"I miss having you care about me"

Another brief conversation with Wife last night, although it never really got off the ground.

Boyfriend 3's father [Tartuffe] is dying. He was something of a family friend for a long time, and yesterday afternoon Wife went to visit him. He was unconscious for the whole three hours of her stay, but she saw Boyfriend 3 for about half an hour. She said that he had aged. (But hell, she's aged.) He is also unemployed and on Disability at this point -- for bipolar disorder. She said that they both agreed the sex had been a mistake, because it had cost them their friendship which was more valuable. His wife has said she'll allow him to see her at the funeral "one last time."

Wife also went to see Counselor, and got some suggestions from him about ways forward, strategies for negotiating a split. And they talked about her depression.

She said to me that she had told Counselor she was really, really sad at seeing the marriage over. I asked why. She started to tear up and said that she had thought I would always be there, would always care for her and look after her -- that she missed our friendship, and missed having me care about her. As softly and sedately as I could, I said I was a little surprised to hear her say that, because she had spent so much energy over so many years pushing me away. So I thought (I went on) that she wanted me not to care so much; and while it had taken a long time, I thought I had finally achieved that.

"When did I ever say that I wanted you not to care about me?"

Where do I start? No, Hosea, put back the laundry list. That's not helpful. Aloud: "Well, for example you made it pretty clear many times that you wanted me not to care who you were with ...." (Meaning "whom you fucked," of course.)

"I never knew until a month ago that it was ever an issue for you, who I was with."

Sigh. Where can the conversation possibly go from there? Of course it's not true, not without assuming massive amnesia on Wife's part. We certainly talked and wrangled and fought over the issue often enough. I think what it has to mean for her to say she "never knew" is that it is way too painful for her to contemplate that her affairs could have contributed to where we are now, because that means it's not just a random accident but the direct result of something she did. And I do honestly think she finds that possibility agonizing. So she would rather deny it.

The affairs were never the whole story, of course. But I didn't think the laundry list was going to help at that point. I may be an asshole at times (as in my mean remark above, about thinking she wanted me not to care for her), but I try at least to be a prudent asshole. In any event, the conversation pretty much stopped there. Wife brushed her teeth and went to bed, a sad and quiet girl.

It has been quiet around the house in general lately, except when the kids are raising a ruckus. Very quiet.

When do we tell the kids?

OK, I'm looking for some advice here.

Last night I asked Wife, "So what do we do now?" It was the first time we had talked about our marriage since we met with Counselor two weeks ago, and we meandered around the subject in a slow, desultory kind of way. We confirmed with each other, as if there could possibly be any doubt, that splitting up is all that makes any sense. At one point, for example, Wife said that she didn't want to live under the same roof with somebody who openly scorned her; I agreed that I don't want to live with such a person either. And I don't think either of us admires the other very far these days. At another point Wife insisted that I have been pointlessly cruel to her over the years, which I can account for only by thinking we must have very different definitions of "pointlessly cruel" ... different enough to constitute (so to speak) different languages. Nor do we have a common moral compass any more, at least not when it comes to claims against her medical insurance that I think count as fraudulent and she doesn't. (There are probably less self-serving examples that indict me instead of her, but -- predictably enough -- I can't think of them right now.)

But one thing I wanted to insist on is that we not drag the boys into this discussion yet. What I really wanted to avoid is that Wife start messing with their heads, like she did with Son 2 in this post. But I don't know how to say that or spell it out, so I opted for a broader blanket request that we just not talk to them.

It looks, however, like I was probably wrong. Or at least I hear that from two sides already.

The first is D, who wrote me an e-mail this morning that said, in part, "If you think the boys don't know that you are preparing to divorce Wife, you are engaging in wishful thinking. They most certainly know, both because children, particularly children as bright and sensitive as yours, make it their business to carefully monitor their parent's relationship and second, because she has undoubtedly said a great deal already, which is why she hesitated to to keep your discussions a secret. I'm all for transparency. I see no value on any front to keep this a secret. Children need to understand that people work together and forge a path through difficult matters by discussion and compromise (why does everything need to be settled before you say anything?), and they need to comprehend the fundamentals; that both parents love them and will be a part of their lives in the months and years ahead. They also should have the opportunity to ask questions and express their feelings.The idea that you 'know' what concerns them is almost certainly untrue, and you would be wise to address their worries directly. They also need the support of their wider community; the school should know, their coaches should be informed, and your parents need to be in the loop. We need each other during difficult times; secrecy serves no one well." Then later today I was thumbing through Judith Wallerstein's What About the Kids? and ran across a paragraph that says, "If your children are old enough to attend school, you should gently run each [suggested parenting] plan by them. Tell them that you had a meeting, these are some of the plans you have in mind, and do they have anything to add? Did you overlook anything important to them? ... But make it clear that they have a voice, not a veto."

So my plan was probably wrong.

But then what is right? At what point do we tell them, and how do we say it? I don't want to get this wrong -- heaven knows, at this point doing the right thing for them is the only reason I have for moving slowly and gingerly. (Fine, maybe not the only reason. But a big one.) But I don't know how they will react, and I don't have any clue how to proceed or approach it.

Advice would be welcome.

Wife's bad dream

I was trying to get the boys some breakfast this morning, before all of us bundled out the door (them to school, me to work). Wife has taken to sleeping in the living room -- or rather, to moving to the living room in the middle of the night because she says I snore too loudly for her to sleep through it. (Interestingly, D says I don't snore at all. I'm never awake at the time, so I couldn't tell you.)

So along about the time I was trying to balance a gallon of milk in one hand and a carton of eggs in the other, Wife toddled into the kitchen from the living room to tell me she had just had a terrible dream. Really? That's awful, what was it about? Apparently there was nothing more to it than that we were having some bitter fight about something; and then at the end of the dream, she said, I put my arm around her and told her everything would be all right. At that point she added, "But I guess that's not reality, is it?" and slunk off to the back of the house.

I was preoccupied with breakfast, so I didn't really say anything, but I also don't know what I would have said. Once upon a time I would have abandoned breakfast to follow her back there and try to talk to her about it. I don't know if that is what she wanted or expected. But today I had neither the time (the boys and I really were in a hurry) nor -- honestly -- the motivation. I couldn't think of what would have been the point.

Maybe that very lack of motivation is what she was dreaming about, in a way. What I mean is that maybe she senses it from me (and I guess it wouldn't be hard) and her unconscious mind was reacting to it. But the whole life in which I would have followed her back to the bedroom, in which I would be entangled enough that we could fight, seems like a distant world now, long ago and far away. And truly, we haven't fought about anything, not for months.

Isn't that better than it was?

"So, how is D?"

Scene: Dinner has been cleared away. The boys are playing in the other room. Wife is taking her nighttime medications and getting ready for bed. Hosea is sitting on the edge of the bed reading the paper left over from the morning.

Wife: So, how is D doing these days?

Hosea: Hmmm?

Wife: How is D?

Hosea: D Who?

Wife: You know, ... D [last name]. How is she doing?

Hosea: I don't know .... [looks puzzled]

Wife: Well I opened the cell phone bill today, and I can see that you've been texting her several times a day all month. So you must know how she's doing.

Hosea: [thinks to himself] Damn, I'm getting sloppy. I could have hidden that bill way better than I did. And it's typical that Wife would exaggerate a number like that ... no way have we had a chance to text each other that often. [says out loud] I text a lot of people. Honestly, at work it is the best way to get a quick answer out of somebody who is stuck in some interminable meeting.

Wife: Well I know I saw her number, and I know I recognized it. I could go get the bill and show you.

But at this point, Wife is already lying down and she doesn't bother to get up. Hosea just grunts but doesn't say anything more, and after a while Wife rolls over and drifts off fitfully to sleep. By the next morning, all cell phone bills for the past year have been mysteriously moved somewhere else ....

____________________


The real answer is that for most of the last week, D and I were fighting. You remember that last week I decided to back off from full-scale war with Wife, hoping that maybe we could talk through some kind of "kinder, gentler" divorce instead. I was planning to write D about this, but it was going to take a little time. The counseling session was on Thursday, and I spent Thursday night writing it up for you folks. I was going to adapt that version for D Friday night, but she beat me to the punch. She had been reading Wife's online journal, which contained a stray reference to the appointment with Counselor; D jumped to the conclusion that I had deliberately hidden this appointment from her "for reasons unknown" and raked me over the coals for dishonesty.

I don't suppose that most people show their best side when under attack. I know I don't. In any event, I responded by getting quiet and logical, and by sending her the story I wrote you with minor adjustments. I will add that it did not even begin to mollify her. I won't bore you with the whole litany of "he said ... she said" after that, except to say that a lot of harsh things ended up being said on both sides. As D said later, when it was all over, "We really need to not get mad at each other, because -- when we do? -- we don't fight fair. Either one of us. This was really bad."

It was really bad. What finally helped, after several days of ever-less pleasant e-mails, was to pick up the phone and talk to each other. Somehow it is possible to write snotty, stabbing, vindictive things in e-mail (and to feel richly justified and self-righteous about doing so) when you could never possibly bring yourself to say the same things viva voce to someone you genuinely still love. So when D (bless her heart) finally asked me to call -- and then immediately followed up by begging me to call because she needed to hear my voice -- I called, and we resolved it all over the phone. In the end, it wasn't about any of the things that she had said in her letter, or at any rate not in any kind of dull, plodding, literal way. What was really going on was that she felt terribly insecure because we haven't seen each other since summer; so if now I was "back in counseling with Wife" (never mind that it was only once), and if I was "not divorcing Wife" (or at any rate not filing legal papers this instant), ... she was fearful that I might be planning to leave her. Of course I'm not -- you all know that. But virtual relationships are difficult for D. She needs the physical presence of friends in her life: their faces across the table, their voices in the air ... and (where appropriate) their bodies in her bed. Sometimes she blames this condition, a little humorously, on being a Catholic and believing an "incarnational theology" but I am certain it is the other way around: the need must have been rooted in her long before she accepted the Church.

Anyway, I managed to assure her that I'm not making plans to leave her, and we are back on track. So when can we meet again, come to think of it ...?

D also told me about her most recent trip "home" to the house she owns with her husband. It was his birthday, so she dressed up a little on the fancy side in case he wanted to celebrate. When she got there, late in the day, he was still in his pajamas. (He does all his paying work on-line, from home.) He hadn't bathed in several days. For that matter, she added meaningfully, he hadn't seen a dentist recently either. So she went out to the store, bought some groceries, and fixed him a nice dinner in. No problem ... except that she spent the rest of the day thinking about it. She told me later that the weekend left her very quiet and thoughtful.

It seems like everybody I know is "thoughtful" these days, in one sense or another.

Providence steps into Counseling 34

So he spoke. And the anger came on Peleus’ son, and within
his shaggy breast the heart was divided two ways, pondering
whether to draw from beside his thigh the sharp sword, driving
away all those who stood between and kill the son of Atreus,
or else to check the spleen within and keep down his anger.
Now as he weighed in his mind and spirit these two courses
and was drawing from its scabbard the great sword, Athene descended
from the sky ... [and] standing behind Peleus’ son caught him by the fair hair.
“I have come down to stay your anger – ....”

Iliad, Book I, ll. 188-195, 197, 207; tr. Richmond Lattimore

My prayer life has been feeling really disconnected lately. That sounds either meaningless or pretentious, but I don’t know how else to say what I am trying to get at. What I mean is that when I get away from all the noise in my life (say, out for a walk late at night) and spend time reflecting on what I am doing and where I am headed (maybe not too far wrong to call it a kind of prayer), I sometimes get a sense that I am where I ought to be, that I am somehow connected to a live circuit, even occasionally that I might hear something on the other end. But not lately. I have tried the experiment, going out for a late night walk and thinking about my upcoming plans for divorce, and all I have “heard” is dead, empty silence. I don’t claim to be intuitive enough to have some kind of right to anything else, but all the same I have noticed.

And then today I had a peculiar coincidence drop into my lap. Last week, Counselor had called me while Wife was in his office for her regular session, asking if I would be willing to join them today just to talk about where we are and where we are going. I agreed, even though I figured it was a waste of time. I already knew where I was going. I had already retained an attorney, I had asked her to draw up papers, ... things were moving forward. But I hadn’t told anybody about it yet, except for D and you. Nor did I want to say anything yet; I figured I would keep the service of papers a surprise.

Now for no particularly good reason, my attorney is in another city. (She was recommended by D’s brother, who is in the business; she seemed smart and capable when I met her; and I didn’t have the initiative to find somebody closer.) And when she drew up the initial papers – a petition to the Court for dissolution of marriage, a summons, and so on – she pointed out that they require an original signature. So her office mailed them to me ... at my work address, I hasten to add. The forms went out Monday. They probably should have arrived Tuesday or at the latest Wednesday, but in fact they didn’t show up till today (Thursday), about half an hour before I was scheduled to leave for Counselor’s office. The plan was for me to sign them and drop them immediately back in the mail; then when they arrive back at my attorney’s office, she will have them formally served on Wife. I was all set to do just that, and I was noting the irony that we would be discussing “where we want to go from here” just after I had dropped forms into the mailbox that would make the discussion moot and the choice of direction irrevocable ... when I noticed a couple of typographical errors on the forms. Obviously the legal boilerplate had been cut-and-pasted from somebody else’s petition, and there were simple errors as a result. (At one place the Petitioner – that’s me – was referred to as “her”.) I wasn’t sure if the Court would accept forms with mistakes on them, so I e-mailed my attorney’s office asking what to do, tucked the forms in my desk to be processed later, and then left to go see Wife and Counselor.

I got there before Wife – does this sound familiar? – and Counselor told me she seemed to him to be really lost, confused, and frightened. Then he asked me if there were anything that I wanted to tell him that I didn’t want her to know, relevant to the question where we are going next. I didn’t answer.

When Wife arrived, the discussion started a little slowly. Wife asked about my walking out of our session a couple of months ago and said it seemed to her that this meant I wanted a divorce. I hedged a bit and said that all it really meant was that I saw no future in marriage counseling for us. Wife said a few other things, to which I replied, “Yes, you’ve been saying those things for decades and for decades I have been telling you that’s not what I mean or how I feel. So this is why I see no hope for marriage counseling for us – that I can explain myself until I am blue in the face and you still fundamentally don’t understand what I am saying. Nor ever will.” And in short order thereafter, we got to the point of agreeing that there was nothing left for us to salvage.

What then? Well, I explained that we really haven’t been talking to each other, about that or anything. And Counselor asked us to look at the situation. He reminded us that he sees a lot of divorcing couples. Some of them can work out the post-divorce arrangements by talking to each other. Others do it all through lawyers. And he put considerable emphasis on the consequences of using lawyers to solve your problems: that you never reach an end until you are out of money (at which point you get the same half-assed compromise you could have gotten tens of thousands of dollars ago); it becomes ugly and vindictive as each party tries to destroy the other; each party goes behind the other’s back to get an advantage, which means that each is afraid of the other, which means (since frightened people are most likely to lash out in dangerous ways) that each reacts to things blindly and irrationally out of fear of betrayal; and it is devastating to the children. He said that children can weather some kinds of divorces pretty well – but not this kind. Get the lawyers involved, and it is nearly guaranteed to scar them for life.

There was more. Wife was crying at the prospect that it was really all over. Counselor asked if we could promise not to take any drastic action – or any action – for a period of time, until we could talk things through. I would not promise anything. I didn’t say why I wouldn’t promise, although I bet Counselor figured it out: he is pretty shrewd, and his question before Wife arrived makes me think that he suspects I am already pursuing the legal route. All I said was that I really didn’t know. And in the end our hour was up. We agreed that Wife and I should try to talk over the weekend.

But I was left with a lot to think about. I had come within inches of taking the last step to make a legal process irrevocable: was that what I wanted to do? Really? And I have kept the whole thing a secret all along: was that how I wanted to do it?

As I mulled this session, I saw some things a little more clearly.

• I saw that I have been approaching this whole process in a spirit of hatred and anger; that I have wanted not just to separate from Wife but to destroy her, in revenge for all the pain I have felt over the years. That’s not the right way to make a decision like this.


• I saw that I have chosen to move forward along the legal track for the same reason that I hired this particular attorney – that I really haven’t known what else to do, so the whole thing has seemed pretty inevitable. That’s not the right reason to make a decision like this.

I also saw that both of these tendencies have been exacerbated by the advice I get from D. When I talk to D, the legal route looks natural, it looks like the only safe way to go, and it looks like a slam-dunk. But that doesn’t mean that D’s advice is simply true. I see several factors that could affect it.

• One is that her brother is a successful lawyer, and she gets advice from him; so naturally that advice is going to take the legal path for granted.


• Another is that she spent several years as a guardian ad litem in high-conflict divorce cases; so again, the environment seems like a natural one to her.


• A third is that Wife has done several things which have really angered D, so she is probably not able to be objective about this: Wife does something annoying and D thinks “Good luck behaving that way when you are on your own” ... and all of a sudden she starts feeling (at some not-very-conscious level) that the divorce is a punishment for how awful Wife is. So why would she want it to be easier? (I don’t say that she thinks this consciously.)


• And a fourth – you thought I’d never get to this one, huh? – is that D is in love with me and resents the hell out of Wife for living with me while D herself is far, far away. So again, at some emotional level she probably wants to punish Wife. Besides, if I make a flamboyant exit, I’ll probably be bruised and bloody from the experience, and need someone gentle and loving to bind up my wounds. Who better than D? And if her gentle ministrations convinced me that I was wrong about delaying remarriage, if I somehow decided that I wanted to marry her right away, ... well that could hardly be an outcome she would want to discourage, could it? (Again, I don’t say that she thinks this consciously. But I would be a fool not to allow for it.)

So I have been doing this all wrong. And I need to slow down and think. I need to remember some things that I know, but that I have failed to keep in mind:

• from Socrates, that it is better to suffer injustice than to commit it;


• from Julian of Norwich, that “All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well”;


• from B, that “Everything will be all right in the end; if it's not all right, it's not the end.” She’s right, you know.

Once long ago, I hired a man who turned out to have lied on his job application by inventing a degree he didn’t really have. When our HR department found out, they told me and asked what I wanted to do; they also reminded me that the application is a legal document, so that lying on it is perjury. In other words, if I wanted to fire him, I had every legal right to do it. I spent a couple of days thinking it over ... and over ... and finally came to a decision. I called him into my office and told him that I knew. I asked him if he had ever even set foot on the campus of the school from which he claimed the degree, and he said Yes but he just didn’t graduate. So I added, “You don’t actually need a degree for the job you applied for, but integrity is nonnegotiable. Therefore I’m going to extend your probationary period, and I want you to bring me some solid evidence that the story you are telling me now is true ... in other words, that you did attend the place once. A transcript, a student body card ... something.” He did it. And he was a good employee. Sometimes the legal route, the one you have every right in the world to take, isn’t the most productive.

I had forgotten that story until just tonight. It happened years ago. But maybe I need to remember it a little more often. It can be really hard to negotiate with Wife, because often she insists on things that make no sense. But I have to try harder.

Distracted

If my boss had any idea how unproductive I have become, he'd fire my ass.

A year ago I could still think coherent thoughts in a linear fashion about how my job fits into the larger picture in my company. I could see where things needed to be expanded and improved. I could contemplate what my next career step might be. I could collaborate in useful and interesting ways with colleagues from other locations. I could contribute ideas worth listening to.

That was a year ago.

And today?

Today I can sneak in an hour-long phone call to my newly-retained attorney while she explains to me how to file for divorce. I can look up interesting books on the Internet, or research high schools that might be good for my boys once they are old enough for high school. Occasionally -- too rarely -- I can even post to my blog. And I can write to D, think about D, miss D, spend long hours fantasizing about fucking D's brains out over and over.

But my actual work? Like, ... the stuff they pay me for? The quality of my work sucks, and I am months behind on some of it. Fortunately nobody has really caught on yet; or when they do notice, they blame it on the bad economy: "Oh, poor Hosea. The company had to downsize and now look at how much work he has ... you can tell he must have a lot because he is so far behind." People shake their heads and cluck their tongues sympathetically. And they don't seem to realize that -- mentally -- I'm not even there.

If I were told tomorrow that I was being demoted to emptying the trash cans, my big worries would be about the salary and the loss of privacy. It would mean I'd have to put in eight hours of work every day for my paycheck, which would seriously cut into my time for web-browsing, letter-writing, and sexual fantasizing. Only later would I realize that I ought to have been worried about things like a career track.

Just pathetic.

I sure hope none of you is actually my boss in disguise ....

Public and private, open and closed

Just a day or two ago, I was chatting with a friend who also has a blog -- ironically enough an infidelity blog -- and who had just gone private for reasons of security. (No, this is not D. As far as I know, D doesn't blog.) Anyway, she talked about all the reasons that going private was better -- reasons with which, under the circumstances, it was hard to argue. But I objected that if we were all private all the time, we could never meet other people out there with similar interests or stories. Somehow there is an inherent risk in making any kind of connection with each other, but life without those connections gets lonely fast.

I was reminded of that conversation today, when I was talking to D. I asked her about one or another of the social networking tools out there -- I forget if it was Facebook or LinkedIn or what -- and asked her if she ever used it. She was horrified, and I realized right away that it was a stupid question. D is in many ways an intensely private woman -- the thought of putting facts about herself (even the most innocuous facts) out where the world can read them is something she finds almost impossible to imagine. When I told her (almost a year ago now) that I blog, it took her a very long time to wrap her mind around the fact.

What seems so odd to me is that there can never have been a woman alive more devoted to what she calls "community-building": making friends, keeping in touch with friends, connecting with people regularly throughout the day or the week. And I have to wonder if there is something a little strange in this picture: ceaselessly keeping in touch with friends around the world, tirelessly keeping the lines of communication open ... and yet building and guarding high walls so that the wrong things can't be seen by the wrong eyes.

Is that strange? Is it paradoxical? Or is it like the "paradox" of a free society, that it actually takes a strong government to ensure enough safety that people can afford to live freely? Is it no more than the old adage that "Good fences make good neighbors"?

I don't know the answer, and I'd be interested in hearing other people's thoughts. But I do know that without some openness -- some publicity, some risk -- we would all sit huddled behind our own walls and never meet each other at all. And that would be really lonely.