As we near the end of the Saga of Smiley's Person, loose ends can start being tied up.
@Greek: SAYS YOU! You have been listening to her, haven't you??? Just b/c YOU think you have been .... honoring ... her contributions to the M, does not mean it resonated with her. Or that she even knew it. Or that anyone knew it. Besides you.
Mrs. SP: I know you understood my work schedule. And I know you appreciate it. I probably should have given you an ultimatum about YOUR work instead of just resenting you. Then if I heard "no, can't do it," I would have well within my rights to move on.
She's had unconditional all along. All I can say to that SP is that if she had it, she didn't know it. And that's kinda the rub, isn't it.
Mrs. SP: just another example of why no one will ever love me as much as you did. I always told everyone that -- no one can love me like [SP] does. I told the girls that the night I told them I was going to divorce you. They looked at me like I was crazy. I'm under no illusions about what I'm leaving behind, and I'm under no illusions how about how lucky your next woman is going to be.
----------
So what has Smiley's Person learned these last 8 months?
1. I can survive. I will survive. I will thrive.
2. Children don't spontaneously combust when they learn there's a divorce.
3. DB'ing is a pretty effective way of getting yourself, as LBS, squared away.
4. There seems to be a Master Narrative for Walkaways. So either all Walkaways are lunatics or there is a common set of challenges to modern American marriages.
5. Expectations are death.
6. Recovery / coping is not a linear process; it's a cycle. Anger comes, anger goes, anger comes again. The same with sadness.
7. Nothing can make The Fog go away but time.
8. Walkaway hurts every bit as much as Left-Behind (on average), though often in different ways. WAW is not an Evil Creature; she feels, she hurts, just like the rest of us. However the way she manifests those feelings and hurts is, as you have seen, "sub-optimal" (in lieu of a less-loaded word).
She's not willing to work through the feelings -- instead, she's all surface. There's depth there, but she's afraid to go there. For years I suggested she go to IC and she refused. Those fears -- those demons -- are finally emerging and in many respects I am collateral damage.
But my recognition of that fact doesn't -- for me, anyway -- absolve WAW of responsibility for what she does.
9. Change is risky. Change too much, and you're not "you." You might enjoy that. But that can simply exacerbate the gap, rather than bridge it, between yourself and Walkaway. I am, in some sense, too changed. I changed myself out of a potential re-marriage. Because I taught myself that I don't need it. I survived too well.
Mind the gap.
10. Love isn't enough.
11. The problem isn't communication or the lack of communication. The problem is the signal-to-noise ratio.
12. Walkaway doesn't pay attention until Left-Behind starts to walk away.
-------
What have I learned about my marriage? What went wrong?
As I said last week, WAW and I actually had good conversations. Full of information. Not so full of actionable intelligence, so to speak, but at least full of dots that could be connected to help us Know the Unknown Knowns (I'm a Rummy, You're a Rummy, He's a Rummy, She's a Rummy, Wouldn't You Like To Be a Rummy, too?).
And that good convo, incidentally, accounts somewhat for my extremely negative reaction to her decision to get back on the Crazy Train -- something happens to her when she goes to European City [last night's (0330) obviously drunk attempt at e-mail torment: NoW I Am offficially a slut LOL!! so now you can hateme for that to).
Here are the major points of agreement -- the "problems":
1. Separation. We took pride in how independent we were. Gosh isn't it great, we would say, that we can do things on our own and not feel a need to be a "couple?" Nice idea -- in theory. As Yogi Berra said (or didn't say), "In theory there's no difference between theory and practice; in practice there is."
Mrs. SP: I just wish that we had had SOMETHING that in common that we could have shared, an interest, an activity, a hobby. I wouldn't want to have everything in common. I can't be in an "every waking moment" relationship. But it just seems like we didn't have anything that was "ours".
I never felt like we completed each other. But I did feel we at least complimented each other. And then gradually, over a long period of time, exacerbated by war, death, work pressures, kids, etc., we ended up living separate lives. I was lonely in our marriage. You probably were too.
2. Expectations. Both Mrs. SP and I expected the other to "know me" and therefore be able to read the mind. "You should've known that..." -- killer words to a marriage.
I expected her to understand that when I said I was tired of not getting Floral Sex, she would understand that I was tired of not getting Floral Sex. Mrs. SP: You should have given me an ultimatum.
She expected me to understand that when she said she was glad I had the work schedule I had, because it created flexibility for watching the kids and dealing with their things, this meant that I should get a higher paying job.
Mrs. SP: Yes, that part was great, but as they got older it didn't seem as great. SP: But you didn't say that. Mrs. SP: I figured you would know because you know how I am.
3. Intimacy. Sex was not the source of intimacy (though it was an intimacy-killer, oddly enough). For WAW, the source of intimacy was "things in common." Which was a problem because, from her POV, we had nothing in common, and, empirically, neither of us worked at building something in common.
For me, it was WAW Herself -- I simply liked being around her. It made me feel close. She found this oppressive, as if I "needed" her and, as she'd say, she didn't want any "clinging vines."
Thus the alarm and threat she feels from Miss Someone: I am happy that you had someone there for you when you were sad and that you are happy now and that, for this moment at least, she makes you happy. She seems like a nice person and you two have a lot in common that, let's face it, you and I never did. But, yes, I am also jealous that you have a lot in common with her and that she is close to you. (Again, not really jealous of the physical closeness, just the emotional).
In some respects -- perhaps many respects -- the demands of sex killed off what little intimacy we had.
SP: You not doing that felt to me like a fundamental rejection of me - and that was compounded by the fact that you barely would touch me there even during sex. I used to lie in bed at night - and I remember mentioning this to you - trying to will you subconsciously to touch me, just to signal...I don't know - some kind of acceptance of me as male and a sexual being. But you didn't and in hindsight I accepted it because that "must have been" how things worked. You can't fight City Hall.
Mrs. SP: It wasn't a rejection of you. I have a lot of insecurities about the whole thing, and I wish that I had worked on that. I always said that if a woman did not satisfy her husband sexually, she had no business complaining if he cheated. You should have.
-------
The bottom line is that there never really was an "us," not in the way most people understand it. Almost everything was "SP and me" or "Mrs. SP and me," but very, very seldom "we."
We thought that was a good thing. Turned out not to be.
Soooooo, when the problems started materializing, there was very little structure within which they could be assessed, analyzed, addressed, ameliorated. There were Two Ways of doing things, mine and hers, and each of us is mule-headed enough to always want her/his way. And, there being no real marital structure, there were comparatively few channels within which those stressors could be sent for resolution.
Now comes today, and MY Fog-boundedness afloat on the White Ship, and WAW's jealousy, and her loutish behavior -- apparently she did find someone to bl*w, though I hope for his sake she didn't bl*w it off -- and of course my affair (her words) with the "homewrecker" Miss Someone. (Though again how a home that was already wrecked could be homewrecked is something WAW has yet to explain.)
And I will write on that tomorrow or the next day -- weekends are hard, what with Themselves and all -- as we bring the story to a close.
As of today, Fab MC#2 is no more. WAW refuses to attend so long as Miss Someone is in the picture, which seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to me, and for the moment I am unwilling to send Miss Someone out of the picture. A bird in the hand, so to speak.
Fab MC#2 is also no more because WAW has broken 2 promises -- 2 commitments -- made to me and Fab MC#2 vis-a-vis the children, and I made very clear (and Fab MC#2 reiterated and asked WAW if she understood what I was saying) that those were N.U.T.S. But WAW went ahead and crossed those lines in the sand anyway, and if she's not going to abide by her commitments in counseling I'm not interested in counseling.
WAW has called an end to all interactions between us save those involving the children -- I WILL TELL YOU 1000X IF I HAVE TO TO LEAVE ME ALONE! -- and that suits my mood at present.
