Like a lump of clay

I've been carrying on a number of different conversational threads with D, lately.

One has been about her asking her husband for a divorce; this thread has mostly been an unsatisfying failure for both of us, and I won't try to post about it until I can see it in some kind of clarity.

A second has been about when we can see each other again. Now it just so happens that a couple days ago I was asked when I would be available for a business trip abroad next spring; and the week which would be most convenient for Wife turns out to be the only time that D can get away from work for an entire week without being conspicuous. There are a lot of other people's schedules to coordinate as well, so nothing is certain ... but it was a pleasant coincidence.

That's not till spring, however -- months away. So apparently, while D was on the phone with Wife today, she suggested -- with a breathtaking audacity that I cannot help but admire -- that she fly out to visit us some time between Christmas and New Year's, in order to help Wife with all of the household projects that hang around unfinished and make Wife feel so powerless all the time. Wife told her, "Oh, Hosea would never put up with that. He's so controlling that he'd insist on micromanaging every little thing you did. Besides, he hates having anybody stay over at our house." D tells me it's a good thing Wife couldn't see her face. But she replied, "Well surely if I'm helping clean the house, Hosea couldn't mind too much. And as for staying over, I'll have to stay at a motel anyway, because ... well, because I'm allergic to your cats. I can be there for a few hours at a time, but you know I could never sleep there."

Now all I have to do is to be so irrationally controlling that I won't let her borrow our car for the week -- and D tells me if I ever saw her drive, I might say that anyway -- because then I would simply have to drive her back to her motel in the evening, once the day's work is done, Wife has fallen asleep, and the boys are on their ways to bed.

Unbelievable.

But in and around these more mundane topics, D has been trying to explore Wife's odd passivity, her unwillingness to take responsibility for changing the things in her surroundings that she doesn't like. And in an e-mail today she captured it remarkably well:

"I want Wife to feel less helpless and make you less wrong about these projects. There's a certain passivity that she seems to revel in; she's honest about wanting to be the submissive with Boyfriend 5, and it clearly goes beyond sexual submissiveness. I'm a bit puzzled because you have so admired her strength, but sometimes I think that true strong willed people can put the past in perspective and work hard at forgiveness. Still hurt and angry at her father for not taking her to Disneyland when she was nine? There's a deep sadness that story evokes in me that goes far beyond his action and my compassion goes to the young girl, now middle aged woman who feels that the fantasy of a "magic kingdom" was forever denied her. Shadows...of a world, far away, always green, where idealism and family devotion fight injustice."

In response, I wrote:

"I am intrigued by what you say about Wife's passivity. Of course you are right, just as you are right that it is linked somehow to her inability to give up the past. In this respect, it is as if she sits like a lump of clay, and whatever hits the clay leaves a mark on it. But think about it -- once a rock has made a deep mark in a lump of clay, you can never get it out again ... not without reshaping the whole ball of clay. That's one thing that I have always found deeply frustrating ... that when I do something inadvertently to hurt Wife, there is absolutely no way to undo it. Five years later, in the midst of a fight about something else, I will be reminded of the time when .... And I know this the second after I've done whatever thoughtless deed it was and seen the hurt register on her face. It's terrible -- it makes me feel helpless and trapped, like a character in some Greek tragedy who has just set in motion (by chance) the blind fate that will now unwind relentlessly until it undoes him. In past years, this accounted for a lot of my shouting ... because it was the cry of a trapped animal who just now realizes he is trapped. (Then of course Wife would follow up the original hurt with, "Besides, you're always shouting at me." Sigh.)

"Wow. Where did that come from? Sorry, I was trying to go down a different path. What I think is so interesting is that I have known this all along, ... and yet if you had asked me to describe Wife in words, I would never have included "passivity" as part of the picture. And I wonder why not? Because I didn't want it to be true? Because I had persuaded myself that it wasn't part of the "real Wife"? I think it must be something like that, because I am pretty sure that I have felt for years, somewhere under the surface, "Can you stop playing this passivity game and get back to being YOU? Get back to being the woman I married?" And yet, I think now that if I were to ponder long enough I would be able to find the same passivity even back then in the woman I married."

Is there ever a point where we stop learning new things about the people who have been central to our lives for over half our lives? And how is it possible that I always knew something like this and yet never knew that I knew it? There is something very mysterious about knowing other people ....

Or maybe it's just me. Or her. I bet not, though.
.

A tale of two Thanksgivings

Two households, two different time zones, two very different holidays ....

We drove down to visit my parents yesterday for Thanksgiving. We had thought about staying home, but Wife was not feeling up to all the cooking so we drove the two hours instead. And all in all, the day went unexpectedly well. My brother and his girlfriend were there, my folks prepared twice as much food as we could possibly have eaten, and everything went pretty well. Wife and my father even managed to discuss politics civilly, intelligently, and without screaming at each other. (After 25 years you would think that this would no longer be noteworthy, because they would have learned to skate around each other. But trust me, it's noteworthy.) We spent the night, were well-fed again this morning at breakfast, and finally hit the road for home. No dramatic news, but a pleasant (and filling!) visit all around. Just what Thanksgiving ought to be.
____________________

Meanwhile, in another place far far away, D asked her husband for a divorce.

Early Thursday morning, she sent me an e-mail which said, in part:

I asked [my husband] for a divorce. I set a period of six months to reflect and consider the options, but I don't have any real doubt that my decision at the end of the waiting period will be the same as it is today. I simply said that I found it impossible to live without sex and that I saw no possibility of that changing in our relationship. Then I basically let him hammer me as a person and accepted his critique. It's not easy to accept that I have deeply hurt and rejected someone who has always been a good husband, excellent father and fine human being because he was unwilling to conform to my views on sexuality and human attractiveness. It is not, I am painfully aware, anything you have ever done to Wife, who clearly gained as much weight as [my husband]-if not a great deal more-and yet you loved her and made love to her. I cannot do likewise. And believe me, Hosea, if I could have willed it different, I would have done so. [My husband] finds my views controlling (It's your way or the highway, I was angrily told), shallow, stubborn, bitterly unkind, and deeply wounding. He is furious with me, and I have to own all the anger because on the deepest level, to refuse to love someone for who they are is a very great sin. I simply don't know how to change, and to fake something I cannot feel seems to betray sexuality on every level.

[My husband] rightly said that at one point he lost 90 pounds and it made no difference in our sex life. He is right on both accounts; my only answer is that he was still furious with me, and gained all the weight back very quickly. Even if we had wanted to work on the relationship-a partnership that had been gone for ten years and needed some long term repair- we never had the time. Second, it became extremely clear that he lost the weight only to prove me wrong.... God, Hosea...how bad do I come across here? Terrible, I know. All I can say-and it's not a defense-is that the physical matters to me. I love your mind and your amazing ability with words and abstract concepts, but when I make love to you, it's your body I embrace, your scent and sweat that cause me to swoon, your mouth that pleasures mine...all the attributes of a beautifully built man that Cavafy celebrates so well. I simply don't know what else to say.

This news upset me a lot. OK, partly I admit I get really irrational on the subject of divorce. It is a lot easier for me to cope with adultery than with divorce. I try to keep my opinions under control on this site because I know that a lot of people in the blogosphere have very different lives and experiences from me ... but you have probably already picked up on my general attitude. (After all, if divorce weren't a really big deal to me, what are the odds that I would still be with Wife?)

I also can't escape the feeling that D made this move with me in mind. If not ... well, what else has changed in her life in the last several years? Her husband has been fat and out of shape for years now; she has been unable to feel any attraction for him throughout all that time. And yet, through all those years she never asked him for a divorce. Now she does ... although she admits that the cost to her will be very high, because she claims to be a devout Catholic and divorce will mean that she is permanently denied the Eucharist. What has changed? What is the relevant variable in the equation? I see only one thing ... and that is her affair with me. So notwithstanding any protestations from her to the contrary, I can't help wondering if this move was sparked at some level by our meeting in a hotel room a week and a half ago for two nights of rapturous fucking.

Anyway, I panicked. Thursday morning, just before we all left for my parents' house, I sent her an e-mail asking basically, "What? Are you sure? And by the way, are you doing this on my account, because you think I'm going to leave Wife right away, or she's going to die or something?" Then we left, and I was out of touch for ... well, maybe about 30 hours more or less.

I came back to no fewer than three long e-mails, overflowing with anger and hurt and umbrage. Hadn't she already said that she knew I would never leave Wife? (Umm, yeah, she has said that ... but why else would she seek a divorce exactly now?) How could I possibly think that she saw marriage purely one-dimensionally? (I dunno ... isn't that more or less what she herself said above?) And what the hell do I know about Catholicism anyway, to allow me to question her commitment to it? (Not enough, I admit ... but the things she herself has told me make the stakes sound pretty high and is she sure this is really what she wants to do?)

What is it with me and emotionally high-maintenance women, anyway? Have I asked this before?

I don't know where this conversation is going to end up. As soon as we got back and I read her three, I wrote her an e-mail apologizing for hurting her; she replied that of course she loves me and forgives me so never mind about all that; and about an hour ago I finished one more e-mail to her explaining that I still don't understand her motivations. I have no idea what she is going to say or where this is going.

Never a dull moment, huh? Happy Thanksgiving.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch ..., 2

Normally I wouldn't write a whole new post just to reply to comments. I may have an inflated sense of the value of my own writing, but not quite that inflated. On the other hand, I started to reply to a small number of comments on yesterday's post and found myself writing quite a lot. So I figured maybe I should put my reply into a regular post after all, if only because the margins are wider and it will fit better .... :-)

So here goes.

First, as a general remark, I have to say Thank you again, all of you -- as always -- for your support. I've been discussing the issues with D too, and haven't come to a lot of solidity yet. (One of these days I'm going to break down and give D the URL to this blog, just to get out of so much double-typing. You have no idea how close I have come more than once.)

Kyra wrote in part: "Well of course I should have anticipated this. But I was so wrapped up in anticipation over your visit with D ... that I didn't think about it....

But obviously that is trivial compared to the other events. How disturbing it must be for you to learn such things. Would you normally be doing some of those things? I ask because what I find most disturbing is whether she shut down more than normal and if so, why? Your last sentences are haunting. I hope that is not the reason why. I wonder actually if she might have shut down because of your absence. Given how important you said it was to Wife that she be independent perhaps that is as haunting as your last sentences.

So what will you do now with this information? Will you stop her from driving? And is her condition terminal in that way?

Double hugs for you, K.

PS and yes, of course I want to hear how things are with D now."

Kyra -- First of all, thank you for the compliment. Since you too write a blog with a clear narrative line (the whole divorce saga, at present), I am especially flattered to hear that my story is so compelling. (I mean, it is pretty compelling to me, but then I live it.)

Yes, normally I would be doing almost all those other tasks: taking the boys to their evening commitments, making dinner ... these days pretty much anything that has to happen after 6pm is mine. I have mentioned that Wife's health and energy levels are deteriorating visibly, and some time soon I should post a few more details to explain this.

At the same time, it is also undeniable that Wife is more likely to break down when I leave. For years I had noticed that she got sick reliably within 24 hours of my plane leaving the ground. The first few years I had to travel for work, she would call me a day into my trip telling me she was sick and I had to come back. (Once she called me because the cat had gotten out and she needed my help retrieving her ... at a distance of how many miles?) I finally pointed out this pattern to her, and she got really offended, as if I were claiming that her illnesses hadn't been real but were only ploys to manipulate me. Well, that idea had crossed my mind (in truth) but I had already rejected it because it didn't fit the data ... by which I mean that I could usually see she was still sick when I got home. So what I told her in reply was that no, my point had been about the stress it caused her for me to leave. Because we all know that stress makes one more likely to get sick, especially if one is already in fragile health. The irony is that I make Wife so crazy in so many ways ... but I don't think she has any clue what she would ever do without me. I have said this before, I think, but without giving all of the reasons why.

What will I do now? I honestly don't know. I think it would be very hard for me to stop her from driving; on the other hand, D has said unequivocally that I have to make arrangements before my next trip for someone else to drive the boys as much as possible, so that they are not in her car when she is behind the wheel. If I set this up (somehow!) as a convenience to her, she will probably accept it.

Terminal? In the long run, yes. (See my reply to L., below.) In the short run, typically not. Meanwhile thanks for the hugs. And you want me to run straight back to the story of D? You're a born romantic, aren't you?

Coquette wrote in part: "Sounds like some fairly serious depression. Is your wife on meds for that? If so, does she also see a psychologist? Have you had her back to the doctor in any case to check?

The depression could certainly be the result of Boyfriend 5's cancellation..."

Wife is under the care of a rheumatologist, a neurologist, an internist, and a psychiatrist. She is indeed on a cocktail of psychiatric medications, along with a bunch of others, to address her severe, "treatment-resistant" cyclic depression. And her rheumatologist recently ran a bunch of bloodwork to try to understand why she has been so sick lately. He has encouraged her to seek out an Ear, Nose, and Throat specialist as well, but she has not been able to summon up the motivation to make the phone calls. Nor has she had the motivation to follow up on her bloodwork.

Her depression could certainly be influenced by Boyfriend 5's no-show. But I wouldn't quite say "caused". Certainly she suffered with it decades before Boyfriend 5 came on the scene. Plus she is in touch with him daily by IM. But yes, no doubt it is a contributing factor.

Veni wrote in part: "I believe ... that your wife has had a difficult time getting her medication properly? Is she actually taking it?" Wife has indeed had a difficult time getting some of her medications (not all), but she takes her anti-depressant cocktail religiously. That having been said, her psychiatrist is currently adjusting the mix for her. November was probably not the right month in which to make this experiment, since it is one her her two nadirs during the year. But he is new for her (her old psychiatrist recently retired) and is kind of feeling his way. Also, he's meeting with her once a week with the idea of heading off any downward spirals. Still, I am not completely sure that she is exerting the effort to comunicate clearly with him.

And finally, L., wrote in part: "So, Hosea, what's wrong with her? Is it depression or something physical?"

Wife's two primary diagnoses are: depression (on the mental plane) and lupus or SLE (systemic lupus erythematosus). There are a number of secondary diagnoses that go along with these or contribute to them, such as ADD or (according to her newest psychiatrist) a mild case of OCD exacerbating the depression; along with fibromyalgia and some other auto-immune diseases in the wake of the lupus.

The lupus is terminal but not yet. By this I mean that there is no known cure (yet) so someday it will do her in. However, most lupus patients die ultimately from the toxic effects of their medication. This process takes decades, and lupus has been known to get a lot easier in some women after menopause. (Nobody knows why.) So there is a possibility that she could get enough better to go off of much of her medication, some time before the mdication kills her. Or maybe not. Again, nobody knows for sure. Wife's rheumatologist is confident that one day a cure will be discovered, but he is not certain that Wife will live to see it.

Based on the experiences of a lot of other people she has talked to, Wife has tended to assume that the lupus would give her another decade or so. But nothing about it is certain. The boys have grown up for as long as they can remember knowing that Mommy is sick and that one day she'll die ... just not right away. I'm not sure how they have internalized this.

It's late and I can't keep my eyes open. I'll come back to polish this later.

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."

First date

I am away from home on business. Never mind exactly where, just suffice it to say that Wife and the kids are in a different time zone. This morning, as I left my hotel room for work, D left the same room to travel 700 miles back to her home and her job, from which she had taken a couple of "personal days". This evening, after spending a scant 10 hours apart, she called me on the telephone and we talked for two hours, making me wonder whether we had not perhaps been magically transformed back into high school students when I wasn't looking.

How on earth did we get here?

All month, it seems, I have been promising a post analyzing my current situation with D, unpacking my motivations, trying to understand what is going on. That post is not this one. I still mean to write it -- heck, D wants to read it too, or at any rate she wants answers to the same questions. But tonight I am going to write narrative, while it is still fresh in my mind. As too often in real life, analysis and understanding will have to wait till later ....

Ever since the end of last month, I have known that I had a date with D for the first couple nights of this week. In the ensuing weeks we worked out the logistics, although obstacles seemed to manifest out of thin air. It didn't help that D was still talking on the phone with Wife every afternoon, and Wife would liven up her litany of complaints about her life with aimless comments to the effect that I drink too much (not true) and snore like a freight train (no idea if this is true or not). This led D to e-mail me in a hurry asking how much alcohol she should expect me to drink each night (answer: none -- I really had an entirely different vice on my mind!) and when I was planning to tell her about the snoring because she is such a light sleeper. It is almost as if Wife suspected D's interest, and was trying to scare her off. (Maybe that's even true.) In any event, we finally sorted through all the arrangements, and I got on the plane Sunday morning for the city where I am now.

By remarkable good luck, D flies on the same carrier as I do, and lands at the same terminal; this means that she doesn't have to cross the security check and is sitting at my gate waiting for me when I get off the plane. She looks up and sees me, smiles, puts down her book, stands up ... and the next thing I remember is that we are kissing. Really kissing. The most we had ever exchanged before was a friendly hug and a light peck on the cheek, ... but this is Very Serious Kissing. When we break for air (and to go get my luggage), D is breathing hard and looks like a drowning woman who has just been pulled ashore. So we collect my suitcase, hail the airport shuttle, and rent a car; and we punctuate each stop along the way with ... another kiss.

Arrive at hotel. Check in. Find room. Once in the room, I call home as always: "Hi sweetheart, just letting you know I got here safely. Hope you're all doing fine. Did Son 1 win his game? Oh, that's too bad. Is he doing his homework now? I see. Well, it was a long flight, so I'm going to unpack and maybe find some dinner. I love you too; give my love to the boys. Bye." Click.

And now, where where we? Oh right, ... kissing.

D and I are standing, embracing, kissing. She runs her fingers through my hair; I caress her back through her sweater. When she starts to unbutton my shirt, I move my hands around to do likewise ... and she giggles nervously. "Oh well, I guess you have to see me," she says. For all the desperate "hunger" she has articulated so eloquently in her e-mails, D is embarrassed at the prospect of my seeing her undressed. Now, at one level I understand this: D is in her mid-fifties; she has the better part of a decade on me in age. But it's not so easy to fuck with your clothes on. So she finally, a little ruefully, parts with her sweater, her shirt, her very plain and functional bra, her pants .... And my God, if ever there were a woman with nothing to be embarrassed about! D is beautiful. Her skin is soft and smooth and delicate. Her breasts are perfectly shaped -- you would never know they fed two children, except perhaps by how delectable her nipples look. The hair on her head is mostly grey by now; but her pubic hair is thick and rich and there is not a grey hair in sight. I am in awe.

There is no way I can keep this a straight, chronological narrative, because from here the exact sequence gets all confused. We never get dinner that night. We never even order room service. From the time we undress until we finally turn out the light is easily four hours, maybe closer to five. But a couple of details stand out.

At one point D cradles me in her arms, and she says "I am learning so much about you that I never knew."

"Like what?"

"I'm learning that you are desperately shy. Hosea, I've known you for almost twenty years, and I never knew that before! But I can feel it all through your body, as I run my hands over you."

Well, of course she is right. It's hard to see it, because I do my best not to act shy -- ironically, it's generally the people who "know me best" who have the hardest time seeing this. But I talk about it a little bit in this post, and I discuss it with Jane in the comments afterwards. And there is no mask you can wear when you are naked in bed with somebody.

Actually, I suppose it was pretty easy for her to tell. D is as sexy as any woman I can imagine; to hold her and caress her is sheer glory. But something -- and I agree with her diagnosis of shyness -- crippled me in the most embarrassing possible way for a guy in bed. [Three cheers for the anonymity of blogs!] If D herself had not been so loving, I would have been truly humiliated. But she said she knew it was shyness and nothing else -- that she could feel it through my skin, and that it was obvious from how I held her.

One positive consequence of this unexpected disability is that it gave me a lot of time to focus all over D's body -- to kiss, to lick, to suckle, to stroke, to caress, to rub. And she enjoyed every bit of the attention -- ecstatically, abundantly, and over and over and over again! After years of Wife's depressingly permanent anorgasmia, I found D's endless enthusiasm to be a deep joy and profoundly gratifying.

Besides, the "crippling effect" did not last forever. Way, way, way too long by my lights ... but not forever.

What more can I say? We finally turn out the lights -- way too late, considering I have to work in the morning. We sleep. D says I don't snore (at least, not that night). Monday morning I get ready for work, while D gazes at me adoringly. And Monday evening, when I get back to the hotel, it is more or less the same again. Dazzling. Exciting. And hours long.

OK, Monday evening we actually do interrupt to get a shower and order room service. And we punctuate the sex with conversation. We even talk about Wife, although D is feeling increasingly conflicted about her dual relationship as my lover and Wife's confidante. But the gist of the evening is the same, and we still turn out the lights far too late.

And Tuesday morning -- with sore regrets for the unimaginative limitations imposed by the real world -- we go our separate ways. I spend the day missing her, only paying half attention at work. And in the evening, just before our two-hour phone call, I get an e-mail from her.

When I had first landed at the airport, I gave D a book of poems by Constantine Cavafy, a poet whose work I love, and of whom she had never heard. In her e-mail to me, she wrote:

I spent the flight reading Cavafy...truly lovely poetry and remarkably easy to read. Looking out the window, all I could see was your face and eyes...my sense of wonder and delight is much better expressed by this Cavafy poem:

...I saw a beautiful body
that Eros must have fashioned with his boundless skill,
designing with delight the symmetrical limbs,
moulding the tall, sculpted frame,
tenderly drawing the face,
and bestowing, with a touch of his hand,
a feeling on the brow, in the eyes and on the lips.
.

Wife's brave decision ...?

So, ... after all the discussion in this counseling session, ... after the further analysis in this phone call, ... what did Wife finally decide to do about my request for a copy of the hotel receipt?

What else? She came as close as she could to pleasing everybody, by agreeing to pay for the room herself. That was the one escape clause which Boyfriend 5 had given her; plus, this way she could give me what I asked for and the worst case is I would complain about the cost. Since she believes that I always complain about the cost of everything (especially in cases where I keep my mouth scrupulously shut), this prospect doesn't seem so bad to her. So everybody gets more or less what they asked for, she doesn't have to feel "caught in the middle," and she doesn't have to make any really hard choices.

I thought there was a chance that she might really engage with the question of personal responsibility. I thought there was a possibility that she might really raise her sights above victimhood, that she might see herself making responsible choices in difficult situations while flanked with the risk of loss on both sides, that seeing this would lift her self-image to the point that she no longer felt trapped and victimized by life.

Why do I ever get my hopes up any more?

.

"Like iron filings to a magnet"

A couple hours after this counseling session, I telephoned D and we talked for an hour. Since she hadn't spoken to Wife that day, she asked me how the session went and I summarized it for her.

Of course she agreed right away that this was progress, and that it is high time somebody kicked Wife in the ass about accepting some responsibility for the situations she creates around herself. D is every bit as sick as I am of Wife's perpetual victimhood and cowardice. And I expressed the fond hope that exercising her ability to make choices in conditions of high responsibility could help strengthen Wife's backbone in other parts of her life.

D demurred for a bit, and finally urged a qualification. Yes, the act of choosing responsibly might itself be strengthening, insofar as it means Wife would have to stop seeing herself as a victim. But, she added, to leave it at that would be to fail to understand that either way Wife risks losing a whole lot ... and that this loss could actually be emotionally weakening. Of course D conceded that what Wife would lose by choosing against me is a lot of real, tangible stuff. But she reminded me that the power of fantasy is so strong for Wife that losing Boyfriend 5 could be just as hard for her. Still, she soberly agreed that it would be good for Wife to have to make a choice in full awareness of the consequences, and that this could be an opportunity to help make things better between Wife and me.

But at that point D got very quiet, very serious, almost solemn. Why? Well, of course as Wife's friend she wants whatever is to Wife's long-term benefit. And as she loves me, so she wants me to get what I want too, and it is clear that in a perfect world I would like things to improve between Wife and me.

But Hosea, if Wife chooses to come back to you and the two of you decide to make it work, ... then where does that leave us?

Ooops. Probably should have seen that one coming. But I didn't. Does anybody know if they give out prizes for cluelessness?

I wasn't sure what to say to this. I was tempted to ask, Why does it have to leave us anywhere? God knows it wouldn't be the first time in history that a married man found himself fucking both his wife and his mistress. And the whole character of our affair -- the emotional and intellectual timbre -- is sure to be completely different from the character of my marriage with Wife. Besides which, D herself is still married. And when I asked her once what her plans for that marriage were, I got back a long paragraph of ruminations that ended in saying she didn't know. So how much difference does it make whether our marriages are functional or not?

On the other hand, D admits that she is a lot more possessive than Wife; while she grudgingly concedes that Wife has the prior claim on my time and attention -- or rather, let's cut the crap, the prior claim on my bed -- she's not happy about it and she wouldn't tolerate her husband having a mistress that she knew about. So I think that in some ways, D may be rationalizing this whole engagement on the grounds that she's currently not fucking her husband (because he has a bunch of health problems, and has let himself get dreadfully out of shape, and physical attractiveness matters a lot to D), and I'm not fucking Wife. If either of those changed, she might start having more troubles with it.

On the third hand, D has also admitted that there really is no rationalizing or justifying this affair, outside the affair itself. There is no line of argument that makes it "right". So in that case, I have to wonder why it makes any difference what either of us is doing with our respective spouse? But I guess this will be an ongoing topic.

Anyway, back to the question: where does that leave us?

I still didn't know what to say, so D started picking her way through the topic. Back when we first began talking about sex and infidelity, I had summarized for her some of the thoughts that I have spelled out at greater length in some of the posts on this blog. I had also pointed out the experience of some of the other infidelity bloggers in our community, that their affairs ultimately spiralled completely out of their control and put them at risk for significant heartbreak or desolation one way or another. At the time, she had more or less dismissed the suggestion that the risk was that great, writing, "All creative activity imposes limits; it doesn't have to be a tragic situation filled with tears and heartbreak.... We are, for better or worse, adults." But Thursday, on the phone, she admitted that she was starting to question her earlier sang-froid. Looking at her own feelings -- jealousy, possessiveness, insecurity -- when she contemplated the prospect that things might improve between Wife and me, she agreed that yes indeed there is the possibility of significant catastrophe down this road. The tears and heartbreak might prove to be real after all.

But we are going into it with our eyes open. We both realize that this kind of emotional disaster is a possible -- perhaps even likely -- outcome; but we hope that there will be enough intrinsic value in the affair itself to be worth it. D chuckled a little bit and remarked that in some ways this was really stupid -- why on earth would we sign up voluntarily for something that we knew could turn out so badly? But then she answered her own question:

"You know, Hosea -- it doesn't matter. You could show me all the reasons in the world to stay away, and I couldn't do it. Right now I am attracted to you like iron filings to a magnet. Whatever happens to me after that, I'll just have to deal with it."

And to that, I think, there is no answer. Besides, it is intoxicating to hear.
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