What was and what might have been

This post is a little different from everything that has come so far—over 1500 of them. This post is deliberately, consciously fiction. But that shouldn't be so strange. I've used this venue to make forays into poetry, philosophy, armchair psychology—even meming, for heaven's sake!—in addition to all my usual whining. Why not fiction?

"Roughly he grabbed her heaving shoulders,
pulling her down onto the bed and ...."

So to be clear, what I have linked in the pages below never really happened. It is purely fiction. More than that, it is actually pornography, or at any rate an attempt at pornography. I don't know if it really works, but that's how it should be graded. If it doesn't work, leave me a comment to let me know why, or what I need to fix.

Having said all that, the story is nonetheless based on an event that really happened. Back in the summer of 1992, Marie undertook a cross-country road trip. She stopped in for one weekend to visit Wife and me. (I mention the visit briefly in this post.) The visit was fun, but its long-term consequences poisoned my friendship with Marie for a while, because Wife told her lies about us that led Marie to offer to be my side-piece. I was already uncomfortable with Wife sleeping around, and I was pretty sure I was in favor of monogamy on principle (even though I also wanted to get into the pants of Girlfriend 1, who wanted nothing to do with me). So I was troubled and confused over the issue, and this meant that I handled Marie's offer very clumsily. She was hurt, and took my rejection very much to heart. When we finally got back together in 2016, we had a lot of damage to work through.

But recently I began to wonder, What if Wife had just told Marie the truth? And then what if, on top of that, she had been a lot more cunning and skillful at human relations in general? Could we have had a different outcome?

The story that follows is one possible answer to that question.

Sexualized politics

Marie and I had the strangest argument tonight ... admittedly after both of us had had way too much to drink. On the one hand it gave me what I think are some useful insights into how she thinks about politics. On the other hand, it made me despair of ever reaching a common understanding with her on the subject. It's not just about correcting this or that factual misunderstanding that she might have picked up somewhere along the way. For her ever to understand the way I see American politics—or as an alternate goal, using the famous Straussian criterion, for her ever to understand her opponents as they understand themselves—will require a total demolition and reconstruction of the furniture in her mind related to politics. It would have to start with massive cognitive dissonance and proceed through total breakdown. I don't want to inflict that on her, and I don't foresee it. But this means she will be a prisoner of her peculiar delusions for the rest of her life.

It all started when I was talking about something else. I was describing how people interpret moral topics, and I said that people respond far more than they realize to the intuitive picture in their head. So when a Malefactor does something bad, you get some people who see him intuitively as a saber-toothed tiger or a cave bear—that is to say, as a lethal threat to their friends, neighbors, and children. Then there are other people who see him as an erring child who can learn better with a little education. These two groups argue with each other over what to do with the malefactor; they quote studies and statistics, and delve deeply into academic criminology to argue their cases. But all this sophistication is window dressing. What really motivates the two groups is their intuitive picture of what is going on. Is he a saber-toothed tiger, or an erring child? On that question hinges the pragmatic decision whether he should be killed straightaway, or rehabilitated.

That was the theoretical point I was trying to make. So far, so good.

Marie stopped me to say that sometimes the roles switch. She said that in cases of rape or sexual crimes, Liberals are more likely to condemn a Malefactor as irredeemable, and Conservatives are more likely to wink and let it pass on the grounds that "boys will be boys."

Now, I had never used the words "liberal" or "conservative" in my discussion. So what I should have said is. "OK fine, that's one more example of what I'm talking about." Perhaps I could have reminded her that I never used words like "liberal" or "conservative" because I was trying to talk about a general disjunction in how people treat Malefactors, and not to make a political point. Then I should have steered the discussion resolutely back to the most general level possible.

Years too late … an article about infidelity

A few days ago, I stumbled across an online article from Psychology Today (March 11, 2025) that would have been really useful if I had discovered it twenty or forty years ago. (Oops, bad news, it hadn't been written yet.) The title is "3 Traits That Can Make a Partner More Likely to Cheat," and yes, I have added it to my list of articles posted at the bottom of this page on the left. The short version is that it might have helped me decode Wife's infidelities a lot earlier, though some of what it says finally (belatedly) occurred to me too.

The three traits are these:

1. Narcissistic tendencies
2. Low self-esteem
3. Fear of vulnerability and emotional intimacy

I'll summarize how each of these is supposed to work.

Narcissistic tendencies

No surprise here. The article argues that narcissists use sex to bolster their own self-image, because they need constant validation and praise. So if the spouse falls down on the job—or gets tired, or mad, or bored, or boring—the narcissist seeks sexual validation elsewhere.

When I first married Wife, I didn't even know the word narcissism! The first time I heard about it as a psychiatric disorder was during this conversation with D. Even after that it took me a couple of years before I really understood it.

Does this explanation fit Wife? I think so. Whenever she started a new affair it always made her bubbly with New Relationship Energy, and confident enough to take on the world. I certainly saw that in her relationship with the Church Tenor, for instance. (See, for example, here or here.) Given how low she always crashed later, those highs must have been intoxicating.

Low self-esteem

Of course this explanation is the flip side of the earlier one. Desperately low self-esteem prods the sufferer to do anything to get external validation. I talked about this connection early on, in this post.

The article goes on to say that when one partner commits infidelity, that damages the relationship, which in turn gives the adulterer more to feel bad about (and even lower self-esteem). Interestingly, I caught that feature as well, in this post here. 

Fear of vulnerability and emotional intimacy

The third trait follows a slightly different tack:

For some, cheating is a way to avoid emotional closeness. They fear being vulnerable and may sabotage their own relationships by seeking external connections that require little emotional intimacy....

When they cheat, they often form external connections that demand little to no emotional investment. These brief encounters provide a temporary sense of control or detachment, allowing them to maintain a surface-level connection while avoiding the deeper emotional work required for a healthy, intimate partnership.

It took me a while to understand Wife's fear of vulnerability. I think the most extensive post I've written on it may be this one, which came some five years after the others that I've quoted. But there were certainly signs there earlier. Her willingness to be involved in the torrid BDSM fantasies of Boyfriend 5 was probably one of those signs. Or in any event I remember reading later the assertion that BDSM appeals precisely to people who are afraid of emotional intimacy, because it provides such a rigid framework for behavior that they never have to worry about not knowing where the boundaries are. And Wife regularly panicked over not knowing where the boundaries were.

I said that this article came along years too late. In some senses, I no longer need it because I ended up discovering all these same conclusions myself. But if I had had it available years ago, think how much time it might have saved me!        

           

Day 13: A caregiving dilemma

I had been planning to leave today. But a couple of days ago I offered to Schmidt to stay on for a bit longer, because he really is going to have more work to do once I've left—and less freedom to do anything else.

Ma Schmidt woke up to pee at 4:00 and again at 6:00 in the morning. (I slept through both occasions.) This time she used the commode. Schmidt called it "easier—well, less difficult." Her voice has been clearer today, and less whispered, but her words are more garbled and harder to understand.

She slept most of the day, though she was physically active trying to change position in the hospital bed.

Around 4:00 in the afternoon, I think I heard her say "I'm dying," and I said, "That's OK." Then she said clearly, "Can you get me⸻?" and never finished the sentence. She said she needed to pee about 4:30, but nothing came out.

This is a stock photo, and not Ma Schmidt. Ma Schmidt was almost
90 years old. Also, there are very few photos on the Internet of
hospice patients in flagrante delicto. 

In the evening, she kicked off her covers, so she was lying in just a turtleneck sweater and a diaper. For a few minutes she grimaced while clutching her thighs together and flexing the muscles in them rhythmically. Her hand was resting on her crotch (but outside her diaper). Several times she said "Help me."

Help with what? Was she trying to masturbate? And if she were—umm, what is the relevant medical protocol? I assume that in principle sexual behavior would be classified as "just one more bodily function," albeit a pleasant one. And the whole point of hospice is to keep terminal patients comfortable. So what exactly is the official hospice line on masturbating patients who are too infirm to do the job successfully themselves?

Just to be 100% completely clear on this point, I did not—repeat, NOT—"help" Ma Schmidt with this job. Among my reasons (though this is not a complete list!) were the following: 

• I couldn't be sure that's what she wanted, because she couldn't talk coherently.
• Her son was in the same room at the time, and that's just squicky.
• Knowing the way the world is these days, I figure anyone who helps a helpless patient by masturbating them will probably go to jail or have to register for life as a sex offender. And neither of those options appeals to me.

At the same time, I can't help wondering: If she had wanted it, wouldn't it have been kinder to help her out? If you have any insight into this question, I would welcome comments or feedback.

       

Was Ma Schmidt hitting on me?

OK, I know this sounds crazy. But hear me out.

During the afternoon, I sat with Ma Schmidt while her son worked in the shop. And the interactions would have felt … intentional … if I thought that she was of sound mind. In fact I don't think she is of sound mind any longer. But I wonder whether some corner of her brain has its own agenda, and is currently unencumbered by the need to look socially acceptable? So for example:

She asked me to sit on her bed, instead of sitting (as I have every day up till now) on a chair next to her bed.

Then she clutched at the gap where my shirt opens, running her fingers through my chest hair.

She asked, "Put your chest on me." (I declined, on the grounds that I've way heavier than she is, and I would crush her.)

She held my hands and said, "I'll be very happy if you'll sleep here with me." Then she smiled and dozed off into a nap.

These behaviors were all pretty much one-offs, in the sense that they were not repeated on other days. There is another behavior that I don't understand, but which she has repeated on several different days. Fairly regularly, she inserts the fingers of one hand—sometimes both—under the edge of her diaper, as if she wants to pull it off. Maybe she is trying to signal a need to go to the bathroom, but she doesn't say anything about that. Nor does she push her hand all the way into her crotch. she just hooks it around the diaper … and leaves it there. It's very odd. 

    

Talking with Marie

What did we talk about during the visit? 

We never discussed politics, or almost never. I think she mentioned a couple of things she had heard recently—once she said she'd heard that Donald Trump was going to round up LEGAL immigrants into concentration camps, along with illegal ones—but I just let them drop or made a joke.

The week before my visit, Debbie came to town briefly for something unrelated to me, but she and I had dinner one evening. Afterwards I sent a note to Marie because I remembered that I had promised always to let her know whenever Debbie and I were together. But I asked her, did she really want to keep hearing about these events, even if (as always) Nothing Happened?

During my visit, she said No, not any more. Marie explained that when I first visited Debbie, her insecurities were so severe that she assumed, As soon as he sees Debbie he's going to remember all her virtues and contrast them with all my weaknesses; and right away he will break up with me to be back with her! In the ensuing eight years, of course, none of that has happened. And I reminded her that Debbie and I have agreed we do better without the added complication of sex and romance. For her part, Marie said she finally realized that even if I did ever fuck someone else, that wouldn't have to mean that I'd break up with her. So she has finally decided not to worry about it.

In practical terms, this isn't going to mean anything. I'm pretty sure my fucking days are over at this point, as noted above. And it's not like any of my girlfriends ever overlapped any of the others, except for the brief period when my involvement with D overlapped my marriage to Wife. (See this post. For the sheer comedy of it, compare also my remarks about D's jealousy of Wife here and here.) But in the abstract I suppose it is nice to know that she's finally not worried about possibilities that could never have hurt her to begin with. Does this count as progress, even if it is meaningless?  

Visiting Marie

I've just been visiting Marie for a week. Now I'm on the train headed home, and I'm thinking about the trip. What worked, and what didn't?

Marie lives in a dingy apartment. She has furniture she doesn't use, which is generally clogged with junk and whose surfaces are all scratched to ribbons by her many years of cats. (In the terminology of the current election cycle, Marie is definitely a Childless Cat Lady, with all the political predilections that term implies.) The furniture she does use is scarce and spare. There are two mismatched chairs (one an office chair, the other an overstuffed living room chair with gashes scratched in it) flanking one small glass-topped table. Her setup is clearly fine for one person (who can use the glass-topped table alternately as a dining table or a desk); when both of us are there, we can use the table together after a fashion, but there is no opportunity to serve an elaborate meal because there simply aren't enough square inches on the table.

The comparisons with my space are unsettling. I too have enough furniture for one, but it is awkward for more than one. I do have a usable desk that is different from my dining table; and I have extensions that I can put in the dining table if I'm going to seat more than three people. But I have no sofa; my chairs are all dining chairs, which makes them not very comfortable for long sitting; and my living room has stacks of junk that I keep meaning to deal with. (Compare, for example, this poem from eight years ago. Nothing has gotten any better since then.) On the other hand, I don't have cats. (You may remember that Wife got the cats we owned back when we separated. They have both died since then, and she's gotten another. I've never had any.) Briefly, Marie and I both live like graduate students (only without the classes, or scholarly productivity, or promise that it will all get better after we get our degrees and get jobs). 

Her apartment seems (from the times I've visited it) to be often dirty. Of course there is always cat hair on everything, no matter how often she cleans. And of course there is a litter box in the bathroom, which means that there is often cat litter sprinkled across the floor. When I arrived a week ago, the sink and counter in the bathroom were scummy, though it seems that she cleaned them a day later when I wasn't looking. And she started vacuuming the carpet my second day there as well. She did dishes very often while I was there, so the dish drainer was always overfull. Nonetheless there were open containers of food scraps or other oddments that she was collecting—I think to use as mulch for the miniature garden on her porch. Her toilet has long-term stains on it.

Again, the comparisons with my space remind me how far I am from where I'd like to be. When I first moved into my apartment (eleven years ago) I set myself a schedule of vacuuming once a week and mopping the kitchen floor once a month. It has been a long time since I have stuck to that schedule, or—realistically—to any other schedule instead. Maybe when I get home I can take the inspiration to give the place a deep clean. My toilet is always clean, or at least it has been ever since Kimberly Steele issued her clean-toilet challenge. My counters are usually clean, and I don't cultivate homemade mulch. But I've got to do something about those floors.

What else did I notice?

We went swimming a couple of times at her local recreation center, and I couldn't swim nearly as far as I did the last time I visited her. I have let myself get flabby and out of shape.

We had quite a bit of sex, or at any rate she did. At this point I can't get hard enough to enter her, and the only way I can come is through masturbation. So there wasn't a lot in it for me, but it was (as always) gratifying to be able to do so much for her.

I've been trying to teach her lately about whiskey, so she bought two bottles this week. One of them we finished off between us Wednesday night (along with a bottle of wine); the predictable consequence is that we did very little on Thursday. Friday night we had just one glass each (an ounce or two, judged by sight), with much better results. I reminded her that whiskey is something to drink slowly.

We went out and about, though we managed to miss a couple of the sights we had in mind to visit. We also went to a bookstore, which was a reliable entertainment for both of us. Last night we went out to dinner with some of her friends.

Also we visited a cemetery. Nothing profound and there was no one in particular whose grave we were visiting. We looked for the oldest graves we could find (mostly from the late 19th century) and read the inscriptions. One of them reminded me of a story that Florence King tells in her memoir Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady, but Marie hates Florence King so I avoided recounting it. 

So from the perspective of writing a travelogue, there's not a lot to say. From the perspective of general observation, I'm made uneasy by how she is living, and by how closely it matches how I am living.

I don't know if there's more. Maybe after I have mulled a while longer.

    

Medieval poetry for the win!

You find the damnedest stuff on Twitter. (Excuse me, X.)

Today, for example, I found a pair of medieval Welsh poems. One is by a male poet, addressing his cock with some exasperation. Then a century later (or so) there's one from a female poet, complaining that men don't compliment women's cunts nearly as often as they should.

You'll find the details below the fold. 

When did you start ...? (A follow-up post)

Just about ten years ago, I posted a rumination about what age people lose their virginity, and what age they start regularly fucking. Among other things, I posed the question whether these things travel in families? If your parents lost their virginity early (or late), did you do the same? How about your kids?

What's wrong with the Five Mindfulness Trainings?

Last night, the Unitarian Sangha that I belong to recited the Five Mindfulness Trainings. This is something we do every month or two. The Five Mindfulness Trainings are Thích Nhất Hạnh's recasting or interpretation of the Five Buddhist Precepts. They also serve as the entryway into the Order of Interbeing. (See also this link here.) So they are kind of a big deal for the Plum Village Tradition of Buddhism.

Overall, or at a high level, I don't really have a problem with the Five Mindfulness Trainings—that is, if you see them basically as injunctions to be a nice person and don't look too closely at the details. But you all know me by now. When have I been able to avoid looking at the details? And when you subject them to that level of scrutiny, … well … there are issues with them. Problems. Things that don't make sense, or that really should be worded a different way. 

Things that I can't fully agree with.

Now, any member of the Plum Village Tradition will be quick to tell you that the Five Mindfulness Trainings are precepts—often they take this to mean suggestions or advice—and not commandments, strictly speaking. In principle they won't insist that you stick to every jot and tittle; but they will tell you that the closer you can come to abiding by these, the less suffering you will feel in your life and therefore the happier you will be. Well and good. At the same time, I don't feel that most of them want to hear the flaws—the misconceptions or simple errors—that I find in them. So you're going to have to hear them instead.

Lost day

I was going to call this post "Hung over" but couldn't quite bring myself to do it. But that's what I mean.

Monday was the same way. That is to say, Sunday night I stayed up too late and drank too much; Monday was a waste. Tuesday night I stayed up too late and drank too much; today was a waste.

If there's a good part to the story, I'm drinking less than I was back in May and June. I look at how much it took to make me worthless today or Monday, and there was a whole week straight back in May when I had more than that every single night. Of course I wrote you about it too, so clearly it concerned me. (And except for writing all my West Highland Way blog posts, the month of May was pretty much a loss for me, as I discussed here.) Anyway, if I'm now tolerating less booze before it wipes me out, maybe my body is finally balking and telling me to quit. That would probably be a good thing, I suppose. 

Also this morning I had a Skype call with Marie, and for the very first time we actually used the video link for sex. (I know, I know, other people figure this out when they are teenagers and not in their sixties. But Skype hadn't been invented back when we were teenagers.) In the moment it was exciting and fun, but I found myself feeling kind of squicky about it afterwards. That might be partly because I realized only afterwards that all my windows were open (though with the blinds drawn), so I wonder if anybody heard anything. Also maybe partly I was still feeling the after-effects of the hangover.

Maybe I can make tomorrow a better day.

               

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity

I get most of my news from Twitter (or I guess now it's called "X") so I have an admittedly eccentric understanding of the hot topics of the day. One that I have seen a lot of posts about lately is the sexualization of children. I try not to read the details, but even a cursory glance tells me that the instances which make it all the way to Twitter are pretty horrific. And the discussion of the perpetrators seems to be mostly about whether to tar-and-feather them before or after drawing-and-quartering them. In any event, nobody doubts that they are evil people with evil intentions.

I'm not about to make excuses for these people, and it seems clear that sometimes the impact they have on the children who come under their influence is really bad. But I find myself wondering, in an intellectual sort of way, whether they are actually motivated by malice (or cruelty or lust or any of those things), or whether in some cases the problem might not be no more than mind-boggling stupidity?

Opinions on Twitter

Nothing new here, because you all know this is my opinion and has been for years. But hey, I got to chime in on someone else's post. So there's that.

Interview with a Cobra: the bad

A couple of hours ago I posted an article about Tucker Carlson's recent interview with Andrew Tate, in which I tried to highlight some of the genuinely positive elements I found in Tate's message. But there were other points where I think he was wrong, and I want to talk about those now.

Let me start by clarifying that I know almost nothing about Tate besides what I learned from the interview. I've briefly scanned his Wikipedia article and half-heartedly googled a couple of other tidbits, but for the most part what I know is what he told Carlson during this 150-minute conversation. So while I know generically that Tate is widely famous, and that most people in the world already have strong opinions about him (for or against), I am approaching the topic as a newcomer. And I propose to restrict my criticisms narrowly to the scope of the interview itself. In particular, I am not going to start saying "Well maybe he sounded nice for Tucker, but we all know that in reality …."

Let me clarify further that even after two articles about this interview, I will not have come anywhere near covering the whole thing. This interview was wide-ranging, and touched on any number of topics which I will ignore here. In particular Carlson and Tate spent a lot of time talking about current events and contemporary politics. I found these passages absorbing in their own right (and I was tickled by Tate earnestly urging that, "We all need to thank Vladimir Putin for curing COVID-19") but they don't really fit into any of the themes of this blog.

Where, then, are my criticisms?

The patron saint of adultery?

OK, one more, but this one is just for fun. I wonder if I have identified the patron saint of adultery?

Of course I don't really think so. Adultery is understood to be a sin, and all that … or at any rate that's true in any form of Christianity that also recognizes patron saints.

But when Debbie and I were in Glasgow, on Day 12, we visited St. Mungo's Cathedral—the big Glasgow cathedral. And along with all the other sights, we got the life of St. Mungo, also often called St. Kentigern. (Apparently he was named Kentigern, but Mungo was a nickname.)

Blast from the past: Boyfriend 1 aftermath (B1. part 3)

We never had another day as glorious as that first one. Wife continued to be married to me. (In fact, Boyfriend 1's older brother warned him, "If you love this woman encourage her to stay with her husband. Otherwise you will set up a pattern for her of leaving whenever things get tough.") But from time to time she continued to see Boyfriend 1. Sometimes he would visit us. Sometimes she would visit him. Mostly Wife was shy and embarrassed at letting one of us see her fucking the other one, so she tried hard to devolve the threesome into two twosomes. Ironically, this was the wrong choice on her part. What I found, speaking purely for myself, was this: 

If there was a closed door—or thirty miles of freeway—between me and some place that Wife was having sex, I felt insanely jealous. But if she was having sex with someone else right there directly in front of me, I felt fine because I figured that it would be my turn in a few minutes.

I don't know if anyone else in the world feels this way, but I bet they do. I assume I'm not so unusual as all that. But this means that, ironically, Wife's shyness and embarrassment led to maximal levels of jealousy on my part … and probably on his as well.

Blast from the past: Boyfriend 1 visits us (B1, part 2)

I told the beginning of this story yesterday, in this post here. (And, to some extent, in this post from two-and-a-half or almost-three years ago.)

So Wife and I left graduate school, and moved home. We found an apartment. Wife found a well-paying legal secretarial job, got fired, found a second legal secretarial job, got fired, and finally in November found a teaching job that she kept for the next three school years. Somewhere in those first few months I found a job as well. (It was after she found her first job, but before she got the teaching job.)

Boyfriend 1 lived in the same state, but some considerable distance away. Wife had gone to visit him for a weekend earlier in the summer, before I moved back with our stuff and before she had secured an apartment for us. (She was living with my parents at the time, and my father was pretty sure she was fucking someone else. Wife was never nearly as good at secrecy as she prided herself on.) After we were settled … I forget. Did she spend a weekend with him? Possibly not … her job situation kept her pretty well occupied for a while, and not in the fun sense.

But sometime in those first few months, Boyfriend 1 finally made the trip to visit us.

Blast from the past: Wife meets Boyfriend 1 (B1, part 1)

Many years ago, when I first started this blog, I figured I would write a post sooner or later about Wife's involvement with Boyfriend 1. Someday.

Well, it's been fifteen years since I started the blog, and I haven't written it yet. How about if I start writing it tonight? I may not finish it all at once, but maybe it will take me less than another fifteen years to finish.

One other thing: the events in this story mostly happened 36 years ago. That's more than half my lifetime. It is inevitable that my memory will be a little foggy around the details. And if you ever hear the story from anyone else, it might sound different. This is what has stuck with me.

So … 36 years ago last summer, Wife and I had been married for two years, and had been in graduate school for two years. We had problems adjusting to married life. Each of us had unstated expectations that conflicted with the other's unstated expectations, and we weren't good at talking about these things. We were also really bad at communicating about sex, and the pressures of graduate school didn't give us a lot of space or freedom in which to get better at it. (One of our neighbors summarized the graduate school experience all too well by joking, "It's Saturday morning—time for sex!")

Lilith

By John Collier - Own work, Public Domain,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=207924

Can you handle one more? Here is another of Marie's early poems. Unlike the last two (here and here) it doesn't really advance the story any. But I like the image; and the more I think about it, the more I like it. Doubtless this just means I'm a lecherous old coot, but—what the hell? I'll take it.     

Lilith

Actually, it was I

who ate the fruit;

Eve’s sin

was in watching

and wanting to.

And it’s true

I steal children

But only girls;

And I don’t eat them

in the sense

that is supposed.

"You're stuck in a room ...."

I found the following post on Twitter: