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Lawyer called me at work this afternoon -- "just checking in after our meeting on Monday" -- and we talked for half an hour. I can't remember the whole conversation, but here are some bits and bobs as I remember them.
__________
"How was the drive home?"
"By turns she was angry, weepy, and very cold."
"You know, I met her in the restroom after you two left my office and we talked for a minute. She apologized for how hostile she had been in my office but said that this whole thing had really taken her by surprise."
"Yes, and I think underlying it all she is very deeply afraid."
__________
"You know, part of what I sensed from her when I met her is that she has a lot of anger at the world bottled up inside."
__________
"Has she made any moves toward getting a lawyer yet?"
"Not that I know of, but of course it's only been a day."
"Do you think she will?"
"I hope she will!"
"Well of course she should. I can't pretend to be impartial."
"It's not just that. You know, a lot of people say 'I'm gonna get a lawyer' like it's a threat (no offense). But I look forward to her getting a lawyer because he'll be focussed on dealing with reality. I think a lot of the things she wants are inconsistent with each other, and others are totally unobtainable. But a lawyer will approach the whole thing with no personal sentiment involved, and will figure out what can be done in the real world. Her lawyer can get on the phone with you and the two of you will have no emotional baggage in the way of working out the best deal for her and me. And she needs somebody who can tell her, 'This is what you can get, but you can't get that' ... I mean, somebody that is on her side, somebody besides you or me."
"I agree."
__________
"Tell me about the house. You said you wanted her to have the house, but she said it needs all these repairs. What's that about?"
"Well I think she overstated it. Yes, there is a lot of maintenance we have kind of deferred; but it's not falling down around our ears. [And I listed some of it.]"
"And it sounded to me like she was saying she's not interested in the house unless all that is fixed. Do you think that's right?"
"I think she's of two minds, and this is one of the places where she is inconsistent. In your office she was trying to be financially shrewd, and was saying that a house with all these needed repairs isn't much of an investment. But suppose you turn around and suggest she move out -- then my God, you'd think the world was coming to an end. She's also convinced she can't move out, because she has all this furniture and all this junk she has inherited from her parents and grandparents and great-aunts and so on, and it completely immobilizes her. So she doesn't want the house in the shape it's in, and she also doesn't want to leave."
"I see."
"I was thinking about it last night and realized there are basically three possibilities. Case One is that by some miracle she can afford the house and the repairs all by herself. Case Two is where she can afford the house by herself but not the repairs. And Case Three is where she can't afford anything. Now Cases One and Three are easy: in One she stays and in Three she leaves. But what about Two? Part of her -- the part that was talking in your office -- wants to say that in Case Two she leaves. But I guarantee that emotionally she can't bring herself to do that, which means really she wants to stay and for somebody else to pay for it all. So what can we do in that case? Well, I figure part of my job is to help her to see that just because she can't afford something today doesn't mean she'll never afford it. I could imagine that we end up with a divorce settlement that says something like, 'The following repairs are so critical that Hosea has to pony up and pay for them right away: list, list, list. And for the rest, we'll add on X dollars to the agreed support number for her to squirrel away in a savings account so that she can save up to do the rest later.' I wouldn't be opposed to something like that. We'd have to negotiate the details."
__________
"She also said something about the boys. Your plan gave you 77% custody and her 23%. But she said the boys would want the split to be 50-50. Do you think that's true?"
"I have no idea. Maybe yes, maybe no."
"So the fact that she said it ...."
"Tells us only that that is what she wants to believe. But there have been plenty of times in the past when we have been arguing and she has tried to score points by telling me, 'The boys both agree with me!' Then when I have followed up and asked them, they've asked, 'What??' "
"I see."
"Maybe they'd like 50-50 because they think it's fair, and because our fights with each other aren't their fights. Maybe they'd choose to be with her all the time because they think she needs someone to look after her."
"You make it sound like they parent her."
"They do. They also tune her out more easily than they do me, so they might like that aspect of it. Or they might choose to spend more time with me because they are tired of dealing with her. I really don't know ... it could be any of those. We'd have to ask them."
"How old are they?"
"Fourteen and sixteen."
"So they are old enough that the Court will care about their opinion."
__________
"You remember she asked me why you wanted so much custody, and I just alluded that you'd said she had some health issues."
"Right."
"Do you really think she doesn't understand?"
"She is totally oblivious to any of the other reasons I think she shouldn't have custody." [Like this and this, for starters.]
"That's what I thought."
__________
"Hosea, there's one other thing I picked up by talking with her. She really wants to keep the status quo."
"Yes and no. When I talk to her about our marriage, she'll insist that she wants to stay with me and then she'll spend half an hour listing things she hates about me. I try to tell her she'll be happier without me, too. But I think she is terrified of change and of the unknown."
"Right, that's what I see. And that means she is going to delay this process as long as possible. You need to keep an eye on it, Hosea, and be prepared to move it along, or else a year from now you'll be right where you are today."
"That's good advice and I hadn't thought of it. Thank you."
Dear God, but I am tired.
I took a day off from work yesterday so that Wife and I could visit Lawyer. Wife was by turns raging, weeping, and cold. All the way there, during the meeting, all the way back, and for the rest of the day. At one point she told Lawyer I had been calculatingly cruel for dropping the news of a divorce on her "the day after I lost my youngest son!" I interjected a quick explanation that this didn't mean he had died, which it sounds like, but just that we had delivered him happy and enthusiastic to boarding school. But that's how she sees the whole thing. I'll spare you the rest, and honestly I probably couldn't bring myself to remember or type it all anyway.
Drove home. I did some yard work, went to the gym and exercised, picked up some groceries, came home and made dinner. Wife lit into me again over dinner. I tried to propose a moratorium on discussing this stuff over dinner or in the evenings, but failed. Wife asked a lot of questions about Why? and How long have you been planning this? I did my best not to answer them, because they are questions that will provoke more tears and recriminations, not questions that move us forward; I kept asking her to focus on What terms do I want? What terms can I live with? I only lost my temper and yelled once -- a first in months -- when I was trying to urge her to think about what she can do, and she cut me off to tell me all about what she can't do and how all scenarios for the future are impossible.
By the end of the evening I was bone-weary. This morning at the office I am vacuous and unfocussed. My arms ache, which I chalk up to overdoing it at the gym. But the fact that I can't think clearly? That I know I shouldn't trust myself to make important decisions or do anything more than routine tasks? It's not a hangover: I drank some last night but not that damned much and there's no headache. It can't be the exercise, ... can it?
I think it's just that the weight of the whole business is starting to settle on me, and that the effort to stay cool and calm and businesslike when I'm with Wife has been more of a strain than I realized.
I'm really, really tired.
For the last two days, Wife has been furious at me that I did some advance work with Lawyer, getting advice and drafting a plan. She feels betrayed, blindsided that I would "go around behind her back" like that. (The irony here is so thick it's hard to wade through, but I don't think she sees it at all.) And so she has not let up asking pointed, insinuating questions, each one in essence a chip on her shoulder that she is just daring me to knock off. And I keep trying to pull her back to reality:
- This plan is only a draft, not a done deal.
- Lawyer is only an advisor, not a judge; her office is not a courtroom.
- Therefore Wife can't be compelled by any of this. If she says No, then No.
But then Wife will change tack so that instead of complaining that I am railroading her, she complains about all the money she thinks I have spent. (I have not given her a sum because it is none of her damned business.) Why didn't we spend that money on fixing up the house, instead of me personally spending what she insists on calling "common money" doing something so "blatantly hostile" as retaining an attorney?
I remind her that we signed an agreement three years ago splitting our incomes and expenses (but not our assets). She insists that agreement cannot be enforced in our state, and that she is entitled to anything I earn. (When she watches herself she limits that to half of what I earn, but she isn't always that careful.)
And so on. And on. And on. Yelling, angry, aggrieved.
Of course, I have realized that what is really behind this is that she is deeply scared. She doesn't deal with change well -- she even accused me of cruelty because I "deliberately" chose to hit her with this while she was still "grieving" at the fact that we took Son 2 up to Durmstrang so he's no longer living at home -- and she has no trust in anybody. So as far as she knows, I am conspiring with the Prince of Darkness to have him devour her immortal soul, all for the sport of watching. When I tell her that she should relax and wait till she looks at the plan because I'm trying to be fair and willing to be generous (except not on custody), she stares at me incomprehendingly as if I were speaking Chinese.
And this evening as I was clearning the dinner dishes she came back for what must have been the dozenth time to screeching at me, "How would you feel if I were the one who had gone to see an attorney behind your back without telling you a word about it, and if I had drawn up a plan for exactly how our divorce was going to be carried out, and then if I told you to come along to my attorney so I could spell it all out for you exactly how it was going to be? How would you feel???"
I feared it was a risk to answer honestly, but she had been harping on this same point just a bit too long. So I said, "How would I feel? I don't know. From what I hear, that's exactly what you did do back when I was unemployed and totally defenseless [This was back in 2004, and I tell the essence of that story here.] ... all except the part about dragging me along to the office to hear the news. I guess you decided at the last minute not to go through with it. But you did all the rest. And how did I feel about it? Not so good."
And she fell silent as abruptly as if she had been turned off with a switch. She stayed silent for the rest of the meal. So it must have been true.
It's good she didn't ask me how I knew, because I found out by reading her e-mail to Lead Tenor. Way back in 2004 when it happened, I told her I knew and claimed that one of her friends had called me behind her back because she (this mythical friend) thought Wife was being unkind and unfair to me; but at the time all she did was to deny it staunchly and demand to know which friend had "betrayed" her by "making up" such a story. And we never got a bill from any attorney, so in the end I figured that either she paid cash or else maybe she was just bragging to Lead Tenor to make herself look worldly and daring. But this time she didn't deny anything, she didn't argue, she didn't fight ... she just shut up. So yes, it was probably all true after all. I figure tomorrow she will tell me that the story is total hogwash, and I'll tell her that if it took her that long to deny it, ... well, ... I can't take the denial very seriously.
I wonder if she'll stop complaining about my unfairness now? If she'll realize that what goes around, comes around? If she'll see that she doesn't have a scrap of moral high ground to stand on? Naaah, probably not. That would be too much to hope for. But the silence was refreshing, even if it won't last forever.
__________
P.S.: That plan she wrote, way back when? It was a gem. I won't quote it all here, but most of the draconian measures were financial: that the house be put into her name alone, that our bank accounts be put in her name alone (even though I was earning the income), ... stuff like that. And in one of her e-mails to Lead Tenor she said explicitly that she planned to use access to the boys as a level to extort my signature to this abomination: basically she assumed she would get full custody (they were a lot younger then, so she was leaning heavily on the "motherhood" angle), and she could threaten to prevent me from ever seeing them if I didn't play ball. Honestly, what I'm offering her is more generous than that ....
About the time I sat down at the computer to type my last entry, I found a reply from my aunt, to the letter I had sent out earlier in the afternoon.
Hi Hosea,
Thanks for sharing this with us. I am both sad and happy for you at the same time. I have known Wife for all these years and I have always known that there was a problem. I believe in principle that relationship problems are usually a 50-50 split in responsibility, with an extreme case being 60-40. Seems to me that the responsibility for problems in your case is about 85 Wife and 15 Hosea. I am glad for you that you are going to be able to move on and find whatever lies ahead. Please let me know if there is anything we can do to help you or the boys.
Just FYI - we have moved to ... [new address].
Please keep in touch.
May peace be with you,
Auntie
The first day with no children at home ... or rather, the first day after both children have moved out (if only to boarding school). I slept in, then checked my e-mail. Wife slept in, then got some coffee and the newspaper. As she was reading the front page, I checked my horoscope which read:
Take charge of the situation. You can relieve tensions at home by acting as the mediator or offering sage advice. Show compassion; save wounded feelings by overlooking faults. Stand by your decisions.
Stand by your decisions. Well yes, I've gone far enough down the road this point that I was planning to anyway. And no, I don't normally take my daily advice from the horoscope in the newspaper. But I couldn't help noticing that it seemed ... relevant.
Wife had wanted to talk with me about some things I was doing that bothered her. A couple weeks ago, she had gotten mad and started yelling at me about one of them (I think I sighed and rolled my eyes in a really dismissive way -- you would have gotten mad at me too), and I asked her please not to go into it right then and there, in front of the boys. (Or at least Son 2 ... Son 1 might have already gone back to school at that point.)
She shouted back, "You always say that! You always want to talk about it later, but then Later never comes! So if you don't want to talk about it right now, buddy, then when is it gonna be? Give me a date!"
I looked at the calendar and told her, "Saturday, September 8, at 9:00 in the morning. Is it a date? Can it wait till then?"
She was a little nonplussed that I gave her an exact date and time instead of just brushing her off, but she accepted it. And so this morning, when she had read the paper until about 9:30, I asked her, "I think you wanted to talk with me about something?"
She started by expressing concern for me, that my depression isn't being adequately managed, that she thinks I'm drinking too much, and that a happy man wouldn't drink the way I do. (I don't get drunk around others -- indeed, it's been a while since I have truly gotten drunk -- and I don't let it interfere with my work. I also think I have cut back from where I was six months ago, or so. But she is probably right that I would drink less if I were less anxious.) Then she moved from there to some of the behaviors she objected to: the eye-rolling, the visible disdain, ... also that when she is crazy or temperemental I will grasp her hand at the wrist to get her attention and not let go until I can get her to calm down and listen. She talked about all this for a while, and for a few minutes I even answered her at the same level.
Then I backed up and said, "You know, you're right. All this sounds pretty unpleasant, and you shouldn't have to live with it. Maybe we should just pack it in and go our separate ways."
And from that point we talked for more or less the next nine hours straight. Don't worry, I won't give you a transcript here.
Wife was pretty upset: by turns weepy, reflective, and furious. I did my best to keep an even keel, and to remind her how unhappy she has been with me for so long. Surely this will be a good move for her too, ... right? She wept and asked what she could possibly have done different; she shouted that I should dare to "go behind her back" to see a lawyer and jot down some notes about a possible settlement. Then later she would admit that yes, in many ways her life would improve without me too. And after that it was back to weeping and shouting. (For more about this conversation, see also this post from many years later.)
I didn't go into any of the details of my plan, because I want to review it all of a piece in Lawyer's office rather than niggling it to death here at home. I did drop some hints, however, most notably that I would like her to be able to keep the house. She said that would be impossible; I admitted it would require a lot of creativity but I wouldn't accept calling it impossible until that had been proven. At one point she calmed down enough to say that naturally she thought I was fooling myself if I really believed she could qualify for a loan in her own name to refinance the place, but that if it were really possible that would ease about 90% (her number) of her fear and unhappiness over the divorce because she is afraid of being homeless and she is afraid of having to get rid of all her junk. So we'll see.
Long ago we established a tradition of eating some kind of fun food Saturday night and then watching a movie. So I went out to get us some burgers. We had "Hugo" from Netflix. She shouted at me over most of dinner and then I coaxed her into giving it a rest so we could watch the movie. She loved the movie, by the way, and was a lot more subdued afterwards. She went to bed soon after, and here I am typing this.
Just before I went out to get the burgers, I sent the following e-mail to my family: my parents, Brother and his girlfriend, and my aunt and uncle. (I have another aunt but she lives in another state and I don't see her much.) I had drafted most of it last night ... indeed, you will recognize the first paragraph ... and just made minor edits this afternoon to soften the rought corners.
Hello everybody,
Yesterday we drove Son 2 up to Durmstrang and moved him in. It was a beautiful day, and Son 2 was in very high spirits. Moving him in was pretty easy, because he packed very minimalistically; besides, the school isn't actually all that far away, so it should be easy enough to get something to him if it turns out he is missing anything. (His roommate brought a lot more stuff, and I had to wonder when he was going to use it all. But who knows?) Afterwards the Head of School talked to us for a while about what we should expect from the school (both as parents and for the kids), there was a large barbecue for everyone, and then the parents all had to leave. Wife was pretty tired, since she hadn't had a chance to rest all day, and went to bed soon after we got home.
This morning I asked Wife for a divorce. This is probably not a surprise because it has been years since the two of us have gotten along at all well, and I assume the fact has been pretty clear to everyone. Ironically, the one area we have (more or less) agreed on over the years has been child-rearing -- I say "ironically" because I gather that even couples who stick together can't always say the same. But at this point a lot of that task has been taken over at a day-to-day level by Hogwarts and Durmstrang. Naturally we both hope still to have a role to play in the boys's lives for years to come, but I think there is less need now for those roles to play out on a common stage under a common roof. And so, since there is really no serious prospect that Wife and I will suddenly start getting along a lot better again, maybe it is time for us both to move on to the next phase of our lives.
We both want to handle the mechanics as quietly and amicably as possible. As a first step, we have an appointment Monday to visit an attorney whose advice I have sought out, to go over a draft parenting and financial plan. Doubtless there will be many points we will have to discuss and refine. But we have to start somewhere.
I WOULD LIKE TO ASK TWO HUGE FAVORS OF ALL OF YOU:
1. We haven't told the boys yet. I hope to wait till we can tell them in person, which will likely be around the first week in October. PLEASE do not discuss it with them until we have had a chance to talk to them first. (Of course if they raise the subject with you, then you know that somehow they have already heard, and so of course in that case it is perfectly fair to talk to them. But please don't be the one to leak it to them.)
2. I have no idea if she will, but it is very possible that Wife might contact any one of you looking for advice or just someone to talk to. By all means it's a free country; if she wants to talk to you and you want to talk to her, clearly that's between you and her. But please understand something important: many times in the past, Wife has had a hard time understanding me when I am talking about something emotionally heavy ... like our relationship. Time and again I have had friends or relatives come to me asking, "Did you really say X to her?" and it's nowhere near what I was really trying to say. Honestly I think this communication problem is a large part of why we can't get along: I want to say one thing, she hears something totally different, and we clash over it. When I put it like that it sounds like something that should be easy to fix, but we have both tried to improve the communication for years -- decades -- and it hasn't gotten better. I don't know why not. Anyway, the only point is this: if Wife comes to you and tells you I said X or Y or Z, it's fine if you want to offer advice or counsel or comfort. But PLEASE do not conclude that what she tells you is what I was really TRYING or MEANING to say without asking me first. The percentage of times that she has really heard what I was trying to get at is a lot smaller than you would ever think possible. I don't know why. I wish I did. Maybe if I'd been able to figure it out years ago, things could have been different. It's sad.
Anyway, we'll keep you all posted on how things progress. I'm sorry if we have disappointed you, and I know we have disappointed ourselves. We both wanted this to end up in a better place; but step by step, over thousands of days, we have somehow managed to end up here instead. My hope now is to make the next steps as fair and as painless as possible for everyone.
With sorrow for the past, hope for the future, and love for you all,
Hosea
Today we drove Son 2 up to Durmstrang and moved him in. It was a beautiful day, and Son 2 was in very high spirits. Moving him in was pretty easy, because he packed very minimalistically; besides, the school isn't actually all that far away, so it should be easy enough to get something to him if it turns out he is missing anything. (His roommate brought a lot more stuff, and I had to wonder when he was going to use it all.) Afterwards the Head of School talked to all the new parents for a while about what we should expect from the school (both as parents and for the kids); there was a large barbecue for everyone; and then the parents all had to leave. Wife was pretty tired, since she hadn't had a chance to rest all day, and went to bed soon after we got home.
Son 2 was happy and excited. Ever since he started to give any serious thought to high school, this is where he has wanted to go. The school is located in a very rural setting, unlike Hogwarts (Son 1's high school) which is considerably more urban. When Son 2 first visited this place he had a short interview with the Head of School who asked him if he liked the place. When Son 2 answered an emphatic Yes! the Head further asked, "So, are you a country boy then?" Son 2 answered, "No, I'm a city boy. But I come alive whenever I come out to the country." (I swear I have never talked to him about John Eldredge.) This was the same time that I alluded to briefly in another post, when the Head asked him whether his parents were sending him to boarding school to get rid of him and Son 2 shot back, "No, I want to escape." So today here he was -- finally moving in -- and he was thrilled. He also had to stop and check periodically that he wasn't dreaming: "I've known for a long time that I would be going to boarding school, and even that I'd be going to Durmstrang ... but it's finally happening! Here I am!"
Wife was happy because Son 2 was so happy, but she did sometimes allow herself to gaze thoughtfully into space and what life would be like with neither boy at home. And then tonight, after sleeping for three hours or so, she woke up sobbing.
"I'm going to miss him so much, and it is going to be so lonely around here! If you spend the weekend paying bills and shopping and never talk to me, the weekends are going to be really long. And then you'll go to work during the week, so your days aren't going to change at all, and I'll be left completely alone all the time!"
I didn't mention that things are going to change for me too, because I don't want to start the conversation about divorce while it is late at night and she's already crying. That can wait till tomorrow (which has been my plan all along). So I just told her that this shouldn't be a problem ... just an opportunity for her to start to do new things and not to have to spend all of every day being a Mom. Then I repeated the same thing in different words a few times, and after a while she settled down and went back to sleep. I'm getting tired and I'm about to do the same. But I guess tomorrow is likely to be even more dramatic.
A few mornings ago I was driving Son 2 somewhere and he said something goofy (as usual). I tried to reply with something just as silly, and he said, "Dad ... that's just a fail. Don't even try to understand me."
Rather than sulk I decided to bat it back to him as a joke.
Hosea: OK, well in that case I'd better get some advice from somebody with more experience communicating with you successfully. So how about your brother?
Son 2: No, ... he just gets frustrated and starts hitting me.
Hosea: Well, then how about Mom? I'll ask her how she goes about communicating to you that she wants you to clean your room ...
Son 2: And I ignore her.
Hosea: Or how she communicates to you that she wants you to take out the trash.
Son 2: And I ignore her.
Hosea: Or how she persuades you to stop playing computer games and do something productive around the house.
Son 2: And I ignore her. No Dad, I don't think that's going to work. Honestly you can probably understand me as well as anybody else, or better. Just don't let it go to your head.
And he laughed.
OK, got that.
