I may go private soon

I'll be trying to get advice on a number of issues in the next few days, and it is possible that I may be advised to go private. (Not that I expect to be posting a whole lot anyway, if the immediate future is anything like as busy as the immediate past has been.) Nobody has said anything yet, but I want to be prepared.

Needless to say, if the advice I get consistently says "Who cares?" then I won't bother going private.

But -- just in case I do -- please let me know if you want an invitation. An e-mail is fine, or else a comment on this post.

Counseling 32

Well, that was fast.

You have noticed before now that I am pretty cynical these days about the chances for our counseling sessions leading anywhere ... not because I am not willing to put in any commitment (as some readers have suggested or wondered) but because Wife isn't. After plenty of years in which she has openly scoffed at every exercise, proposal, or suggestion that Counselor makes, I figure the odds are against any change ever happening. Back before she left, D asked me, "So why do you still go? Isn't the whole point of marriage counseling that you be willing to make a change in your life? If Wife is absolutely unwilling to change, doesn't that mean that the whole exercise is a waste of time and money?" And the answer, reluctant as I have been to admit it, is really "Yes."

So enough is enough. We get to Counselor's office, he invites us in, we comment briefly on the weather ... and then I start right at the beginning by saying I have a "procedural question" for Wife. I start by explaining all the stuff above about the whole point of marriage counseling; I add in the part about her systematically refusing to budge whenever Counselor has offered us a way to reframe our situation so that we can make progress. And then I ask Wife point blank:

"Are you willing to change?"

"Well," she hedged, "a lot of the specific things we've discussed in the last week where you have asked me to change are things that I have no idea how to change; they may not even be possible ...."

"That's an evasion. I didn't ask about understanding or possibility. Are you willing to change?" My point is that I am not even asking her to succeed -- for that, questions like whether it is possible become relevant. All I want to know is where her heart is ... where her will is ... what direction is she pointing in ...?

"That really depends. Some things I might be willing to discuss changing, but other things I'm not ...."

I stand up and walk to the door. "Then this is a waste of time and I have work to do. Counselor, send me the bill and I'll process it through our insurance." (He usually only gets around to billing us once or twice a year.)

"Wait, I really don't think you can just leave like that ...."

"Bye." And I leave the office and drive back to work.

One minor complication, just to make it a complete story. I have been exchanging e-mails with D over the situation, and she reminded me of something that has concerned me in the past. From time to time, Wife has talked to Boyfriend 5 about kidnapping the children and fleeing to the Old Country. [I looked for references in earlier posts but couldn't find any. This is probably the closest.] Now I know Wife hasn't been in touch with Boyfriend 5 lately (or I think she hasn't) ... but I still worry about the risk that she'll grab-and-go. Flight is, after all, a big deal in her psyche. D brought up the same issue. So when Wife pulled into the parking lot at Counselor's office with Son 1 in the passenger's seat, I asked him to move into my car. The fact is that I have a job in town, so I'm not going anywhere. But I don't want to make it easy or possible for her to do so.

The narrative is starting to accelerate quickly.

P.S. added August 26. I just realized something. This post, our last counseling session together, is dated July 9, 2009. Our first session in this round of counseling was just exactly a year ago, July 10, 2008. Wow.

What is Wife trying to do?

OK, this one is short and sweet. It's a question.

Tonight after everyone else was in bed, I noticed in Wife's purse a lumpy sealed envelope. Under the circumstances, I figured that self-preservation trumps respect for privacy, so I opened it. It contained her birth certificate and her passport. I have mentioned that she already has her driver's license.

What does this add up to? In other words, what is the transaction for which she would need these particular pieces of paper? Is she going to the bank to get her other ATMs back? Or is it something a lot more dangerous? For that matter, why is she in such a blasted hurry to get those things back, when I have tried to say that the more she nags me about them, the more nervous I get and the longer I'll hide them? Is it just that she can't stand being out of control? Or is she planning to do me some kind of harm once she gets them?

Inquiring minds want to know ....

There was also a letter to Friend, but I didn't bother opening that. I can probably guess that it is about how awful I am, and about why she hasn't been around her cell phone lately. I hope it is nothing actually threatening.

Thoughts?

Sixth date 4, Brief narrative

Let's see if I can give a bare bones account of what actually happened last week. Let's see ... chronologically? Thematically? A mix ...?

Revisiting the week as I wrote this, I think it is pretty likely I won't have any friends left in the blogosphere by the time they finish reading it. (sigh) I hope it helps that I am aware of the problem. I am trying to figure out the next steps from here.

Cleaning

[Saturday] D started by helping the boys tidy their room and put away their laundry. Only they couldn't close their dresser drawers because of the huge numbers of shirts falling out of them. Wife says "If they'd only hang up their shirts it would be no problem." D asks the boys, "What are these shirts? Can you show me? Do they still fit? Do you like them or wear them?" Then she weeded out a couple of bags worth of shirts that no longer fit and/or that neither boy was willing to let touch his body. And suddenly the dresser drawers closed nicely.

[Sunday, Monday] D and I totally rearranged the storage units. Wife and I have rented a storage unit ever since we moved into our house. You may recall that back in January we had to rent a second unit because of all the junk we moved out of the house. Well, two units cost twice as much as one unit (fancy that!) and the expense was getting to be a nuisance. D and I rearranged things so that we could consolidate into one unit, and surrender the second one. And mostly we succeeded at this by simple geometry ... we really threw out very little. (Well, ... considering.)

Also, D cleaned the bathrooms again. Yes, she had done that back in January. It is possible somebody else might have done it since then, but I'm not taking bets.

[Tuesday, Wednesday] Then she started in on the living room, which had been left out the last time around. The boys had left a bunch of junk lying around, and there were books strewn. Also the room was hard to use (and therefore drifted into being a junk depository) because of the way the bookshelves and furniture were arranged. OK, well D got the boys to pick up their own stuff. She consulted a bit and we agreed that the brick-and-board shelf had to come down ... that would improve the space enormously. (I would swear that Wife was in on this agreement, but maybe she thought we were talking about something else.) So D went to work on the shelves, pulling down books to dust them and asking what could get donated to charity or the library or something. As the project went on, she got significantly more aggressive on this point; and in the end we must have culled somewhere over a thousand books. Not that this really stripped our living room, you understand ... there must be twice that many still on the shelves. Or more.

[Thursday] Last thing was to organize a whole box of filing into which I had been pitching papers pell-mell for a long, long time. She did ask me (several times) if I had any intention of ever dealing with the papers, and was tolerant when I said yes.

Other chores

D did a lot of laundry -- every day -- and did the dishes after every meal. (She doesn't believe in dishwashers.) She also offered to help Son 2 pack for a big two-week expedition he was leaving for -- call it a campout, which is close enough. She helped me plan, shop for, and cook the meals. She made a huge raft of sandwiches for Son 1's sports team, which had a number of games during the week. There's probably more that I'm forgetting.

Sex

Since D was staying in our house, there wasn't really a good venue for sex. But we improvised the best we could, using what little standing room we could find in the storage units and the garage. I can't say either of those venues worked for me terribly well, but they did seem to work for D -- rapturously and repeatedly. At any rate she certainly sounded like she was enjoying herself ... and the loss of muscular control is something I'd only ever read about before. I take all that as a good sign. (Seriously, it could sound like I'm griping and I'm not; given the very tight constraints, I think the sex was one of the things that worked out best during the whole week.)

Fights

There were a lot of them.

Wife blamed D for throwing away all those shirts; although honestly I had wanted to do the same thing for years. Wife buys stuff without any visible regard for whether we need it or already have it; I have enough shirts to go to work for three weeks without repeating a single one, but she still tells me I need a few more. The thing is that I'm too dilatory or slothful to get around to purging the boys's shirts, to say nothing of wanting to avoid the inevitable fight that it would (and did) generate. But when there were so many shirts that they would never wear, it was the right thing to do.

D for her part got progressively more irritated at Wife's refusal to say Please or Thank you or even Hello, at Wife's seeming inability even to notice when D was scrubbing her fingers to the bone cleaning caked shit out of the inside rims of our toilets, and at Wife's consistent failure to make even the smallest gesture of politeness: Can I get you something? Would you like a glass of water? One way of explaining this neglect would be to say that Wife didn't want D to do the things she was doing, but it is pretty hard to think that about scrubbing the toilets. Nor does it explain similar rudenesses over breakfast or dinner, when no work was being done at all (except for cooking or washing up). In any event, when Wife shouted about some of the other topics, D shot back with this one.

Wife resented the hell out of our pruning the books, and truth to tell we probably went overboard. But the way she reacted wasn't very productive, because it mostly meant repeating the refrain, "You can't throw those away because their mine, mine, mine, all mine! Do you hear me? Mine, mine, MINE!" This just cemented D's diagnosis that owning all this stuff has totally distorted Wife's view of the world, making it all about her. Since Wife acquires the stuff with no concern for whether we will need it or ever use it, the overall pattern looks unhealthy. And no, D was not terribly gentle about explaining this back to Wife; rather, when Wife had screeched for long enough at D, D would shout back at her to open her eyes up to other people besides herself. The point about basic civility (see the preceding paragraph) fit in here too.

Occasionally Wife would argue that she needed these or those scholarly tomes because she still reads them on a regular basis and is going to go back to scholarship any day now. Mind you, she failed her master's exams nearly fifteen years ago and hasn't seen the inside of a university since then. The "scholarly tomes" in question were all covered in spider webs and insect droppings, so they probably hadn't been used all that recently. But Wife claimed that they had been and would be, all the same. This argument just contributed to the impression both D and I have, that Wife spends most of her time in a world of make-believe.

Wife was also angry that D offered to help Son 2 pack for his expedition. What was she trying to say, that Wife wasn't good enough to pack her own son? (Somehow the topic had shifted from getting the work done to whether Wife was good enough ... but don't conclude that this is self-absorption.) Now, Son 2 is a gentler and more sensitive kid than Son 1, and I really didn't want him being caught between two such dominant women. So I pushed both of them away (figuratively) and insisted that Son 2 should pack himself. After all, if he's going to be gone for two weeks, he'll have to be able to take care of that. This seemed to work out OK.

Shortly after we finished with the books, Wife went out to get "one last thing" that Son 2 would need for his trip. She came back not having found it, but having bought a big box of candles (we have candles already, not that we use them), some personal electronics (for which we have no need), and a pair of $60 earrings (she must have hundreds of earrings). I lost my temper at this and took the bags away from her. I went immediately back to the store to return them. In the process, I also took Wife's wallet and hid it somewhere I am reasonably sure she can't retrieve it. (I can, easily enough.)

That's how I confiscated Wife's wallet.

While I am still speaking of the wallet, I should explain a couple of things. I let her keep her driver's license and all her keys. She recently set up an ATM card with our bank that lets her access two separate accounts holding inheritance money from a relative that recently died. These accounts are in her name alone, so I have no ownership rights on them. And I let her keep that ATM card. (Between them they add to something over $23,000.00 ... so as long as she is willing to drive to the bank, she has access to plenty of money.) I also let her keep her insurance ID cards and her library card. So she is not without resources. But I hope to impede her ability mindlessly to piss away our common resources as long as she is making such irrational buying decisions.

While I was gone, she spent the time murmuring softly to Son 2 about what a beast I am and how she won't put up with it any longer, until he was curled up on his bed crying in fetal position. (Nice send-off for his big trip, huh?) When I came back and found out, I told her "No more. You are going to be happy and cheerful until Son 2 leaves tomorrow evening. I don't care what anybody does to you or says to you, but you are not going to say a single, solitary unpleasant thing until that time. Then after he leaves, you can say anything you want." She couldn't make herself be pleasant, but she did succeed in shutting up, which I guess is the next best thing.

She also got on the phone to Boyfriend 5 ... or no, I guess it was Friend. That's when I picked up her cell phone, insisting that she deal with the here-and-now instead of fleeing into fantasy land. I handed the phone to D, saying I was really too upset to know what to do with it. D put it somewhere around the house. I'm sure it will turn up.

That's what happened to the cell phone.

Travel and heat

The next day we took Son 2 to the spot where he was embarking on his big trip. Everyone said nice things to him, and we all hurrahed him off. (Wife sulked when she wasn't actually talking to him, but never mind.) Then we went from there to visit my parents and spent the night. The next morning we hung out at my parents' house for a while, preparing a big barbecue for lunch. D spent a lot of time chatting with them and getting to know them.

After I took a shower that morning, I couldn't find my comb so I checked in Wife's bag for one. I didn't find a comb, but I did find her Smith & Wesson 38. Now, I don't know about you but I honestly can't think of any legitimate reason for her to have brought a handgun along on this trip. So I lifted it out of the bag and hid it at my parents' house. I also told my parents -- and D -- what I had found.

Not ten minutes later, Wife asked me in a long-suffering voice to give her back her handgun. I asked her why she had brought it. Her answer was, "I always carry it whenever I go anywhere, so that it can't get stolen by someone breaking into the house."

This is a pure lie -- a total fabrication -- and I told her so. I know perfectly well that on plenty of other occasions when we spent the night at my parents' house, she did not pack a weapon. So what was she planning? Was she going to kill us all? Or make a dramatic last stand and then kill herself? Both? Or what? My private theory is that she didn't have a plan, and in fact that she didn't even know why she packed it. But that doesn't make me feel any better.

Anyway, that's how I confiscated the handgun.

Coda

Later in the week we went to one of Son 1's sports events, went out to see a silly summer movie, got pizza and ice cream ... fun stuff. I read aloud a funny essay I had found. And Monday morning I took D to the rental car office, from which she was going to drive herself a few hours away to visit some relatives. First stop, of course, was her adult daughter, whose comments on the week you have already read here.

This will have to do for now ... it's more than I really had time to write, but no matter. I want to add another post or two that spend more time thinking about what happened, not just narrating it. But that's for another day.

Sixth date 3, Letter from D

I realize it is kind of silly to keep posting letters that reflect on the week when I haven't told you anything about the week itself yet. But I really am not planning this out very clearly or well. As a result, when something drops into my hands that is relevant, I am going to post it before it gets away from me. Over while, I hope a mosaic picture will emerge.

D left this morning to visit other relatives, including her adult daughter. This evening she sent me the following e-mail:

Dearest Hosea,

I told [my adult daughter] something about our relationship and the week. She is very disappointed at my behavior and believes that I should end the relationship with you until we both are clearer about our respective marriages. I knew I risked receiving a message that would be very difficult to hear, but I'm also confused enough to ask for help.... I respect her clear-eyed view, and thus I am feeling considerably subdued and thoughtful.

Let's see if I can organize this material into some sort of pattern. I'll start with [Wife], move to you and finish with me.... Never doubt my love for you; but let's reconsider everything else.

There is no question that [Wife] is right on almost all the basics. I did take over tasks that were no business of mine and I did get rid of huge amounts of stuff that frankly was not mine to make decisions about. I did insult and shout at her. I took your side and made her life more and more difficult as the week went on. I'm not justifying her packing a gun, but she was certainly right on some emotional level to think that together, we threatened almost everything in her life. We did; we do.

That said, [Wife] is not stable. This is not new, but you are right to think that her complex mental and physical health problems have worsened greatly in the last two years. She is miserable herself, and toxic to others, and she has almost no ability to change or even any desire to try. [Wife] has no belief in anything or anyone; her faith life is as false as her regard for her family and friends. She is lost in a dozen ways. This confusion and self-centered outlook also makes her dangerous.... I am afraid she is capable of doing something unforgivable and tragic.

The house and all the mess, all the useless and ugly things [Wife] has bought and acquired over the years have been purchased and preserved with your agreement, however reluctant and passive ... to preserve elements of peace and to provide some stability for your beloved boys. Your decision to do so is almost certainly a mistake; it has brought her closer to moral and intellectual ruin, and you are increasingly isolated and unhappy.... [Another e-mail friend] is absolutely right to say you have had almost no power in your personal life. Your reactions, passive-aggressive at times, and angry in other situations have not helped to shift the power balance. The situation is critical now because it so obviously impacts the children. I would like to think that your willingness to join the blogging community and later, your relationship with me, are signs that you have decided to turn to others for understanding and support.

After this week, it is clear that your clinical depression is something I have to factor in every matter involving you. It is quite serious, and affects you deeply. You can be fine; charming, intellectually stimulating, and in charge, and then turn on a dime...become timid, paralyzed by the smallest decision, exhausted, passive and deeply unhappy.... Sometimes you check out entirely, but most of the time when you are depressed, I believe you are truly confused and saddened by events that have spun out of control....

My behavior...is probably inexcusable on many levels. First, I am certainly not helping either you or [Wife] deal with each other or make wise decisions about your marriage. I can no longer pretend to be neutral; after our sexual relationship began, I am not able to mediate effectively, even if I was able to do so in the past. Second, I am not being fair to the members of your family and my family by having an affair with you. If [my husband or my other children] found out, they would be deeply hurt and shocked. If [your children] discovered our love for one another, they would feel as though you had betrayed their mother. We cannot avoid the consequences of our behavior...and I am deeply afraid that we will be found out, sooner or later.

I have not filed for divorce; perhaps I have felt as though the status quo is acceptable because I am afraid you will never leave your wife and I don't want to live by myself. You have not filed for divorce because of your love and hope for [Wife], your passivity and diffidence which is part of depression, and because it is most unclear how she would survive if you left. Neither of us have decided definitively what to do about our marriages, and [my adult daughter] may be right to say our marriages must be resolved, one way or another before we can truly commit to one another and talk about forging a life together. Right now, she feels I am acting immorally and perhaps setting you and the boys up for disaster. If [Wife] finds out, will she react passively? Or will she feel so betrayed by both of us that only violence will suffice? My worst nightmare is not losing the respect and love of my family, but being responsible for harm done to you or the boys.

It is clear that I cannot be a friend to both you and [Wife]; even if you decide to end our relationship, I cannot continue to befriend [Wife]. Frankly, I don't admire and respect her any longer. Her denigration of you is intolerable on so many levels; I simply don't want to listen to her lies and bitterness and excuses any longer. Her materialism, her selfishness and her unkindness make her the last person I would ever think of as a confidant and friend. I am deeply sorry; I have so many wonderful memories of her. But the person in your home today is a shadow of the woman I once loved. I will not return to [your city].

But you...I love you beyond measure. I have considered leaving you...but I can't, not now, not without both of us sitting together, talking to each other and considering what is to be done. I love you far too much to simply walk away and wish you well. I do have terrible fears about hurting those I have loved so long and well, but I also love you with a deep and abiding love that remains, even when I know what I am doing is wrong and potentially extremely harmful. But to cut you from my heart, my mind, myself...not yet, not without more thought and prayer and discussion.

Take care, my darling. Be well.

.

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 ....