Blackmail

 Wife has discovered a new way to blackmail the children. Or at least (for the moment) Son 1.

You know that I'm out of a job. I have severance through the end of August and a little bit into September. And I have applied for Unemployment Insurance, for whatever that adds up to. (Not much.) According to my Separation Agreement with Wife, the alimony I pay is partly dependent on my income: if my income drops too far, the alimony goes to zero. (It never turns negative, though.) So if I don't get a new job by September -- or at any rate October, just to be certain -- Wife's alimony stops.

She explained all this to Son 1 over the phone one evening, in a dead panic -- the kind of panic she gets in where there is no way to placate her or to reason with her. And she kept it up until he told her, "It's going to be fine, Mom. If your alimony runs out you can move in with me." (Son 1, remember, has a job and his own apartment now.) Apparently that let her calm down.

And that's great and all, except … God in heaven, who ever thought this was a good idea? In the first place Wife is crazy and emotionally abusive. Beyond that, how is Son 1 supposed to live a normal life as a young man if he shares an apartment with his mother? 

• What happens when she starts telling him not to spend so much time playing video games? Properly, at that point he should throw her out. But if his whole motivation is that he doesn't want her to be homeless, will he be able to do that? 
• What happens if he wants to bring a young woman home for the night? Does he tell her, "It's fine, my mom won't mind?"
• One point I mentioned directly to him on the phone is that when you are responsible for paying somebody else's bills, you cannot help but judge their spending. So it is a foregone conclusion that if she moves in with him, one day he'll find himself screaming at her, "For God's sake, woman, why did you go spend money on that, of all things?"

But of course he doesn't want her to be homeless. That speaks well of him. But it really bothers me. I see it as the opening wedge, as her putting her nose in the tent in such a way that Son 1 will never get her out again. She would love that, but it's wrong.

I also can't help wondering what she has been doing for the last eight years since we've each lived alone? Did she never understand that one day the alimony would run out? It runs out when I die, for example. If my income ends when I retire, it runs out then. And there was always the possibility that I might be laid off. Did she really take no steps in all that time to secure some kind of income on her own? Of course she often says that she can't get a job, because of her various illnesses. But surely there are ways to secure an income of some kind without working a regular 8:00 to 5:00 job, or without having to type 150 words a minute in a legal office. Flannery O'Connor suffered from lupus just as Wife does, but it didn't stop her from writing. Has Wife really been willing to be simply dependent for the rest of her life, and to leave it at that?

Apparently so. And it's very sad.

       

But anxiety is normal, dammit, part 2

Three months ago I posted a short note that should have marked an end to all my whining about low-level, undifferentiated anxiety by observing that, according to the Buddha-dharma, this feeling is just dukkha and it is a fundamental fact of existence. Complaining about it is no more productive than complaining about the Second Law of Thermodynamics: that's just how things are.

So far, so good. But I just stumbled on the note I made to myself (a month before writing the post) on which the post was based. I wrote it right after Sangha one evening, based on that night's dharma study, and it turns out there's a whole batch of thoughts I forgot to include.

The dharma study talked about how our natural reaction to unpleasantness is to try to escape from it, but this reaction ends up being a lot like scratching at a poison ivy rash: it just makes it worse. The author of the article (I think it was Pema Chödrön) had several examples of times she had tried to scratch the itch of unpleasantness when she felt it, and every time it just made things worse. And worse. Her advice, unsurprisingly, was therefore just to sit with unpleasantness when you feel it. Notice it, be aware of it, but don't try to do anything. Just wait it out.

And I realized all of a sudden that this is exactly what I had figured out to do on my own -- very belatedly -- as a way to deal with Wife's cyclonic tantrums. When she got in the grips of fear or despair (and for years that was pretty common, even after she went on antidepressants), she would lash out in fury at the world. Usually she would wait until she was safely home in bed before doing this, so that she wouldn't actually run any serious risks by lashing out at people who might hurt her. But that meant lashing out at me instead, regardless whether I had anything to do with the problem or was just an innocent bystander ... someone that it was safe to get mad at. And the more worked up she got, the less rational she was, the less sense anything she said actually made, and the less it had to do with me. (I was going to link one or two examples, but you know what? Just click "Wife loses it" and browse through the stories there.) 

At first when this happened -- and I mean over years, here -- when she shouted at me I'd shout back. I'd say this wasn't my fault, I had nothing to do with it, and she was being completely irrational. Bet you can guess how well that worked for me, huh?

So finally -- years and years into the marriage -- I decided to try something else. Bit by bit (and with regular backsliding) I forced myself to stop reacting. She would start screeching at me ... and I would just sit there and take it. Saying nothing. Or possibly going so far as to agree, "Wow, that really sucks." But saying nothing else. Not defending myself. Apologizing, if I could squeeze a word in edgewise, but otherwise sitting silently.

Did it work? Define "work." It didn't make her stop. It didn't shut her up. It didn't make her suddenly see reason. And it sure didn't make me feel good! It did none of those things. If "work" means that it stopped me feeling desperately, horribly shitty every time she went into a tantrum, then No, under that definition it didn't work. 

But another way to look at the situation is that that outcome was never on offer to begin with . That was never going to be available, no matter what I did. The alternative was not between my feeling bad and my feeling good, but between (on the one hand) my feeling desperately, horribly shitty and (on the other) my feeling even worse than that! And it that sense, ... yeah, it worked. I felt terrible, but at least things didn't go to the even worse place that they had gone to so many times earlier in our marriage. It's grim and depressing to look at one of those scenes in retrospect and say it represented progress. But yeah, it was progress. 

Coming back to my evening at Sangha, I think I actually commented on exactly this when the leader asked us if anyone had any reflections on the reading. And this is the story I meant to tell you when I posted on this topic last January, only I forgot.

Just remember: poison ivy. Don't scratch.

It sucks to suffer, but it sucks even more to make it worse.
    

What is compassion supposed to look like?

At Sangha tonight, we were discussing the Four Brahmaviharas (love, compassion, joy, and equanimity) and in particular the conversation turned to compassion. We read an article ("The Four Qualities of Love") by Thich Nhat Hanh [see also here], which said in part:

The second aspect of true love is karuna, the intention and capacity to relieve and transform suffering and lighten sorrows. Karuna is usually translated as “compassion,” but that is not exactly correct. “Compassion” is composed of com (“together with”) and passion (“to suffer”). But we do not need to suffer to remove suffering from another person. Doctors, for instance, can relieve their patients’ suffering without experiencing the same disease in themselves. If we suffer too much, we may be crushed and unable to help. Still, until we find a better word, let us use “compassion” to translate karuna. 

And I started to think about my years with Wife. How did I react when she lost it? (See, for example, any of the posts tagged "Wife loses it" ... just for a start.) Or never mind a complete meltdown -- how did I react when she was just plain angry or morose or anxious or upset -- when she was suffering and needed me to be there?

Well mostly I was there. That is, ... early in our marriage I used to offer suggestions on how she could fix things, but I rapidly learned that was a bad idea. She could tell me right away why every single one of my suggestions was stupid and doomed to fail. So mostly I just sat and listened to her and tried to swallow the pain as fast as she could dish it out ... hoping that somehow if I swallowed enough of it there would be less pain available to torment her and she might start to hurt less.

So far as I could tell, this approach didn't really work; and unfortunately it wasn't easy for me to think of alternatives. But what caught my attention tonight was the line, "we do not need to suffer to remove suffering from another person." That would have been good to know, because certainly my approach to easing Wife's suffering -- sitting and listening and swallowing all the pain that she vomited forth -- caused me an enormous amount of suffering in turn. I did it because I told myself that I could be strong for both of us and therefore could be strong enough to take it. (Compare that with the posts here and here.) But in fact it hurt like hell. And now all these years later I read that this means I was doing it wrong. So I talked about this with the others in the Sangha, and explained that I didn't understand what (on this measure) I should have been doing instead? How could I have been compassionate without drinking in all of Wife's pain? What is compassion supposed to look like?

I can't say that the ensuing discussion was terribly helpful. Of course in a sense the whole discussion is academic now, because I'm not around Wife any longer. But I'd still like to know. Maybe some day I'll need to use these skills with somebody else, God forbid. And if nothing else I'd enjoy knowing the answer just because answers are more gratifying than questions.

In any event, one woman started by saying that in any difficult situation you have to have compassion for yourself first. Know what you need and what your own boundaries are because you can't help anybody else if you yourself are beaten into the ground. (But wait, ... doesn't this same article say a little farther on that when you truly understand the other person then the boundaries between you melt away?) And sure, this sounds like the kind of advice I could have gotten anywhere. But what is she telling me to have done, in practical terms? When Wife was weeping and crying out about how everything in her life was going to be bleak and miserable from this day forward, ... what would this woman have had me say that wouldn't sound smug or clueless or uncaring, or that wouldn't make me sound like a ninny?

Then another woman told a very difficult story about a time when her son was on suicide watch, and when she and her husband were frantic to do anything they could to help him. The lama she was seeing at the time (and still sees, in addition to attending our Sangha too) told her to take no action and not to interfere, but to spend her whole day in prayer and meditation. And in the end her son didn't kill himself, so it worked! Which is great. I'm glad her son didn't kill himself, of course. But it is hard for me to look back, in retrospect, and think of that as helpful advice.

It would be fair to reply that I might not recognize good advice if I saw it. After all, to all appearances my approach didn't work. What makes me think I have any idea what the right approach ought to look like? And I guess I don't. That's one reason I'm writing this out now. As things turned out, I finally ended up pulling back because I recognized that I wasn't doing any good. (This came after lots of variations on trying to be helpful or compassionate or simply present, all of which failed more or less spectacularly.) I would tell her that I was sorry, that I wished things were better for her, but that I just wasn't smart enough to know what to do ... or, depending on the concrete situation, that it was literally out of my hands and there was nothing I could do. This didn't solve anything, but it actually didn't make things worse (I had feared it would) and it got me out of the line of fire. And in the end, as you all know, I pulled so far back that I asked her for a divorce, and then moved out, and then we legally separated.

Is that what compassion is supposed to look like? Somehow I can't think so. Surely the Buddha himself, or even Thich Nhat Hanh, would have figured out a more intelligent approach.

Let me know if you think of something.
   

When is it abuse?

Marie told me where to find some of the Harry Potter fan-fiction she has written, and I've been reading it. She writes well. The characters are sensitively drawn, they sound right, and her plots take the characters in interesting directions without violating what is "known" about them from the writings of J. K. Rowling herself. (The seven Potter books are described collectively as "the Canon".)

Sometimes "interesting" is a pallid understatement. For example, she raises the question whether it is possible to characterize James Potter (Harry's dad) as an abusive husband and Lily Potter as a battered wife, without violating anything about them that is known from the Canon. Then she writes a story which does exactly that; and in her comments on the finished narrative, she adds that it was disturbingly easy. I get the sense from her remarks that she thinks the "real James Potter" (if we can speak of such a person) probably was an abusive husband, even if Rowling claims in interviews that she thinks he's a great guy.

I was thinking about this story while out walking last night, and suddenly I found myself deep in an imagined conversation with Marie about my marriage ... an imagined conversation in which I was trying to defend myself against the charge that I systematically abused Wife, that I was (in fact) just as obvious an abuser as James Potter. It was not a pleasant conversation to be in.

(As an aside, ... am I the only one who does this? You'd think that if I were going to fantasize a conversation with somebody I hadn't seen in twenty-four years, I'd make it something that flattered my own ego. You'd think I would pretend that she had missed me all those years -- her plain remarks to the contrary notwithstanding. Or maybe I'd make a sexual fantasy out of it and then come home to masturbate. But no, I imagined an accusation -- one in which my explanations were peremptorily cut off as transparent excuses just like the ones all other abusive husbands use. "It wasn't my fault. She made me do it. Besides, I never hit her." It was really unsettling.)

In abbreviated form, the accusation was that a lot of the things I did to Wife were subtly abusive.

• I paid all the bills, which sounds fine until we add that I went over every expense (e.g., every credit card) line by line and asked her to justify each one. I fought with her over any expense I disagreed with. And at one point I took her wallet away, with all her credit cards, so that she could not buy anything.
   
• I asked how she spent her time. Where did she go? Who was she with? When she told me things that sounded like lies or didn't add up, I would cross-check the details. If I thought she was lying I would confront her and demand the truth.
   
• At night after she went to bed, I read her e-mails and her text messages without her knowledge or permission. Most of the time I did not have her password and therefore had to hunt around in the guts of our home computer until I found how to get what I wanted. (But I never installed a key-logging program.) I made copies of the messages that mattered to me, so I could retrieve them later.
   
• I almost never hit her. I remember that there were a couple of times that were line calls, and they were long enough ago that I don't actually remember the details of what happened. Therefore if I were asked in a court of law today whether I remember ever hitting her, I could honestly answer No under oath; if I were asked simply whether I ever hit her -- leaving out the qualifier about what I remember -- I couldn't honestly be certain.

Was this spousal abuse? Taken by themselves, these behaviors sound pretty bad. At best they mean treating a grown woman like a child, which is demeaning even if we talk about isolated cases. (And in truth I never treated either of our children this poorly.) To expect a grown woman, an educated professional with a master's degree from a great university, to put up with this treatment on a regular basis -- as a pattern, as a way of life -- sounds worse than demeaning. It sounds abusive. And this is how we lived, for years.

When I finally got a chance to defend myself (in this imagined conversation), my defense was that Wife was crazy.

This provoked another outburst from the imagined Marie. Of course! It was all the woman's fault! Isn't that what every abusive husband says? "My wife was crazy." Isn't that just like the lecherous husband in the 1950's telling his secretary "My wife doesn't understand me" just before he fucks her on the long table in the board room, after hours? Of course your wife was crazy! You can explain and excuse anything like that!

No. Really, she was crazy. And it was scary. If you can't believe me, that means you've never lived with somebody so crazy -- which is a good thing, I guess, except it means you have no bloody clue what I'm talking about.

• Take the bills, for example. I didn't want to have to pay them all. It was a pain in the ass, and for the first couple years of our marriage she paid them all. I was content to let her take charge of this. That lasted until one day we started bouncing checks, because when she paid the phone bill (we owed some $35 that month) she wrote a check for over $800. I accused the bank of making a mistake, and they produced the physical check itself, as proof. Wife could not account for what had happened. Where did that three-digit number starting with an "8" come from? It wasn't our account number, it wasn't a transposition of any of the digits in the real bill, it wasn't the amount we owed on any other bill she paid that day. The number just appeared out of the blue. That was the last time I let her pay our bills. I figured if this kind of thing could happen with no warning and no explanation, the only way to protect against it was for me to pay all the bills. If we had not been married -- if we had had separate checking accounts and separate credit ratings -- I would have let her continue to do as she pleased. But not with my money and my credit.
• I went over every expense because she bought things that made no sense.
• One night after I had gone to bed she stayed up late on e-Bay and bid on $700 worth of blue jeans because the boys needed some new jeans. Why so many? She figured she'd be outbid on some of them. And she was, so the final bill was only a little over $400. That's a lot of used blue jeans. They boys outgrew them before they could outwear so many.
• When we sold the house, we discovered boxes and boxes of things she had bought that we had to put straight into the trash, or give to charity. We had never opened them or used them ... but we owned them, because she got an idea one day and decided we "just had to have" something we never had any use for.
• There are a lot more stories in this vein -- a lot more! -- but I'm not going to tell them because it will just make me angry, even these many years later.
• I took away her wallet because ... well, I've already told you that story.
• I asked her where she went and what she did because she slept around so much and then lied about it. The sleeping around bugged me. The lying made me crazy. I even asked her, "If you are sleeping around just say so -- it's better than lying." But she wouldn't. I spent the first year of this blog complaining about this topic, so maybe I don't have to go into a lot more detail now.
• I read her e-mails and her text messages because I was genuinely afraid of what she might do online.
• When she got involved with Boyfriend 5 -- who, you will recall, never actually existed -- early on she texted him her social security number and her birthdate and her mother's maiden name, all to prove that she "trusted" him because he was "afraid" that she didn't.
• At another point she was all set to respond to an e-mail from somebody in Nigeria asking for her help because his little girl had cancer. "What?" I exploded. "Haven't you heard that this is the most common Internet scam in the world these days?" She looked at me in dead earnest and said, "But Hosea, what if there really is a little girl in Nigeria dying of cancer? Isn't it my job to help her any way I can?" I finally dissuaded her, but it wasn't easy.
• Then there was the time she was going to steal the children and fly internationally to go meet Boyfriend 5 and live there forever with him. I hid the children's passports so she couldn't take them; but I am convinced that -- had I not known to do so -- she would have gone. So there would have been no Boyfriend 5 abroad to meet her, and she would have taken the children to a foreign country with no money and no provisions made in advance (all because she expected a reception she couldn't get). If they ever got back alive I could have had her arrested and thrown in jail (I think), but it would have been a hell of a risk to run. Fortunately she couldn't take the first step, because she couldn't even get tickets without their passports. Good thing I read her e-mail that night!
• And as for hitting her ... all I can say is, you try living with her day and night for thirty years, and tell me if you never hit her! I'll bet my track record is better than yours, when all is said and done.

After all this my summary was that my actions didn't constitute classic abuse because I didn't want to exercise power over her but did it only for self-defense: now that we live in different places and have different bank accounts, I don't care any more what she does. On the other hand, I added, the evidence also shows that if I feel threatened I am capable of doing almost anything to defend myself.

In my fantasized conversation, Marie ended up unsure: unsure whether I abused Wife, and unsure whether she wanted to be my friend. After all, why would she be friends with a confessed wife-abuser? Again, since it was my fantasy you'd think I could have made it all work out so that she came round to my way of thinking at the end. But "unsure" was absolutely the best outcome I could get.

Maybe I just need to learn how to fantasize better. This particular fantasy was really depressing.

    

Just like old times, part 2

After they were at my place for a few days, I was to drive the boys back to Wife’s. Well, Son 2 left to help my folks on Thursday morning. Then Thursday afternoon, Son 1 suggested I take him to Wife’s place a day early. I don’t know if it’s because he finds it too boring here without his brother, but maybe.

 

Friday, Son 1 texted me from Wife’s house and we had the following conversation.

 

Son 1: So apparently she only checks her email once a week, then she totally flipped the fuck out and started shouting about how much she hates you. Then I actually had to shout back. It was a fucking mess. Then she just yelled “I still believe Dad [i.e. me, Hosea] bought you.”^{SEE NOTE 1}

 

Hosea: WTF?? What does she hate me about this time? Did I send something inflammatory that I don’t remember? Not trying to get sucked into the tempest – just curious.

 

Son 1: Not including her in the college selection process for Son 2^{SEE NOTE 2} and me^{SEE NOTE 3}, and not inviting her to college trips, regardless of the fact she couldn’t make them physically.

 

Hosea: Right. She couldn’t make the drive to B—^{SEE NOTE 4} even as a passenger. It’s a long fucking way.

 

Son 1: What I said. Didn’t help any though. Tried to explain even you weren’t that involved.^{SEE NOTE 5} It was just a clusterfuck. She also tried to say I loved you more.^{SEE NOTE 6}

 

Hosea: Oh Jesus. OK this is not veering back to sense any time soon. I was going to write … “More important is that visiting the college isn’t the important part. Thinking and talking it over afterwards is. Nothing prevents her being a part of that.”

 

Son 1: Well, hopefully she’ll take a nap, calm the fuck down, and I can talk to her sensibly.

 

Hosea: Yes. Try to assure her that she can be valuable by giving wise advice even if she doesn’t do the running around. Like Yoda. OK, bad analogy but you get the idea.

 

Son 1: Ya, I’ll try.

 

Hosea: Sorry dude.

 

Son 1: Now she’s bitching about you to C— or something. Fuck it, I’m not even going to try for the next few hours.

 

Hosea: OK. C--? Weird. No idea why she’d call C--.^{SEE NOTE 7} Whatever.

 

Son 1: Not your uncle. This is C— S--. Some guy who she met on a dating site and who became infatuated with her. He worked at [a military base near where Wife lives] but is now retired in [a state on the other side of the country].

 

Hosea: Infatuated? Good to know that life goes on ….^{SEE NOTE 8}

 

Son 1: He’ll call a couple times a day. He’s old and harmless, but can be annoying at times.

 

Hosea: Couple times a day? Wow. Good for her, I guess, to have someone to talk to. Surprised they don’t talk about one of them moving closer to the other, but maybe that’ll wait till Son 2 graduates high school. Or not. You never know.

 

Son 1: He’s married.^{SEE NOTE 9} And Mom [i.e., Wife] is scared to death of living anywhere not near [her home town, or at any rate her home state].

 

Hosea: Ah. Well if he weren’t married he could move here but I guess not.

 

Son 1: Yep. I don’t give a fuck. Her life; she’s over 50, she needs to be able to confront her problems and the unknown without panicking.

 

Hosea: No argument.

 

Son 1: I didn’t think there would be.

 

Hosea: J

__________

 

NOTE 1: Wife commonly expresses her anxieties in financial terms. Never mind that it’s impossible to “buy” the love of anyone perceptive and intelligent – Wife is convinced that in the grand scheme of things she is poor, has always been poor, and will always be poor; also that anybody in life who has any more success at anything than she does got it by buying it with money. That’s why she always loses, you see … because she doesn’t have the money to buy victory.

 

NOTE 2: Not sure if I have mentioned it yet, but Son 2 is looking at colleges. He wants to visit two or three of them this summer, and wants me to take him. None of them could be called “nearby” and at least one of them is very far away. So I have been discussing plans for this with him, along with discussing his thoughts about college in general. I have no tincluded Wife in any of these discussions. As regards the travel, it’s impractical and I don’t want her along: I don’t want to have to put up with her company that long. As regards the general discussion … she gets the same e-mails from the college counselor that I do, so she can initiate the conversations if she wants to. I can’t and won’t manage her relationships with the boys. (When they were a lot younger I used to try, but it was a hopeless effort.)

 

NOTE 3: I did the same thing when Son 1 was looking at colleges. In fact, I think I wrote something about his college trips, but I’m writing this disconnected from the Internet so I can’t check just now.

 

NOTE 4: B— is the town housing one of the colleges Son 2 is interested in. Mapquest estimates the distance from my town as twenty hours of solid driving. Maybe we should fly. In that case it won’t be the rigors of travel that prevent Wife from coming along, but the cost of a ticket. All of which are easier to say than “Neither of us wants to be around you that long.”

 

NOTE 5: And that’s true. I gave Son 1 some general advice, including the criteria I would propose for rating his top two choices. He decided to pick the other one, and I told him that was OK as long as he performed there. So far he has (more or less).

 

NOTE 6: The same insecurities as in Note 1.

 

NOTE 7: I have an uncle named C--.

 

NOTE 8: Way back when I started this blog (that was in 2007 for those who are keeping track), I was really upset that Wife was always trying to romance other guys. Now I think it’s probably a good thing, because I hope that it insures her against isolation. Given how bad she is at human relationships, and how helpless her medical conditions can make her (see the recent story about my taking her to the hospital), isolation is both highly likely for her and a danger as well.

 

NOTE 9: Did Son 1 see the irony that he was trolling a dating site while married? Not that there aren’t plenty of other guys doing the same thing, of course. I didn’t ask, because it struck me only now as I was retyping all this.

 

 

 

Other times Wife lost it

In digging out the last few stories I posted recently (here and here and here) I found some others as well.  I'll post a few of them here just to get them out and online; some of the others might take a bit more time to put in readable form.  And in some cases I start to wonder if these are stories I have already told: after six years and some of posts, it's easy to lose track.
__________

Hosea's log. Stardate January 13, 2005.  Wife had an attack that I described in an e-mail to Boyfriend 4 as follows:

…. Wife had an attack where she started snarling like an animal, making not-very-veiled threats to damage herself and/or the children, and insisting that nobody loved her or would care if anything happened to her; when I tried to hold her to tell her this wasn't true she began to struggle violently with me. I held her still on the bed by holding her wrists and pinning her legs, because I was at this point genuinely concerned about the consequences (to herself or others) if I let her go. Her response was to shriek as if possessed.

Actually that's not a bad image, because her voice got deeper and huskier and the look in her eyes was not anything she normally has. Her reason also left her; I told her more than once that if she stopped fighting with me I wouldn't pin her down, but her response to that was to fight harder ... the way an animal might. (The sounds coming out of her mouth were feral and inarticulate as well.) I don't know if she was actually bruised, but her skin is so sensitive that she bruises if she bumps into a table. So I bet she was….

She finally settled down, after shrieking incoherently for many minutes. (…I think it helped that the boys came in the room to see what was going on.) When she stopped fighting and snarling, she settled down into sobbing, at which point I concluded that there was no further danger and let her go. I think this has been building for a while. I believe it is the depression coming to a peak. ….

I tried calling you but got your answering machine. Anyway, here is the story of the evening. I have left out all the story building up to it, because I still need to feed the boys and get them to bed; but there was a long trail of anger and frustration leading to this moment….

Oh, she did ask me to call Boyfriend 3. … I gave him basically the same description. He said that one of his ex-wives used to experience the same thing on rare occasions; also that he would pray for her and put her on his church's prayer line, but then after a few minutes Wife was willing to talk to him. That seems to have helped her collect herself, too.

__________

Hosea's log.  Stardate spring 2002.

During the spring of 2002, Wife had an extended bad spell. One Sunday in March, I took the boys down to visit my parents; I worked on taxes with my mother, while the boys played. Later that evening we had dinner and a small birthday party for my father. Wife stayed home because she wasn’t feeling well; also, at that point, she and my father got on badly and I thought they would each be happier without the other. But the next day, while Son 1 was at baseball practice, she became very angry with me. She began to accuse me of trying to take the children away from her permanently, and nothing I could say would shake this belief from her – even though there was no rational connection between anything I had done and that conclusion.

In early May of that year, she called me at the office one afternoon and insisted I come home immediately. She had just gotten off the phone with the hospital trying to arrange something about her upcoming gastric bypass surgery, and something had gone wrong. As a result she threw a tantrum, barricading herself in the bedroom and throwing clocks and other things into the bathroom and out the window. Her niece was staying with us at that time, and so she shepherded the kids into another room and tried to look after Wife. When I got home, I tried to calm Wife down; when that didn’t work, I held her wrists and held her down onto the bed to restrain her forcibly from doing more damage. She snarled and fought and shouted, but finally the fit passed and I let her up. Later I called the hospital and worked out whatever the problem was. I also cleaned up the mess.

__________

Hosea's log.  Stardate spring 1996.

 

She went into a similar downward spiral while pregnant with Son 1, our oldest. She had been taken off her medication (then Prozac) because of her pregnancy, and one evening I came home from work to find the kitchen a complete disaster. She had thrown food and dishes across it, smashing glass jars and spilling molasses, soy sauce, and many other foods all across the floor. She was sitting on the floor surrounded by broken glass and all this other stuff, playing with the broken glass by tracing it along her arms. When I asked her what had happened, her voice sounded almost serene (but crazy); she said that she was fine and that she was just playing with broken glass. I got her out of there and cleaned up; I cleaned up the kitchen; I called her OB/GYN to say that if she couldn’t get her Prozac she was going to have to have an abortion so that she could have her medicines again; and finally I got a hold of a psychiatrist who had seen her years before (when she was hospitalized for psychiatric reasons). I made an appointment, and at that appointment he told her that after the first trimester Prozac is completely safe for pregnant mothers. She went back on her medicines and things got better.

Blast from the past -- The weekend that Wife was arrested

So after much promising, I have finally posted this story ... as a separate page linked to this blog, because it is so damned long.  You can find it here:

http://hoseasblog.blogspot.com/p/the-weekend-that-wife-was-arrested.html

Any sane person would ask, after reading all this, "Hosea why in God's name did you spring her from jail? Why did you pay thousands of dollars in bail? If you'd played your cards right you could have kept her in jail for a long time after a weekend like this, and think how much pain and heartache you would have saved yourself!"

I've thought about it over and over, and I can come up with only one plausible answer to the question why I acted as I did.  That's how abused spouses act.  Over and over, that's how they act.

Which means I have to identify myself as an abused spouse.  Although, all things considered, the identification might not be that far off.  Read for yourself and decide what you think.

Blast from the past -- "My mother would have beaten me bloody"

Hosea's log, star date November 11, 2006. 

Location: home ... the house we sold last summer.

Boyfriend 4 is living with us.  Son 1 is ten years old.  Son 2 is eight.

It is a full year – no, it's more than thirteen months – before I even start this blog.  Even back then, life was sometimes far too exciting and far too tough.

This account will be pretty close to what I wrote down at the time, with only minor alterations for clarity.

This evening at dinner, Wife exploded at the boys in a potentially violent rage like the one she was in the night she was arrested.  [Gosh, that's yet another story I've been meaning to post and never have!]  What led up to it?  I don't know – she didn't take her lunchtime meds until 6pm, and we'd been talking about money (which always agitates her), and Son 1 was being difficult today because he spent last night at a sleepover with a couple of friends ... so he didn't do all his chores and he was cranky and out of sorts because he stayed up way too late last night.  But none of these things should be enough by itself – it's just that her disease is getting worse.

Anyway, she and I came out (from talking about money) after Boyfriend 4 and the boys had started eating already.  And Son 1 wasn't eating any of his corn chowder, which Wife had spent "all afternoon" making.  This was "all afternoon" a week or so ago – and even so she'd invested way too much anxiety in it and started it way too late.  But it was still a week or so ago.  Anyway, she went on to say that when she was Son1's age she was glad to have any food on the table at all, and her mother would have beaten her bloody for wasting food, and ... and ... and ...!

Boyfriend 4 and I got her to go back to the bedroom, and after a couple minutes I left her with Boyfriend 4 to go check on the boys.  They were both crying heavily.  I sat down on a chair next to Son 1, who had been the target of her fury (and she could still be heard declaiming against him in the next room), and I pulled him onto my lap.  But Son 2 was crying even harder than Son 1, so I called him over to my lap too.  I hugged them both close, and asked Son 1 to put an arm around Son 2 – partly for balance on my lap, and partly to comfort Son 2 who was sobbing profoundly.  And I talked to them.  I explained that when Mommy's depression is bad, it means that her emotions aren't right – and so when she yells at them in this kind of way, it's not because they are bad and they mustn't take it personally.  I explained this a couple of times and asked if they understood.  They both nodded feebly through the tears.  Then I asked if this was something they already knew before I told them ... and they both shook their heads No.  So it's a damned good thing I told them.  Maybe this will inoculate them against Wife's rages having the same effect on them that Wife's mother's rages had on Wife.  Or maybe not, but at least they needed to know.  For some time I've been hoping that this is something they had figured out on their own, but I guess not.

After a while I asked them if there was somewhere they wanted to go that they would feel safer.  Son 1 stammered "room" almost inaudibly, and Son 2 chimed in, "Anywhere with a door we can close so no-one can hurt us."  So we went into their room.  There (after closing the door) we cuddled on the floor, with Son 1's big blanket around us.  Son 1 explained that it was really scary when Mommy was like that.  And Son 2 said something that really struck me, which is the reason I wrote all this down.  [In other words, without this next point I would have let it slide into oblivion ... presumably because it wasn't extraordinary enough to record otherwise. It amazes me to look back and realize that I didn't record the tantrum for its own sake. I must have taken them too much for granted. Sorry, I'll go on.]  Anyway, Son 2 told Son 1, "It's way scarier for me than for you because I know what this can lead to!"  And then he told Son 1 about the night Wife got arrested, when she was smashing plates on the kitchen floor and "throwing pots and pans."  He explained that he had been awakened by the noise and had come out to see what was going on ... and he had seen Wife do all this destruction.  (And in fact I remember that he had come out afterwards, as I was cleaning up and when the social worker came to check in with me.)  Then Son 2 told Son 1, "You're lucky you're a sound sleeper, because you slept through it. But I saw!"  And this explains why he was so much more upset than Son 1, at whom the rage was ostensibly aimed.  (Although don't get me wrong – Son 1 was really, really  upset too.)  

Finally I got them to settle down.  They agreed to go brush their teeth and go straight to bed, and they both slept together in Son 1's bunk (the upper bunk).I told them a funny story, about a cat we had owned before they were born and how she had befriended a rabbit during a couple months that we were rabbit-sitting for a friend.  Then I turned their light low but kept it a little on, and closed the door.  Son 2 asked that it be open because he doesn't like a closed door when he sleeps. But I said I didn't know if everything was settled yet, and I'd open the door later when all was OK.  And they slept.

When I got back to Wife, Boyfriend 4 had calmed her (thank God for Boyfriend 4!) and she had taken the rest of her meds.  I took over while Boyfriend 4 cleared the table and emptied his cat box.  (When he came to live with us, he brought his cats who joined the house along with ours. His three shared one box, while our two shared another.)  I talked with her and held her until she fell asleep, reassuring her that we all love her.  She talked a lot in terms of the kids retracting their love, or at any rate never trusting her again.  I dismissed the question of trust and assured her (truly) that the boys still love her.  As for trust ... now that I stop to think about it, I am even more amazed at Son 2's willingness to throw his arms around Wife and kiss her to cheer her up when she is depressed – because obviously he has not forgotten the night she came fully unglued.  So what does it mean, that he can show so much love and affection for a mommy whom he knows capable of such destruction?  I know he loves her, but how does he reconcile that with what he has seen?

This child – Son 2 – is going to grow a very deep soul somewhere along the line .... 

Moving out, I guess

Wife had a major explosive rage last night.  She accused me of starving her to the point of malnutrition and otherwise abusing her, plus a bunch of other things I don’t even remember because they made even less sense.  (Ironically I have been home as little as possible in the last few weeks, so I’m not quite sure what she thought I had done.)  She insisted that I “have no idea how much [she] can get out of” me by claiming to be an abused wife.  She shouted at me like this for some time, frequently six inches from my face.  At one point, to punctuate her remarks, she threw a full glass of wine in my face.  Then, not content that she had made her point (whatever that point was), she took a full bottle of Ensure she had gotten from the fridge for her dinner and emptied it over my head. 

I said very little during this – that is, I started by trying to bring her back to rational reality, but soon realized that I wasn’t getting very far.  I kept my voice very low and even.  Several times I suggested that what she was saying was an opinion but that I saw things differently; I said nothing which contradicted her more directly than that, though, and just hoped that the fit would blow over soon.  Oh … I did succeed in persuading her to mop up the Ensure which had spilled onto the countertop and the floor.  I didn’t bother mentioning the stuff that was in my hair or shirt, figuring I would deal with that later.  The only time I touched her at all was when she picked up her wine glass to refill it.  I told her I thought she had had enough and took her hand to get her to set down the wine glass.  When she resisted I let go: so sure enough she refilled it and took it with her.  (Fortunately she did not decide to throw that one too.)

Finally she wound down.  She took her night-time medications (or some of them) and her wine glass and went to the boys’ bedroom, where she has been sleeping since they are not home.  I don’t know if she went to sleep or not.  She left the light on, but closed the door most of the way.  I texted Debbie to see if there was any way she could put me up for the night, and fortunately got the answer Yes.  So I grabbed a new shirt and a pair of socks – and my briefcase (for work in the morning) – and left.  When I got to her apartment I first took a shower (to get all the Ensure out of my hair) and then slept.

I am writing this now from work.  Talking it over with Debbie this morning, I realize it would make no sense at all for me to go back home.  Wife has done things like this before, as you know, and I have always managed the situation and stuck it out.  And in fact while it was happening last night I was thinking “How unusual – she hasn’t done this sort of thing since her medications were stabilized a few years ago.”  But come to think of it, that’s not true.  There was the time last October when we were over at my parents’ house that she was so disagreeable for an hour and then slapped me and stormed out.  There have been other storms of other sorts.  I guess I have just papered over them in my mind, … I don’t know, maybe I just figured they were normal, so what was the big deal?  But that doesn’t make them OK.  And it doesn’t mean I have to live like that any more.

I’m not sure where I’ll go.  I can’t just stay with Debbie.  On the one hand it would hardly be fair to dump my problems in her lap for her to fix.  On the other hand she is starting to have second thoughts about the relationship – not about loving me (which she still does), but just about our actually fucking while I am still this early in the process of disentangling from Wife.  So I assume I’ll get a motel for a night or two while looking for a room to rent.  And of course I’ll have to go back to the house several times: for clothes, for other basic stuff.  A full-scale move-out will be a big deal and take a while.

Just to let you know the latest status ….

Wife freaks out, slaps me, leaves, returns, threatens ....

I started this post a week ago.  A week ago last Friday, in fact.  (That means Friday the fifth.)  The weekend hadn't even started, and already it was full of drama.  I'll try to keep it brief.  I'll also keep all the time references as they were when I started.
__________

This was the first day of Parent's Weekend at Hogwarts.  Last night we drove to my parents' house, five minutes away from the Hogwarts campus.  The idea was that Wife and I would sleep there, spend today at Hogwarts visiting Son 1's classes and talking to his advisor -- partly about Son 1's abysmal grades, and partly about what support he might need when he learns we are divorcing -- and then drive home, skipping the second day; then tomorrow we'll go visit Durmstrang, which is having their Parents' Weekend the very same weekend as Hogwarts (only Saturday-Sunday instead of Friday-Saturday).

It's a two-and-a-half hour drive, so I wanted to leave as soon as I got home from work.  Wife had been fighting with plumbers all day, so she was already primed for battle and running late.  I tried to be patient, or at least tried to act patiently, until we were already an hour past the time we'd planned to leave; and then I confess my half-hearted imitation of a patient person fell apart pretty sadly.  I picked things up to dump them in the car, asked Wife fretfully if she had anything more she had to take, and made myself a general pain in the ass.  So Wife got rattled and disorganized and ended up leaving her glasses behind.  But finally we got under way.

Wife can't stand to sit silently, so she talked most of the drive.  She complained about the plumbers, she complained about the house, she complained about me, she complained about the divorce ... in fact, she complained about pretty much anything she could think of.  At a couple of points I thought her remarks were interesting, though not perhaps in quite the way she intended.

For example, at one point we were talking about a subject I had already discussed with her at considerable extent in e-mail.  Not wanting to repeat myself, I asked ...

Hosea: Hmmm. Well, I don't know how many of my e-mails you have read, but ....

Wife: I haven't read any of your e-mails! You should know that. I don't have your password and in any event I would respect your privacy. How dare you insinuate that I have been reading your e-mails?!

Hosea: No, actually I meant the e-mails I have written to you. It never occurred to me about that other. Gosh, interesting you should jump to that conclusion .... Does this tell me where your head is at?

Or at another point, she started complaining about my proposed terms for the divorce, and suddenly said, ...

Wife: You know, I really resent the way you are trying to use visitation with the children as a way to extort my agreement to a plan that is clearly not in my best interests.

Hosea: Huh? I'm not doing that at all. What are you talking about? I've proposed a plan that I think is fair. You don't like it -- OK, that's fine, you should propose another one. But I'm not trying to extort anything, and I'm certainly not using time with the children as any kind of lever. Why would you even think of such a thing? Is this what you are planning to do to me?

It wasn't a fun drive.

We got to my parents' house.  They weren't too thrilled to see her -- at any rate, my mother made herself scarce in the kitchen and my father made the kind of dull, toneless chit-chat that he makes when he knows he has to but wishes he were somewhere else -- but of course they asked us in and offered us a slice of pie for dessert.  (My mother makes the best pie on the face of the planet, and I'm not interested in hearing how good you think your pie -- or your mother's pie -- is by comparison.)  But Wife was disagreeing with everything anybody said.  My father complimented her on something she was wearing, saying it was a very pretty shawl, and she snapped "It's not a shawl."  Then it was something else.  And something else.  Finally she got so mad at something she thought my dad had said -- though he hadn't, and in fact we were talking about something totally different anyway -- that she got up from the table abruptly and left.

I followed her into the other room to tell her that she was objecting to a nothing: nobody was talking about what she thought we were talking about, nobody had said what she thought had been said, and in any event none of it was worth getting mad at.  I told her that her overreaction was so extreme as to be laughable.

Wife: If you were standing over here where I could reach you and said that, I'd slap your face!

Hosea: No problem, I can move.

I walked over to within arm's reach, meanwhile also calling my parents into the room as witnesses in case she did something really bad.  She spewed venom at me for a while -- sorry, I'd give a transcript if I could remember it but I can't.  But it was so disconnected from any sense, and so far over the top, that it was very easy to laugh.  So I did.  And so she slapped me.

Not very hard, really.  And I have to admit I laughed at that too.

Wife gathered up her tote bag and bolted outside.  As she climbed into the car, I followed and asked her where she was going.  "Anywhere I want!!"  And she was off.

The rest of the evening was a lot quieter, but none of us knew what to expect.  Was she going to a motel?  (Could be.)  Was she going to try to drive the two-and-a-half hours home, late at night in the dark?  (I thought this unlikely.)  Was she going to drive off a bridge, or into a tree?  (Not real likely, but I couldn't rule it out.)  Or was she just going to drive for the state line and then keep going as far as she could go?  Nobody knew.  My mother went to bed.  My father and I talked about it for a couple hours.  ("Has she ever done this kind of thing before? Just fled like this?" "I don't remember, but she sure has talked about it." "Has she ever threatened suicide before?" "She's talked about it but never done anything.")  And finally we too turned in.  I made sure to sleep lightly and in my clothes, so that I could wake up and be ready if she came back in the middle of the night to do anything unpredictable.

But she didn't.

The next morning she called while I was eating breakfast.  The first words out of her mouth after I said "Hello" were to complain about the motel where she had spent the night, because they didn't give her a wake-up call.  So when was I planning to leave for Hogwarts?

I don't know, maybe half an hour.

Wait for me.

I'll wait the half an hour or a couple minutes longer, but not forever.

Just wait for me -- I'll be right there.  Click.

In fact she got there in just about half an hour -- pulled up in front of the house and waited for me to climb in.  Then without a word she pulled away to drive to Hogwarts.

A couple of minutes down the road, she said suddenly, "Don't you ever do that again! If you ever just stand there and laugh at me again. I'll beat you to a pulp. Go ahead and call the police -- you'll be filing your complaint through a straw."

I don't remember what I said back, but it was pretty inconsequential.  Later in the day, as we were walking around Hogwarts attending Son 1's classes, she said to me, "Of course I would never really do anything to hurt you, but please never laugh at me again because it is the worst thing in the world to me."  Mind you, I never really thought she was going to beat me to a pulp.  The fact that I weigh approximately twice what she does, that she has done nothing for years to strengthen her muscles, and that she still doesn't have her gun ... all these things make me feel reasonably secure.  But I also understand that she has real trouble coping with being laughed at.

At the end of the day we met with Son 1's advisor.  We discussed some plans to bring up his grades, and also discussed what kind of support he might need after learning about the divorce.  And then we left.  Later my dad said that he asked Son 1 how Parents' Day went, and Son 1 simply said "Disastrous."

As Wife and I drove home, we talked about laughter just a bit.  (She brought the subject up.)  I tried to suggest that being laughed at is no big deal.  She didn't get that at all: how could it not be a big deal for someone else to mock at you, to think you are so petty and worthless as to be laughable?

But I am laughable, I told her.  Good Lord, you can't think I take myself seriously.  Nor should you, nor should any of us.  If someone mocks me -- hell, let him.  I mock at myself, why shouldn't he?  There's no human alive who isn't silly enough to deserve a good belly-laugh, if you only look at us right.  Let it go, relax over it, and have a good laugh.  Taking yourself seriously is a lot of work, after all ... who has time or energy for it?  Why bother?

She didn't see it that way.  No surprise, I guess.

A visit from the police

We had a visit from the police this evening, and I want to write down what happened while it is still clear in my mind. 

 

[Already this evening I have sent this story, minus a little editing, to my father, my brother, and D.]

 

It all started – so far as I can tell – because of dinner.  We got home from the Shakespeare Festival about 6:30 pm, and of course nobody had been here over the weekend to do any shopping or to plan dinner.  I offered that this was no problem because I had one meal left over in the refrigerator.  So we all unpacked our bags from the trip.  The meal I had left over was a cauliflower-and-tomato dish I had prepared last week before leaving for the Festival.  I remembered that Son 1 hadn't liked it much, but there was enough to feed everybody so long as I made a starch to dish it over; so I decided to make up a starch that would appeal to anybody in the crowd who didn't like the cauliflower.  I made a big pot of spaghetti.  Then in a separate pan I cooked up about a pound of bacon (cut into little pieces) and a huge onion (itself the better part of a pound) … diced and with plentiful garlic added as well.  When I poured the water off the spaghetti I added the bacon-onion-garlic mixture, added a cup of parmesan cheese, and stirred it all in with the noodles.  Then I called everyone to the table, saying, "Take a plate, dish yourself up some noodles, dish up some vegetables on top of them, and have a seat."

 

We went through dinner uneventfully.  Son 1 took lots of noodles and just a bit of vegetables; he told me he loved the noodles.  Son 2 said, "Cauliflower! Hooray!" and dished up plenty of both.  (He also went and got seconds on both.)  Wife took just a little bit and then sat at the table motionless and stared straight ahead.  She did not eat.  The boys and I talked about silly stuff for a while, and dinner seemed to be moving along just fine.  Then Wife announced, "I have to eat more protein than this before I go to bed."  It was phrased as a plaint, where I couldn't rightly tell if it was a statement or a request for permission.  I looked at her a little puzzled and reminded her that she's a grownup and doesn't need to ask permission if she wants something else for dinner.  She retorted something (I don't remember what) and the boys chimed in to the effect of, "Fine, Mom, whatever. Go get something else if you want."  So she got up, dumped her dinner down the sink, and started rummaging in the kitchen for some cottage cheese.  We are out of cottage cheese but I reminded her that we have eggs, so she scrambled herself a couple of eggs and ate those.  Then she sat sullenly and stared at the table.

 

The boys were still having fun with some topic, ricocheting off each other, but I commented to Wife that she looked very tired.  She agreed she was.  I continued that if she was really so tired she had to go to bed, everybody would understand.  She got up from the table, then said that she needed somebody to help her get her box of medications down from the shelf in the closet in the study.  I got up and joined her in the study, and we got down her box of meds.

 

While I was there, I closed the door because I wanted to talk to her without involving the boys and I said, "I know you didn't like dinner, but blaming it on your need for protein was a lie.  You had a great big three-egg omelet with cheese and other fillings for breakfast and lunch, which means you have already had lots of protein today.  What is more, your so-called need for a certain amount of protein is a pretty elastic thing, because I have seen any number of days where you have eaten junk all day and hardly any protein.  So I want *you* to understand that *I* understand that your claims about how much protein you need are just an excuse you pull out when you want to blame somebody else for what they have cooked.  And I would rather you not hide behind your health as an excuse, and just admit you don't like something."

 

This provoked a torrent of replies.  Partly she insisted that she really does eat protein at every single meal (which is absurd).  And partly she hurled a torrent of vitriol at me for "all that vegetarian shit you have been cooking lately!"  The conversation went on far longer than it should have or needed to, growing to include everything she could think of to hate about me … which seems to have been a long list.  Anyway, finally she brought it back around again to the question of food and cooking, and insisted that the boys hate everything I cook just as much as she does.  As you know, I have asked her to keep them out of our fights. 

 

She replied, "I know you don't want me speaking for the boys, but they really do hate all this vegetarian shit you keep cooking! I'll go ask them right now!"

 

I happened to be standing between her and the door at that point, and I repeated, "No, please keep them out of our argument."

 

At that point she suddenly changed direction and cried out, "You're blocking my exit from the room! That's kidnapping and it's a crime!"

 

I should have been stunned at the non sequitur, but in fact she has lobbed this kind of verbal grenade at me before.  I don't remember my exact words, but I said something like, "Oh for Pete's sake, I'm not kidnapping you. Sheesh, if you really believed that you'd call the police."

 

And so she walked over to the telephone and dialed 9-1-1.

 

This was completely nuts, so I rolled my eyes, shrugged, and left the study to see what the boys were doing.  They had both finished eating, had cleared their dishes from the table, and were rolling around on the floor playing.  A minute later she came out of the study and then the phone rang.  I picked it up.

 

"Good evening, may I help you?"

 

"Hello, this is the 9-1-1 operator.  Is there any trouble at your location?"

 

"Ummm, … no, I don't think so."

 

"Well I was just talking to a female voice who called us and then hung up. Is there a female there?"

 

"There's my wife. Would you like to talk to her?"

 

"Yes please."

 

I turned around to Wife who had come into the room, and asked her "Could you please pick up the other line?"

 

She went back into the study, picked up the phone, and I hung up my end.  She had left the study door wide open, so when I walked back that direction to see what was up I heard her saying, "Yes he always locks me into rooms …. No I don't think I'm in any danger tonight …. yes .… no ….  OK, good bye."

 

I asked her, "What's up?"

 

"They said they have to send someone out here to check up on us."

 

And sure enough a few minutes later there was a knock on the door.  By this time the boys were in the living room, so they jumped up to get it.  When they opened the door, there were two policemen standing there, one shining his flashlight into the house. 

 

I walked up and asked (again) "Can I help you?"

 

The first policeman asked, "Are you the man of the house?"

 

"Yes."

 

"Could you please step out here for a moment?"

 

So I stepped out onto the front yard to talk to the first policeman while his partner went inside.  He left the front door open, but I asked him please to watch that the cats didn't escape and so he closed the screen door.

 

The first policeman started by asking my name: I gave it to him and then handed him my driver's license to simplify the whole process of determining who I am.  He asked me what had happened, and I spelled out exactly the story I just described above.  He asked a couple questions in the process of my spelling this all out.  Meantime I heard the voice of his partner and Wife's voice mumbling a conversation inside.

 

Then he asked, "Is there any history of domestic violence?"

 

I explained that yes, Wife had been arrested for domestic violence back in the summer of 2004 (I had to stop for a minute to remember when it was) because she had let herself slip off of her medications and then threw a tantrum that spun way out of control.  He asked, "Did she go to jail that night?"  Yes she did, but then afterwards I didn't press charges so the court assigned her to some kind of anger management class and otherwise dropped it.  I added that I was sure he could find the police records somewhere, but he explained that he didn't necessarily need all the details.  He just has a list of questions he has to ask.

 

About that time his partner came out and the two of them conferred for a moment; then they traded places.  First Policeman went in to talk to Wife, while Second Policeman kept me company.  He didn't really have any questions, though, so we just passed the time until First Policeman was done and had come outside again.  The one of them thought to ask, "Does anybody in the house own a firearm?"

 

I could hear that Wife had crept close to the screen door to listen closely to how I answered this, because I still have not told her where her revolver is.  So I answered scrupulously accurately, but without naming anybody:

 

"Yes, my wife bought a revolver a long, long time ago.  Back when she was arrested for domestic violence she had to give it up for a while – I forget how long – and she did so.  But then when the time period was up she got it back.  Some time later we were on a routine visit to see my parents and I discovered she had packed her revolver in with her toothpaste and underwear and other personal effects.  We had been fighting just before that so this really frightened me.  [At this the policemen made noises suggesting maybe they didn't think this sounded exactly normal either.]  Anyway, I removed it from her stuff and left it with somebody else, asking them to keep it far far away."  I was a little concerned that by handing the revolver off without a paper trail I might have violated some state regulation, but all the officer asked was, "So it's nowhere in your dwelling at this point?"

 

"No sir, it is not."

 

At this point Wife piped up that she was really interested to hear what I had said because I have never told her where it is and sometimes I have said misleading or inconsistent things about where it might be.  But the officer simply told her, "The important thing ma'am is that it is nowhere in the dwelling.  That's what your husband tells us, and you say you don't know where it is, so that's good enough for me."  Wife spluttered some more, but the officer plainly considered that question closed.

 

The only remaining issue as far as the two policemen were concerned was whether they could afford to leave us alone.  They explained that of course they would have to write a report, but it was just going to he a "he-said, she-said" kind of report with no further action.  Did I think they could afford to leave us and have nothing else bad happen tonight?  I said I was quite certain that we could both stay in the house tonight with nothing bad happening.  We discussed this for a couple minutes more, and then they took their leave, reminding me that if we had any more problems we should call them back.  I said something to the effect that I certainly hoped there would be no need to, and waved as they drove off.

 

Sleep well!