On self-defeat, part 2

I just wrote about how Wife's whole life—so it seems—has been one long exercise in self-defeat. This is a line of thought I started after looking at the journals she left behind when she vacated Son1's apartment.

But my reflections didn't stop there. Oh no.

Father undercut himself the same way. I've talked here and here about how he undermined his own authority as a businessman. I don't know the details of his stint as a university professor, except that he failed his first tenure review (after three years) so his contract was not renewed. Decades later he found a letter he had written to the Dean after his contract was canceled, and read it to us over the dinner table. As a piece of rhetoric or invective—as a letter that burst into flame upon reading—it was a remarkable piece of work. But by that time I was already an adult, and in fact I was a manager with employees of my own. And what I thought privately (though I never said it aloud) was, "Gosh, if that's where your head was at the time, I'd have fired you too." The letter was all about him, and never mentioned the needs or strategies of the university. And even if he didn't care about the university, anyone who wanted to play the employment game should know enough to pretend to care. Not Father. 

After he retired from business, he tried to make a living as an actor. There he was dogged by a special kind of bad luck that repeated over and over. Time and again, he would get a part in something very small whose schedule neatly prevented him from auditioning for something large and rewarding. To hear him tell it, this happened so often that he could almost count on it. Now was this self-defeat? I have no idea. All I know is what I heard from him, and he made it sound like random bad luck each and every time.

On the other hand, we've all heard the saying: Once is chance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action. I just don't know which "enemy."

In other words, the topic of self-defeat is one I probably need to spend some time with, because I've lived around it much of my life. First Father, then Wife. That's definitely why I need to think about it. Right?

Ha. I should be so lucky.

Regular readers of this blog know that I have discussed my own self-defeating behaviors many times. Good luck seems to be wasted on me. And I never had the skill to advance up the corporate ladder. I hide myself, and I seem to court failure. You can multiply other references throughout the blog without breaking a sweat.

I think this is why Kimberly Steele told me (three years ago!) that publishing my book "is going to be an act of will that will act as one of your major tests in your life." I have spent too much of my life trying actively to fail. I have worked at defeating myself, and I have surrounded myself with masters at self-defeat. So the challenge is, Can I pull out of such a dramatic dive? Can I get my ass in gear and make it happen?

The questions about Wife matter to her therapist, but I'm not her therapist. The questions about Father are of biographical interest, but after all he's dead. The questions that have to matter to me are about me. 

I have achieved two long-term goals in my life. The first was my marriage (and children). The second was my separation. What comes next? Now that I'm a senior citizen, what long-term goals can I still accomplish? And can I do them without ruining myself in the process?

Those are the questions that matter now. I suppose I should be grateful to Wife's old journals for making me think of them.   

           

On self-defeat, part 1

I've been thinking more about those journals that Wife left behind, when she moved out of Son1's apartment.

She must have been writing them under the guidance of some psychotherapist, or at any rate under the guidance of some psychotherapeutic ideas—ideas that she might have read somewhere, or might have gotten from a therapist in the past. The journals specifically talked about her experience of compulsive thinking, and she set up tables to work out concrete examples.

• Column 1: Initial idea.
• Column 2: Compulsive idea that it triggers.
• Column 3: Rational idea towards which she should redirect herself.
• And so on ....

Examples included:

• Initial idea: "I hurt Hosea by my infidelities and by overspending the budget."
• Compulsive idea: "I am a terrible human and don't deserve to live."
• Rational idea: "I did cause pain but it will be manageable if we work together on it." [Actually I don't remember this entry, but I assume it would have to be something like that.]
• I don't have more examples, because you remember I left the journals there.

It all looks like a very logical therapeutic approach. But the single most important fact—overwhelming everything else—is that it didn't work! Self-understanding counts for bupkes unless it results in meaningful changes of behavior, and Wife's behavior never changed! So all these journal entries were just masturbation, nothing more.

During my most recent visit, Son1 mentioned as an aside (as if it were an obvious point, while explaining something else) that Wife still suffers from these compulsive ideas. Someone criticizes her and right away she falls into a spiral of ranting, "Oh I'm a terrible human and don't deserve to live!" Then whoever's talking to her backs off, because he (or she) didn't mean the criticism to be quite that extreme. And therefore nobody ever succeeds in talking to her about behavior that she actually has to fix.

As I typed those words, I found myself thinking, "Nice work, if you can get it."

And indeed, in the short run it seems like this uncontrolled and disproportionate response is an effective tactic to prevent Wife ever having to face any serious criticism. It insulates her. If narcissism means having to preserve her self-image at all costs, it's a very sturdy form of narcissistic defense, ... even if it is awfully remeniscent of Russian roulette. 

In the long run, of course, the tactic is self-defeating because it means she never confronts the habits that make her fail. So she never learns new habits instead, and she continues to fail. At this point, Wife has failed:

• As a musician. (Good enough to be a church organist, not good enough to be a professional.)
• As a scholar. (She dropped out of one graduate program for complicated reasons, and then failed her Qualifying Exams in her second program.)
• As a businesswoman. (She alienated several employers and they fired her; then her health collapsed while she was still working for the last one and she had to go out on permanent disability.)
• As a church-goer. (I don't know as much about this. But she transitioned over the years from Wiccan to Baptist to Mormon. She was pretty open—to me and the boys—about joining the Mormon church because they look after you. But I think I remember her saying a few years ago that her bishop had actually thrown her out of the church for some reason. Maybe freeloading.)
• As a friend. (Wife keeps making new friends and then keeps alienating them. She tried to contact her friend Leia to say goodbye before leaving town, but no such luck.)
• As a wife. (OK, maybe I'm prejudiced on this point. But read the first ten years of this blog to see my perspective on the question.)
• As a mother? (Whatever else is going on, Wife has clung to her identity as a mother of two wonderful boys. But the last long email I got from her makes me think she is reconsidering what that relationship really looks like.)

If you run into an asshole one day, well, tough luck, you ran into an asshole. If everyone you meet, all day long, is an asshole—it's because you are the asshole.

What this means, in turn, is that Wife's whole life is one long exercise in self-defeat. And it didn't have to be. It was all avoidable. I mean ... maybe her bad health was baked in from the beginning. But the dysfunctional personality, that squandered every opportunity she was handed? That seems to have been something she did on purpose. And it is sad.