New and Suffering

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I have been giving this some thought over the last couple of days about the “warning” the therapist gave. One of the problems with this sort of arrangement is that although the therapist gets to see both sides of the story through the eyes of the participants, one must be very, very careful about how the information from the other party is shared.

It could be that your wife has shared more with the therapist than she has with you as a sort of “progressive reveal.” Does that mean that there have been other men you don’t know about? I don’t know and that may be one possible source of the warning. But the fact that it was put in the context of addiction to the attention may provide a different clue (I wonder if the word “addiction” is a little too strong, Though if we do something and can’t seem to stop, that might be classifiable as an addiction.

Young at Heart points out something that I’ll say in a different way. There can always be the sense that the “grass is greener” somewhere else and we can choose to pursue that. But that is and never will be satisfactory because it will always seem that “the grass is greener” somewhere else (or with someone else). Always!

Let’s take what your wife said at face value and assume that it reveals some truth about how she sees the situation…that you seemed content and not really willing to change (on your own). Here is the thing to get from that: you have both trained each other how to see the other and yourself in the other’s presence and how you should be seen. We are seldom aware of how we’ve trained people even when we are most dissatisfied with the situation.

Think about that for a moment. If she sees (saw) you in that way as being unwilling to change…didn’t you train her to see you that way? Its not all your training for she has her own interpretive experiences to work from. And the converse is true. Your wife, through many years and many, many words and actions has trained you to see her and the nature of your relationship in a certain way. There are certain things that you” know” about her, yourself, and how the relationship does (and does not) work and the “way things are.” It’s informed by your entire past (and hers).

I suggest that it isn’t the attention that she craves (she’s getting a lot right now and the attention isn’t necessarily a great one to go through). It’s the fact that with someone else there isn’t the baggage (training) of the past (relationship) to bring into and disrupt the excitement (actually the baggage is already there but there is the tendency to ignore it because it’s not shared baggage developed together).

That works for a while…until the one becomes aware of the tractor trailers full of the baggage from the past that show up and the movers start delivering it. Then it’s time to move on.

It is clear that you love your wife and, despite everything you know so far, you wish to stay married to her and forge a stronger marriage. Yes, the trust has been damaged and perhaps you have no real reason to trust her (ever again). But your heart tells you something else. I recognize that because I felt much the same way with my first wife. In my case, we were never able to get to the place where she was willing to take a chance, that the changes to the relationship would be to the positive and would be built to last….a loving relationship with me once again. I had often wondered if I had fought harder for our relationship, if I had not followed my instincts to give her space and “let her go” whether we would have rebuilt or relationship.

And although years later she saw me blossom once again, into the person she first saw (in me) and fell in love with (her words exactly), I always had the intuitive feeling that nothing I said or did would have mattered or made a difference. A family event had me ask her (finally) if somewhere I had misread the situation and by letting her go and giving her space that I missed out on rebuilding our relationship.

She told me that she was grateful for the space and the fact that I didn’t make it hard for her. But no, nothing would have made a difference. She had made up her mind about me and nothing I could have said or done would have swayed her.

The point is that intuition informs us. If your intuition tells you that your wife is willing to rebuild something with you know this: your intuition is fallible and yet you should trust it because you only you have a sense of how good your intuition is.

That doesn't make you a doormat.

The Captain