Pushing and pulling

Yesterday I was scrolling through Twitter and found the following gem. Someone had posted a picture than says: "I pushed you away because I needed you to pull me close."

It sounds crazy, and part of me wants to ask "Would anybody ever do something so backwards?" But in fact I know they do. Just over thirteen years ago, I asked Wife for a divorce. We talked for most of that day, although Wife's side of the conversation included a lot of weeping, shouting, and recrimination. But at one point I asked her why she was so unhappy with the idea? Leaving aside the financial practicalities for just a minute ... isn't this what she wanted? All through our long marriage she had threatened me with divorce more times than I could count. She regularly told me she hated me. She treated me with disdain. She actively undermined me with the boys. Looking at all that history, wouldn't she be eager to get rid of me?

For a moment she looked truly shocked. Then she shouted back, "Didn't you understand? All the times I did those things, I was asking you to love me more!!"

Umm ... no, Babe. I didn't understand. I guess once again we were bad at communication.

So yeah. Have a picture.

      

Home ownership

Back in February, Marie and I had a conversation (over text) about home ownership. It started when she was talking about some routine natural disaster in her area -- I don't remember if it was heavy rain or sudden snow or quite what it was. And she talked about a coworker who had been delayed getting to work by having to mop up after the crisis. Anyway, from there the discussion went on like this: .... 

 
The poem she is referencing is this one here.

I'm not sure whether I have more to say about the subject besides this. But yes, sometimes I do miss owning a house....
   

Progress

Two things, both of which I touch on briefly in the previous post.

Wife may have a place to live.  She has been accepted by someone renting a house, who did not bother to check her income.  So the fact that we have not reached a settlement yet, and she therefore can’t prove any support from me at all, doesn’t matter.  This has lifted her spirits considerably.

Also, Son 1 is back at Hogwarts.  We spent the weekend moving him in.  The down side is that more burden (of every sort) will fall on Son 2.  But at least Son 1 is out of the day-to-day maelstrom.  That has to be a good thing.

"She took you away from me!"

During the same dinner when Wife complained about making salads -- this was Monday night -- she started complaining about D again.  But the lead-in was a little roundabout.

It started when Wife complained that I hadn't done something or other that she wanted (I don't remember what) and I replied that she had never asked me.  How was I supposed to know?  By reading her mind?  She replied that of course she had never asked me, because she knew perfectly well that my answer would be No.  And I told her, ...

Hosea:  You know, every time you say you know perfectly well what I'm going to say, you always turn out to be dead wrong.  Maybe you should give up trying to second-guess me.  I know that way back when you used to claim to be psychic.  [She did.]  But it's obviously not working any more, if it ever did.  Because you are never right about what you think I am going to say.

Wife:  That's just because you have changed so much.  Nowadays you are not the man I married, and you are not any man I ever knew.  You have changed every single aspect of your personality that I ever knew before, into something I don't know at all.  And you did it just to hate me, just to make me suffer by not having any idea who you are any more.

Hosea:  Gosh, I hardly know what to say.  I guess I'm flattered that you think I have changed every single aspect of my personality.  Most people I know don't think that's possible; they think that if you try really, really hard maybe you can change this or that little surface habit or characteristic.  But to change a whole personality?  That would take real mastery.  I don't think I'm nearly that good, but I'm flattered you do.

Wife:  Yeah, well you didn't change everything.  [She tried to make it sound venomous.]  But I know when you started.  It was the second day that fucking D was here, and you just started to model every single thing she did.  That's when you decided to become vegetarian, and that's when you decided all my books could get thrown in the trash, and that's when you drove her back to her hotel every night which was only ten minutes away and you'd stay there for two hours!  Oh I know you'd make excuses but I also know perfectly well you were spending all that time plotting with each other over exactly how much of my stuff you'd let me keep, and how you were going to screw me over by throwing away the rest of it.  And that's when you'd split bottle after bottle with her of the good wine we got from our wine club.  You never split any of that wine with me, but it was fine to pour it for that fucking D! 

Hosea:  I can guarantee you we weren't spending any time plotting against you.  Good God, the cleaning job was bad enough when it was going on ... the last thing we wanted to do was keep talking about it afterwards.  We were probably discussing philosophy or something.  [I didn't add that actually D and I were fucking like bunnies, and I'm a little surprised that Wife has never accused us of that. Then I went on.]  As for sharing the good wine, you never asked.  Look, do you remember the story of the Prodigal Son, in the Bible?  [She nodded.]  There's a line in there that's so short everyone misses it, but it's really important.  The father is making all these preparations for a big feast as the prodigal son comes home, and the good son -- the one who stayed there all along -- pouts, "You never threw a party like this for me."  The father answers him, "You never asked."  You can't expect me to read your mind.

Wife:  So if I'd been as pushy as that fucking D, then maybe you would have shared some of the good wine with me?  Because that's all she was -- just pushy!  And she made you change every single thing about yourself, so that I'd never know you any more and you'd hate me and want nothing to do with me!  She made you change your personality so that she could take you away from me and I never had you for myself again for a single minute after that!  I hate her so much if I ever see her again I'll put a kitchen knife between her ribs.

By this point the veins were standing out prominently on Wife's forehead, her face was dark red, and she was weeping freely.  I didn't know what to say and I felt like a ninny saying anything.  My first attempt to pull her out of it was a total failure.

Hosea:  You know, I really don't think I changed all that many of my opinions then.  I think there was a lot more continuity in how I felt than you are painting.

Wife:  Well you sure didn't act like it!  You used to act like you cared about me, and now you do everything you can to get as far away from me as possible.

Hosea:  And as for eating less meat and more vegetables, you know part of that dates back to when my dad had his quadruple-bypass.  [This was really weak, because it truly was D who inspired me to change how I eat. My father had his bypass surgery in 2002, and it was another six or seven years before I started eating differently.]

Wife:  Well if that's what made you change, then you deserve to die of clogged arteries and a heart attack and cancer all at once for what you've done to me.

Wow.  What do I say to that?  I had no idea, so I tried a different tack.

Hosea:  Can I ask a question?  Why are you still so upset over things that happened so many years ago?  Most people, if they are angry over something, find their anger dissipates after a while.  Why are you still so worked up over something so old?

She didn't have a clear answer apart from repeating her grievances, but my question did kind of derail her.  And after a while she did calm down enough to say, ...

Wife:  I'm really, really scared.  Two and a half months ago I knew what the future looked like.  Back then I figured even if we didn't have a great marriage we could stick it out and stick together.  And now I'm looking at being all alone and I don't know what to do.  When Christmas rolls around I guess I'll go buy a magazine and just wait it out.  You'll visit your parents with the boys, but you won't want me there.

Hosea:  You know, Babe, none of us knows the future.  None of us knows what is coming our way.  Any of us could be hit by a bus tomorrow.  So you were never as secure as you thought you were.  But the flip side is that things aren't guaranteed to be bad any more than they are guaranteed to be good.  You think you'll be alone because right now you can't foresee who you'll be with.  But you won't really be alone.  I have too much confidence in you for that.  You'll meet new people, make new friends.  You'll have somewhere to be for Christmas: maybe at your nephew's house, or maybe with some new friends you haven't even met yet.  There's never any absolute security outside of God and Heaven.  But I have confidence that you can weather it.  Have some confidence in yourself.

Wife:  I don't.

Hosea:  I know.  But work on it.

And with that we picked up dinner and Wife headed off to bed.

Wife panics over money. Regularly.

Wife seems to have a lot of trouble with the financial planning aspect of the divorce.  I suppose this is no surprise ... part of why I am leaving her is that she has no sense of financial reality.  But the other night she was complaining that I had offered her far too little money to live on (that being the exact amount that our state's standard formula calculated).  So I asked her to make a counter-proposal, and we could negotiate it.  "How much do you need?"

"Well, I don't know that because I don't have all the figures."

Silly me, at this point I think she's talking about figures like what I earn and what we pay for the mortgage, so I say, "Gosh, I'm pretty sure that's all in there. Go through it with a pencil in hand, and if you find something missing just jot it down and I'l get the number for you."

"But I can't do that because I don't have all the information I need."

Ummm, ... what?  Didn't I just answer that?  "Right, but that's why I say to jot down whatever it is you don't have and I'll get it; meanwhile you can replace those with X and Y in your calculation and just say that whatever you need is so much a week plus X and Y. But you have to start somewhere. Don't make a huge project out of it. I'm just looking for a rough draft. You should be able to sketch it out in a day or two. If you are spending longer than that then you are going into more detail than you need for a first draft."

"But I can't do that because I don't know what I'm going to need!!!"

At this point she was getting pretty upset, and I was completely clueless why.

"Huh?"

"Well, the house needs all this work and there's absolutely no way I can save up enough money to have it done on what you are offering me. So I have to get quotes on all of that. And I have no idea how much it will cost to hire a gardener, so I have to get quotes on that. And getting quotes on all these things is going to take months! There's no way I can do all that in the 48 hour deadline you are giving me! And what if I have to rush through it so much in those 48 hours that forget one little thing that I really need? I can't come back to you later and ask for more -- you'll just smirk and say I should have thought of that before. And so whatever happens I'll end up losing the house and all of my possessions and I'll be homeless!"

Wow. 

I don't remember quite what I said.  I'm sure it was ineffectual -- something on the order of, "Look, just get started and I'm sure you can get most of it. It can't be that hard."  But I started thinking about what she had said.

I have to admit the part that struck me first was the gardener.  We don't have a gardener now ... so why does she think that she "needs" a gardener?  All I can figure is that she means she won't have me to mow the lawn any more.  Or maybe she means that the garden is all overgrown and the yard is a wreck and she "can't" do any of it herself because of her illnesses and allergies and trick knee, and so "of course" she "needs" a gardener to bring it into minimally-acceptable shape, that being better shape than any of it is in right now.

Except that spousal support is meant only to maintain your existing standard of living, not improve it.  If your current standard of living sucks, spousal support won't change that.

The second thing that struck me was the intensity of the panic.  She is clearly feeling enormous fear, and therefore feels compelled to know that every possibility is covered and accounted for.  But when does any of us ever get that?  Isn't life inherently uncertain?  Isn't the future always unknown?  It is, but that kind of uncertainty has always been "unacceptable" to Wife.  It's part of why she is never able to trust anything or anyone, and therefore (out of a desire to protect herself against the betrayal she "knows" is coming) behaves in ways that make her untrustworthy.  That's another reason I am leaving.

She cannot distinguish between needs and wants -- I mean that not in a frivolous way, as if I were merely trying to say that she indulges herself too much, but really deep down.  She does not have the intellectual tools, whatever they are, to make that distinction.  And I think that somehow she really has no idea how to get started.  She has no idea what she needs or how much it costs.

She also can't listen, because her fear is so great that she is always interrupting.  "No, I can't do this because ...."  "No, that's impossible because ...."  "I'm completely trapped because ...."  Some of this might even be true, but I can't tell.  There is so much of it that I tune it all out completely.  I can't listen to it, can't digest it, therefore can't evaluate it or try to help her disentangle reality from fantasy.  In the back of my mind I think I used to try to do that, but whenever the issue touched one of her deep fears -- and money is a very, very deep fear for her -- it never worked.  She could never hear me.  She could never bring herself to let go of the fear long enough to see that there was a world beyond it.  That's another reason I am leaving.

One side of me thinks that divorce is going to bring an end to the craziness I have lived with for so long, at least as far as I am concerned because I will be out of here.  But I'm also starting to suspect that it will bring to the surface every last scrap of craziness that I have been avoiding for so long.  That one last bonfire is going to be a big one.

And now for Wife's perspective ....

I know what she has been telling me ("You don't believe this but I still love you").  I know what Lawyer picked up from her ("She really wants to preserve the staus quo.")  But this evening, as in the past (from time to time), Wife was sloppy about not logging out of her e-mail.  So what is she telling her friends?

Well, a fair bit of it is about what a monster I am.  A typical paragraph starts off like this: "I took it as a body blow that Hosea chose to tell me he's divorcing me the day after Son 2 left, when I was still very much grieving over being an empty nester. I also think that he is telling me that he only wants what is best for me, but is not dealing at all fairly with me...."

But then, after the harangue, comes this little gem:

"[Anyway the upshot is he is planning to move out.] Honestly, that is a great relief to me. I can't help but be stressed by the uncertainty, but the sooner he leaves, the happier I'll be."

Glad to hear it.

Win-win.

"Just checking in"

Lawyer called me at work this afternoon -- "just checking in after our meeting on Monday" -- and we talked for half an hour.  I can't remember the whole conversation, but here are some bits and bobs as I remember them.

__________


"How was the drive home?"

"By turns she was angry, weepy, and very cold."

"You know, I met her in the restroom after you two left my office and we talked for a minute. She apologized for how hostile she had been in my office but said that this whole thing had really taken her by surprise."

"Yes, and I think underlying it all she is very deeply afraid."

__________


"You know, part of what I sensed from her when I met her is that she has a lot of anger at the world bottled up inside."

__________


"Has she made any moves toward getting a lawyer yet?"

"Not that I know of, but of course it's only been a day."

"Do you think she will?"

"I hope she will!"

"Well of course she should. I can't pretend to be impartial."

"It's not just that. You know, a lot of people say 'I'm gonna get a lawyer' like it's a threat (no offense). But I look forward to her getting a lawyer because he'll be focussed on dealing with reality. I think a lot of the things she wants are inconsistent with each other, and others are totally unobtainable. But a lawyer will approach the whole thing with no personal sentiment involved, and will figure out what can be done in the real world. Her lawyer can get on the phone with you and the two of you will have no emotional baggage in the way of working out the best deal for her and me. And she needs somebody who can tell her, 'This is what you can get, but you can't get that' ... I mean, somebody that is on her side, somebody besides you or me."

"I agree."

__________


"Tell me about the house. You said you wanted her to have the house, but she said it needs all these repairs. What's that about?"

"Well I think she overstated it. Yes, there is a lot of maintenance we have kind of deferred; but it's not falling down around our ears. [And I listed some of it.]"

"And it sounded to me like she was saying she's not interested in the house unless all that is fixed. Do you think that's right?"

"I think she's of two minds, and this is one of the places where she is inconsistent. In your office she was trying to be financially shrewd, and was saying that a house with all these needed repairs isn't much of an investment. But suppose you turn around and suggest she move out -- then my God, you'd think the world was coming to an end. She's also convinced she can't move out, because she has all this furniture and all this junk she has inherited from her parents and grandparents and great-aunts and so on, and it completely immobilizes her. So she doesn't want the house in the shape it's in, and she also doesn't want to leave."

"I see."

"I was thinking about it last night and realized there are basically three possibilities. Case One is that by some miracle she can afford the house and the repairs all by herself. Case Two is where she can afford the house by herself but not the repairs. And Case Three is where she can't afford anything. Now Cases One and Three are easy: in One she stays and in Three she leaves. But what about Two? Part of her -- the part that was talking in your office -- wants to say that in Case Two she leaves. But I guarantee that emotionally she can't bring herself to do that, which means really she wants to stay and for somebody else to pay for it all. So what can we do in that case? Well, I figure part of my job is to help her to see that just because she can't afford something today doesn't mean she'll never afford it. I could imagine that we end up with a divorce settlement that says something like, 'The following repairs are so critical that Hosea has to pony up and pay for them right away: list, list, list. And for the rest, we'll add on X dollars to the agreed support number for her to squirrel away in a savings account so that she can save up to do the rest later.' I wouldn't be opposed to something like that. We'd have to negotiate the details."

__________


"She also said something about the boys. Your plan gave you 77% custody and her 23%. But she said the boys would want the split to be 50-50. Do you think that's true?"

"I have no idea. Maybe yes, maybe no."

"So the fact that she said it ...."

"Tells us only that that is what she wants to believe. But there have been plenty of times in the past when we have been arguing and she has tried to score points by telling me, 'The boys both agree with me!' Then when I have followed up and asked them, they've asked, 'What??' "

"I see."

"Maybe they'd like 50-50 because they think it's fair, and because our fights with each other aren't their fights. Maybe they'd choose to be with her all the time because they think she needs someone to look after her."

"You make it sound like they parent her."

"They do. They also tune her out more easily than they do me, so they might like that aspect of it. Or they might choose to spend more time with me because they are tired of dealing with her. I really don't know ... it could be any of those. We'd have to ask them."

"How old are they?"

"Fourteen and sixteen."

"So they are old enough that the Court will care about their opinion."

__________


"You remember she asked me why you wanted so much custody, and I just alluded that you'd said she had some health issues."

"Right."

"Do you really think she doesn't understand?"

"She is totally oblivious to any of the other reasons I think she shouldn't have custody."  [Like this and this, for starters.]

"That's what I thought."

__________


"Hosea, there's one other thing I picked up by talking with her. She really wants to keep the status quo."

"Yes and no. When I talk to her about our marriage, she'll insist that she wants to stay with me and then she'll spend half an hour listing things she hates about me. I try to tell her she'll be happier without me, too. But I think she is terrified of change and of the unknown."

"Right, that's what I see. And that means she is going to delay this process as long as possible. You need to keep an eye on it, Hosea, and be prepared to move it along, or else a year from now you'll be right where you are today."

"That's good advice and I hadn't thought of it. Thank you."

And so it starts

The first day with no children at home ... or rather, the first day after both children have moved out (if only to boarding school).  I slept in, then checked my e-mail. Wife slept in, then got some coffee and the newspaper.  As she was reading the front page, I checked my horoscope which read:

Take charge of the situation. You can relieve tensions at home by acting as the mediator or offering sage advice. Show compassion; save wounded feelings by overlooking faults. Stand by your decisions.

Stand by your decisions.  Well yes, I've gone far enough down the road this point that I was planning to anyway.  And no, I don't normally take my daily advice from the horoscope in the newspaper.  But I couldn't help noticing that it seemed ... relevant.


Wife had wanted to talk with me about some things I was doing that bothered her.  A couple weeks ago, she had gotten mad and started yelling at me about one of them (I think I sighed and rolled my eyes in a really dismissive way -- you would have gotten mad at me too), and I asked her please not to go into it right then and there, in front of the boys.  (Or at least Son 2 ... Son 1 might have already gone back to school at that point.) 

She shouted back, "You always say that! You always want to talk about it later, but then Later never comes! So if you don't want to talk about it right now, buddy, then when is it gonna be? Give me a date!" 

I looked at the calendar and told her, "Saturday, September 8, at 9:00 in the morning. Is it a date? Can it wait till then?"

She was a little nonplussed that I gave her an exact date and time instead of just brushing her off, but she accepted it.  And so this morning, when she had read the paper until about 9:30, I asked her, "I think you wanted to talk with me about something?"

She started by expressing concern for me, that my depression isn't being adequately managed, that she thinks I'm drinking too much, and that a happy man wouldn't drink the way I do.  (I don't get drunk around others -- indeed, it's been a while since I have truly gotten drunk -- and I don't let it interfere with my work. I also think I have cut back from where I was six months ago, or so. But she is probably right that I would drink less if I were less anxious.)  Then she moved from there to some of the behaviors she objected to: the eye-rolling, the visible disdain, ... also that when she is crazy or temperemental I will grasp her hand at the wrist to get her attention and not let go until I can get her to calm down and listen.  She talked about all this for a while, and for a few minutes I even answered her at the same level.

Then I backed up and said, "You know, you're right. All this sounds pretty unpleasant, and you shouldn't have to live with it. Maybe we should just pack it in and go our separate ways."

And from that point we talked for more or less the next nine hours straight.  Don't worry, I won't give you a transcript here.

Wife was pretty upset: by turns weepy, reflective, and furious.  I did my best to keep an even keel, and to remind her how unhappy she has been with me for so long.  Surely this will be a good move for her too, ... right?  She wept and asked what she could possibly have done different; she shouted that I should dare to "go behind her back" to see a lawyer and jot down some notes about a possible settlement.  Then later she would admit that yes, in many ways her life would improve without me too.  And after that it was back to weeping and shouting. (For more about this conversation, see also this post from many years later.)

I didn't go into any of the details of my plan, because I want to review it all of a piece in Lawyer's office rather than niggling it to death here at home.  I did drop some hints, however, most notably that I would like her to be able to keep the house.  She said that would be impossible; I admitted it would require a lot of creativity but I wouldn't accept calling it impossible until that had been proven.  At one point she calmed down enough to say that naturally she thought I was fooling myself if I really believed she could qualify for a loan in her own name to refinance the place, but that if it were really possible that would ease about 90% (her number) of her fear and unhappiness over the divorce because she is afraid of being homeless and she is afraid of having to get rid of all her junk.  So we'll see.

Long ago we established a tradition of eating some kind of fun food Saturday night and then watching a movie.  So I went out to get us some burgers.  We had "Hugo" from Netflix.  She shouted at me over most of dinner and then I coaxed her into giving it a rest so we could watch the movie.  She loved the movie, by the way, and was a lot more subdued afterwards.  She went to bed soon after, and here I am typing this.

Just before I went out to get the burgers, I sent the following e-mail to my family: my parents, Brother and his girlfriend, and my aunt and uncle.  (I have another aunt but she lives in another state and I don't see her much.)  I had drafted most of it last night ... indeed, you will recognize the first paragraph ... and just made minor edits this afternoon to soften the rought corners.

Hello everybody,

Yesterday we drove Son 2 up to Durmstrang and moved him in. It was a beautiful day, and Son 2 was in very high spirits. Moving him in was pretty easy, because he packed very minimalistically; besides, the school isn't actually all that far away, so it should be easy enough to get something to him if it turns out he is missing anything. (His roommate brought a lot more stuff, and I had to wonder when he was going to use it all. But who knows?) Afterwards the Head of School talked to us for a while about what we should expect from the school (both as parents and for the kids), there was a large barbecue for everyone, and then the parents all had to leave. Wife was pretty tired, since she hadn't had a chance to rest all day, and went to bed soon after we got home.

This morning I asked Wife for a divorce. This is probably not a surprise because it has been years since the two of us have gotten along at all well, and I assume the fact has been pretty clear to everyone. Ironically, the one area we have (more or less) agreed on over the years has been child-rearing -- I say "ironically" because I gather that even couples who stick together can't always say the same. But at this point a lot of that task has been taken over at a day-to-day level by Hogwarts and Durmstrang. Naturally we both hope still to have a role to play in the boys's lives for years to come, but I think there is less need now for those roles to play out on a common stage under a common roof. And so, since there is really no serious prospect that Wife and I will suddenly start getting along a lot better again, maybe it is time for us both to move on to the next phase of our lives.

We both want to handle the mechanics as quietly and amicably as possible. As a first step, we have an appointment Monday to visit an attorney whose advice I have sought out, to go over a draft parenting and financial plan. Doubtless there will be many points we will have to discuss and refine. But we have to start somewhere.

I WOULD LIKE TO ASK TWO HUGE FAVORS OF ALL OF YOU:

1. We haven't told the boys yet. I hope to wait till we can tell them in person, which will likely be around the first week in October. PLEASE do not discuss it with them until we have had a chance to talk to them first. (Of course if they raise the subject with you, then you know that somehow they have already heard, and so of course in that case it is perfectly fair to talk to them. But please don't be the one to leak it to them.)

2. I have no idea if she will, but it is very possible that Wife might contact any one of you looking for advice or just someone to talk to. By all means it's a free country; if she wants to talk to you and you want to talk to her, clearly that's between you and her. But please understand something important: many times in the past, Wife has had a hard time understanding me when I am talking about something emotionally heavy ... like our relationship. Time and again I have had friends or relatives come to me asking, "Did you really say X to her?" and it's nowhere near what I was really trying to say. Honestly I think this communication problem is a large part of why we can't get along: I want to say one thing, she hears something totally different, and we clash over it. When I put it like that it sounds like something that should be easy to fix, but we have both tried to improve the communication for years -- decades -- and it hasn't gotten better. I don't know why not. Anyway, the only point is this: if Wife comes to you and tells you I said X or Y or Z, it's fine if you want to offer advice or counsel or comfort. But PLEASE do not conclude that what she tells you is what I was really TRYING or MEANING to say without asking me first. The percentage of times that she has really heard what I was trying to get at is a lot smaller than you would ever think possible. I don't know why. I wish I did. Maybe if I'd been able to figure it out years ago, things could have been different. It's sad.

Anyway, we'll keep you all posted on how things progress. I'm sorry if we have disappointed you, and I know we have disappointed ourselves. We both wanted this to end up in a better place; but step by step, over thousands of days, we have somehow managed to end up here instead. My hope now is to make the next steps as fair and as painless as possible for everyone.


With sorrow for the past, hope for the future, and love for you all,
Hosea

Sleeping in the car

This weekend we drove the two hours to Hogwarts to see Son 1; also his coach was giving a presentation about the sports program, and they were having an Open House for prospective students ... which might include Son 2. (He like the place but isn't sure he wants to go to the same school as Big Brother.)

It was late as we drove home. I always do all our long-distance driving; Wife and Son 2 both slept at least part of the way. And I found myself thinking wistfully of this cartoon.

I'm glad to do the driving, even if it is a long way, if only I can offer this.

Still an anchor?

Yesterday, Wife told me she had had a nightmare the night before. Awful things were happening (I don't remember all the details, and mostly they aren't germane) and she was lost (which terrifies her). There were strangers who offered to help her find her way, but she just got more and more lost. "And," she went on, "I was trying to find you. It was like any other time I have a nightmare, I knew if I could only get to you I'd be safe."

Then she paused and reflected, "And in the dream, I even knew you didn't want to be with me any more. You didn't want me to be with you. But it didn't matter. I still knew that I had to find you, and if I did then I'd be safe." Pause.

"You really are still my anchor."

In another context, that remark might have cried out for a sarcastic rejoinder. There are so many things the symbol of an anchor can mean, and many of them aren't too good. But it didn't seem like the time for any of that.

And the crazy thing is that I suspect at one level this is even true. It's not a level that is operative in the real world, it doesn't inform anything she does, and it's not going to help anything once Son 2 is out of the house and we split up. But I don't think she was actually lying, .... It's strange.