Sixth date 2, Letter to parents

I don't think I'll be able to describe the past week in a single post -- way too much went on. So I am going to nibble away at it in bits.

D left this morning. Also this morning, I answered an e-mail I had gotten a couple of days ago from my Dad, after we visited them for a day last week. He wrote in part:

It was fun meeting your friend [D]. You two sure seem to hit it off famously. I can't remember when we had such a good time just sitting up and talking about . . . whatever! Does she have an email address?

On the downside, I am deeply distressed about what is happening to [Wife]. Part of the distress is that I don't really know what it is that's happening to [Wife]. But whatever it is, there could be intense consequences for you and the boys as well. Naturally, you are going to want to shield [Son 1] and [Son 2] from the worst manifestations of your conflicts because they are at a vulnerable age. [Son 2] probably more so than [Son 1], but who can say for sure?

Keep in touch. We do not intend to interfere where we're not needed or wanted. But DO let us know if you would like us to help out in any way. For example, if you and [Wife] want to get away together, we could play host to [the boys] for a while this summer, and shuttle them to their [various summer commitments].

In reply, I wrote back as follows:

[D] does indeed have an e-mail address. You should be able to reach her at [insert e-mail address here]. I think she is planning to drop you a note as well ... she said she had a wonderful time.

As for [Wife], it is hard to put in a nutshell, because it has been kind of gradual. You know the story about putting a frog in a pot of boiling water, right? It's like that. But she has been sinking for a long time into a kind of shell of her former self, in which the negative qualities (some of which were admittedly there all along) are ever more prominent; and in which the positive qualities (which used to overshadow or compensate for them) are withering away. She always wanted to surround herself with acquisitions as a way of defining herself -- by things she inherited or by things that would show off her taste -- but these days there is no compensating interest in or concern for other human beings. She was always careful about her health, but these days her diseases have become an excuse to disengage from anything and anyone that she doesn't feel like troubling with. She was always able to stretch the truth for the sake of a good story, but these days she has built almost a whole alternate history for herself -- one that often (not always) takes its start from events that really happened, but that then twists those events beyond recognition and retells them in a form so different from what anybody else remembers that it can only be called a fabric of lies. For a long time I have just sat by as these changes have happened, in the interests of peace and because the changes have been slow and incremental. (It's that frog-in-the-stewpot thing again.) But there is something about D's visits (both of them now) that brings these issues to the fore and to a flashpoint.

Agreed that the consequences could be intense. I have relieved [Wife] of her gun and of her wallet (saving out only her driver's license and an ATM card which accesses her inheritance accounts). [Footnote to my readers: This means that she has access to some $23,000 any time she wants it, and she can drive anywhere she wants to go ... so even now she is not exactly without resources.] But I am not sure what is next.

It would probably be useful if [the boys] could spend some time with you. I have to travel [for work] in the last week of July, so that might be an excellent time to choose. Also, [D] pointed out that if I don't feel I can trust [Wife] with her wallet, then it's not clear that I want to trust her with managing all our assets in case I die unexpectedly. It might be useful if I could find some time to explore what it would take to rewrite my will so that someone else -- maybe you and Mom for now -- could step in as trustees in the unlikely event that something happens to one of my airplanes. I'm not quite sure how to go about this part.

I'll post more later. There is a lot to say.

Sixth date 1, Descent into Hell

For the past week, D has been staying with us again. This time she is actually staying in the house, on the floor of our study; her thought is that by not staying in a hotel, she'll save enough money that we can see each other again later in the summer as well. The thought was that she would help with just cleaning. She arranged this visit with Wife (although Wife later insisted that the visit was against her will), and promised up front that she wouldn’t throw anything away. In the end, a lot of stuff has (deservedly) gotten thrown out, although it has been perhaps something of a technicality who threw it away. Any way you look at it, it has been a really intense week.

I don’t know how to describe what has happened, how to make sense of it, how to explain plausibly the things we all have said and done, the choices we all have made. I am struggling to find a narrative angle that will allow me to narrate coherently how the week has gone ... how we have unloaded bags of trash, dozens of shirts, and somewhere over a thousand books ... how I have seen D at her best on waves of ecstatic bliss, and at her worst shrieking like a harpy at Wife ... how I have seen Wife sink deeper and deeper, from sullen resentment through systematic lies into a world that has no visible connection with this one ... how I have listened to D accuse Wife of deep-seated evil, and of betraying the bright and promising woman she used to be; and accuse me of aiding, abetting, and enabling that evil and that betrayal for decades ... how I have listened to Wife accuse D in turn of betraying their friendship, me of betraying our marriage, and both of us of tyrannizing over her ... how in the last two days I have confiscated Wife’s wallet, her cell phone, and her Smith & Wesson ... how my parents finally had a chance to meet D (who was enchanted by them – I haven’t heard from them yet), and how I finally allowed them to see the sick and damned space that Wife’s mind has come to inhabit ... how I have come to guess that the charade (D’s and mine) may well be over, and how I have come to be convinced that the marriage (Wife’s and mine) is almost certainly over.

The visit isn’t over yet (D leaves on Monday), but I am shell-shocked by it. My own mood has been bouncing around up, down, and sideways. At times I have found it scary to be with either woman, and have just longed for a little peace and quiet. But my longing for peace and quiet may be at the heart of the enabling and abetting that D correctly sees I have practised for so many years.

I fear that the bare facts of the narrative will make me look bad. I can only say they made sense at the time. I hope I can make them make sense to you.

To be continued ....

Dark vapors

The day wasn't nearly as bad as this will make it sound (though I have had days that were). But I found that by the end of the day I was getting crabby and discontent and generally unpleasant to be around. I decided to beguile my irritability by trying to capture it in words, and this is what I got:

The damsel that I swore to love for all
Eternity, I cannot stand. The brats,
My gentle, manly sons just spit and squall,
And tenderness show only to the cats.

Perhaps I’ll go to work. I think I’ll pay
Our bills instead. I ought to cut the grass.
I need a snack – it’s just my third today! –
Or else a drink, until this fever pass.

It’s nothing true. Dark vapors cloud my sight,
And give each angel bright a demon face.
Though it be day, I stumble in dark night.
Where’er I light, I can’t abide this place

So hold me in your arms and let me grieve;
And stroke my hair until the darkness leave.

Follow-on to Counseling 31

I got a comment from Janeway on my account of our most recent counseling session, as follows:

If Wife's upbringing was anything like mine - in which being "wrong" always drew negative consequences - then being acknowledged to be "right" is just as important as actually being "right". It's not about you. It's about her need to feel safe from bad consequences, and her need to build back up the bits of her ego (for lack of a better word) after its having been assaulted by your accusations.

And, from your perspective, if the substance of the original argument is immaterial to you, then it follows that it would make no difference to you one way or the other to tell Wife that you were wrong to accuse her in the first place. So why not do it?

Perhaps because it's really not immaterial?

I was planning out in my mind how to answer this question, and I had pretty much settled on writing a long, careful analysis of exactly what goes on in my head during these arguments. My plan was to show that no, in this case it doesn't quite work out the way Janeway suggests, for the following subtle reasons. In other words, it was going to be a whiny self-justification, cleverly disguised as a careful, probing self-analysis. But some time before I wrote it, I happened to tell D about the feedback I had gotten from Janeway. The very next morning (today, in fact) I awoke to an e-mail from D that ran, in part, as follows:

My dearest darling,

You have a valuable friend, because she is willing to confront you when you need to corrected.

I don't need to appreciate Wife's childhood to understand that when she is right, she should receive that recognition. There is real and significant difference between the mode of transmission and the message itself. You were wrong in both aspects here, and honesty demands you recognize that fact....

Sometimes I think understanding someone's background just clouds the issue. If you had done this, for example, to my daughter, who had a decent childhood, you would be equally responsible for acknowledging the entire truth and for apologizing for both wrongs. You don't apologize [just] to make someone feel safe.... You apologize because you were wrong. What you should have demanded at Counselor's is the understanding that once an apology is made, that's the end of the matter....

There is a tissue of lies in your relationship with Wife -- hers about you on so many issues -- that makes it almost inconceivable for you to tell the truth and voluntarily give up some of your power and control. Better to apologize for yelling and not for making a mistake in content. But the issue will never be defused without a full apology. It's not that the issue is vital, but your unwillingness to admit your mistake is important. Essentially, you are making Wife wrong, which is a neat turn, but you won't be able to get away with it. You are saying, "I'd apologize to you, but if I do, you'll just bring the issue up again , so I won't say I'm sorry." All you can do is simply apologize. You have no control over what she does with your words. If she "build up her ego" with your apology, fine. If she ignores it and still treats you poorly, you have still done the right thing. and that's all you can do. That's all anyone can do, and it's enough, because it frees your spirit from wrongdoing.

I never said apology is easy. But apology must be thorough, which is why I tend to craft my apologies very carefully. They involve justice...(Counselor is wrong about this aspect being secondary; a moment's reflection will make that clear)...and they bring me face to face with God. For when I apologize to a person well, I have begun to cultivate the ground for a new beginning, for a more productive relationship with that person. I've owned my responsibility for the break in our understanding and commitmernt, and I've opened the door to forgiveness. Since Wife must learn to forgive if she is to be forgiven, why not help her learn how to do so?

I suppose I should be grateful to have friends who are so concerned with bringing out the best in me. Sometimes I think life would be a little easier if more of my friends were interested in seeing the worst of me instead, but I suppose after a while that would get old.

Doesn't make it easy, however ....

Can you see yourself in Marcão?

Long, long after I suggested she read them, Wife and I had an interesting discussion last night about the Ender books (mostly Speaker for the Dead).

I'm not sure we reached any profound conclusions, although she did say early on (in response to a question from me) that no, she would not like to have a Speaker for the Dead speak her death. Why not? Because she thought that "most people" would interpret her as "a monster" (her word, not mine). I tried to shift the discussion a bit by asking if the Speaking of Marcão's death had been a good thing or a bad thing for Novinha. Wife never really told me what she thought of that question, and we ended up talking around it for some time. I avoided giving my opinion till the very end, when I said that the Speaking of Marcão's death had been (my opinion) the single best half hour in Novinha's life ... because it freed her from the twisted life she had built for herself and gave her a chance to make it better. I admitted that she didn't do a perfect job of making it better, but hey -- we're all human beings, right? We all make mistakes.

Interesting discussion of Novinha and Marcão. Wife remarked with a bit of puzzlement on Novinha's statement that Ender was the first one to love her as an adult.

OK sure, I replied, but look how old she was when she met Libo -- you can't call that attachment simply an adult one.

What about her marriage to Marcão, Wife asked? He was alive into middle age; doesn't that count as loving her as an adult?

Not really, I answered. Ender is very clear about this in his speech: Marcão's love of Novinha is plainly adolescent worship.

But then why does he hurt her?

Huh? What do you mean?

If Marcão worships Novinha, why does he torment her so badly?

But this is easy. Everybody past the age of seven who has loved has experienced this. (I tried to tread carefully but continued ....) Have you never had the experience of badly hurting someone you love very much?

Wife was silent. I let her sit silently for a long time, and then restated the question. Finally, in a long, slow, quiet, drawn-out syllable, she answered, Well y - e - e - e - s - s - s ....

OK, then you can see yourself in Marcão. And if you can see yourself in his shoes, then you can understand why he acts the way he does. And then later on, with a different background, I made the same point about seeing herself in Novinha. Of course I palliated both remarks by saying that I meant *anybody* could see himself in both characters. But Wife was quiet and pensive for a very long time.

Counseling 31

We got a bit of a slow start today. Counselor asked, "What do you want to talk about?" and Wife said, "I don't know ... we haven't had any big fights in the past week."

Then she added, "Well, except that Hosea yelled at me about the banking Monday." Followed the story. Wife had to go to the bank to set up a couple extra accounts for, ... well, this and that. The details aren't very interesting. She pulled money out of the checking account to do it, and I completely failed to follow up with her to find out how much. So Monday evening, as I was paying bills, I checked our account balance and found out (to my surprise) that it was $1000 less than I thought it was. I was shocked, and proceeded to yell for several minutes about the situation. Why hadn't Wife told me she had pulled $1000 out of the checking account? Why hadn't she set up these accounts in a different (lower impact) way? And so on. Of course, none of what I said made much sense. Obviously I should have asked her for the details the day she set those other two accounts up, and she set them up in the only way the bank would allow. But really I was just blowing off steam because I was so startled to find out that the checks I was writing that night weren't backed by the money I thought we had there. And once I settled down it was an easy problem to fix (by moving some money from savings to checking to cover the difference).

Counselor asked Wife how it felt for me to yell at her. She said that for the parts where she felt she had done something wrong, of course she felt guilty; but for the rest of it, .... Counselor stopped her there. Guilty? Are you sure? Yes, Wife replied, guilty and sorry. Counselor wouldn't let it go. He said he understood feeling sorry, but where does "guilty" come from? After probing a little more, he suggested that "guilty" is the way a child might feel; but an adult would be more likely to realize that people make mistakes, and so making a mistake doesn't make you a bad person. In other words, the issue of guilt-vs-innocence really doesn't matter.

We would come back to this question of guilt-vs-innocence, but first we talked for a while about how Wife feels about the yelling itself, when I yell. The answer is that it scares her.

Then Counselor asked me how these situations feel for me, and I explained that when I yell it usually isn't even directed specifically at Wife. But if something happens to alarm me or make me upset, I do this to blow off the steam that builds up inside me so I can think about it more clearly.

So Counselor asked Wife, Now that you know that this is just something Hosea does which doesn't necessarily have anything to do with you, is there something he could do to make you feel better when this happens? She wasn't sure. Maybe apologize.

Hosea, could you do that?

Yeah, sure. But. Sometimes I try to apologize, and I get the clear sense from Wife that the damage is already irreparable. This just makes me feel trapped, and so my internal tension gets worse and the drama escalates. When that happens, it makes me not want to apologize the next time.

Is there something Wife could say that would help de-escalate instead?

Maybe. It might help if, when I apologize for yelling, she said "OK, I understand." But I can tell you for sure what she has to avoid saying.

What's that?

She has to avoid bringing up the original subject. She has to avoid saying, "OK, thank you for the apology. But you know, I really was innocent of that thing you were yelling about ...," because if she does that I feel like she is just starting the fight all over and I'll get mad again. And I'll start yelling again.

At this point Wife objected, "But I have to clear my name. If you are willing to apologize for yelling at me, why can't you also apologize for accusing me unjustly? Why can't you admit that you were wrong to accuse me?"

I am telescoping the discussion a bit for clarity, and there are a lot of answers to this question. One answer is that I might not even know yet whether she is "guilty" or "innocent" of the original issue, whatever it was -- nor does it even matter! The important part is that I shouldn't yell at her. I know that, and I can apologize for that. Re-opening the original argument just rubs in salt, and it is immaterial anyway.

But Counselor pointed out that for Wife it is not immaterial. For Wife, this is fundamental, it is life-or-death. And he asked her to think about what it would take to be able to live with "being guilty" and not care ... to be able to value the dynamic of the relationship over who can be proven judicially right or wrong in this or that petty argument. Because, he added, most of the issues you two "go to court" over in this way are really pretty trivial and not worth it.

He's right. I know he's right. But somehow Wife didn't seem to have any idea what he was talking about.

On lying, part 5

Several readers have pointed out that D is really in an impossible position, maintaining a friendship with Wife at the same time that she is involved in an affair with me. She has realized this, of course, but some days it is driven home to her just a little more powerfully than others.

Two days ago, I got a letter from D after she had gotten off the phone after a long conversation with Wife. She was pretty concerned about a number of things, and her letter began, ...

Dear Hosea,
After listening to Wife talk about your recent behavior, I can't help but wonder about your stress level and well-being. Below are some of the points she made, both about herself and about you. I'm concerned, and I question how transparent you are being with me.
Wife says you are drinking -- a lot -- and that this has been an on-going concern for years. If you are drinking anywhere near as much as she insists you are drinking, it seems reasonable to question your consumption. She says your snoring is directly related to your drinking. Yes, we split a bottle of wine, several times; you did not manifest any hostility and you did not snore. But an entire bottle, night after night? Scotch, three or four glasses? ... I don't understand.

The rest of the letter was in the same vein, and the accusations which Wife had made about me were just as dreary and just as implausible.

Wife reports that you are increasingly hostile and angry; ....
Wife says you told her last night about more job cuts, and you may be at risk....
Wife says that you are overwhelmed with financial concerns and are likely to incur more debt....

And on and on. Finally she ended with:

In short, I am worried. Perhaps you can reassure me, perhaps not. Let's just work towards honesty, our earliest promise to one another, and still sacred.

Now at one level I was fairly irritated at this; I mean, this was the kind of e-mail I was getting from D last fall (see here, et seq.) and I thought we were past it. But at another level, I know that Wife can be remarkably persuasive even when she is lying through her teeth -- persuasive enough even to make you doubt things you saw with your own eyes. So it didn't surprise me too much that she could make D doubt her own knowledge of who I am and what must be the truth. So I did reply to everything she said, item by item, although I fear that some of my pique showed through the surface:

Dearest D,
Oh good heavens, this is ridiculous. I don't drink anything like those quantities. One glass of brandy last night, period. I think two the night before. I haven't kept a list, but the quantities on days before that are comparable.... An entire bottle [of wine] a night, night after night? I would be far too ill to go to work -- the thing is absolutely impossible.
I am not aware of being increasingly hostile and angry, but Wife has been known to say I am "hostile and angry" when I am merely distracted....
I said *nothing* last night about more job cuts ... Holy cow, where did this come from?...

And so on. Item by item. I ended by saying something like what I said just above:

I am a little vexed that whenever you have one of these conversations with Wife, you write me asking about *my* honesty and *my* transparency, when your practical experience should suggest to you that the trouble does not often lie there. But I guess it is difficult to be really at ease when you are thousands of miles away from the situation, and that this is one of the tensions inherent in our relationship as it stands today.... [Then there followed a paragraph that was a lot more romantic, before I signed off.]

So far, there wasn't much in this exchange to warrant talking about it, except by way of random griping. But then the next morning, D sent me a letter that pondered the whole situation as follows:

I'm not sure what to think about my relationship with Wife. After writing you and receiving your letter back, I know I have wronged you and I don't know quite what to think about her. I have never had a 'friend' who literally lies about everything. You write about [a social event we went to recently that I haven't bothered to describe here], and it's clear that you know this woman [someone we met there], and enjoy her company. For Wife, she was a new acquaintance, who was a hairdresser, not a shop owner, and you weren't around for any of the conversation (I specifically asked). I don't mind disagreements over education; I've engaged in a few of those myself. But why lie about the small particulars? ... More disturbingly, she tells endless lies about you; everything from the way you speak to her, to your lovemaking, to your behavior with the boys, to your drinking...none of it has any basis in fact. She cheats on you like a tom cat. She doesn't discuss books, or music, or theater, or philosophy or religion. Our conversations center around the minutia of her life.

As a mother, Wife has no real regard for the boys. Her discipline, or lack of effective consequences bothers me, but many first year teachers [for example] have many of the same problems and I'm tolerant because they are dedicated to the kids; they can be taught how to manage a classroom. Wife is different; she just doesn't deeply care about her children. She has mapped out Son 1's future with a chilling casualness; [she thinks] he's beneath serious consideration because [she thinks] he's just not smart enough to be a real intellectual. Not only is that a completely unwarranted conclusion to draw about Son 1, but the idea that only 'intellectuals' are worthy people is offensive, extremely offensive. I feel she uses Son 2 for low level sexual satisfaction and she works to keep him dependent on her, refusing to either model or teach the social skills an adolescent boy needs in our society. I see no effort on her part to engage the boys or to learn about the challenges ahead as they enter manhood.

So exactly why do I spend any time with her? Most sensible people are more particular about their relationships. If I introduced you to my brothers and sisters, or to my colleagues, you would be impressed and you'd admire all of them. But neither of us admires Wife, and while I may not be as pessimistic as you are about the possibility of real change, the evidence is on your side of the discussion. I find myself questioning you unfairly and without foundation, and feeling unclean, dragged down to a level that is at once sad and yet also frightening and miserable. I realize why you stay with her, although it's not easy for me, and has certain drawbacks for you as well, but above all, I'm not sure how to befriend this woman. I feel pity for her, I remember what she used to be like and I mourn the loss of that person, and I'm sobered by the realization that Jesus' words about the choices we make having consequences we cannot undo are remarkably clear-eyed.

D took the discussion in another direction for a paragraph or so, and then said something that had never occurred to me: ...

I need to understand a great deal more if I'm to deal with her habitual lying, [but] it's clearly clinical in degree. It has occurred to me that she and Friend are actually enmeshed, rather than Wife being duped by this elaborate fantasy about Boyfriend 5 and his family. Rather, she has helped to create the fantasy; I realize she may be making up the stories she tells so often about the various members of this clan. Victim/perpetrator; the line is very blurred.

Maybe I should have thought of that, but I never did.

Anyway, then D wound up her long letter:

I owe you a deep and heartfelt apology for doubting you on any of the issues she raised yesterday, although I was glad to hear that the financial picture is workable, and that you are not awake at night worried about your job. I'm sorry, Hosea. It won't happen again.

Wow.

I'm really not sure how to summarize this. I know I have said that sometimes Wife seems more and more disconnected from reality, and this is part of it. But she is so convincing when she lies like this! So I have to wonder ... does she even know she is lying? (And if so, what could possibly be her motive for lying about irrelevant details?) Or does the truth simply get rewritten before it is written to her memory? Or what exactly is going on?

Most of the time I try not to think about this, and most of the time I can succeed. But some days it just mystifies me.