The incredible shrinking boyfriend

I suppose this is as good a time as any to summarize the developments with Boyfriend 5. Basically, he has been dropping farther and farther out of Wife’s life. At the same time, the slack is being taken up with his Friend (whom I may have to christen “Boyfriend 6” if this keeps up, but not yet). So it is not like Wife is spending any less time online or on the phone ... it’s just that the object of her affections has appeared to shift.

You all know that I don’t believe the stories about Boyfriend 5: that he is a terrorist from the Old Country, and a trained magician who can teleport, and a vampire. Well, I am pretty sure that Friend is an equally ficitious character concocted by the same (real-life) person. Interestingly enough, Boyfriend 5 has never talked to Wife by telephone. Friend does; and he explains to Wife that the reason his voice sounds like a woman’s is that his vocal cords were damaged in a bad accident a few years ago. Wife appears to accept this explanation unblinkingly.

Anyway, the story about Boyfriend 5 – pretending for the moment that the basic narrative is all true – is that he has gone for weeks without contacting Wife in any way. Wife has been pretty unhappy about this. She points out that, “A year ago we were inseparable. A year ago it was a big deal for him to go even a single day without talking to me, and if he was going to be offline absolutely unavoidably, he would do whatever it took to get word to me of what was going on. Now I can go for weeks at a time without even knowing what city he is in.” Oddly enough, Friend generally seems to know where Boyfriend 5 is, at any rate if Wife gripes to him about it.
“Oh yes, he told me he had business to take care of in This Place or That Place.”
“By the way, he asked me to tell you that he won’t be online for a few days because he got mad at his laptop and threw it into the lake.”
“Boyfriend 5 has been really ill for the last couple of weeks, and it will probably be another couple of weeks before he is well enough to talk to you.”
Somehow Boyfriend 5 is always able to get word to Friend, but it is progressively harder for him to communicate with Wife.

His growing distance hasn’t stopped him from developing new skills, which Wife explained to me with some admiration one evening. I don’t know if I ever explained that Boyfriend 5 is nearly blind; he has something wrong with his eyes that means he needs a screen-reader for his computer, that he cannot tolerate anything more than trace amounts of light, and that he cannot focus at all well to see. This disability has been part of the story for a long time. Only it turns out now that he also rides horses competitively – you know, dressage, steeplechase, that sort of thing. And somehow he does this while blind, an achievement that just knocks my socks off. He also manages to compete even though he has all these political enemies who want him dead; for some reason he has not the slightest worry about being shot by someone hidden in the crowd while he and his horse are prancing in full view of the judges.

As Wife has spent less and less time with Boyfriend 5, she has spent more and more time with Friend. They talk on the phone for hours every day. At one point he even claimed to be in love with her, although she wasn’t at all sure what to do with this sudden declaration. He has asked her to write sexual fantasies for him, and to post them on the Internet. (She found a site for this and has posted a few under an assumed name.) Most recently, he has gotten her avidly involved in some kind of online game about horse breeding ... I guess this was when the conversation about horses started, during which Wife learned the news about Boyfriend 5’s new skill in this area. So this is where her hours go, most days.

But Friend may have overplayed his hand. Recently he told Wife that he had to come to our town for business – that he was, in fact, already here. Does this mean Wife can go meet him? Well, ... no, actually not. I suggested to Wife that this would be a great opportunity for her. I also suggested, not to put too fine a point on it, that it would be useful to discover whether Friend was real or not. Wife said he would never consent to showing up merely for that purpose, because he would resent the suggestion that he owed me anything (including proof of his physical existence). But I countered that this isn’t about me at all. This is about whether he is any kind of friend to her ... whether they have any kind of relationship at all, regardless what sort. After all, I went on, friends do things for each other. Friends do things for each other, sometimes at considerable inconvenience, if they truly care about each other. So if Friend truly cares about Wife, he wouldn’t want her to have to endure all the skepticism that she gets from me. Allowing her to meet him – allowing us to meet him – would be a favor he did for her! I can understand that he doesn’t owe me a damned thing. I even agree. But what about Wife? Does he (who once proclaimed his love for her) care about her so little that he wouldn’t be willing to do this? Does he care so little that even when I was away for several hours running errands, he could find the time to telephone (from his cell phone, so there was no local area code displayed) but he couldn’t find time to drop by the house to steal a kiss? Really?

Annoying fellow that I am, I have pointed all this out to Wife and asked her to think about the implications. Is it truly believable that a real-life, flesh-and-blood person – who also loves her or even wants to call himself a friend – wouild treat her this way? Or is Friend’s behavior indicative of something else? I proposed two alternatives: either he doesn’t really exist, or else he doesn’t care about you. Pick one. Wife has said very little in reply.

D tells me, however, that Wife is listening. In their phone calls, Wife admits that she is having serious doubts about the whole Boyfriend 5 / Friend melodrama. So D tells me that she is encouraged that Wife may in time pull out of this obsession with an unreal world, and try perhaps to engage a bit more with the real world instead. It would be a great thing if D were right. I guess we shall see ....

Comic interlude: drugs and demons

My narrative has been short on humor for a little while, but D's conversations with Wife (and Wife's with Boyfriend 5) have taken up the slack. I have just been remiss in posting about them.

The day after Counseling 17, D spoke with Wife on the phone and summarized her conversation as follows:

Wife made no sense today. I'm sorry, but honestly, sometimes she's just not thinking quite straight. She spent a goodly amount of time angry because [when she walked in] you were discussing your job with Counselor rather than using the time to deal with your "issues". When I suggested that perhaps you did not see any personal matters to discuss with Counselor while waiting for her, she became quite angry and insisted that you had as many problems as she does (oh no, you don't. There is *no* way!); she then talked a great deal about your [alleged] drinking problem. At one point, she insisted that I had only a half glass of wine [over dinner while I was visiting you] while you finished the rest of the bottle. That's simply not true. I matched you, glass for glass, every night. And why not? The wine was lovely, and we both richly earned a bit of relaxation (which we took, let's be honest). All this could be concerning, but what doesn't make sense is her abrupt subject shift to Boyfriend 5's drug addiction. He is unable to visit her because he will run out of muscle relaxants due to substance abuse when his pain becomes more than he can tolerate. OK...let me get this straight. You are a bad person who has an alcohol problem, but her ex-heroin addict boyfriend is to be pitied and cared for because he abuses prescription drugs to such an extent that travel becomes impossible. What am I missing here?

Even weirder postscript. She told me that Boyfriend 5 wasn't 'mad' at her for being concerned about his drug use. Does this man have a clue? And this after Wife insisted that you had no ability to have an emotional life, and would treat any other woman in your life the same way you treat her. You would never talk to her, or ever even mention your children or family. Hosea, who needs drugs? I'm listening to surreal conversation every day.

There was also some discussion to the effect that Wife was planning to spend part of the year in the Old Country. I did a little checking and found that yes, indeed she was discussing exactly that ... and was planning to travel by demon express:

Wife: i'm so blessed, so grateful to have you in my life. i'm not possessive, don't expect to be the only or most important thing in your life, but i am glad i'm there too. Loving you is what makes it worth getting up every day. Knowing you love me is second.
Boyfriend 5: I feel the same about you, even if I can't always talk to you. You're still here, in my mind.
Wife: And you know what? It feels really wonderful to belong to you. And no, it's not "just online". We're as real as it gets. i will belong to you in person, too. :) and looking forward to it, i might add. And we won't always be separated, will we?
Boyfriend 5: Damn straight we won't.
Wife: So, with [your demon]'s help, maybe, we can spend some quality time in "real time" instead of online. Maybe eventually i'll even learn to travel by myself -- who knows? Doubt i'll have the talent, but... i want so badly to just have you hold me.
Boyfriend 5: Yes, we can...I wish you could get away for a weekend, but...maybe one day.
Wife: yes
Boyfriend 5: Wouldn't someone shit his pants if you told him a demon was coming to take you to the Old Country to spend the weekend with me. That's the first laugh I've had all day.
Wife: i'm pretty sure Hosea wouldn't believe it, for starters. He's convinced you don't even live there and there's a chance i'd be left at the airport alone -- i'll be he doesn't believe in demons and i KNOW he doesn't believe in TPing -- so if i told him [your demon] was coming for me, he would truly have his jaw drop when he showed up out of nothing in the kitchen or something. Too bad he looks human, actually.
Boyfriend 5: He'd believe it if he saw it.
Wife: yes, he would.
Boyfriend 5: [My demon] looks like whatever he wants to look like. Horns and goat feet?
Wife: Great. And red eyes! :) LOL! The thought amuses me greatly.
Boyfriend 5: Yeah! Slitted eyes, and a forked tongue.
Wife: And for me to tell Hosea that i *want* to go with this character, "poof" into nothingness... i'd
promise to call when i got there safely, of course, as always.
Boyfriend 5: lollollollollol LMAO LMAO LMAO
Wife: and it wouldn't be a 30-hour transatlantic flight, either. :)
Boyfriend 5: I still like the idea of [my demon] taking him to the jungle or antartica or something.
Wife: Just scaring the bejesus out of him would be ok...but actually, if [your demon] wanted to appear totally respectable and let Hosea see him appear out of nothingness, it would force H to believe that you guys *can* TP and that i can get there without plane tix. Don't know what i'd do if caught there without a visa stamp, tho.
Boyfriend 5: You wouldn't get caught.

As D says, Who needs drugs?

Grumpy and out of sorts

I have been grumpy to everybody lately, which means it is just as well I haven't felt the slightest motivation to keep up with blogging or I'd inflict it on the rest of you, too. And that would hardly be fair. But I have been totally out of touch with the blogosphere since my last post over a week ago: not posting, of course, but not even reading either. Just grumpy.

What's been going on? Oh, let's see ....

• Wife and I had another session with Counselor last week. We seemed to spend the whole hour fighting about buying a new computer. (I know, I know ... we find the damndest things to fight about when we are in Counselor's office.)


• Over the weekend, we went out and bought a new computer.


• My company is looking seriously at layoffs, just in time for Christmas. Gotta love the timing. (No, I don't think I am on the list. I could joke that nobody else wants my job, but when the rest of the post is this grumpy it would sound like I was whining, not just poking fun at myself.)


• I have a co-worker who was just diagnosed with a carcinoma and consequent reduced liver function. Merry Christmas.


• D has asked me to send her the phone numbers of cheap motels in our area. This whole plan for her to visit still seems surreal to me ... I have trouble imagining that it will really happen.


• Wife wants Boyfriend 5 to teleport her to the Old Country so she can deliver Christmas presents to the extended family. Did I just say something struck me as surreal?

Anyway, a minute ago I was saying something about being grumpy and out of sorts. I forget what, exactly ....

Meanwhile, back at the ranch ...

While I was away on my business trip, what was going on at home?

The developments about which I was eagerest to learn were all about Boyfriend 5. But after all that thought and preparation, this was a pure anticlimax. The day he was supposed to arrive, he IM'ed Wife to tell her something terrible had happened (his father was attacked by political enemies and lay broken in the hospital) ... and while of course he was willing to come anyway, because he had said that he would, nonetheless he felt torn in two because he couldn't stop thinking about his poor suffering father by whose side he felt he ought to stay. I must admit he showed (as he does too often) a true mastery at plucking Wife's heartstrings like a banjo; and of course she said no, no, you have to stay there. We'll find another time.

I'm really not very surprised. While I had to plan as if he were going to show up, my cynical side never really expected him to. I had been half thinking all along that he would announce a crisis at the last minute, and -- sure enough! -- he did exactly that. At some level, I have to wonder what Wife thought of his story. I mean, if he were travelling by conventional means and were coming all the way from the Old Country, he would already have been en route by the time this calamity transpired, which means he probably would have gone ahead and shown up anyway. On the other hand if the family can really teleport -- and he claims that his father is a far more powerful magician than he is, so presumably he can teleport better -- then how could enemies ever attack him in the first place? Why couldn't he just vanish and reappear somewhere else? But of course I no longer expect Wife to dissect these stories analytically.

Oh, I almost forgot -- in other news, Boyfriend 5 says he is a vampire. Wife does not appear to have laughed in his virtual face. (Hey, don't look at me. I don't write this stuff; I just report it.)

Far more important in the long run, I think, is the state of Wife's health.

Wife has been really tired for the last several months -- most of the year, in fact. She isn't eating, or not much. She sleeps a lot. When she gets tired, she simply shuts down. She has been going to bed between 7:00 and 8:00 in the evening. So it was no surprise to me when she e-mailed me that the boys were not getting driven to any of their evening commitments -- she had tried to arrange help, had not succeeded, and couldn't do it herself. OK, well none of that will make the sky fall in.

But Tuesday she had a regularly-scheduled parent-teacher conference with Son 2's teacher. In the past, her conferences with this woman have always been very ... well, let's call them "engaged." By this I mean that Wife is usually fighting with the teacher, demanding special assignments for our boys (each of them in turn) so that they are more challenged than they will ever be with normal homework. Wife used to teach, after all, and she has strong opinions and high ambitions for our children. But the teacher actually telephoned me in a far city, the next evening, to say she was worried about Wife -- apparently because they didn't fight during this week's conference. The way she put it was that Wife was usually ... "advocating" for the kids very strenuously; and this time she was calm, almost bored. "Yeah, well Son 2 doesn't seem to want to challenge himself much. Oh, is that what you are going to assign him? That's nice, ... whatever ...." The change was dramatic enough that she wondered if there were a problem with Wife's medications, or indeed if it was safe for Wife to drive.

The answer to that last questions appear to be "Maybe not." When I got home on Thursday, Wife was lying apparently asleep on her bed (although she responded a little to my coming in); Son 2 was sitting next to her reading. Son 1 was still at school.

I asked Son 2 about the week. Oh, it was fine. Here's the mail; there's the stack of bills that Mom saved for you.

Were you and Son 1 a big help for Mom? Yes, Dad -- well, basically she would go to bed as soon as she got home from picking Son 1 up at school. Then we would get dinner for ourselves and do our homework and stuff.

Mom really fell asleep that early? Yeah -- actually one afternoon it was pretty scary because we had to keep talking to her the whole way back from getting Son 1 at school, so she wouldn't fall asleep while she was driving. But we got home fine, so it was OK. I'm glad you're back, Daddy.

Stories like this are a little scary. And it doesn't help when I talk to Wife, as I did this morning, and she says she finds she can no longer care enough to fix herself food, or to fight with our son's teacher, or to do any of a hundred things she used to do.

I cannot help but be reminded of a story that Bertrand Russell used to tell:

"My grandmother was a woman of caustic and biting wit. When she was eighty-three, she became kind and gentle. I had never found her so reasonable. She noticed the change in herself, and, reading the handwriting on the wall, she said to me, "Bertie, I'll soon be dead." And she soon was."

Counseling 13

My e-mails with D have continued as intense as they were before, and then today I have heard nothing from her at all. So I have been watching my Inbox fairly closely, worried that something I wrote last night may have crossed a line I didn't know existed. All of which is only to say that today's session with Counselor didn't have my full attention.

But maybe it should have. Wife announced that Boyfriend 5 (and his father) want to visit us some time in the next couple of months. Say what? Yes, she went on. They don't think it is fair to ask her to fly all the way to the Old Country to visit them if she hasn't ever met them in person. And Wife even agreed that she would feel more comfortable making an international trip to far away if she had earlier met the people she would be visiting.

Counselor asked me how I felt about this, and my first question was, "Are you asking me or telling me?" (She wasn't asking.) So how do I feel about it? Hell, I don't know. What difference does it make how I feel about it? It's a free country and it's not exactly like I can stop them.

But Counselor pushed a little more and I had to say something. I started by saying that -- as Wife knows all too well -- I'm not terribly good about sharing my living space with people I don't know. No problem, they'd come in an RV, so they wouldn't have to sleep on the sofa. (Why don't they just teleport? Surely it would be cheaper. Besides, then they could sleep in the comfort of their own beds at night and still come back the next morning.) Does that address my concerns?

No, of course it doesn't. Since I believe these people are continuing to lie to Wife about basic things, and since I can't figure out their motivations, I have to assume the worst. That includes assuming that they plan to case the house, or at least help themselves to anything small and moveable on the way out. Maybe not, of course, but I don't have enough data to take any possibilities off the table. So I suggested maybe they -- we -- could meet at a restaurant instead of our house.

Wife isn't too thrilled about that. I mean, she doesn't mind meeting at a restaurant first, but she sees their visit as lasting a couple of days and obviously wants to be able to bring them back to the house in the meantime. She also accused me of resisting this idea because I don't like them.

Well no, I don't. But there are people I dislike whom I would nonetheless trust not to steal from me. I didn't emphasize my fear of theft, but I did tell Wife that I thought the basic question of trust had to be settled before we could even talk about liking / disliking; and I pointed out that I don't know them well enough to have reached even that first level yet. (I remained silent about the things I do know which make me actively distrust them. I figured it was not the right time.)

However, Counselor had a good idea here. (Or somebody did ... I don't quite remember who.) I agreed, in a theoretical kind of way, that it would be a good thing if I could get to the point of trusting these people more ... sort of the way it could be useful for Hell to freeze over. Wife also wants me to trust them. So how about we take this goal -- my becoming able to trust these varmints -- as a common goal and brainstorm ways to achieve it? That way we can at least talk about these things without the conversation having to degenerate into Hosea vs. Wife. And who knows? We might come up with something.

I don't hold out a lot of hope for that, but at least we got through the session without any major tantrums or other trouble. And if we can get to a point where Wife is more willing to talk to me about Boyfriend 5 and his family, that might be progress too. I guess that's enough for one session.

Meanwhile I still haven't heard back from D since last night -- this is the longest she has gone without e-mailing me in two weeks -- so I am really beginning to wonder if I put my foot in it badly. I'll let you know once I find out.

.

Could she really believe that?

A couple of days ago -- wait, was it only yesterday? -- I posted a dialog between me and Wife's good friend D in which I mentioned (among other things) Boyfriend 5's claim that he can teleport. Apollo Unchained commented on this posting, reasonably enough, as follows:

Whew!
Teleported from the Old Country to North America?!
Could she really believe that? Surely she knows it's bullshit. Hosea, can you allow her to act on such a belief? Consider her physical safety ...

I was going to add just a short reply, and then I thought maybe the question deserved a little bit more time and thought.

In the first place, this isn't the first time the topic has come up. For veteran readers, if any :-) I mentioned it briefly way back in June, in a trio of connected posts. I set up the situation here, and then continued the reference here and finally here. And it has figured in discussions between me and Wife since then, on and off. Of course it is obvious to me that the claim is bullshit, and that Boyfriend 5 is a con artist or -- at the very least -- a very imaginative liar. But she doesn't see it that way, which was a large part of my lament to D a couple days ago.

Back when the subject first came up, I told Wife what I thought of the idea ... and I added that at the very least I was profoundly skeptical because anybody who claims something so outrageous has to face a monumental burden of proof. Wife passed these remarks along to Boyfriend 5, who proceeded to get outrageously "angry" and "hurt" at being challenged and interrogated and distrusted in this way. To me it was obvious that an over-reaction like this is a classic manipulation: if you can't refute an accusation, make the accuser feel guilty for ever mentioning it. But Wife nearly went to pieces that she had "wounded" her darling so badly. It took a lot of damage control on her part to get Boyfriend 5 to calm down, and she only succeeded by petting his ego and telling him, in effect, "There, there, it'll be all right. It's not that Hosea doesn't believe you or doesn't trust you or anything like that. It's just basic scientific curiosity on his part ... he has never seen anybody teleport before and so he is genuinely curious how you do it." [Insert gagging sound coming from Hosea.] And Boyfriend 5, finally mollified, allowed as how maybe someday he would show me. Sweet guy, huh?

Anyway, ever since then Wife has been unwilling to question the veracity of Boyfriend 5's claim to teleport. I will add that he has told Wife several times he will teleport to our house one day while the children are in school, so that they can meet in person and finally fuck. He has even said he can take her back to the Old Country that way, in which case I am not quite sure why she is fussing about with Frequent Flyer Miles from D's sister. But he has never followed up on any of these offers. That doesn't seem to faze Wife.

I seem to have addressed the question whether she can possibly believe this. The question how she can believe it has, I think, two different kinds of answers.

The first answer is a dismissive one: she wants to believe it, and human beings can believe almost anything if they want to badly enough. The second answer is that Wife has had a number of experiences at different times in the past that have seemed somehow paranormal to her. None of them, so far as I know, have violated basic laws of physics -- most typically these experiences have involved some kind of premonition that later turned out true. But the consequence is that she is not inclined to dismiss tales of unusual abilities out of hand. To me it seems obvious that even if there is something real behind some paranormal experiences, teleportation is never going to be one of them. On the other hand, it's not like this is the first difference of opinion we have ever had.

The last question is the most important, but it is in some ways the hardest to answer in a satisfying way. How can I let her plan a trip to the Old Country under circumstances like this? What about her physical safety? Don't I have a moral obligation to intevene?

Well of course I would like to intervene, but unfortunately it doesn't look that simple. In the first place, as I replied to Marianne when she left a similar comment on one of my posts last July, it's not clear how I could intervene. Wife is a grown woman with credit cards; no airline is going to refuse a reservation from her, and it's not like I want to invite a charge of kidnapping by duct-taping her to the bed. If it came down to that kind of contest, I don't think there is any legal way I could stop her.

This doesn't mean that I am blind to the possibilities. I can think of several, in fact:

• She could get to the Old Country and meet Boyfriend 5 as planned, and spend a rapturous week with him. (I think this is the least likely option.)
• She could get to the Old Country and nobody meets her at the airport. (I think this is the most likely option.) After waiting at the airport for a long time -- two hours, four hours, six hours -- she calls me long-distance to ask in a tone of helpless panic, "Hosea, what do I do now? I'm alone in a strange city, and they are trying to close the airport and want me to leave, and it is the middle of the night, and nobody has come here to pick me up, and I don't know where to go or how to get there, and I have no idea where to turn or what to do next ... and I need you to fix it for me right away!"
• She could get to the Old Country and nobody meets her at the airport ... so she takes a taxi to the address she has for Boyfriend 5. Either the address exists ... and it's a business, or a vacant lot, or a residential home where nobody has ever heard of her (or even speaks English); or else the address doesn't exist and the cabbie drives around aimlessly for a while, runs up a big bill, and deposits her ... somewhere. We have all heard about countries where you have to be careful about your choice of taxi, because there are criminals disguised as cabbies who will drive their passengers to remote places far from help, loot all their goods, and then rape or kill them. I don't know for sure if this is a problem in the Old Country, but I sure hope Wife never has a chance to find out. Still, I can't rule it out.
• She could get to the Old Country and nobody meets her at the airport ... so she asks an airport official how to get where she is going. The airport official inquires the name of the family she is trying to find, and quickly realizes she is looking for a family of noted terrorists (a family whose patriarch is legally forbidden to enter the United States, for starters). The official asks her a few questions about her business with this family, and her answers are completely outlandish (because Boyfriend 5 has been feeding her a load of crap). So the official concludes that she is a particularly stupid terrorist who can't remember her cover story but who is a contact between this family and sympathizers in the USA; he turns her over to the immigration authorities or the police, and she lands in jail in some part of the world that has never been troubled with details like habeas corpus or due process of law. This is marginally better than the previous option, because her American passport will probably prevent her from being out-and-out killed by public officials. On the other hand, I wouldn't want to bet good money on how long it would take her to get home again.
• And of course there are countless variations on these themes ....

So if these are the possibilities, and if my gut tells me that the first one is the least likely, then what am I morally obligated to do? What, for that matter, can I do?

• I can't physically stop her from going.
• I can try to persuade her not to go, but my attempts to persuade in this arena have been particularly ineffective to date.
• Or I can simply let her go if and when she wants, not blind to the possibilities but resigned to them. This means telling myself, as she gets on the plane, that I might never see her again; and it means preparing myself for a phone call which confirms exactly that. And you know, in a sense we should all tell ourselves the same thing when a loved one boards a plane. For all that flying is the safest form of travel per mile travelled, some planes do crash. And you just never know.

I wish I had a better answer than that. This answer breaks my heart, but I just don't see a better one.

An airport is as good as a cave

I know I have promised to write a couple of different posts, and I still will, but this is just in. Yesterday I e-mailed D, Wife's best friend, to tell her some of my concerns about the situation between Wife and Boyfriend 5, and her reply shed a whole new light on it. I will have to think about this for a while, actually, because she points out that this romance may be meeting needs for Wife that I never guessed at. Both e-mails are long, so I will try to edit them a bit.

Yesterday, I sent the following e-mail to D:

Dear [D],

I have wanted to reply to your e-mail below for ... well, I guess it has been over a month since you sent it ... but I have never been quite sure how to get under way. I keep being sure I am going to go off the rails somewhere. But let me give it a try.

I'm glad to know we agree about the transforming power of truth, .... In this spirit, I have recommended "Speaker for the Dead" to [Wife] ... partly because it is a fine book in its own right, and partly because the question of honesty and truthfulness is one that she and I have struggled with for twenty years or more.

During that time, I have tried to communicate ... [all the stuff that I say in “On lying”].

In practical terms, [Wife] does not appear to agree with me. I don't know if she agrees at a theoretical level. But the blunt fact is that she doesn't live as if she agreed....

I've been thinking about the issue lately because of [Wife]'s ongoing (long-distance) love affair with [Boyfriend 5]....

What bugs me about the romance with [Boyfriend 5] is that ... I have strong reasons to believe that [Boyfriend 5] is lying to her.... And I think that at some level [Wife] even recognizes this fact and doesn't want to know it.... I fear that she may be walling herself into a fantasy world that has less and less connection to reality. But to her ears, this sounds like I am being jealous and controlling and interfering. And so it just drives her farther away....

Just as a point of reference, [Boyfriend 5] is the same fellow who asked her for money last summer. Do you remember when you were visiting us, that we had a long conversation over the advisability of paying other people's bills for them? This is the same guy. That wasn't the first thing that made my ears perk up, but it was a big one.

Since then, I have accumulated a certain amount of data that makes it look clear to me he has lied to her about living in [the Old Country]. I can almost prove that he lives in [the Midwest]. Now he has told [Wife] that he frequently travels to [the Midwest] on business, but that's not what I mean. I believe -- and can almost prove -- that he out-and-out lives there. That would mean, in turn, that the whole story about [the Old Country] is nothing but a story. And if something that basic turns out to be false, I would ask how she can trust anything else that he says, period.

I might be wrong.... For this reason, when [Wife] talked tentatively several months ago about maybe flying to [the Old Country] to visit [Boyfriend 5], I didn't object.... After all, that would be one way to prove conclusively that he really exists, and that he really lives there....

The only caution from my side was that I didn't want to pay for the ticket (or spend my Frequent Flyer Miles on it). Here is my line of thought:

• If [Boyfriend 5] is who he says, and if he really lives in [the Old Country], and if he really loves [Wife] to the ends of the earth (like he says), then he would be willing to pay for her trip if it were at all possible.
• If [Boyfriend 5] is NOT who he says, and if he really lives in [the Midwest], he might play along with the idea of a trip but he will try to discourage her when the time comes (because a trip to [the Old Country] would prove him a liar).
• If [Boyfriend 5] is NOT who he says, and if he really lives in [the Midwest], AND IF [Wife] insists on making the trip anyway, he might play along and even let her fly out there ... but then she would just be stranded at the [Foreign City] airport with nobody to meet her. And he might be willing to let that happen. But I assume that he would NOT be willing to do that if he also paid for the ticket.
• Therefore, if [Boyfriend 5] paid for her ticket to [the Old Country], I would have a strong reason to believe he was genuine ... and, of course, that would be confirmed when [Wife] met him in person. If he refuses to pay for the ticket, it might mean just that he cannot possibly scrape together the money ... but it also encourages my suspicions that he is a charlatan or a shyster, and that he is playing with [Wife]'s affections either for his own amusement or so that he can use her.

Of course I am not happy that she so obviously prefers him to me; nobody would be. But I really, really hope I am wrong about him. I would far rather that [Boyfriend 5] be a rival or even a threat -- but genuine! -- than that he be a shyster who is just using [Wife] or toying with her. But so far I have not seen any evidence to prove that I am wrong. And this disturbs me.

One thought is that it might be simpler for me just to show her the data I have about where he actually lives, .... But I can't rule out the possibility that the facts could be stretched in such a way that they look like they mean something else .... [And in general, Wife will extend the most outrageous benefit of the doubt to a boyfriend because she wants so badly to believe him.]

An example: one day [Wife] was IM-ing with [Boyfriend 5], and he mentioned being in [the Old Country]. About an hour or two later, he let it casually drop that he was in [the Midwest]. [Wife] picked up on the discrepancy immediately and asked him to explain it. After all, even if he had business reasons to travel to [the Midwest], no aircraft travels that fast. [Boyfriend 5]'s answer was that he and his father are accomplished magicians, and so he teleported.

Can I PROVE this is false? No, strictly speaking I suppose that I can't.... [But] I think any reasonable listener who heard that explanation would guffaw, .... And [Wife] accepts it.... As near as I can tell, the logic goes like this:

1. It makes sense that [Boyfriend 5] can teleport, because after all he is a powerful magician.
2. I know that [Boyfriend 5] is a powerful magician because he tells me he can teleport.

[D], I remember when [Wife] would have poured bitter scorn on an argument as feeble as that. So do you. And it breaks my heart to see her taking it seriously now. The only way I can explain it is to conclude that [Wife] has been devoting a lot of energy to telling herself that this makes sense, because she wants so badly for it to be true. But that means she is lying to herself. Or maybe it is just that the constant effort to keep up a facade for my benefit means that she can no longer tell the difference between what is plausible and what is absurd.

So at one level, I hope "Speaker for the Dead" will be a salutary corrective, encouraging her to start telling the truth to HERSELF and therefore to those around her. Then I look at where she seems to be with [Boyfriend 5], and I wonder if it is already too late. I hope and pray that it is not....

I love [Wife] deeply and always have; but at this point I am very concerned for her.

Love as always,

[Hosea]

Late the same evening, D replied to me as follows:

Dearest [Hosea],

I can only imagine the courage it took you to confide in me, .... I hope I can be the friend you trust me to be. I will start by being honest...not always the same as being true, but you have forced me to make the uncomfortable distinction....

[Hosea], I offered [Wife] my sister's frequent flyer miles to go see [Boyfriend 5] in [the Old Country] if she thought it best. She does not know, of course, that I have now told you, and I will not tell her. I would ask that you let her tell you about her proposed trip ... [which] she has not yet firmly scheduled. I asked her today if she had told you of her plans; she sighed and said she had not. She promises me that she will return to America, but acknowledges that it will be difficult. I already know that, as do you. I will not deny her love for [Boyfriend 5], although for very different reasons, I find the drama in his life more fictional than believable. Is he a terrorist living in [the Old Country] and visiting condemned prisoners for eighteen hours during a prison riot? I have no evidence either way, but my experience, however limited ... suggests that such a situation is highly unlikely. I cannot know for sure, but I am not without resources and reason.

Reason will not serve me now...and my deepest fear is that you will not understand that everything I say below is said with love and support for you. But [Hosea], I have long felt that [Wife] does not know you. And perhaps honesty, the honesty Card writes about and you crave, is not possible without genuine knowledge, without love. It is not a matter of [Wife] superficially knowing what you have done or left undone or said or not said, it is something far deeper and perhaps beyond words. It is that sense you get when you are at exactly the right place to glimpse what a person truly can be, the laughter and song and sheer energy that lies at the core of a person and reveals who they really are when everything false has been stripped away. That -completely unexpected- view of you came to me several years ago one morning when you were discussing the Greeks, and I suddenly saw you...as though I had never seen you before. I was frankly astonished. I have known [Wife] for nearly twenty years, and I certainly know about her relationships...but not about /you/. I should hasten to remind you that I am well aware of your complexity and struggles; there were some dark times. [J], my son, remembers your anger and fury during the long days of isolation and unemployment. Yet when I saw you this summer, it was clear that you have tasted happiness somewhere ....

The possibility that [Boyfriend 5] lives in [the Midwest] is surprising, but after the financial discussion we had at dinner and your careful investigation, I have every reason to believe you may be right. And yet, perhaps the truth is besides the point. You may want to solve the mystery, but mystery and intrigue are exactly what [Wife] desires. You cannot tell her what is real because that would be unbearable. Surely you realize that her escapism, her belief in magic, stem from her desire to somehow defeat her despair and fear of a premature and painful demise that daily haunt her. You cannot break that spell or in any way soften or postpone her eventual reckoning with death. If you cannot do it by love, surely you know that honesty, however well meant, will not resolve the problem. You are right when you assert that lies do not simply distort and damage those who listen to false words and experience deception, but they also deeply wound the innermost being. In addition, Scripture says that lies and deceit also transform our relationship with God and with the natural world. Such a fall from grace is beyond your ability to prevent or remedy. Sometimes I think that all we can do is stay awake and watch with compassion and understanding, deeply feeling the personal rejection and confusion without turning away or leaving when those we love act in ways that are clearly destructive. My guess is that you knew, on some level, how hurt and betrayed [Wife] has been since earliest childhood when you married her, and you decided to defy the odds. That ... [might be] admirable, but it doesn't promise success. I have always seen a large measure of Greek tragedy in your relationship with your wife, and with all the sound and fury....what is truly valuable, of course, is the still, small voice. A [Foreign City] airport is as good as a cave, and I have to believe-and do believe- that she is not as alone as she fears.

I have to get up at 2:00am and write lessons. Energy, fortunately, is still abundant, although I would love to be clever enough to truly do my job well and allow my students the success they want. I will write again soon. Please forgive me if I have said anything hurtful or unkind; I would do almost anything to avoid either. My love for you is constant, my compassion and support yours forever. Take care; Godspeed.

Love,
[D]

I have to admit that D raised points I had not thought about. I have been prepared to believe that Wife wants romance, that we have communication problems, that she feels unappreciated or belittled (although I don't mean her to), and so on. In the past, when she has been involved in a physical romance with somebody, I have been prepared to believe that it was about the fucking. But that she would actively seek "mystery and intrigue" -- regardless of whether any of it was even true! -- as a medication for her physical pain and relentless depression ... this honestly had never occurred to me. I am going to have to think about it a lot more.

And I owe D a reply.

Where next? part 2

This morning I asked Wife if she had ever actually seen Boyfriend 5 teleport, since she talked about it so matter-of-factly. No, she said, she's never met him in the flesh. (Mind you, if she had met him in the flesh, I would take that as evidence that he's really some anonymous blogger from around the corner, and not really an exotic terrorist from Far-Far-Away. But be that as it may.) But he says he can teleport. Moreover, he'll IM her in the morning saying he is in one place, and then a few hours later he'll IM from another place that is so far away from the first place you could never get there by plane in that amount of time.

She seems to regard this as evidence. The fact that I could claim to be writing (here and now, this very moment) in Antarctica -- and that there is no possible way for you to tell if I'm lying -- does not seem to make much of an impression on her. (Wife believes in other paranormal phenomena too, and I'm generally not inclined to argue. Most of the paranormal phenomena that she believes in are pretty small-scale and ambiguous, anyway. But I can't help feeling total incredulity at a claim of teleporting halfway around the world.)

I also asked her if she and Boyfriend 5 have been discussing what happens in case she divorces me. Oh no, not at all, she protests. Now, I know that's a lie; but I didn't want to call her on it then and there, because I think I am not quite supposed to know this, and I'd rather not start a long discussion of exactly how I know it. Suffice it to say that soon enough the whole conversation would be about how much I know and how I know it (so she can plug the leaks in her own security) -- and none of it would be about the stuff I think is really important (like whether she plans to break up our family).

Right away she followed this denial by saying that Boyfriend 5 insists she should stay with me, so that our family is not broken up. She seemed not to notice that this reassurance contradicted her first denial, because obviously Boyfriend 5 could never have said such a thing if someone hadn't raised the subject. Then later on she admitted in a kind of sideways way that yes, of course she thinks about it from time to time; not because of any single individual thing that I've done recently, but just because (as I should know) she has been chronically discontent for a long time.

It's true, she has been. But I think that is a function of her chronic depression, which can get pretty despairing even on heavy medication. I truly think she would be this discontent with anybody -- be he never so perfect -- with whom she had lived a quarter century. But I think in her mind it's all because I'm an asshole. Maybe I am, too.

So do I need to call a psychiatrist to deal with the belief in teleportation, or a lawyer to protect me (just in case) from the threat of divorce? Or do I stick my head in the sand and pretend that it will all blow over? Maybe I'll choose this last option. I mean, it's worked before ....

Where next?

Wife appears to have no trouble with the conundrum that I posed yesterday, that suggested (to me) that she is being set up by con artists. So maybe Grandpa isn't allowed to come into the country -- big deal, he was probably in Texas anyway. Either he sneaked in (in disguise) or he teleported. Yeah, she really said that. I almost think she meant it.

Meanwhile she is starting to talk with Boyfriend 5 about leaving me and the boys -- yes, I mean divorce -- and going to live with them in their country. I have no idea how seriously to take this.

Now I'm scared

I've told you about Boyfriend 5 ... how there are really three of them, and how they are terrorists (politicians?) from a foreign country. Apparently Grandpa is not even allowed into the United States because he is on some list somewhere, or had a visa revoked or something.

So tonight Wife was IM-ing with Son (the middle one). He says he is in Texas right now, on a business trip of some kind. The conversation veered towards some complicated personal topic, and Son said his dad (that's Grandpa) had strong feelings about it. In fact, Grandpa was sitting right there, so he took the keyboard away from Son and proceeded to write about it all. Wife just ate it all up, and chatted away about this deep personal topic.

Only wait a minute:

1. Son is in Texas.
2. Grandpa is sitting right there next to him, so Grandpa is in Texas.
3. Grandpa is not allowed into the United States.

Something about this story is badly wrong, and now I am scared that Wife is being set up by some very, very clever con artists. But she is insanely protective of this new "relationship" so I don't know what I can say without driving her to make shit up in order to defend these guys. I want to protect her, but there is no way she will see it like that.

For the first time in this soap opera, I am really scared.