@CityGirl, @Clinging -- at least we know we're not unique!
It's weird, though -- in the last 24 hours I've been overtaken by this almost preternatural calm.
STBX and I'd had this discussion a few weeks ago in which I crossed what was apparently a bright line and mentioned the current Signore. STBX wigged-out, told me "I cannot possibly convey to you how truly and deeply I hate you," and declared that Signore is "OFF LIMITS" [sic].
It came to me in my few hours of sleep last night, like a lightning bolt hurled directly into the old cerebral cortex by Zeus himself: she is (or believes herself to be) absolutely, 100%, head-over-heels in love with this Old World character! And the boundary I'd crossed was one inside her head she doesn't want to confront -- the idea that maybe Signore Schmuckatelli the nth might, in spite of the fact that he speaks with an o-so-sexy furrin accent, also just be a regular, G.I.-issue Dumb-A** Man.
Which would be really, really bad from a Walkaway POV. Because it would mean the grass really isn't greener on the other side.
And I felt such utter calm at that notion.
She had to have some kind of surgical procedure recently, and she'd been Johnny Appleseed with the hints about it, so finally I got bored with the hints and just said, "Look, I know it's not my business anymore, but what's up with this? Do you need help with the kids or what? I'm sure someone's on the job, but in case."
And she went through this long explanation of how she appreciated my concern, and I'm right it's not my business -- okay, so far so good -- and then, "It's nobody's business; nobody knows; nobody cares; and there's no way I'm going to burden anyone with my problems."
So okay, whatever. That's an avocado pit, not an apple seed. So Signore Schmuckatelli n has not expressed sufficient concern / worry / whatever -- so what?
And last night it struck me -- ye gods, she SO wants Signore to make it his business! She SO wants him to know! She SO wants him to care! And he's not!
Which would suggest that the only reason she won't "burden" him with her problem is that she's re-enacting the pattern she followed with me in the M -- she expects him to "get it." He's supposed to feel her so deeply that he "just knows." After all, as she said to me on D-Day about my own shortcomings, if you "really care" for someone, wouldn't you "just know"?
And then so much else fell into place.
Like why she was such easy pickings for Signore Schmuckatelli I, and why the collapse of that...thing...so hurt her that she came to me for comforting.
I recalled that she'd told me she "knew" he was "different" and had a real "connection" with her because at their first dinner he'd asked what was wrong out of the clear blue, and when she told him "nothing," he said, "But you have sad eyes," and he didn't want to see her cry.
O swoon! And she could sense he was so-much better than me, so much more attuned, so into her, because he "just knew," he could "just sense her truth" (though apparently what she didn't know was that he was just quoting a cheezy 1970s song which, when you think about it, is a pretty good strategy for the kind of sexual predator who preys on married women).
And that, of course, would seem to explain why she was so heartbroken when Schmuck I didn't pick-up on all the hints she dropped about meeting up with him later and so, from her POV, dissed her and blew her off. Gasp! He really didn't "just know"! She was wrong again!
And here she goes 'round the mulberry bush for the umpteenth time. That whole Tammy Wynette outburst -- OFF LIMITS --would suggest to me she still has some kind of desire or want or need -- desperately -- for this, the latest in an ever-growing line of Signores, to be "different" -- he has to "just know"! And yet, it appears he doesn't.
Bummer.
But bummerer still -- what could be worse, what could better guarantee the Pompeii-like eruption (bam! I hate you!) of fear and anger and (self?) loathing, than Smiley's Person Hisownself -- that Model of DAMdom, that oblivious, not getting it, not "hearing" her, sad-eyes-not-noticing, useless no-account STBXH of hers -- him somehow getting it when Milord Haw-Haw the Viscount Schmuckatelli Smythe Hamstercage the Thurd didn't?
There he was, Smiley's Person, once-and-future Spy in the House of Love, knowing that she wanted someone to ask after her, ask how she was, was she scared, what did she need, Doing The Job -- while Prince Charming was out riding to hounds I say, what-ho, pip-pip, and all that.
O cruel fate!
I think she just can't deal with it, the reality. Sure, we're pretty cool, and we demonstrate great taste when we pick out the neon beer signs we intend to hang in the living room, and we know all the lyrics to the best classic rock albums and we're really good at belching and farting and stuff, but at the end of the day we men-folk are kind of stupid. We're dog-like in that way. So keep it simple, ladies -- yes, no, sit, fetch. Subject-verb-carburetor. We get that.
But STBX? She's still languishing in the Eat, Pray, Love Fantasy World, where chivalric balladeers notice her sad eyes and carry her off on their magickal unicorns to castles atop Rainbow Mountain in the Land of Bliss, and where the Cool Together Gals of the Oughties dump their useless no-accounts in favor of sexy foreign men with accents (just like Elizabeth Gilbert herself did).
And discover, shock among shocks, that foreign men are just different breeds of dog. Every bit as dumb and, often, a lot harder to care for.
Hot. Diggity. Dam.
It wasn't me. It was her. Seems she just can't live here on Planet Earth with the rest of us.
And for some reason that makes me feel very, very calm. Good old Dinah Washington; what a difference a day makes.
