"What were you thinking???"

Some time ago, Wife let Boyfriend 4 (not 5) put her name on his checking account ... the thinking being that it would make it easier for her to act as his executrix if and when his cancer kills him.

But Boyfriend 4 is financially reckless, and ran up a bunch of bounced checks. So this evening we learned that the bank had initiated a transfer from our main checking account -- the one out of which I pay all the household bills -- to cover B4's overdrafts to the tune of $967 and change. Wife protested a dozen times that she had insisted with the bank manager when this was set up that she not be responsible for B4's debts, and that the bank manager had told her she wouldn't be. But there it is.

I talked with Boyfriend 4 on the phone, after I calmed down a bit. He intends to close his account Tuesday, thus (so he thinks) making it impossible for this to happen again. And he gets his monthly disability check on Wednesday, out of which he promises to send us the money to cover the damages. I sure hope so, because I have checks out there waiting to come in, and I would sure hate to bounce them because we paid for B4's bounced checks. Meanwhile Wife is going to go into the bank tomorrow to try to get the charge reversed. I may take the time off work to go in with her.

I told Wife that if she can't get the charges reversed, this money will come out of the savings that her aunt left her; then any reimbursement from B4 can go to paying her back directly. I also asked for some acknowledgement of personal responsibility for this catastrophe. Everything she said in response was hedged around with qualifiers that made it not her fault, until I finally told her that I wanted to hear her say, "I'm sorry for having the poor judgement to let this happen." Even then she said "I'm sorry I let this happen," until I asked again for the whole thing this time. She finally said it, but unwillingly. And I said a number of unpleasant and insulting things in the process of it all -- but really!!

Later, as I was cleaning up the kitchen, she came out to ask me quite formally if she could excuse herself to go to bed; and I said, "Why not?"

Not a lot of yelling, really, although I did raise my voice fairly intensely at the beginning when I first learned the news. But I quieted down after that, and Wife never raised her voice. Still, I would not call it one of our better evenings.

I hope your day and evening were better than that.

Happy anniversary

A year ago today, I walked off of an airplane and into D's embrace. Nothing has ever been the same since that day, nor ever will again.

__________

“Your body is a temple,” you’ve been told,

And so it is – to Venus of the Foam:

An altar decked with perfume, incense, gold,

A shelter where Her doves can find a home.

A holy font to bless me is your kiss;

Your neck, a tower calling me to prayer;

Your breasts, an ikon of the Queen of Bliss,

Whose glory shines about your rich black hair.

So loving you, my prayers to Venus run,

That She might sanctify our path as right:

To walk together underneath the Sun,

And love each other in the honest night.

Thus tangled on your honeyed bed we lie,

Envelopped in the musk of sanctity.

Like father, like son

Son 2 went into a major fury this evening. It was over his chores -- specifically, in this instance, cleaning out the catbox. At the point that he announced he was done, I showed him there was still a lot to do; then I insisted afterwards that he sweep up the spilled cat litter, and pointed out (a couple of times) where he had missed it. I understand that it is a nasty job, but it has to be done; I also understand that from Son 2's perspective, it was really annoying to have lapses called to his attention. Anyway, he blew up: his face was red, his neck was bulging, he was shouting and slamming doors. Wife went to talk to him, but I tried to redirect her. My most immediate concern was that I wanted to avoid her saying (as she has in the past), "Yes, I know Daddy's an ogre -- he's like that to me too and there's nothing to be done about it." But once I had slid her into a different room, I also realized that what Son 2 truly needed more than anything else was to be left alone. Solitude -- time and space to himself -- was what he needed to settle down. And of course I realized this because I recognized absolutely everything he was going through. That could have been me, when I was eleven years old, almost exactly.

Sure enough, he went through exactly the stages I would have expected. For a long time he sat alone in his room; then he came out and buried himself in a book in the living room while I started dinner. At one point he came into the kitchen and announced very matter-of-factly that he had decided he would make himself enjoy dinner whatever it was, so that he could get over his grudge against me. And in fact the boys both liked dinner: it was a nacho casserole, so it tasted heavily of salsa, cheese, and refried beans. Anyway, by the time dinner was over, Son 2 was curling up affectionately on my lap; and as he went to bed he sang out a merry "I love you, Daddy." All better.

It is interesting watching him from the outside, and remembering what it was like to be him.

"I was afraid of dying without being loved"

Two weeks ago, D nearly died from a blister.

OK, I know that sounds crazy, but let me explain. Some parts of her lymph system don't work very well, especially in one leg. And she has been walking to work lately as part of a project sponsored by No Impact Man (Colin Beavan). So she got a blister from all the unaccustomed walking; it got infected; and there was no lymph system in her leg to fight the infection. All of a sudden, her leg was "twice its normal size, covered with red welts, cracking around the scarred areas and hard to walk on." She went to the doctor, who gave her some tests and a stack of antibiotics, and who thoughtfully told her that -- had she not come to a hospital -- she would have had "hours to live."

When she wrote me about this, she did everything in her power to downplay it; at one point she wrote as if her biggest worry were that the leg looked unattractive. Meanwhile she spent the week "at home" in the house she owns with her husband, taking time off work until the doctor said she was well enough to resume her duties. Even then, she was a little cagey about what had happened to her.

But as she sat at home, she got more and more and more depressed. Her husband is in poor health and spends all his waking hours on the computer because he works from home. Then he falls asleep in his chair for hours on end. The children are away at university, and D didn't call them to fill them in. She notified her employer of what had happened -- that she had nearly died -- and got not a single word back: not a "Get well soon," not even a "Thank you for letting us know and we've made arrangements to cover your work while you are gone." Her boss told her colleagues that she was on vacation -- a totally unannounced vacation -- and left it to her colleagues to sort out among themselves who would handle her work. I wrote her e-mail after e-mail telling her I was worried about her, but she kept insistently turning the conversation towards what was going on in my life, instead. And all the time she got ever more depressed.

The next weekend I called her. Her doctor had pronounced her officially on the mend, and discharged her from further treatment. She had left her home (I mean the house where her husband lives) to go back to the little duplex from which she commutes to work every day, ... which meant she was out of her husband's earshot. I found an excuse to leave my house on some errand, and rang her up. The conversation was awkward and difficult, with silences in odd places. I asked if there was anything I could do, but it was obvious that her answer to this was -- for the moment at least -- a non-starter: what she wanted desperately from me was that I be there, by her side, supporting her through all this. And the fact remains that we live far, far away from each other and each of us is married to someone else. It's a bit of a complication.

It wasn't until the middle of the next week that she finally sent me an e-mail that spelled it all out:

Yesterday I wept and wept, and could not stop crying.

I tried to tell you on Sunday, but I wasn't clear and honestly, I did not understand why I couldn't write you anymore. Even when I've been depressed in the past, I always wanted to write you. Not this week. What was wrong? It certainly wasn't anything you said. It was me. What happened last week was a turning point. But what exactly did it teach me?

Hosea, I wasn't afraid of dying. But I was afraid of dying without being loved. I was deeply afraid that I would die without anyone being there or caring on a significant level. If I died, you would not even know for several days and then life would go on for you almost unchanged. Neither of my children even knew I had an infection; my husband was busy working, and my colleagues were either kept in the dark or were callous and silent. My family did not know for a week that anything happened; my brother still hasn't called. It's the lack of love, the sense that no one truly cares, that has sent me into some sort of existential crisis.

I realize I cannot work in a place that so disrespects me. I work with wonderful, dedicated and talented professionals, but the administration subtly divides us; we are always looking around and wondering if someone isn't pulling their weight and thus making our jobs that much more difficult. Nothing is ever done; excuses are made every day for behavior that is unacceptable and appalling. I can't stay.

I realize anew how difficult it is to live alone and have no family nearby. Unlike my friends here, I don't have children nearby and a church community to lean on while I do this job. My husband cares, but he is either depressed himself or preoccupied with work; our relationship has ended on every significant level. You love me, but the ties that bind you to Wife seem unbreakable and as of yet, unaltered. Most of the time, I can deal with the distance and separation, but last week, it just seemed to add to my sense of meaninglessness. The usual things that have sustained me in the past have been buried under an avalanche of work and more work, and always, I doubt my professional competence. I can't live like this anymore.

I am not sure how to move forward. I don't want to leave those friends I have made here, but I know I almost surely have to move far away. I am scared to start over and break new ground, but I have to find a supportive community. I love you dearly and completely, but I know I have to see you more often, and I have to be able to contact you when I need support. I can no longer say it doesn't matter or that I can live without security...not financial, but of the heart.

This was a tough letter for me to answer, for at least two more or less conflicting reasons. On the one hand, it shows D's customary eloquence, an eloquence that I can hardly resist or even imagine resisting. But on the other hand, ... well, look at what she says. Her children didn't know she was sick, but then she never called them to tell them. Her colleagues didn't know, because the administration at her work is psychopathic and lied about what was going on with her; but she knows they are psychopathic, and so she knows that the only way to get word to her colleagues is to go around the administration. She doesn't have a church community, it is true, but that's because she recently left the church community to which she had belonged for a long time. All of these points are ones where she has some measure of control or influence; and in all these cases she made choices that distanced her from others.

And then there is me. I am, after all, why she left her church community ... because she couldn't honestly participate in the life of her church while committed to an affair with me. And I get that she wanted me there, more than anything. I get that I have a major importance in her life -- as she has, truly, in mine. Only, ... my life is here. What is more, I have told D more than once that -- even if Wife were to vanish into the mist -- she should not expect me to marry her, or not any time soon.

So I didn't really know what to say.

While I was dithering, we talked on the phone again; and by this time she was in a much better frame of mind. I tried to suggest to her, oh so cautiously, some of what I said above -- that really, she had to own a certain amount of the isolation that oppressed her so. She admitted this, and said that she just didn't feel comfortable asking people for help or support. OK, I understand, it can be embarrassing. But this is what your friends and family are for, dear heart. And it is hardly fair to bemoan other people ignoring you if they have no way to know what is wrong. She agreed a little ruefully, and admitted that her children had been really unhappy with her when they learned what had happened, and that she hadn't let them know. There, you see? We all really do love you, so get over this insecurity already! You're in your fifties, for heaven's sake.

D seems back to her old self now. She is back at work, e-mailing me about the ups and downs of each day. But when she gets upset or something goes wrong, she retreats and can be reluctant to speak up. I'm going to have to pay close attention to this ....

Wife in tears, part 4

When the boys and I got home this evening, Wife was folding laundry and crying. Dinner was on the stove, bubbling away unattended. After starting the boys on their evening chores (and homework), I asked her what was wrong.

"It ... it just all hit me today. Everything that is happening with us. And it's just too much."

"What's too much?"

"I tried to get the laundry all done today so you wouldn't yell at me about the boys having no clean clothes; and I put dinner on early but it is taking forever to cook, so now you'll yell at me for dinner being late. And I just can't do anything right."

I wasn't quite sure what to say to this. We talked desultorily for a bit, with a couple of barbs thrown back and forth for good measure. Then Wife went out to the kitchen to finish dinner.

After dinner, we talked some more. Wife said she had been crying ever since her psychiatric appointment this morning, as she tried to unpack for her doctor what was going on for us. But she still didn't understand it. At one point she said, "You don't love me and you don't like me. There's nowhere we can go from there." At another point she said, tremulously, cautiously, like a real question, with no defiance but genuine confusion in her voice, "What have I ever done, in all the years we have been together, to hurt you so badly?" Or again, "Maybe you are right that I just can't maintain any relationships of any kind." And all the while, tears were beading under her eyes and rolling slowly, reluctantly down her cheek.

I didn't say a lot; and when I did, it wasn't much to the point. I didn't know what to say. When she suggested that the first few years of our marriage were the happiest, I gently demurred (thinking again of "Stiletto"); when she accused me of not liking her, I asked what I am supposed to do about that. But mostly I just listened and did not get too wrapped up in her version of the story.

The other thing I did not do was to get too emotionally wound up in the situation. I mean, a woman's tears will do terrible things to me -- no doubt about it. And in years past I would have dropped everything to dry them. But today, I just sat and watched and listened. I didn't change any of how I felt, nor any of what I see for the road ahead. And that may be (in some ways) the saddest part of all.

Just before she fell asleep, Wife asked me please to be kind to her: or at any rate, if we have to divorce, please not to go out of my way to be mean and spiteful. I agreed, of course. And she fell asleep.

I need to do the same thing pretty soon. I wish I had something insightful to say. But I think the situation is starting to consume her, and I think she is scared.
____________________

Update added the next morning: There was a part of the conversation that I meant to include, but by the time I wrote this post last night I was too tired to remember it. At one point in the discussion, I said -- for what must have been the hundredth time -- that I found it really hard to understand why Wife was taking this so hard, since she had been the one who for years kept threatening divorce, offering divorce, speaking about divorce as a foregone conclusion ....

And she said, "Didn't you understand that when I said those things, what I meant was that I was begging you to love me? To be kind and affectionate to me? Didn't you get that?"

No, I never understood that. I'm going to have to think about this for a while.

"Hosea ... smash ...!"

I'm not sure I can write about this evening. It makes me look far too bad, even for an anonymous blog, among friends that don't know who I am.

Suffice it to say that, after all these years -- all the antidepressants, all the settling and stabilization of middle age -- I still have a temper that can go off on no notice over something trivial and stupid. I can still blow up without warning. And I don't even realize that it is something I can (or ought to) control until it is over and the damage is done ... I mean, the thought just never occurs to me. I am too into the rage of the moment. No matter how childishly stupid and asinine I am being, no matter what innocent bystanders are getting the brunt and having to deal with it.

Some days I think that everything Wife has ever said about me -- every low, mean hateful, squalid accusation -- is probably true. I'll go sit in the corner now. If you see the gendarmes out in the street, tell them where I am and have them run me in for being an ill-tempered, uncontrolled, infantile, moronic jerk.

Thanks, my family and I all appreciate it.

Hosea and Wife's soundtrack: a meme

I read this meme over at Kyra's blog months and months ago, and I thought, "That's really cool but I could never do that. I don't know enough music." And it's true that I don't listen to music nearly as often as almost everyone around me, so my repertoire of songs to draw from is smaller than most people's. Nor do I think of my life in terms of a soundtrack, typically. But the idea never quite went away, and I found myself chewing it over. And in the end, I came up with three songs that I thought could express the arc of our relationship. We have been together for over a quarter century, after all, so the tenor of the relationship -- and then marriage -- has changed with time. And there are some aspects of that change that get reflected in these three songs.

Of course I should emphasize the words "some aspects." Obviously there are many sides to any long-term relationship, and these could be reflected in a lot of different songs. There were times when the boys were young that you might have said our relationship was characterized by "Baby Beluga," but I don't think that is quite the kind of song that Kyra had in mind in this meme.

Let me start off with the formal statement of rules, a paragraph which I have quoted from Kyra's posting in its entirety.

The Rules:
Write a post about the soundtrack of your life. Please include somewhere in the body of the meme "This was started by Kyra (last refuge of the lonely housewife)"... I want to google to see how far and wide this meme travels.

With that said, here are the three songs I can think of, as they line up with three different phases of my long involvement with Wife. I think it will be the most instructive if I list these in reverse-chronological order.
__________

So today, I have to say that I am pretty much fed up with ... well, almost everything. You've read me whining over and over in this vein. Musically, I think that's pretty well represented with this song:

"Get Over It" by the Eagles

I turn on the tube and what do I see?
A whole lotta people cryin' "Don't blame me."
They point their crooked little fingers at everybody else
Spend all their time feelin' sorry for themselves:
Victim of this, victim of that,
Your momma's too thin; your daddy's too fat --

Get over it!
Get over it!
All this whinin' and cryin' and pitchin' a fit
Get over it, get over it! 

You say you haven't been the same since you had your little crash
But you might feel better if I gave you some cash
The more I think about it, old Billy was right
Let's kill all the lawyers, kill 'em tonight
You don't want to work, you want to live like a king
But the big, bad world doesn't owe you a thing -- 

Get over it!
Get over it!
If you don't want to play, then you might as well split
Get over it, get over it! 

It's like going to confession every time I hear you speak
You're makin' the most of your losin' streak
Some call it sick, but I call it weak 

You drag it around like a ball and chain
You wallow in the guilt; you wallow in the pain
You wave it like a flag, you wear it like a crown
Got your mind in the gutter, bringin' everybody down
Complain about the present and blame it on the past
I'd like to find your inner child and kick its little ass 

Get over it!
Get over it!
All this bitchin' and moanin' and pitchin' a fit
Get over it, get over it! 

Get over it!
Get over it!
It's gotta stop sometime, so why don't you quit
Get over it, get over it!
__________

Of course, there were years and years before I got to the point of being fed up ... years when I rode Wife's emotional roller-coaster up and down, when I loved her deeply and passionately and then reeled from the pain of one of her tantrums, or betrayals. That time -- call it the earlier years of our marriage -- could probably be summed up this way:

"Stiletto" by Billy Joel   

She cuts you once, she cuts you twice
But still you believe
The wound is so fresh you can taste the blood
But you don't have strength to leave
You've been bought, you've been sold
You've been locked outside the door
But you stand there pleadin',
With your insides bleedin',
'Cause you deep down want some more

Then she says she wants forgiveness
It's such a clever masquerade
She's so good with her stiletto
You don't even see the blade

She cuts you hard, she cuts you deep,
She's got so much skill
She's so fascinating that you're still there waiting
When she comes back for the kill
You've been slashed in the face
You've been left there to bleed
You want to run away
But you know you're gonna stay
'Cause she gives you what you need

Then she says she wants affection
While she searches for the vein
She's so good with her stiletto
You don't really mind the pain

She cuts you out, she cuts you down
She carves up your life
But you won't do nothing
As she keeps on cutting
'Cause you know you love the knife
You've been bought, you've been sold
You've been locked outside the door
But you stand there pleadin'
With your insides bleedin'
'Cause you deep down want some more 

Then she says she needs affection
While she searches for the vein
She's so good with her stiletto,
You don't really mind the pain
__________

OK, well in that case it is fair to ask -- as several of you have -- why I ever married her in the first place? And of course the answer is that I didn't see it coming. Sure, I could tell Wife was going to be high-maintenance. But remember that long ago I did love her. Long ago, I did see something powerfully attractive in her. Long ago, before we were married, she looked like this:

"Witchy Woman" by the Eagles   

Raven hair and ruby lips
sparks fly from her finger tips
Echoed voices in the night
she's a restless spirit on an endless flight

woo hoo witchy woman, see how high she flies
woo hoo witchy woman she got the moon in her eye 

She held me spellbound in the night
dancing shadows and firelight
crazy laughter in another room
and she drove herself to madness with a silver spoon 

woo hoo witchy woman see how high she flies
woo hoo witchy woman she got the moon in her eye 

Well I know you want a lover,
let me tell your brother,
she's been sleeping in the Devil's bed.
And there's some rumors going round
someone's underground
she can rock you in the nighttime 'til your skin turns red 

woo hoo witchy woman see how high she flies
woo hoo witchy woman she got the moon in her eye

__________ 


 Good night, all ....