Haven't posted in a while. Nothing much to post. We had the Big Meeting on The Boy last Thursday, and STBXMRSSP reverted to type, choosing under stress to reveal (yet again) the depths of her not-so-covert loathing of me. Which is okay. Water, the backs of ducks. I've simply been Darkly, darkly. Now I'm marking time until Saturday, which will be the one-year anniversary of the Bomb.
In the Rich Irony department, the children wanted so much to make presents for their mom for Valentine's Day, that I spent all day yesterday with them working on their respective crafts, spending about $30 on supplies. But I'm sure she'd do the same for me.
"A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born." Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
1-4-12-52-365. It has passed, the year.
One year ago today, I emerged from the Manly Fortress of Solitude, constitutional complete, brain candy (the collected "Sgt. Rock") tucked under one arm, to find myself confronted at the kitchen island by the woman I'd kissed on the cheek just 24 hours earlier (wondering at the time why she so obviously turned her lips away when here I was finally walking through the door from a week-long business trip) and who, steadying herself with her hands on the countertop, said "Um, I want a divorce."
And so it began. I did all the prescribed things -- raged, wept, begged, retreated to the guest bedroom and cowered in the fetal position.
She agreed to go to marriage counseling, though her agenda (unknown to me at the time) was to string me along just long enough to induce me to be "cooperative" (i.e., rights-surrendering) on the question of alimony, since she earns roughly 4x what I do.
The faux-"let's see if we can salvage" counseling lasted all of 3 weeks, during which time I also latched onto DB and DR and started posting here.
After resisting the suggestions that there was OM and the like, I became a Spy in the House of Love and, Badge 714 be praised, got the Facts.
And with the facts came also the all-important, life-saving, self-affirming journey home -- Thomas Wolfe be damned! -- to Big Midwestern City.
And there, ensconced at the rail in the Best Bar on Earth, rain splashing down on River Ave from the elevated train tracks above, aglow from the magic elixir handed me by the shaman in the starched white apron, there I became a veritable Ponce de Léon, discovering the Fountain of Mojo.
It has been up-and-down-and-round-and-round ever since, but Mojo has seen me through. And what have I learned?
If I may be so bold as to borrow (and invert) a cliché from the Walkaway Grammar, I've learned this: The problem isn't me -- it's her.
That self-recrimination? That "figure-out-what-you-did-wrong" stuff? That "make the changes and keep making the changes" thing? That's over.
It takes two to make a marriage; it takes two to un-make a marriage. Maybe I was a schmuck. Maybe I wasn't "there." Fair enough -- I'll take that hit.
But the solution to schumckery and not-there-ery isn't to go spreading your legs for another man. Sorry 'bout that.
But that was the crux of the affair -- no pun intended. She'd set herself on this course without thinking much about it because, in her mind, she didn't need to think much about it -- there were Greener Pastures. No fear of Alone. Because there was no Alone.
What she'd known, that night of the Lip-Turning-Away, and I did not, was that another farmer was plowing those fields. Oh others knew it, mind you, among them her 4 BFFs and at least 3 co-workers I'm aware of, not to mention her sister.
Oh, sure -- she loved me, she just wasn't "in love" with me. But you'll notice how that "love" for me wasn't quite valuable or important enough to her that she had any reluctance in spreading the news about spreading the legs to people who knew me. To this day she denies that there "could possibly" be any reputation effects of that decision.
Alas, the GreenerBrowner Pastures turned out to be artificial turf (and not even the name-brand stuff!).
So she was floating somewhat freely in the system, and through the long summer of Ought-Nine I tried to be a good DB'er, tried to lead, tried to herd the cat, tried to be the fellow only a fool would leave -- and to be honest I think I got close, pretty close, to the DB Dream-Shot ("I saw a glimmer of hope for us last night" / "I haven't wanted you that much in years"), but...impatience and not-so-latent anger got the better of me. And, as so often seems to be the case, I effectively shifted roles, from Left-Behind to Walked-Away-Myself.
I tired of the cycle of remorse-talk ("no one will ever love me the way you did") followed by string-it-along-talk ("if I could just be on my own for a little while") followed by hate-talk and attacks ("you never thought about me for a second!"). Roller coasters. Never liked 'em.
My suppressed-hopeful-wouldn't-it-be-great-if Self was in conflict with my self-respecting-I-can-do-better Self. And that guy won and for good reason -- he had the better story. Confronting her in his mind's eye, that fellow would say:
Wait a minute -- you have an affair, you lie, you cheat, you decide to divorce me without a moment's how-d'ye-do, you rush to file, you rush to move out, you damn-near bankrupt us both, you break the kids' hearts....and you're going to make rules? Your affair is "off-limits"? Your lies and deceit and trash-talk about me to everyone you know who knows me -- including your own family -- is "off-limits"? I'm just supposed to give you "space" and some "time to yourself" (and an odd definition of "yourself," that, since it involves the Signores Schmuckatelli 1-n athwart your hips at every opportunity) and when you figure out that you had it pretty damn good I'm supposed to...what? Cheer? Welcome you back through the door with open arms? Just be grateful that you're tossing me the bone? F*ck that.
I tired of being the whipping boy for her own insecurities, her own inability to define herself or, to an extent, even recognize herself. I switched gears; I allowed myself to feel sorry for her; increasingly aware (as she is not) that she'd checked nearly every box on the application for Midlife Crisis U, I decided to just treat her with the same kindness I'd treat any other physically harmless, but mentally deranged, unfortunate.
She was foundering in a sea of her own making and, came August, I was damned if I was going to be pulled down with her. So I set sail on the White Ship and, with few exceptions, haven't looked back since.
The clock ticked away the moments that made up the dull days. We three, Themselves and Me, made our ways, not always smoothly, but always forwardly.
And now we are here. The sun is the same in a relative way, but I'm older. Hopefully a bit smarter. Surely a bit wiser. There's no Valentine for me this year. Valentine's Day doesn't have quite the resonance it once did, which is a shame because I've always been a sap for it.
An example of how still-unthinking she is. I did what @BobbiJo suggested up-thread and kept heaping coals upon her head. Predictably -- truly predictably -- after the kids Themselves brought their cards and gifts to her house earlier this week, she begged for the opportunity to take them on a mad dash to the card store to get something for me in order to reciprocate. She'd never have done it on her own initiative, but now she had (apparently) face to save.
It had been that way for years. Valentine's Day, anniversary, birthdays -- somehow she always "forgot," though I managed always to remember, even when I was at war. She didn't initiate sex; she didn't initiate even the simplest physical expressions of couplehood, like hand-holding, or leaning together on the sofa-ing, and the like. She took. She seldom gave.
And even when there were cards, if belated, the messages in them for the past few years had always been variations on a theme -- "The kids are so lucky to have you." No expression of her happiness. No sense that she was lucky.
I'm no fool. She blames me, really, for the divorce, even now. I wasn't there. Etc. And when she's feeling lonely and sorry for herself and convincing herself that we were O-So-Close to reconciliation, she blames me for that, too, because I obviously didn't really have any feelings at all for her, and if you need any proof of that just look at how I took her at her word and did what she said she "desperately, desperately" wanted me to, which was to "find Someone and start moving along already."
But when I look back, really look back, and pull the rose-colored lenses away -- when I try to assess her for who she was in the relationship -- I can see that she checked out a long time ago. Certainly from the birth of our first child. Maybe from the very beginning.
She'd yearned, she said, for a stable, committed relationship with someone who -- unlike her father and past boyfriends -- wasn't stinting in his displays of affection. She was attracted to me because I was "different." I was physically affectionate -- didn't mind putting my arm around her in public. I said the "L"-word without even having to be pressured or guilted into it. I brought flowers. I wrote little love-notes.
What she knew she didn't want was her last boyfriend, he of the single-minded pursuit of Professional Excellence, he with lots of money but no time for her. She wanted someone with "interests" and "cultural tastes" who wanted something more than an impressive job title. She knew what those guys were like and couldn't run away from "living that way" fast enough.
And she "knew" she didn't want "her" family -- cold, distant, aloof. The family where the parents gave the children money. For Christmas. Because the parents wanted to teach the children they didn't have to accept presents they didn't like. She felt so alone growing up, she'd said. She wanted to be embedded.
Well, well, well. Be careful what you wish for.
Because that's what she got.
And at the end of the day it seems that what she really wanted all along was what she'd had and run away from.
She wasn't running towards me, not even then -- not even at the beginning. She was running away. From herself.
It's understandable. We were young. When you're young you don't want to confront the Truth about yourself. You want to believe you can Change.
Not so much. She got embedded in a family -- one literally of her own creation -- and instead of finding it a source of comfort, she increasingly viewed it as a hindrance, a limitation, a burden. She couldn't "be herself" in it. Too many people (i.e., 3) "making demands" and having "expectations."
Heck, all the cool kids at work were hanging out on the weekends -- taking their Big Bucks on ski trips to Snow State and sailing trips to Tropical State and tipping lavishly waiters and sommeliers and maître d's at the Latest Places.
If I had to guess, I'd guess that this is what she's learned: Way back when, 24 years ago, Last Boyfriend -- he of the Emotional Distance and Unavailability and Obsession with Money and Too-Much Polo by Ralph Lauren cologne [though really, let's face it, any Polo by Ralph Lauren cologne is too much] -- was, in fact, exactly what she wanted because Last Boyfriend is her Perfect Match.
"I guess I just don't love as deeply or truly as you do," she said to me not long ago.
I guess not.
So here endeth the saga of one of Smiley's people, Spy in the House of Love. No one special. Just a man, like Alec Leamas, a plain, simple, muddled, fat-headed human being.
---------------------------------------- "Ain't got no rabbit foot, ain't got me no old bone, and now I'm leavin' baby, leavin' you alone; 'Cause I'm a mojo man, yes I'm a mojo man." (Lonesome Sundown, 1957)
