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 ....

Looking for rocks to throw

Gosh, it has been a long time since I posted anything much. Let’s see if I can do something to bring the story up to date.

After Wife and I met with Counselor (this is back in early April ), and after my subsequent conversation with D, I decided to try a couple new tactics. Neither of them is exactly rocket science, but it had been too long since I had done either. The first was simply to try to be nicer to her, without waiting for her to do it first – just out of generosity. What I told myself was, “When she says something irritating or accusatory, don’t take the bait; just hold her instead.” The second was related: to pay a little more attention to our interactions: what I feel like saying and doing, what I actually say and do.

The plan was simple enough. But it turns out that there is a cost to paying attention to what is going on inside your own head, namely that you may not like what you see. You’d think that marriage counselors would have racks of little pamphlets in their offices, warning about the risks of sudden resolutions like this.

So a couple of days later, Wife and I were talking about something inconsequential, and I caught myself scanning the conversation as she spoke looking for things I could find fault with. And all at once I saw myself doing it, and I thought, "You know how Wife says I am always criticizing her? Well, maybe I am.” This was a very unpleasant thought, although I realized even at the time that I wasn’t planning to say any of these things. But I started picking this observation apart in my mind, to try to understand it better. And I realized that often (maybe not "always") when Wife and I are talking about anything that might have some practical consequence in the real world, I am on the lookout for ways in which she might be made wrong ... not necessarily to use them all, but to have them in reserve as tools for self-defense, just in case I need them. Now if I am collecting these rocks as I find them on the ground in front of me, ... how can I suppose that she is never going to notice? Wife may not follow intellectual arguments as well as she used to (what with the effects of illness and a certain “hardening of the categories”). But it does not stretch credulity to suppose that she is still very perceptive where something could affect her own emotional well-being. So yeah, she probably sees me pick these rocks up and pocket them, even when I was obviously unaware I was doing any such thing. And what is she going to think, in that case? That I'm picking them up out of compassion? Out of antiquarian interest? Or that I'm planning to use them against her? Again, that's not a stretch. And so we get to one of the core things she believes about me.

This was a really uncomfortable moment, as I pieced it together in my head; and it was not exactly easy for me to write D about it later. On the other hand, I think the self-awareness has to be valuable, because now I can watch myself do this (when I do it. Maybe some day I'll even be able to stop it, but being aware is the first step. It also gives me a little insight into how Wife might have gotten where she is now. I am pretty sure that I started looking for openings like this, where criticism could be possible, as a preparation for self-defense against Wife's almost unremitting criticism. Well, back up a generation: if Wife, in turn, grew up getting such unending waves of criticism from her mother, what should I suppose she was going to learn as a self-defense technique? Obviously, it would have made sense for her to learn to be hyper-critical, ... which in the event is exactly what happened. So since I understand how it came about (and can see the process at work in myself too, if not – God willing – quite so far along), maybe I could bring myself to be a lot more charitable about her hypercriticism of others. Again, awareness is the first step.

There is nothing here to be proud of, but I hope it may show a way forward.

Follow-on to Counseling 24

The night after we met with Counselor for session 24, I discussed the outcome on the phone with D. We came to a couple of conclusions.


At one point, I was telling D how hopeless I felt about the prospects for following Counselor's advice, and I used the example I gave in the preceding post: that if I tell Wife "I'm feeling blamed right now" her answer will be "No, I'm just defending myself against you because you are being so controlling and dominating." (In other words, "Yes, that's right, I'm blaming you.") As I summarized it to D, I am afraid to name my feelings to Wife because I am afraid of being smacked down. D laughed and asked two questions. First, very specifically, how much worse could the smack-down possibly be than what I am already living with every day? Second, more generally, how well do I think our current methods of communication work?

Ummm, ... OK, fair enough. Point taken. They don't work at all, so I guess I have nothing to lose by trying something else instead.

In the ensuing days, I tried to put this into practice. What I found was that it was difficult to remember the whole ritual of saying, "When you said X it made me feel Y." So I opted for something simpler: to pay attention, closely, to what I say to Wife; to try to avoid saying harsh things so far as I can; and to replace words with gestures (hugs or other physical contact) when I can't think of anything nice to say.

The idea to hug Wife more often is one I took from Kathleen Norris's Acedia and Me. In chapter 10 ("The Quotidian Mysteries") she writes about the power of repetition:

A recent study that monitored the daily habits of couples in order to determine what produced good and stable marriages revealed that only one activity made a consistent difference, and that was the embracing of one's spouse at the beginning and end of each day. Most surprising to Paul Bosch, who wrote the article about the study, was that "it didn't seem to matter whether or not in that moment the partners were fully engaged or even sincere! Just a perfuctory peck on the cheek was enough to make a
difference in the quality of the relationship." Bosch comments, wisely, that this "should not surprise churchgoers. Whatever you do repeatedly has the power to shape you, has the power to make you over into a different person -- even if you're not totally 'engaged' in every minute."

So there.... Let's hear it for insincere, hurried kisses, and prayers made with a yawn. (pp. 187-188)

Of course I'm not quoting this article that Norris quotes (and that I have never even read) as a panacea for everybody's marriage. But I also figured that it doesn't cost much to implement. If it turns out to have any benefit, so much the better.

The short answer, though I may be getting ahead of myself here, is that it did seem to work some. Or at any rate, there seemed to be some kind of positive correlation between my increased levels of affection and Wife's improved reports about our life together when she talks to Counselor (and D). Of course there were bumps along the way, but they belong in a later post.

Could this be remission?

I wish I had time tonight to catch up on all the posting I haven't done. The last two or three weeks have actually been kind of busy: I've been ... trying out a new-and-improved dynamic with Wife, ... calming D down from a major emotional fit when she realized that Wife and I still fuck occasionally (I honestly didn't know that she didn't know this), ... screwing up at work in an altogether slipshod kind of way, ... keeping a straight face as the soap opera with Boyfriend 5 has gotten ever wilder, ... and so on. As I say, busy.

But all that is going to have to wait till I have a little time. Not tonight.

However, I should mention that Wife saw her rheumatologist today. This is the fellow who has been monitoring her lupus for nearly a decade, the one who told her about five years ago that he doubted she would ever see remission. Well, over the last few months he has been ramping down her chemotherapy to smaller and smaller doses. As she has lost weight, he has reasoned that she didn't need as much. And he has been watching how her test results look after he decreases a dosage.

Today he pulled her off of it completely.

Now, strictly speaking this is an experiment. She might flare. He might look at her lab results in another three months and decide to put her back on it. We don't know yet.

But he told her that he thinks maybe she has reached a point where she can be symptom-free without medication. And that is the technical definition of "remission." It would be pretty cool if she reached that point, after so many years of assuming she would die first. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Counseling 23 and 24

During our session with Counselor two weeks ago, we spent the time deconstructing an argument from the previous night over a big professional photo which Wife had bought of the family. This photo was and is important to Wife; I didn't want it in the house. Counselor asked me to talk about why I felt so strongly about it (and whether I thought there was room to negotiate with Wife on the subject) ... and I was really too embarrassed by even discussing the subject to get very far (much the same way that I am embarrassed by the photo in the first place). One highlight: I commented that I wasn't even that interested in negotiating the point because I took it for granted that I would lose and Wife would get her way. Wife said that makes no sense, because the night before I was adamant about not wanting the photo hanging in the house. I said, "That's right. I absolutely don't want it. I also take it for granted that I won't get what I want on this point." This baffled Wife; because, in her view of things, when I say "I want X" that means "X has been decided conclusively." (Needless to say we have different memories about how past arguments have turned out.) Anyway, so this was just incomprehensible to Wife and Counselor tried to discuss it for a bit.


Then last week, Counselor highlighted another circular dynamic between us: something happens --> Wife feels controlled --> she defends herself --> I feel like she is blaming me for controlling her --> I defend myself --> Wife feels even more controlled --> ... and so on.

And for what must be the hundredth time, he urged us to look at our interaction as if each of us were watching a (different) movie: so what shows up on Wife's movie screen really is real for her (because it is part of her movie) regardless of whether it shows up in my movie at all, or how. And vice versa. He urged us to name how we are feeling without connecting it to a broader story, so that (for example) I might say, "I'm really feeling blamed right now" if I am. And he asked if this seemed valuable.

I had to say no, I couldn't see the point. Oh sure, theoretically it makes loads of sense. But practically speaking I have a very strong expectation that if I tell Wife "I'm feeling blamed right now" her answer will be "No, I'm just defending myself against you because you are being so controlling and dominating." (In other words, "Yes, that's right, I'm blaming you.") And where is the profit in that?

Besides, I added, it is ironic that we are even talking about my hyper-controlling Wife about the laundry or whatever, since I have basically disconnected emotionally from all of that stuff. I no longer ask her about any of that but once in a blue moon. I have shut down caring about it. Let her do whatever she wants, let it be however it will be; I'm not going there. And I haven't been, for a long time now. True to form, Wife was able to fish out some really inflammatory things I had said in the last couple of weeks. And when she quoted them, yes I remembered saying them. But I also remembered that each of them had reference to a very specific context, in which alone it made sense. Deprived of context, so that this or that remark is no longer a comment on this specific thing but just a free-floating insult? Meaningless. I didn't bother saying any of this in Counselor's office, though, because he has made it clear long since that clearing one's name against one or another accusation is not the point of counseling. (I don't mean that he is insensitive. But he points out rightly that the cycle of incrimination and self-justification can go on for years -- has, in fact -- without getting anywhere. So let's not waste time on that in his office.)

So by the end of the session I have to admit I felt pretty apathetic and hopeless.

When I described this session to D afterwards, I added that I know this hopelessness is all wrong. Surely, whatever else it is or means, one promise of Easter (or of the Spring Equinox, if you prefer) is that we can always hope. So, I told her, my mind knows better and in a while I'll shake it off. I can't stay feeling this way for long, just because I never do. Somebody tells a joke or I get another cup of coffee, and it passes.

And it did.

The calm after the storm

D felt much better today. All the anger and hurt from yesterday had dissipated, and what was left was a reflective and loving calm. I shouldn't be surprised, because it only makes sense that this is going to go in cycles, at any rate as long as the whole divorce process is under way. Probably longer.

And cycles were on her mind. After a long day of work, she wrote me in part: "I suppose what I am [mulling] is just the sheer creative energy it takes to love well. If love is creative, it isn't a continuous state, .... All creative energy has winters and summers, planting and harvesting, with time in between for growth. I feel guilty at times for my jealous feelings, my possessiveness, even though every part of my intellect knows that there is no reason for either. The literal coming and going which is unavoidably our lot reminds me of Martin Buber, who once said, "love is like a light breath, at times like a wrestling match." (You have I and Thou on your bookshelf in the study; you might want to re-read it.) [I suppose I should let her know I haven't read it even once. sigh.] He used the word 'meeting' to identify true encounter, and the word has a lovely sense of movement, a dance, advancing and receding. This morning, I spent hours on my work, only to turn and meet you again this afternoon [in e-mail]. Both can be wonderful; certainly both are necessary."

And so ends another day ....

"More difficult in any way you want to name"

Recently a reader e-mailed me privately to ask, "Am I the only one of your readers who believes D when she says that you have nothing to do with the break up of her marriage? I'm in a very similar situation myself ..., and I can say with both honesty and accuracy that my relationship with a, or indeed any, man other than my husband in no way contributed to the demise of my marriage. I'd be willing to bet that leaving her husband was something that D had considered seriously more than once, but the leaving seemed just as unappealing as staying, and very certainly more difficult in any way you want to name. I say, give her credit for being an adult - a very astute and self aware adult - and accept what she says, not just as the truth as she sees it, but the truth."

For myself, I have to agree that I am coming to a similar conclusion. It is true that some months ago, when D first talked about divorce, I couldn't help but be struck by the timing. (It was right after our first date.) And so I assumed that somehow her divorce was all about me. Self-centered little prat, ain't I?

But I have come to realize that this makes no sense. D has been talking to me lately about the disintegration of the life she knew, and she has made it abundantly clear that she does not imagine I am somehow going to magically fix everything. She takes it for granted that I have no plans to leave Wife, and that we will continue to live in different states for the forseeable future. She recognizes that I have not promised her anything to the contrary, and that (if anything) I am on the whole unhappy about and uncomfortable with her impending divorce. But it's not about me, so my opinions (rightly) count for bupkis. For good or ill, it is about D and her husband and their thirty years together. Nothing else.

But to say it's not about me is not to say it is simple or easy. My correspondent is right about that. D has been going through an absolute hell of a time the last ... well I guess it has been two weeks since my last post. She saw her husband for Easter, wrote me glowingly about the vigil and the service, and then got into a bitter fight with her husband over some comment he made about the Easter litany. I don't know the details, obviously; I wasn't there. But it sounded like the kind of fight I have with Wife sometimes, that just materializes out of nowhere. One minute you are discussing something inconsequential, making idle chit-chat over morning coffee; the next minute somebody says something wrong or ill-considered, and there are tears and shouts and recriminations and nobody quite knows how you got there. D told me that she replayed the conversation and the fight over and over in her mind the rest of Easter Sunday, as she drove all the way back to the city where she works during the week. And the more she chewed it over, the worse she felt.

This story, by the way, constitutes proof (if proof were needed) that D is telling the literal truth when she says the divorce is not about me. Fights like that don't really materialize out of nowhere. They can't. As in physics, nothing comes of nothing. Fights like that can only appear and intensify that fast if they follow well-trodden pathways, cuing scripts that have been rehearsed between the same two people for years, ripping the scabs off of very old hurts. Whatever the history between D and her husband -- and I am coming to realize that I know next to nothing about it -- it long predates anything to do with me, or with our affair.

When I spoke with her on the phone yesterday, D was in a bad state. She was mad at me for ... well, nothing, really, when you come right down to it. And after we had talked for an hour she no longer sounded mad. But she still had this fight with her husband on her mind; then work has been crazy for a month or more, and she is heading into a month of even more intense craziness; and everything is falling apart. Look at it from where I stand, Hosea, she implored me. My marriage of thirty years is ending -- thirty years of high hopes and ideals and promises. My children are both away at university, but honestly they are both pretty conflicted about this. I am looking at having to do things for myself that I have never done in my entire life. Hosea, I've never had to do my own financial planning. I don't even know how to do my own taxes -- I've never done them! My work is run by madmen, and I have no idea if I will even have a job by the fall. I spend twelve hours a day at work, and then I come back to my apartment where I am alone! And I'm looking at being alone for decades to come, very likely for the rest of my life, ... with only brief visits with you here and there when you can get away. And meanwhile you go home to your wife -- here her voice caught -- and your children and you can be domestic with them, and .... Do you know how hard it is for me to talk to Wife every day and listen to her complain about you, and all I want to do is scream at her "You're living with the man I love and I don't even know when I'm going to see him again, and you have the gall to complain about it?" And then at the end of the day you can go home and ... Hosea, where is my home? This little apartment I'm renting to be near my work? Or the house that I own with my husband, where he lives and I don't? Or where, exactly? I know that I've chosen the situation myself, and I know that you've never promised me anything, and I don't even think you owe me anything, ... and I know that the only way out is through. But Hosea, some days it is so hard.

Some days it is so hard. Got that. And lately she has been going through a lot of those days.

I wish there were something I could do. I hate for her to suffer like this. When I hear it, I feel like a jerk for not abandoning everything to catch the next plane out to where she is. But I know it's crazy to think like that. And I know neither of us is really planning on crazy. And so I know this means she is going to go through a lot more pain before this is all through.