Ok, here is an update – and some journalling, I guess.
First, I don’t know if H’s problem is actually an addiction, or just a combination of narcissism and doing what he feels like with no regard for my feelings. But even if it were an addiction, I can’t see him ever participating in a “12 step program”. It’s not his style. Just as an example, when our dr told him he needed to change his diet drastically due to high cholesterol, he went and did that without outside help. I helped him figure out a workable diet based on our dr’s recommendations, and he has stuck to it, even though he had to give up some of his favorite foods. But I can’t see him ever participating in “Weight Watchers” or any other “program”. It’s just not his style to “join a group” for something, and the “12 step programs” also involve the humiliation of admitting the addiction, etc. He would never do that even if it was an addiction – and, I’m not even sure it is one. So we will have to scratch the idea of a “12 step program” as “maybe a good idea for some, but wouldn’t work here”.
On the other hand, counselling could work – but only if he would agree to actually follow the counsellor’s recommendations. The only question is how to get him to do that. i.e. – 1) to agree to counselling, 2) to follow up and actually participate in the counselling, and 3) to actually do what the counsellor recommends. My feeling is that if he would do all that we wouldn’t even need the counselling - because he wouldn’t do any of that to begin with unless he had already decided to completely abandon his previous behavior and make our marriage (and me) his priority. And in many ways (as shown by his stonewalling when I ask him questions about the past) he is certainly not there yet.
Anyway, update for this weekend – on Sunday morning I am going to be driving a few hundred miles to a national park, where I will join other amateur astronomers in showing a solar eclipse to the public. This is something that I have been planning for a very long time, because there are only two solar eclipses in the US in this decade – this one, and in 2017.
I have been active in our local astronomy club for about the past 10 years. We often have “star parties” where we bring our telescopes to a school or other public place, to show beautiful sky objects to people and explain what they are seeing. And I really enjoy it, first of all because I find astronomy to be fascinating; and also because it’s really rewarding to see people’s enthusiasm when we show them these things through our telescopes. You see teenagers saying “wow!” and adults telling us that this is the first time in their life that they’ve actually seen a galaxy, or Saturn’s rings. And people have also told me how much they appreciate that besides showing them these things, we also explain what they are seeing in the scope.
But H has zero interest in astronomy. So if he happens to be at home on a day when our astronomy club is having an event, I need to choose between going to the event, or staying home with him – because he certainly isn’t interested in coming to it. And that is sometimes a difficult choice, because he travels so much and isn’t always home. In fact, in some cases he might have travelled very far to be home with me for the weekend, so then it would really be rude for me to just go out and leave him alone. But, the astronomy events are the one time when the focus is on me. Usually the focus is on him as “the big expert”, and I am “wife of the big expert, helping out in the office”. At an astronomy event, I am one of the “experts” explaining to people what they are seeing in the sky.
Now, this weekend, H wasn’t planning to be home. He was supposed to be driving a long distance to get to next week’s job location. But that job was cancelled for next week and postponed to a later date, so H has an empty week. (For simplicity, I’ll talk about L1, the place where he was working last week; L2, the place where he was supposed to be next week; and L3, the place where he needs to be right after Memorial Day. L2 and L3 are pretty close to each other, but both are pretty distant from L1. All three are quite distant from our home.)
So last week he was in L1, and this weekend he was supposed to be doing some very intensive driving to get from L1 to L2. But now he doesn’t have to go to L2, so he has a whole week to get to L3. Our plans for Memorial Day weekend are, that I am going to travel to L3 and we will spend the weekend there together, because if he would come home for the weekend, he wouldn’t be able to get to L3 in time. He needs to be already there.
So yesterday when he finished last week’s job, he wrote to me – “I was thinking, since I don’t have to drive to L2, I can come home for a day or so before heading out to L3. I wouldn’t be able to be home for the weekend, but I could get there by Sunday afternoon.” (This means – he is offering to drive an extra 1000 miles, just to spend a day or two with me at home.)
But I told him – Sunday afternoon I will not be here. I’ll be at the national park showing the eclipse. (Ordinarily, I would not have replied that way. If this were an ordinary star party, I would have cancelled and said, “ok, if you are coming, I will stay home”. But this is an eclipse! I have been planning my participation at this event for the past few years.)
So he said, “Ok, have a good time, I’ll just start driving to L3.” I told him – just a minute, if you were willing to drive home, why don’t you drive to the national park and see me “in action”? Suppose I played a musical instrument and was giving a concert, would you stay home because you’re “not interested in classical music”?
He wrote back right away that he will be happy to see me “in action”; he thanks me for the invitation and was even thinking of suggesting it himself, before I wrote about it. So I am going to be at the eclipse star party at the national park, and he is coming to see me there!
Now, this might seem like something small. But basically he offered to drive about 1000 miles out of his way, just to spend a day or two with me at home; and he then revised that to drive the same long distance, not only to spend a day with me, but to also participate in something that is important for me, and not important at all to him. In fact, even somewhat boring for him, except for the fact that I am involved. So I guess that’s worth something.
