Instant Zen

I want to live in the present. I rarely do.

I am a worrier. I obsess about the past and what could have been. I worry about the future and what might happen. Lost is the present, the now, the only part that really matters, the only part that directly touches me. These preoccupations distract me from being in the moment and seeing the world, really seeing it.

So often, I look at my girls and rather than seeing them for the precious beautiful people they are, I see them as distractions: impediments to what I want to do. The wonder of their love, the marvel of their existence is obscured by this fog of thoughts, worries, concerns about the past and future, neither of which I can do anything about.

I wish to control my own thoughts, to quiet my mind, experience more fully the world around me. I think that is much of what I seek in my quest for God: being able to quiet my mind and actually feel life, connect with it. During my religious youth I was never able to successfully pray or mediate, the chatter of a thousand thoughts drowning out the voice of God.

The only time I have ever really lived in the present has been on long-distance bicycle trips. I have done several 1000-1500 mile rides, each taking 2-3 weeks. Most of these rides were done alone, just me, my bike, a tent and sleeping bag, a couple changes of clothes. When I started these rides I always had ambitions of deep introspection, intense reflection. I would bring notebooks and pencils. I never used them. My thoughts were very immediate and short: the road, the cars, my legs, the next hill or water stop. If I stopped for a break, I could get myself to think about where would I overnight, what would I eat, how far could I go. It may sound like I was thinking a lot, but I wasn't. These thoughts we all very short, a second or less, sometimes a minute during a stop. My mind was washed clean by this shower of trivial minutia, a mental sandblaster.

Within minutes of getting on the bike, my mind would be a blank slate, gone was the veil of worry obscuring my view of the world. If I looked up, I really saw the trees, birds, cars, people, houses. I lived, absolutely and fully, in the now. My mind was open, spongelike, to the sensory reality of living.

It has been 3 years since I last went on a ride, the first being 10 years ago. Yet, if I pause for even a moment, I remember. I remember a corn field outside of Dubuque where I slept in a savage thunderstorm, an empty road in Ontario that stretched off in a perfectly straight line to the horizon, the raw terror of sharing the Trans-Canadian Highway with triple-tandem logging trucks. Sleeping in a campground in Ohio and a cemetery in West Virginia, drafting an Amish carriage for 10 miles in upstate New York, the soybean fields of Illinois as infinite and uniform as a green rustling ocean, smoking brakes going down the truly endless mountains of Pennsylvania. I remember horrible, bitter people and incredibly wonderful generous people. I remember them all, my open, uncluttered mind having soaked up the unfiltered experience of existence.

I want to fully experience the present in which our lives unfold. I want to stop seeing so much of the past and future. I want to see my daughters, the trees, the hawks circling in a limpid Texas sky. I want to feel the passion of a kiss, the love of a friend, the hug of a child.

I'm looking for the present, I'll let you know when I find it.

The gods toy with us

I think the ancient Greeks were onto something.

One of the recurring themes of Greek tragedies is that despite our individuality, our personal skills, efforts, in the end our lives are predetermined by our past and our circumstances. We can try to avoid our destiny but we are ultimately doomed to follow it.

I am at the end of one phase of my life and on the cusp of beginning another. As I look back over my life, I understand how this all came about. I can look back over the 21+ years of my marriage and before that into my and my wife's childhoods and see how everything followed almost inevitably from the past.

Even now, although I feel like I made a clear and deliberate choice about separating from my wife, I'm not sure I really had a choice. I tried keeping it together, to just "get past" the hurt and betrayal of her infidelity, and I couldn't, I simply couldn't. So what choice did I really have in the end? What were my choices: to go insane? To be angry and resentful the rest of my life? No, there was only one reasonable choice, which is to say there were none.

I think I am making choices about my future, but what choices do I really have, in the big picture? Changing one's destiny is like changing the course of a ship, hard, slow, and in the end, if the current is swift enough, impossible.

Nonetheless, I am unique, just like everyone else, and like everyone else, I value the illusion of free-choice and autonomy. That being the case, I will go through the motions of making good choices, the best choices I know how to, hoping the play the gods have me in involves me being happy.

Out there

It's 5:15 and my alarm goes off. I don't really want to get up, but I'm not really tired. I dawdle in bed for another 10 minutes then get up, start the coffee, check email, begin this blog entry. I should go running, I really want to.

Out there it's inhospitable, still dark, probably not cold, but seems like it should be nonetheless. Perhaps too many years spent in a cold climate where it almost always is cold at 5:30. My nice warm bed and house, hot coffee and comfort here, the dark and cold out there. In here: the indolent pleasure of sitting and surfing. Out there: the dark, the pounding pavement, whizzing cars with glaring headlights, straining muscles, straining lungs.

Yet I love the feeling of being out there running, using my body like a machine, feeling in control. I feel strong, healthy, good. Once I'm out there, I love it, savor the act of living that running really is. If being out there running isn't living to the fullest, what is?

Out there is daunting isn't it? At least it always is for me. Perhaps for some it's always first and foremost something else: an adventure, an opportunity, a chance to live. I recognize it as all those things and yet find it intimidating. I'm not sure why. What am I afraid of? failure? the unknown? doing something hard? I couldn't tell you, although I know exactly what I do like about being out there.

I can think of many reasons why I should be out there, want to be, and no good reasons why I shouldn't or don't want to. Yet, I'm still here typing, sitting in my warm house, on my soft couch, drinking my coffee, comfortable.

Those miles won't run themselves.

Time to go out there.

Waiting

Waiting is hard, the hardest part, according to Tom Petty

Waiting for the ketchup to comes out of the bottle
Waiting for your food to arrive
Waiting for an approaching storm to break into rain
Waiting for the first big snow of the year
Waiting for Spring
Waiting for an exam to start
Waiting to graduate
Waiting for the first glimpse of someone you are expecting
Waiting for the feel of that first kiss
Waiting for an important meeting to begin
Waiting for the doctor to enter the examination room
Waiting for test results
Waiting for the end of a bad day
Waiting for a movie to begin
Waiting to be done running during a hard run
Waiting to climb into a warm bed after a tiring day
Waiting for the alarm to go off when you are only half-asleep
Waiting for the first swim of the year
Waiting for the first day of school in fall
Waiting to see your kids after work

Waiting for your house to sell
Waiting to decide what to do about your marriage
Waiting to close on your wife's new house
Waiting for the moving truck to come
Waiting for a new beginning
Waiting to be who you want to be
Waiting for happiness

Waiting for the beginning of the rest of your life

I'm done waiting.

Friends

Ok, so this is some sort of writing frenzy. Three blog entries in the space of 16 hours or so. I don't care, it makes me happy and it's cheaper than heroine.

I recently had the opportunity to be a friend to a friend. You know, one of those moments when you are able to help someone in a way that means something to them. You are are the person they call when they need someone and you are able to be there for them. You know what I mean, you've done the same. The act of giving of yourself is tremendously rewarding, it feels like nothing else. It connects you to the person you are giving to even more than that act connects them to you. I think that act of giving, in a real sense, is love and intimacy.

Think about this: is there any moment of purer love and intimacy than when you are able to give something to your child and see their eyes light up? I'm not talking about material stuff, but maybe when you say you'll take them to the park, or library, or play a game with them, expend something that really costs you and they know it: your time, attention, energy. They look at you and they feel your love, physically, viscerally. In that moment, they are certain you love them because you gave of yourself to them. Kids know everything that matters, we adults sometimes forget.

Do you want to know how I know my Dad loves me? It's very simple: when I was in high school, I had to catch the bus at 5:45AM. My Dad, who didn't really have to get up till 8 or so would wake up at 5:00 every bloody day, wake me up, make me coffee and breakfast, pack me a lunch, give me a hug and send me out the door. If I missed the bus, he would drive me to intercept it at a later stop. To this day, as I type, this brings tears to my eyes. That man loved me. In addition to being my Dad, he was a true friend.

The act of giving is the essence of what binds us together as people. I can be said to love my children, spouse and friends when I give of myself to them and the act of giving cements the bond between us. As it is reciprocated, the bond grows. Conversely, if that act is not reciprocated or it is taken advantage of, more being taken than was offered, the love is lost, killed.

On a somewhat tangential note, I think the connection I mentioned above is what we are all actually ultimately seeking in our adult relationships. As adults, we pursue romance and sex, partially driven by Darwinian and pleasure-seeking urges, but also largely, perhaps mostly in pursuit of that emotionally intimate connection. I think we are missing the boat in some sense. Isn't what we really want just that sense of bonding to another person?I think we are really yearning for the connection that comes from the simple love of a true unconditional love, born of mutual dedication to the other person and their happiness. We are merely distracted by that other stuff.

I love someone because I will do anything, sacrifice anything for them and their happiness. They love me because they will do and sacrifice anything for me and my happiness. Doesn't that pretty much summarize things?

It's so simple. How do we forget?

More intent

Some time ago, I posted an entry entitled intent in which I described what I intended to do about my marriage.

In the same spirit, I would like to state what I want to do in this next phase of my life, after my wife and I separate in a couple weeks.

During the next year,

I intend to really live and find out who I am on my own.

I intend to cultivate the friends I have and make new ones.
I intend to engage in my hobbies and perhaps find new ones, time permitting.
I intend to exercise regularly.
I intend to date.
I intend to meet, discover and appreciate new people.
I intend to read more.
I intend to go to the library more.
I intend to buy and even more importantly listen to music.
I intend to go to museums, zoos, shows, concerts, with friends, my kids, by myself.
I intend to be a better, funner, more attentive and engaged father.
I intend to join some clubs, groups or take some classes.
I intend to plan fun activities and adventures for myself.
I intend to be good to and supportive of my estranged wife.
I intend to maintain a sense of family with my family, including my wife.
I intend to develop more self-confidence in social settings.
I intend to stop deferring happiness and joy.
I intend to have a plan to work on the above by late-May.

I intend to live with intent.

Joni

At the beginning of my marital crisis, I began surfing and posting to a web site dedicated to the many and varied interests of over-40 people. It is a great web-site. People there talk about religion, writing, politics and of course marriage and relationships. I had posted there the details of my situation both before and after I became aware of my wife's affairs. I received a lot of useful advice and support. A couple people in particular were very helpful. One of them is Joni Peschman. Joni is a "personal coach", she offers her services both remotely and locally (Tempe, AZ).

Joni met with me weekly for the last couple months helping me first discover then strive toward my goals. She asked incisive and thought-provoking questions which clarified my feelings, hopes, desires, values, motivations, pointing out the logical and practical implications of those things. She gave me concrete suggestions on how to implement my stated goals. She validated my desires, concerns, hopes where they were reasonable and self-consistent and pointed out where they were not. She validated me as a person. She encouraged me to make decisions and live by them, to take action to achieve my goals. When those goals changed, she adjusted her suggestions to the new goals. In short she helped me become more the person I said I wanted to be.

There are people you come across who help you at the right time, in the right way. Joni was such a person for me. There have been other such people in my life and there will be more in the future, but right now, today, Joni was it.

I want to take this forum, however limited in readership it is, to publicly thank her for her help. I may have been able to make a decision and act on it without her, but it would have at least taken a lot longer, and I question how successful I would have been at actually making a decision.

I won't know for a while if the decision I made was correct, optimal, but it was my decision and right now, it feels really right. Joni did not make any decisions for me, nor even influence the direction(s) I took, but she did help me take stock of myself and my situation and move forward with my decisions.

So Joni, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Acceleration

I mentioned earlier how my life seems to have taken on, well, a life of its own. I seem to be a spectator of my own life. In that context, it was a completely normal weekend...

I worked all weekend, didn't get to go to church, which was disappointing. We got to spend evenings together though, and still got some good family time in. My oldest is getting used to the idea of separation, and the calmness with which we are discussing and planning it seems to be helping. We are treating this like a big adventure, which it kind of is. House shopping is always hopeful and exciting.

My wife reiterated the very amusing and flattering idea that I will be entertaining an endless stream of women the moment she leaves. It's very sweet: she seems convinced that I am so irresistible that I will be overwhelmed by suitors knocking on my door. It cracks me up, although I would love to share that view of myself.

We made an offer on a "used" house, and priced out floor plans of new construction with the builder's sales guy. If our offer is rejected, we will either start construction right away or try to get a good deal on an already-built new house. We'll have bought two houses in one year, and moved 4 times in 18 months. The house we made an offer on is about 0.3 miles from "my" house. It is small, nice, very well maintained and landscaped. My wife likes it, which is what matters.

My wife told her Mom about our situation. People's reactions are almost always the same, I'm getting good at predicting it. They assume that I (the guy) have been fooling around, that I have found someone else, that I am moving out, that my wife is keeping the kids, that I am paying child support/alimony. They always advise you to lawyer-up and "be very careful". There are very few exceptions to this reaction.

In fact, every separation/divorce, like every marriage, is completely unique. Just as our marriage was different than most, our separation is likely to be too. A relationship cannot be described from the outside. External observers, even those very close to you, see so little of what actually happens in a marriage that their understanding of it is very partial, biased by their own experience and perspective. We all tend to assume a certain universality of experience, in fact nothing like that exists.

Well, off to another exciting week.

Take care everyone.

New beginings

Well, events seem to have taken on a life of their own.

It seems like once we started making decisions, it all happened very quickly.

My wife and I are making definite plans to separate, and decided to do that rather than divorce straight away. We figure give it a year and figure things out. Perhaps we'll find we can't live apart, or that we like being semi-married but apart, or that we should get divorced in which case the separation will ease all of us into it.

We are looking at lots to build a house for my wife on, as well as looking at pre-existing homes for sale in our neighborhood. We want to remain very close (1/2 mile or less), so the kids can easily walk/ride bike between our houses. We are still discussing exact locations (0.5 miles versus 300 feet).

We really want to be done moving before school starts. One issue is that build times are currently 4-5 months in our neighborhood.

We are settled on a kid-sharing scheme (alternate weeks at each place, on Tuesdays and Thursdays one of the kids goes to the "off" parent's house, lots of dinners at each other's house, spending time together on weekends). Our goal is to minimize the loss we all experience and maintain a sense of family and closeness. We still love each other, we just won't be living together. At least until one of us enters a serious relationship, the close contact should pose no problem. I struggle to imagine either of us doing that anytime soon, but what do I know?

This seems both surreal and good. Although it is strange to be talking about not living together (it's all I remember), it still feels right, like a good decision. We are separating while we still like each other, can still wish the best for each other.

The best analogy I can think of for the current state of our relationship is that we are like boxers in a clinch: we are locked together, neither of us able to function effectively or be our best, afraid to let go because we'll get hurt, unable to extricate ourselves from a dysfunctional mode of interaction. This separation seems like exactly what we need to go out on our own, define ourselves, our lives, then either come back together healthily or go our separate ways, also healthily. This separation is the referee saying "break".

If we get back together after this, it will be on different terms, a different basis: one of true equality, respect and a genuine desire to be together.

I was asked today what my goals were for the next year. What a great question. I think my main goal will be to find out who I am: what do I like on my own, what am I capable of doing by myself, can I relate socially to others as an individual instead of as part of a couple? I want to start exercising more regularly, being a better dad, read more, go out, make new friends, join some clubs, maybe some classes. I want to find out who I am, me, by myself.

Being seperated will no doubt be at times lonely and depressing, sad and scary. Perhaps much of it will be that way. It could also be exciting and fun: an opportunity to rexamine my life and what I want out of it. I want to become more independent and sure of myself. I feel very much like my personal development, certainly my social development stopped when I was 20 and met my wife.

I feel like just one half of this married entity, I want to become an individual at least part of the time. I want to find out who "me" is when I'm not Dad or husband. Some people speak of re-discovering the person they were before they got married and had kids, I feel like I never existed before then. This will be an exercise in constructing a man from parts gathered over the last 20 years.

So much of my life has been lived in fear, seeking the easiest most comfortable, safest route. I don't want to start living recklessly, I don't think I would enjoy the consequences. I do want to stop living constrained by my fears and an overdeveloped sense of responsibility and duty.

I want to live my life to its fullest, in the best sense of that expression, this could be my chance to do so.

I'll let you know how it works out.

Sadness and loss

How can making the right decision make me so sad?

Choosing to divorce feels right. I mean it feels really right. It seems like the most obvious choice ever, something that will allow us to move on with our lives, get past the hurt and anger of the past. That makes me feel happy and hopeful that there is a way out of this hellhole we seem to be stuck in.

And yet, it is so very, very sad.

I feel already the loss of the relationship, the gulf that will exist between us, physical and otherwise, the sadness of not growing old together and or watching our children grow up, all in the same house. That is sad. I feel the need to simply state how, no matter how right or inevitable it is, this is the saddest thing that has ever happened to me or my wife.

The failure of a marriage is never something to celebrate, even if things are relatively better as a result of it. It represents the death of an ideal, a hope, a dream. This is something that should be properly mourned, cried over, become angry over. My heart aches for what could have been, what should have been. I wish the past was different, so the present could be, I would give anything for it to be.

But it isn't, and here we are.

So here's some free advice, worth every penny, to every unhappily married person out there: make it work, do whatever you can to avoid getting to this point, it really sucks.

Paradox

My life has recently been filled to overflowing with irony and paradox.

For example: since we have more or less decided on divorce, the tension between us has diminished considerably. I am much happier, more relaxed. I am able to accept my wife's continued friendship with her former lover and be genuinely happy for her. The pain of her infidelity has diminished to some degree, her bad habits don't bother me as much. I have already started emotionally detaching from her, viewing her life and problems as hers, not things that I have to concern myself with.

Some of the good aspects of our marriage are ironically making themselves apparent. We work really well together. I mean really well. When we work on a project together we are a veritable dynamic duo, we get stuff done. Yesterday we assembled a gas grill the size of a small aircraft carrier. It came in about 50 pieces, with about 10 different sized-screws/bolts. I could not have done it without her. We knocked it out in about 45 minutes. It was great. Real teamwork.

Ratcheting up the level of irony, we are really working well at planning this divorce thing together: we 're looking at lots for a new house together, discussing floor plans, where to get the down payment, the relative pros and cons of different financing options. We're talking about timelines, child-custody. We're approaching this like we have every other big decision and project in our lives: quickly, efficiently and together.

The secret to a good divorce, it seems, is a strong marriage.

I crack me up.

On the other hand

[Disclaimer: What follows focuses only on the wrong done to me by my wife and the burden this places on me. I do not claim absolution from guilt or responsibility for our marriage problems, there's enough blame to go around, and I also had an affair. Because of the specifics of our situation and the details of what happened, it seems that that most of the choice for what happens next lies with me. What follows is my thinking about what stands in the way of me giving my marriage everything I have. My wife would also have a list of things I did that she needs to get past for us to continue on together]



Accept them? How can I accept them? Can I deny my faith and everything I believe in? On the other hand, can I deny my own daughter? On the other hand, how can I turn my back on my faith, my people? On the other hand...No, there is no other hand
-Tevye in "Fiddler On The Roof"

One of the things that has become clear is that if our marriage is to continue, I need to be able to "forgive and forget" as well as trust again. I don't know if I can, but those are sine qua non conditions for the continuation of our marriage.

I think forgiveness is indeed a form of "forgetting". Not literally forgetting of course, that is obviously impossible. I think "forgetting" in the context of forgiveness means to stop incessantly thinking about the offense, viewing everything through the filter of the wrong that was committed. The unfortunate reality is that when I see or think of my wife, I see the woman who cheated on me extensively, with several men, over 18 years, including very recently; someone who deceived me and took ruthless advantage of me and my blind, naive trust for those 18 years. I think of the years of memories which are now invalidated, the reality of what actually took place having exposed my memories as mere illusions.

I see all of our previous life together as one big lie. I know that is an overstatement of reality, but that is how it feels to me, and I don't know how to change that.

I need to be able to see the wrong done to me in the context of the larger picture of our relationship. I need to be able to accept what happened and move on without hanging on to past hurt, to put it aside and carry on with my life and relationship. I think that definition of "forgetting" is what forgiveness really is. Forgiveness is setting the past aside and moving forward.

I just don't know that I can do that.

There are two problems. The first is that I don't know that I want to do that. I don't know that I want to effectively say "it's ok", and give a free pass to this behavior, because it wasn't ok, it really wasn't. It was grossly wrong, egregiously selfish and extraordinarily hurtful. The hurt was inflicted not only on me but also directly on my oldest girl: we just found out she has known for 6 months about my wife's infidelity and kept the secret at great personal cost. She found out in the hardest way imaginable. That adds a whole new level of seriousness to the problem. My happiness and best interest are negotiable, hers aren't.

Doesn't there have to be a point, determined by a basic sense of self-respect and the fundamental "game rules" of social interaction, at which one says "no, that was just too much, goodbye"? Aren't there violations of trust and respect deep enough that they cross some sort of threshold, some point of no return, a point where some absolute rules kick in? It feels at times like that point has been reached in my situation. Isn't a basic sense of self-respect something I want to exemplify to my kids?

I feel very much like Tevye: after making every allowance for everything and considering all the reasons for my wife's faithlessness, I feel like I am out of "hands", out of reasons why this might be explainable. I feel like the elastic boundaries of excusable behavior were breached and hard absolutes encountered.

The second problem is that even if I decide "it's o.k." in some sense and choose to move on, how do I "forget" as required? I am currently unable to spend so much as 3 minutes without thinking about what happened, how am I supposed to just shut off the infinite-loop that plays in my mind? I am not choosing those thoughts, really, they are just there. Everything reminds me of what happened: my wife, my kids, my house, pictures, songs, furniture. I would love to be able to stop thinking about how everything I thought I knew about my wife and my life is false, because it really isn't, I just don't know how to.

Similar issues exist in the area of trust. For me to continue being married, I need to trust that my wife will not leave me in 10 years when the kids are older, circumstances more convenient, when her most recent lover changes his mind and begs her to join him, or she meets the next "best guy ever". I have no reason to trust her, she has come very close to leaving me at least twice before. My wife has refused to give up private communication with her last lover, who she claims she is romantically done with and he with her. Her reassurances notwithstanding, choosing to trust her would be irrational, a blind leap of faith ignoring prima facie evidence of how risky that is. So again: do I want to trust her, knowingly exposing myself to the risk of again being taken advantage of? And if I do, how do I get rid of the fear, the constant nagging suspicion that she is planning just that, all the while telling me exactly what I want to hear?

I would like things to be the way they should be: I want to be wholly dedicated to one woman, to love her with hopeless, foolish, reckless abandon, to fully commit every breath I have to her happiness and our life together, without any reservation or hesitation. I want to blindly, gullibly, naively believe everything she says, to never question her commitment to me or mine to her. I want to never wonder if she really wants to be with me or is scheming to leave me. I want to trust her that she will abide by the rules of our relationship, that she won't keep secrets from me or violate my absolute trust in her. I want, no, I need the same from her. I can do that, I've done it before, I just don't know if I can still do it with my wife. It feels like too much has happened, too much hurt, too little trust.

Then again, what is life without the hope that we are all capable of change and renewal? It is spring, Easter Sunday in fact. This is the season where everything becomes new again, where the hope of rebirth and transformation overcomes the stark reality of death and personal failure.

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference"

Happy Easter everyone.

God

I grew up in a very religious home, a fundamentalist, evangelical, protestant, Christian home. My parents were missionaries. The rules were simple: don't smoke, swear, drink, have sex, listen to rock 'n roll, have lustful thoughts, dance or go to movies. Do go to church, read your Bible, pray. A lot.

The God I grew up with was a god of rules. Religion was a set of rules and an intellectual exercise: explain everyday life in a way that matched the stated dogma. It was hard to do so, life often did not match what I believed. During that time I developed a fascination for philosophy: the examination of beliefs, belief structures and the logical implications thereof. I spent two decades, from ages 10 to 30 trying to reconcile the world I observed with my faith.

Absent in my life, even my religious life, was any emotion, any passion. I occasionally saw it in others: people weeping with love for God, overwhelmed by his tangible "presence". I wanted to feel that, I longed to experience God in the immediate, real way in which these people experienced their God, the way in which they felt connected to the universe. I never did. I tried believing more, praying harder, it never worked. I was convinced I was doing something wrong, but I didn't know what.

I got older, began my scientific studies in high school, then college, then grad school. I found that the world I observed every day, the world I lived in, studied, calculated, examined did not match the world I claimed to believe in: a world of miracles and spirits, justice and order. At great personal cost, I finally gave up the fight of trying to apply the filter of faith to the world I saw. Having failed to observe even a shred of evidence for the existence of God, I became an agnostic, then an atheist. My family of origin all but disowned me. I was now one of "them", the damned who would burn in hell for all of eternity. My relationship with them never completely recovered.

The world was now simple: all I had to worry about was what was real, what I saw with my eyes, felt with my hands, heard with my ears. I loved it. I could stop worrying about how to reconcile an omnipotent, good God with the horror of the Holocaust and Rwanda, starving Ethiopian children and childhood leukemia. I didn't have to reconcile the fossil record and the cosmic microwave background with the creation story of Genesis. My world finally made sense.

On a few occasions I experienced wonder and awe, a sense of mystery, of being part of something big (the Cosmos). For me these mostly happened in moments of scientific discovery, when I was learning something really cool about how the universe works (e.g.: the Euler Identity). Once it was a real discovery, something no one had ever understood before (Bose-Einstein Condensation in 2-D systems IS possible after all). I also experienced that sense of purpose and belonging with my first child, feeling like I was part of the great "circle of life". It was wonderful every time: tingles and butterflies in my stomach, lightheadedness. It was like being in love. I haven't had such a moment in a very long time.

I lived that way for 15 years, then, recently, my world fell apart. I found out my wife had been cheating on me, on and off, for most of our married life. For that reason and others, my marriage began to fall apart. Feeling lost, I have started to feel the need for a sense of connectedness to the universe, a sense of wonder, mystery, belonging. A friend of mine believes in God. She is someone I respect. She is smart, rational, self-aware. She says that occasionally when she prays, she gets those butterflies in her stomach. She really feels, at a visceral, emotional level, the very presence of God. I envy her, and my siblings, and my parents, all these people for whom God is real. I want to feel that. I don't even care if God is "real" in the scientific, physical sense. The effect that God has on people is real, that's good enough. God makes them feel like they belong, like they fit in the universe. I want to fit.

So what is God? Is God a person, as I learned as a child? is he a feeling, a sense of wonder at the beauty of being alive? I don't know. I don't care. I want to feel that, whatever it is.

I'm going to church this coming Sunday. I am hoping that it has been long enough, that I am in enough of a sensitized state of mind that I can feel God. I may be disappointed, but I want to give it a shot, see if God is out there.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Intent

I intend to be in a relationship based on trust and honesty.
I intend to give myself wholly to my mate and demand the same in return.
I intend to realistically assess if my wife can be the person I do this with.
I intend to get a divorce if the answer is "no".
I intend to not compromise my need for the basic, simple happiness of loving and being loved.
I intend to decide before summer.
I intend to do everything I can to fix my relationship with my wife.
I intend to give more weight to my needs.
I intend to never do anything I am not proud of.
I intend to be the person I have always wanted to be.
I intend to live with intent.

Anger

Anger is a funny thing, it appears when you least want it, but hides when you need it. I want to feel angry. I want to rage at the injustice of living an honest, open life and being taken advantage of. I want to be able to yell and ask how my wife could do this, where was her conscience, her sense of decency? How could she violate my trust so completely when I gave it unconditionally? How could she so completely abrogate everything our marriage and relationship was supposed to be? How? HOW???

And yet I am not angry. I am baffled, puzzled, hurt, even resentful, but I find it hard to be angry. I'm working on it ;-). I think it is because I know my wife too well: I understand too well how it could happen, how the emotional abuse of her childhood may have caused her to shut down the part of her soul feeling loyalty and obligation to people close to her. Those people hurt her. I understand how her strict religious upbringing taught her guilt and self-loathing for the great sin of being a sexual being; how her father poured contempt and derision on her for being a woman and how he abused her vulnerability and relative weakness. I understand how she might have wanted to feel good about being a woman, a strong, tough woman in control of her own sexuality. I comprehend how she may have learned to shut down the part of her which sought out romance and intimacy, having been denied it in her marriage to me. I can see how she might have been desperate to feel the love and approval she wasn't getting from me, to feel the connection and tenderness I was unable to give her for my own reasons. I can see how she would have loved to feel beautiful, wanted, adored, how the ability to attract men would have been irresistible. I see the allure of feeling appreciated, being wanted and accepted. I understand her wish to wholeheartedly reject the shame associated with sex.

I can see how the seeming inevitability of her actions and the shame at having violated her own sense of morals might have been overwhelming and caused her to decide she no longer cared about right and wrong; how after a while she might have stopped even asking herself what is right and wrong.

And here we are, at a crossroad, deciding if we can recover from this tragedy and sally forth together or if the pain of deceit, resentment and past hurt is more than we can bear.

I understand all this I and I am sad. How I long for the simplicity of anger, that pure, beautiful, uncomplicated emotion.

Questions

There are questions I need to answer:

1- Can I get past the hurt and resentment?
2- Do we have enough in the marriage to be worth saving?
3- Would it be different with anyone else, or would all the same problems reappear?
4- Will open marriage work for us?
5- Do we have enough commonality in what we want out of each other and marriage to make it work?
6- Is the price of divorce worth paying?


1- Can I get past the hurt and resentment?

I don't know. I hope so. I seem to be gaining perspective on it by the day, understanding why it happened, how it happened. I am almost not angry anymore. On the other hand, there are some core feelings of violation of trust, unfairness and loss (theft) that I am not seeming to really get past. Perhaps because those are things that are objectively true, determined by facts and not how I feel about them: my trust was violated, it was unfair and stuff was taken from my marriage.


2- Do we have enough of a relationship to be worth saving?

That's a bit easier. I think yes. All the gentle reader knows of my wife is that she cheated on me on and off for most of my adult life. That is the ugly side of her. The truth is that is only a tiny little slice of who she is (but an important one, as it lies at the core of what connects us). The vast majority of my wife is a really nice, caring person. If you met her, you would like her. Really. She has many great qualities, I just haven't really mentioned them. She made some very poor choices, hurting me and herself. That is not "who" she it. She is a good person. That is worth saving. We also have this incredible history together. We know each other better than anyone else ever could. Shared history, growing up together, kids, pets, houses. We are comfortable with each other. We understand and have mostly made peace with each other's peculiarities. We have developed the same beliefs and preferences. We have kids together which we are doing a pretty good job of raising.

So there is a lot to lose if we split up.


3- Would it be better with anyone else?

That is a hard question. I don't know. Would the deficiencies of our marriage (lack of passion, intimacy, and now trust) be different with anyone else, or would it be the same play with a casting change? Would I have enough of the good stuff I have now with my wife and get something else to boot? I guess they would not have cheated on me, and I would never *not* have an at least somewhat open relationship in the future. On the other hand, the pain of this experience would not go away and I might still have trouble trusting the new person, although I wouldn't be reminded of it daily. There might well be aspects of the new person and my relationship with her that would be better: more compatibility, less bad history and built-up resentment.


4- Will open marriage work for us?

That is a complete unknown. I feel like we have no choice. My wife has demonstrated as well as stated that she doesn't attach any moral question to secret affairs. She said she stopped even asking the question of whether they were good/bad. They were just something she was going to do to make herself happy, and didn't think of it beyond that initial decision. That being the case, I feel it is impossible for me to even consider a normal marriage with her: the next time things turned to crap between us, she would seek the same escape. She would lie again if she had promised not to. I would never know if she was telling the truth or not.

As harsh an assessment as that is, an open marriage may work: the only rule is that there are (almost) no rules. Use a condom, let the other person know it happened.

The problem I see for myself is that I am not looking for sex per se. What I want is romance, love. That is hard to achieve in casual sexual encounters, very hard. Impossible. I have a hard time seeing myself satisfied with one-night-stands. So where does one find real romance out there, and wouldn't it severely detract from our marriage? Lastly, if I did find real romance and "connection" with someone out there, wouldn't I just want the whole enchilada with them? Because the truth is that that is was I want: everything. I want to come home and have someone really happy to see me, want to talk to me, not be able to wait to be alone to do something with me: read, watch a movie, make love, have sex, make out. Did I mention sex? Not want to go to sleep because it is so much more fun to be up with me. That is what I want. I don't know, other than sex, what affairs could provide.

There are people who claim this works great. The disadvantage we have is that we are coming from a situation of complete lack of trust and more than a little hurt. I don't think I would engage in "angry screwing", but these aren't the best conditions under which to start something so rife with challenges.


5- Sufficient commonality

I'm not sure. In the recent past, I think the answer was "no". My wife sees/saw marriage merely as a vehicle for raising children, making a life together, being close friends, good roommates. I want, I need so much more. I need a hint of being in love. I need to really feel wanted in every way. I see marriage as this deep emotional bonding between two people. This is not completely unlike what one might have with a close friend, but it is more. I don't know if the "extra" part is just sexual or if it is a warm tenderness in your heart for each other. Whatever it is, I now need a lot more than just being friends and roommates.

The nature of our relationship appears to have changed, although the precipitating events are so new, it is hard to know what will stick, and if the freedom of honesty and her current external romantic experience will have changed her view of what she wants out of marriage, if indeed she returns wanting to remain married.


6- Is the price of divorce worth paying?

That is a tough question. I am adding this question after the initial post of this article, because we both recently came to the conclusion that we probably would be better off getting a divorce. We started discussing realistic options, negotiating terms. The conclusion of this first pass is that it would cost us a lot, in every way. Some of the more significant are how to split up the kids, the loss of a relationship that still has many great things about it, and the additional financial burden of maintaining two households. The kid-issue is the hardest: not being able to see your kids every day, not being there when they wake up in the middle of the night with a nightmare. That idea breaks my heart. The loss of the relationship with my wife would also be hard. In spite of everything, my wife an I have an extraordinarily close and (mostly) honest, open relationship. That would be a great loss. The financial reality would also be difficult: if we stay together, we will soon be in the enviable position of having a house that is paid for. This would free us up to pursue careers that do not generate 6-figure incomes.


I guess we'll see. We have a few months to decide, see what happens. Just think of all the great blog material.



Sorry for the brain-dump. I feel so much better now.

Goodnight.

The cost of an affair

So I've always had this rather "economic" view of affairs, namely the if they don't cost me anything, why should I care? This was an abstract theoretical position. It was recently put to the test.

I am now able to compare several different types of affairs: long ones with a strong romantic content, short romantic one, short unromantic ones, and "open" ones (where the spouse knows about it). Most of these experiences were my wife having affairs, I had a one-timer and an "open" one recently. I will draw from both of our reactions. I claim no universality to my observations, this is just how it seems to feel for us.

My first observation is that the thing that hurts the most by far is the deception, lying and betrayal. The sex or even romance is almost inconsequential. They could have been playing tiddlywinks and the effect would not have been much different. Being lied to for years attacks trust, which is foundational to any close relationship. The lack of trust will probably be the biggest problem we face, if I had to guess. My wife is right now spending time getting reaquainted with an old lover while on vacation in Spain. I wish it were me, so I am envious (I would love a vacation in Spain), but I am not really that bothered by it because I knew about it, even before her "confession". I had an overnight stay at a woman's house with my wife's approval. She claims, and appears, to not be bothered by it.

The second observation is that the cost of an affair seems to be proportional to how long it lasted and how much time/energy it took from the marriage. Most of my wife's affairs where short (a few days to a few weeks), and didn't really take that much time away from us. There are only two that I really have a hard time getting my head around: one is a two-year affair she had 15 years ago. This involved many (50?) encounters and a lot of time spent together. During this time, my wife had no desire at all for sex with me and even was denying it to me. That affair cost our marriage and me a lot. The other is her overseas boyfriend she goes and sees every summer for several weeks. That is mostly just time away. Vacation and fun experiences that happen with someone else instead of me.

My third observation is that much of what I feel can only be described as envy and resentment. I wish I could have been allowed to pursue "fun" during that same time. When I proposed openness, it was flatly turned down as gross. I dropped it and played by the rules. In the true definition of cheating, my wife wanted different rules to apply to me than to her. That wasn't "fair", as my kids would say.

Lastly, I don't think all affairs are bad in a practical sense. This may well seem self-serving, but I really don't think that my affair was bad for our marriage: it made me desperately want to try to get the spark of passion back in our marriage, and really re-awoke (or gave birth to) the hidden romantic in me. I was frantically wooing my wife for a couple months after it happened. It really gave me a whole new outlook on life.

So the cost of affairs for us seems to be: breakdown of trust caused by deceit, the time/energy diverted from the marriage and the resentment caused by the unfairness of two sets of rules.

So here is some simple unsolicited, opinionated advice about a standard affair:

1- DON'T DO IT if you care about your marriage. If you don't, go nuts.
2- Try to fix your marriage.
3- If outside sex/romance is something you need, negotiate an "open" marriage which can at least still be based on trust. The violation of trust is the worst thing by far, perhaps the only bad thing. The time spent can then be negotiated too.
4- If you can't negotiate an open marriage, either suck it up or get a divorce.
5- As a last resort, if you do it, NEVER, EVER, EVER confess. Lie through your teeth until the day you die. Never tell anyone else. The cost of this is high though: it puts up a huge barrier to intimacy and closeness. I am convinced that was a lot of the problem in my marriage for the last 17 years. This may kill your marriage, just much more slowly and subtly. This is a real hidden cost, which is why it is the last resort.

So that's my free advice, and it's worth every penny.

I love, I hate

I love your strength.
I hate your addictions.
I love your independence.
I hate your lack of respect for yourself and your body.
I love your determination.
I hate your lack of self-control.
I love your boldness and courage.
I hate your anger.
I love your passion for your passions.
I hate your lack of motivation for things you find uninteresting.
I love your generosity and selflessness
I hate your narcissism and selfishness.
I love your attentiveness to the physical needs of your family.
I hate your abuse of my unconditional trust.
I love your kindness.
I hate your willingness to expose me to health risks.
I love your empathy.
I hate your lying and deceit.
I love your concern for the integrity of other marriages.
I hate your lack of concern for ours.
I love your ability to make decisions.
I hate your lack of passion for me.
I love your spirit of adventure.
I hate you writing off your betrayal as normal, common, excusable.
I love your positive attitude.
I hate your stubbornness and inability to take suggestions.
I love your dedication to our kids.
I hate your abuse of my generosity and reluctance to leave you.
I love that you know every bit of me.
I hate your rejection of any specific responsibility for our problems.
I love that we grew up together.
I hate being #5 on your list of priorities
I love that we are entering middle-age together.
I hate the distance between us which your infidelity contributed to.
I love that you support me in everything I do.
I hate that you cheated on me while adopting our youngest.
I love that you are my best friend.
I hate that your lovers stole mental focus and passion from our marriage.
I love that you are brave and had the courage to tell me about them.
I hate having to reinterpret history.
I love that you are open-minded and flexible.
I hate that you lost your sense of obligation and duty, honor and morality.
I love that your are willing to reinvent yourself, start over with yourself.
I hate that I will never be able to trust you again.
I love having inside jokes that no one else would understand or appreciate.
I hate your disbelief in romance.
I love having you be able to finish my sentences, or being wordlessly understood.
I hate that you denied me physical intimacy when I was young.
I love your dedication to being happy.
I hate the means you were willing to take to ensure your happiness.
I love that we can talk openly about almost anything.
I hate that you are so conflict-adverse that constructive discussions of serious differences are so hard.
I love your love of me despite my genuine failures as a person, husband, father.
I hate it when I think that we might be in the last days of our marriage.
I love that I know 99% of you.
I hate that we have different ideas of what marriage should be.
I love that you genuinely love me.
I hate that I have been unable to meet your needs.

I love you.

The day the earth stood still

My world, as I knew it, ended on Monday.

I have been married 21 years. Some of that time was difficult, filled with stress, conflict. Not much fun. Well, ok. A lot of that time was like that. There were also great times, intimate, close, wonderful times. Vacations in Florida, house-building, adopting children, starting careers, adopting pets, holding them in your arms as they died. Great and terrible stuff.

I had this memory, detailed in some of my posts, of the first 10 years of my marriage as incredibly tough, harrowing years that we survived as a couple because we stuck together and were totally committed to each other. I recalled occasional passion and intimacy in the midst of what was often a living hell. I missed that time in a way, at least the good parts.

On Monday, I decided, after months of waffling and soul-searching that I needed a change, some way for me to obtain the intimacy and passion which had left our marriage and which I now craved. We seemed unable to get it back, and I could not live without it anymore. We were distant and dispassionate roommates. I wrote my wife a letter telling her that I needed to take her up on an earlier offer to have an affair to get those needs met. I told her I was absolutely committing to our marriage, that I would no longer consider the possibility of divorce, that I would seek to improve our marriage through whatever means necessary, but that I need to feel free to look outside it for that missing spark.

I was proud of myself. I had finally made a bold, if imprudent decision for my own happiness while following the rules I want to follow for myself. I want to be an open, honest, truthful person. An honorable individual. Someone I can be happy to see in the mirror. I am not always that person. I am not always brave enough to do what I need to do either.

My wife requested a lunch appointment with me. We met and she started telling me stories. Stories about herself. Stories about those hard but good first years of our marriage. It turns out she had engaged in a series of sexual affairs during that period. The first was 17 years ago, after about 5 years of marriage. Most were short, but one lasted two years. That one cost me the most: it took away time, energy and passion that should have been going to me over an extended and very critical time of our lives. Most were 13-17 years ago. There was one more affair 5 years ago, while she was overseas adopting our second child. That affair briefly resumed last summer and again in fall. She will be going on vacation to reconnect and stay with an old flame for a few days next week. The number and scope of her sexual adventures was a shock in rather the same sense that a thermonuclear detonation is loud.

This confession of hers was her acceptance of my offer for an open marriage, and her first act of openness. To her great credit, it was an act of unparalleled bravery. It could have led to the end of our marriage, something I know she values more than almost anything else.

There simply are not words that can express what I felt. I could say shock, anger, surprise, bafflement, resentment, hurt. Those words are not inaccurate, but they utterly fail to capture the depth of the emotions they portend to describe. I felt like the biggest idiot on the block, the wide-eyed country bumpkin in the big city, the only person in the room not getting the joke. This is a woman I knew for 25 years, with whom I entered adulthood and now middle-age, a person I *knew* that I knew, to her core, as I know my right arm and as I think she knows me. I now feel like I know nothing of her. She is a stranger posing as my wife. Think of "Invasion of the body snatchers", in real life.

My life and universe kind of sucked before Monday. I was not happy, but I thought I understood my world, my life. I thought I knew the fabric and foundation of my life and that of my wife, the nature and challenges of our relationship. I thought I knew our shared history. The foundation that was my understanding of the world vanished. I now feel completely lost. I feel like everything before Monday was an illusion, a dream based on some story I read somewhere. I know intellectually that this is not the case, but this is what it feels like. My wife was the core of my world. As unhappy as we were, she was the center of this universe I thought I knew. I feel adrift, directionless. I know that all of this is just shock, I also know that reality is different than it feels now. But this is what it feels like right now. Some day I hope to gain perspective on what happened, who I am, who my wife is. That day is not today.

Do you recall me writing "I am not jealous. At all". No, really, I wrote that. I meant it too. The difference between theory and practice in this case should be noted as huge. I actually felt myself begin to lose contact with reality that first night. I think they call it a nervous breakdown.

I know that she is mostly the person I know. She just has a part of her which led this parallel life hidden from me all these years. A part of her that I had no clue of, completely opposite of the person I thought I knew. She loves me, she really does, I know this. She is still the good person I have described in previous posts, she just had this secret, this very big secret.

Having been so open about my wife's transgressions, I will say that I also had an affair last summer. While the core of that affair was the intimacy and romance, it did culminate in a sexual encounter. My affair was wonderful, beautiful, it transformed me and re-awoke the part of me that understood beauty and love. It was also wrong. I guess it is a good thing that I did, because I understand first-hand how two people meet, fall in love, connect and meet each other's needs. I should also say that had it not been for my lover's inerrant moral compass, I don't think I would have terminated the affair so quickly, if at all. In my more reflective moments I have a hard time being too judgmental. But I try anyway ;-).

My wife's affairs seem to be an escape hatch from bad periods in our relationship, when there was stress, conflict, or perhaps to get needs met that weren't being met by our marriage. Mine was driven more by the realization that life was passing me by and I had missed out on a lot of stuff (a.k.a. mid-life crisis). But I think for both of us the mechanism was that age old one: we met someone and fell in love.

The end of the story is still being written. We have decided to try this very, very strange thing called an "open" marriage. I have no idea if it will work.

The early indications are encouraging. Since she and I came clean with each other, the barrier that had existed between us has lifted. We are able to discuss, really discuss, our feelings, frustrations and hopes for ourselves, our marriage. We have been intimate and connected in all the ways that I yearned for in the past few months. The barrier and distance that this Big Secret had placed between us had limited our intimacy. That impediment is now gone. The irony of the situation is not lost on me.

I am certain I will never be able to trust my wife in matters of sexual fidelity again, and for that reason, the very notion of monogamy is absurd: I would never know if statements of fidelity were real or just another cover-up for another series of affairs the next time we hit a rough patch.

I am happy, excited, nervous, scared. This is giving me the chance to live that youth I always felt cheated of, but also putting me on a precarious path. The humor of this happening after all my previous posts is too precious for words. You cannot make this stuff up. Really. "I wish my wife would have an affair" I think I recall writing.

Life is full of surprises isn't it?

Take a good look at your spouse, friends, co-workers. They may not be who you think they are.

Do you know who you are? I'm about to find that out about myself.

I think I feel the planet begin to rotate again. Let's see what tomorrow brings.

Happiness

I had an epiphany last night.

I was speaking to my wife about happiness, or the lack of it in my life. I pointed out her amazing ability to come to a decision point, evaluate reality exactly as it is, make a decision, and NEVER look back. She never second-guesses herself, wastes little time on worrying about the consequences or moral implications. She embraces and enjoys her choices. She pursues her choices without holding anything back: fully, completely, and with abandon. She is unreservedly immoderate in her commitment to being happy. Of my statement, she said "that is so completely true". This is a wonderful gift. It allows her the freedom to make choices in the pursuit of happiness, even questionable ones, and live in the present. It allows her the freedom to live. It has enabled her to not only pursue personal happiness, but also accomplish amazing feats: start a non-profit, switch careers (twice), go on hiking and biking adventures. Sometimes there are bad consequences to her boldness, but usually not. I told her I envied her ability to do that. Her response was that maybe that could be one of the things I tried to change about myself. She is right. Absolutely.

If I wanted to flatter myself, I would say that I have a strong sense of morality or at least responsibility. That is probably partially true. Another view, probably more accurate, is that I allow myself to be ruled by fear. I fear the possibly negative consequences of a bad decision, and allow that fear to "force" me into a very constrained and rigid life. As this blog shows, I agonize endlessly over decisions, afraid to pursue my happiness, because Bad Things could happen. Not only does this prevent me from making choices that would result in my happiness, but even when I do, I find it difficult to own them and enjoy them. How utterly stupid.

I have lived my life so prudently and cautiously that I now have a lot of regrets over lost opportunities to love, to travel, to have adventures, to live "dangerously", to be free and happy. I see life through the lenses of a 30-year outlook. I rarely live entirely in the present, the now, and have hard time enjoying it. What a tragedy, what a real loss and what a waste of a life.

My epiphany was that I need to be more like my wife. I need to be happy. In this lifetime. I need to live more in the present, not in a 30-year future. I need to occasionally make choices that make me happy, right here, right now. I need to own them, embrace them, enjoy them. I need to at least occasionally forget my responsibilities, duties, what I "should" do, stop imagining evertything bad that *could* perhaps happen. Make a choice and go with it. Immoderately and imprudently.

This is hard for me. It involves the risk of failure, rejection, and loss.

I don't want to live with any more regrets over things I was afraid to do and thus didn't try. If I fail, having tried, good. I just don't want to not try out of fear anymore.

No more fear.

Depression

Depression's a bitch.

There are as many reasons for depression as there are people I think. My own experience with depression has taught me a few things about myself. The first is that I think I am naturally a rather happy, social, gregarious person. Secondly, I need people and social interaction to be happy. I don't do well all by myself. Thirdly, I have a well-developed stress response, much too well developed.

The upshot of the above is that when I am relatively stress-free (job, money, marriage) and have active friendships, I am happy. When life turns to crap, and my social life dries up, I get depressed.

Regrettably, that happens to be where I am now. I am finding it difficult to focus, to work (thus making my work-stress worse, funny thing that), to enjoy or even put up with my kids, to relate to others. I find it difficult to talk or enjoy the company of other people. I can't sleep. I can't get myself to exercise, which also doesn't help. I seem to be suffering from anhedonia, one good side-effect of which is that I don't really want to drink... much, but I can't seem to enjoy much of anything either. My mood could best be described as "flat". I'm not so much sad as I feel nothing. I also recall this being a response I've had in the past to stress: just shutting down to be able to deal with it and get through the day, do what I must do and carry on.

I am buoyed by the recollection of happy times, even rather recently, and the firm belief that my depression is entirely situational. The most useful statement ever made to me was by a counselor I was seeing years ago. He said something to the effect that there are times when it is completely normal to be depressed. I think this is one of those times. I'm normal, my life just happens to really suck right now. I will get through it, this isn't my brain, this is my brain on crap.

Being a person of plans, here is mine: I am in the process of selling a house, that will be a huge stress relief as well as a financial one. That should happen by mid-March. Around that time, perhaps in May, I need to resolve, one way or another, my marriage issue. Fix it, really fix it, or get the hell out. I simply cannot continue as it is now. I want to start running again. That is hard no matter what, doubly so when it is cold and double that again when I am down. This will give me a chance to "live on purpose". I am great at making plans, follow-through... not so much.

A friend recently posted this quote on her blog, the single best quote I have ever read, bar none:
You took my joy, I want it back.
--Lucinda Williams

That is my statement to the universe: I want my joy back, I want my happiness back, I want my life back.

I'm coming to take them.

Crossroads

I seem to have a knack for finding myself at crossroads in time. Mere coincidence no doubt, mostly due to when I was born, but rather intriguing nonetheless when taken as a whole.

I spent my childhood in France, my family having moved there when I was 5, in 1969. This was only one year after the tumult of the 1968 student revolution, which led to sweeping changes in the French educational system. These changes were not yet really in place and I went to a school in an older area, so was one of the last entering classes to experience the old system. I wore a blouse of sorts ("tablier") over my clothes in school, to keep them clean. This was necessary of course because we wrote with a quill, the steel kind that you dip in an inkwell every line or so. The teacher would come by with a big jug-o-ink and fill you up when you ran out. Corporal punishment was standard as was public berating and humiliation by the teacher. Pink Floyd's "We don't need no education" resonates with me in a most profound way. Of course we never spoke in class without first raising our hands. My male classmates wore shorts year-round. While the Paris area isn't exactly Fargo, North Dakota in winter, it isn't exactly Miami either. We had months of low-40s rain and some freezing temperatures too. No matter, the little blue-legged boys would run around me in my big, warm, American clothes. I'll blog about how always being a weirdo freak scarred me some other time.

France was coming out of the old post-war era, but still was very old-world in many ways. For example, indoor plumbing was not universal out in the country where I lived. Some people would still wash their clothes in the public outdoor wash-buildings "lavoires" and you could see them haul water in Jerry cans. Water in the cities was in fact not always safe, which was the original reason for bottled water, which later became a fad in the the U.S. and is still with us today. Most houses didn't have showers and little old ladies in black would would be seen walking around town doing their groceries and going to church.

I grew up near a woods in which there was still a rusting German rail-gun and lots and lots of bomb-crater ponds. I grew up in the shadow of The War (WWII, although older people used that term to refer to WWI). Many of my friends' parents had fought in the war or in the post-war wars of independence in Indochina and Algeria. I grew up on a diet of war stories from my best friend's Dad who was a real war hero, having served as a scout in a French unit attached to a British division. They would go into northern France and scout out German positions. He was strafed once by a British "Mosquito" fighter plane who mistook his squad for a German one. Wearing the British summer uniform of shorts, they dove into a nettle patch to escape.

I really feel now that I grew up between worlds: the old post-war France one sees in the movies and the new France that is fully developed and modern.

My childhood took place in the 70s. As a result, I came of age right at the end of the counter-cultural movement of the 60s and 70s. I grew up listening to the music of that era, and hearing the stories of sex, drugs and rock and roll, only to come of age (back in the U.S.) to Reagan, the preppy movement, Young Republicans and a lot of bad music. I never saw all the drugs and sex I had grown up hearing about, I felt downright cheated.

I already mentioned in a previous blog that when I discovered the world of computers, it was right exactly at the crossroads between the old heroic days of the mainframe and the beginning of the modern era of computing, ushered in by the PC. I was a freshman in 1982 when the PC was invented. So I never actually read a core dump in hex, but I still took COBOL and assembly-language classes.

I pursued a career in science, Physics specifically. When I graduated in 1994 with my PhD, I discovered that the end of the Cold War had resulted in a very sharp decrease in the perceived need for basic research. No one was hiring Physicists. I graduated just in time to witness the end of a certain kind of heroic era of Big Science (think Apollo project). Oh well.

Right when I was graduating, the old Soviet empire was falling apart. In our lab we got a bunch of really great Russian equipment (and scientists) for cents on the dollar. It also felt like I was coming of age at the transition betwen the old Cold War-dominated world and the global political reality in which we now live with the U.S. as the only global superpower (for now... did someone say China?).

Right out of school (1997, I went back for another degree), I hired into IBM, at a time when it was changing from the old mainframe and hardware-dominated company it had become huge with, into the new software and services behemoth it is now. This transition meant a decreased emphasis on R&D and internal development, ultimately resulting in me losing my job there. It also very much felt like the passing of the era of Big Blue when that meant something heroically uncompromising. Many companies went through that transition which is at least somewhat sad.

So here I am now in Austin, Texas. Although I am told that Austin has been changing rapidly for a long time, it now also feels to me like it is on the cusp of really becoming a new Silicon Valley, of entering a new phase of even faster development. We'll see, it is usually hard to tell these things until after the fact.

I guess all eras are crossroads of some sort or another, few things remain unchanged in our world for very long. It's likely that someone 10 or 20 years younger or older could present a similar story with different events, but this is mine.

Sex vs. Romantic Love: Love wins

This won't be very eloquent, thus matching most of my other entries, but I can across this study showing that sex and romantic love affect mostly different parts of the brain. Moreover, love has a much stronger effect on the brain than sex.

http://www.livescience.com/health/050531_love_sex.html

That makes so much freaking sense to me, I can't even begin to tell you.

Living on purpose

I want to live on purpose. What I mean is that I don't want to live just doing whatever happens my way, "accidentally" if you will. I want to decide what I want to do and do it.

Living deliberately has always been something I wanted to do, but had a really hard time doing, either because I can't decide what I want or having decided what I want, I fail to follow through on it. I think most people have at least somewhat of a hard time with this, so I am not unusual, but this is no less of a problem for being common.

This recently came up as an issue in my life for a couple reasons. The first will be familiar to anyone who has read my blogs. I am trying to decide if I want to remain married. There are a lot of considerations, but I have enough information that I should be able to decide. That isn't really the hard part. The hard part is being willing to get a divorce if the answer is "no" and really accepting reality exactly as it is today if the answer is "yes".

The second reason that living "on purpose" is important now, is that, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the turmoil in my marriage, I began drinking excessively and smoking, even though neither had been much of an issue at all in the first 43 years of my life. I don't want to smoke. I don't want to drink excessively either. Both make me feel bad physically as well as mentally. I don't want to be a drunk or a smoker. I want to be a runner.

I have tried cutting back several times, but moderation doesn't seem to work. So I decided to stop altogether. It just so happens that all three of my friends have also decided to stop drinking and the two who smoked (somewhat casually) decided to stop smoking too. They inspired me, particularly my closest friend who has really struggled with this, and is now starting week 3 of total abstinence.

I want to be able to decide that I will not smoke or drink, and do so. At some later stage, I think I want to decide I want to drink moderately (2 drinks/day) and do that. But for now, at least for a while, I want to go completely without.

I want to be able to decide that I will start running everyday and do that.

So here's to being who I want to be... cheers.

Motorcycles = Sex-on-wheels

This will either make sense to you or not, depending on whether you dig motorcycles or not.

When I was young I owned a 1978 Yamaha 650 Special II, it was a beautiful thing. Every time I got on it I felt virile, adventurous, happy. One of the concessions I made when I got married was to get rid of it after we had kids. That was 12 years ago.

Last summer, fully embracing my mid-life crisis, I bought a 2003 Triumph Bonneville T-100 . A finer machine was never made. I was amazed that after all these years I could hop on that thing and feel 20 again. I LOVE THAT BIKE. I don't even know if I can explain what I feel when I am on it. But I'll try.

When I am riding, I feel inexplicably sexy and adventurous. I feel raw exhilaration, the adrenaline rushing through me. I feel alive and happy, strong and slightly dangerous (well that part might be easy to explain). The thumping vibration of this beastly machine is an almost sexual sensation, as cliche'ed and idiotic as it sounds. The instant speed and ability to outrun any car on the road is a guilty and juvenile pleasure that never seems to get old. Particularly satisfying is the ability to race some hot sports car driven by a testosterone-laden youth (up to the speed limit), leaving him in the dust. I love putting on my vintage leather jacket and having my daughter tell me I look "beautiful". The truth is, I feel beautiful, glorious even. When I put my helmet on, I am a knight in armor, fully prepared to perform some heroic act. On my motorcycle I am Evel Knievel, the Fonz, Marlon Brando in "The Wild One" (he rode a Triumph too btw), or Steve McQueen in "The Great Escape".

How stupid is that? Pretty stupid I'd say.


The fact is I don't understand why I feel this way. It's just a machine, a mode of transportation. There are millions of motorcycles, all driven by ordinary, boring people. Like me. I know this. And yet, when I am on my bike, I am this beautiful, confident, glamorous person, at least in my own mind, which is what counts.

And the fact is that I don't care how stupid this is, how juvenile and pointless, how dangerous and crazy it might be. I love who I am when I am riding. I want to enjoy and savor every precious moment I have on that thing. I want to accept and appreciate those feelings at face value without scrutinizing them too closely for as long as they last. I want to embrace everything that life has to offer me and squeeze the last drop of joy and excitement from everything I can.

Life is short. Prudence is overrated.

Birthday

So today is my birthday. I'm 44 today.

Damn I'm getting old. Of course as a friend of mine said many years ago now "It beats the alternative".

I was born 5 weeks after JFK was assasinated. My mother tells me I was named for one of JFK's bodyguards who acted bravely or was hurt in the incident, although I can't find any reference to anyone sharing any part of my name.

I am just a bit too young to be a real baby boomer and just a bit too old to be a gen-X'er.

I'm old enough to have seen the rise of the computer industry, but too young to have lived through it's heroic era where people fixed computers with soldering guns and oscilloscopes and actually read "core dumps".

I saw the battle of the CPUs be won by Intel and the battle of the OS' be won by MicroSoft, resulting in the domination of the Wintel duopoly. I saw the emergence and death or near-death of many great technology companies: Compaq, DEC, Cray, SGI, Atari, TRS. I saw icon of American innovation dwindle to a mere shadow of their former selves: IBM, HP, AT&T, Xerox. I saw Apple rise, fall and rise again.

I saw the invention of the "internets", and used it when it was ArpaNet, run by the DoD.

I was an adult when communism collapsed of its own weight and still have a "Dukakis-Bentsen" yard sign, as well as an "Al Gore '88" Button.

I remember the central American proxy wars of the 80's and Ortega, Colonel North, Iran-Contra. I remember Noriega and the murdurous regimes in Guatemala and Argentina.

I saw the emergence of the War on Drugs and the "Just Say No" campaign and the ensuing imprisonement of millions of Americans on charges that would have been ignored a decade earlier.

I remember when catalytic converters were made mandatory on cars and leaded gas was phased out. The US automotive industry warned of it's imminent demise as a result.

I remember the first great alternative energy movement, the energy crisis of the 70's and President Carter turning down the White House thermostats and wearing a sweater.

I saw the invention of crock pots, crazy glue, and the begining of the fitness movement (adults didn't always run).

I remember SCTV and the glorious era of Saturday Night Live (75-80) when they were really funny. I remember when Letterman used to throw flaming gasoline-filled watermelons off the top of buildings.

I remember the Challenger disaster, the Rodney King incident, "if the glove don't fit, you must acquit", the second LA riots ('88?). The first Iraq war.

I remember when the pronunciation "harassment" changed litteraly overnight to the British one with emphasis on the 1st syllable. (Supreme court Judge Thomas' nomination hearings in which he was accused of asking is that was a pubic hair on Anita Hill's Coke can. I was changing a water heater that day).

I am old enough that I can see several distinct phases of my life: Childhood, college, grad school, NY and now TX. I can see how I've changed during each of those phases, how I really became someone different.

I am old enough to be able to look at myself and see who I really am. Sometimes I like it, other times not. I know who I am (mostly), but still don't always know what I want (apparently).

I am old enough to be confident in what I know and can do, but young enough to still be insecure and frightened about what I can't do.

I am old enough to be happy with and thankful for what I have, but young enough to want more.
May I always be so.

Yearning

yearn: (yûrn)
intr.v. yearned, yearn·ing, yearns
1. To have a strong, often melancholy desire.
2. To feel deep pity, sympathy, or tenderness: yearned over the child's fate.


Yearning for intimacy.
Yearning for connection.
Yearning for passion.
Yearning for tenderness.
Yearning to love.
Yearning to feel alive.
Yearning to feel glorious.
Yearning to be wanted.
Yearning to be desired.
Yearning to talk and be heard.
Yearning to be understood.
Yearning to feel interesting.
Yearning to hold and be held.
Yearning to brush hair from a face.
Yearning to be gazed at.
Yearning to caress and be caressed.
Yearning to kiss and be kissed with abandon.
Yearning to be yearned for.

Yearning to yearn.

The End of Information

Last night I was watching an episode of a TV show on my laptop. It was fairly interesting, well acted, good character development. A bit too "soap opera"-ish, but that's ok.

There was one line which really resonated with me: "When you run out of new information, it's time decide". It doesn't mean making a decision is easy, but it means there is, or should be, an end to the data-gathering and data-processing phase.

I tend to over-analyze and over-discuss everything, as the gentle reader may have noted. This is not a good quality when done in excess.

I sometimes lose patience with myself, why can't I just decide what I want to do and do it, instead of interminably talking, thinking, blogging about it?

I have a difficult, but painfully simple choice facing me.

I'm out of new information.

I should decide.

Hard Things

I've always been good at not quitting hard things. Really hard things, and really never quitting. I think part of it is because of the way I was raised: one never gives up, quits, or shies away from a difficult task. Part of it is because of fear and insecurity too: I fear the unknown. The familiar, no matter how difficult, is the devil I know. I am a very prudent person, sometimes overly so.

This is often a useful habit, but not always. There are hard things that aren't worth it.

I spent 8 years in a graduate program, from age 22 to age 30. The best years of my life, in many ways. While other people where having kids, traveling, building careers, living, I was learning things that have little usefulness in my current life. Moreover, my adviser was one of the two true narcissistic sociopaths I have met and made my life a living hell, but I stuck with him because that's what I do.

I spent at least 6 years in absolute marital misery, not divorcing primarily because I didn't want to give up. During that time my spouse and I inflicted much emotional pain on each other and our one child at the time, possibly scarring her for life. Wouldn't want to quit, now would we? Wouldn't be prudent.

As our last house needed a lot of work, for many years I spent most holidays and many weekends working on it doing major construction, something I knew nothing about. This was time I didn't spend with my family.

I stayed in my first job for at least 3 years after it started really sucking really bad, contributing to my low-grade depression and marital problems.

I stayed in an exercise group for three years after I stopped liking it because the instructor completely changed the format and content of the class.



While I tend to overdo the whole sticking-with-it thing, it does have upsides too:

My stint in grad school allowed me to discover a lot about the world: I look at the world and understand (in part) how it works. I love that. I met dozens of wonderful people and formed some beautiful relationships. It eventually led me to a good career which allows me to get things that really do make me happy. I know that things aren't supposed to, but that's not completely true. My horrible adviser gave me the ability to tolerate almost any behavior with equanimity. I can constructively work with the most difficult and unpleasant people. I don't like it, but I can do it. That has proven invaluable on many occasions.

Because I remained married, I now have two wonderful children who fill my life with joy. My spouse is a great parent, who has helped form who my children are and gave them experiences I could not have. I have a hard time imagining someone who could be a better parent, friend, colleague, roommate than my spouse. I also learned a lot about relationships and how to live with someone, or at least how not to.

I have learned how to work on houses, which allowed us to have a much nicer house than we could have otherwise. My spouse and I mixed and poured concrete two Christmases in a row, in the snow. We converted a basement into a very nice apartment, built 1500 sq ft of decking which we enjoyed immensely. Our best times as a couple were working on the house together.

I went on several long-distance bicycle/camping as well as long canoe/camping trips. I have done some with my spouse, with my oldest child, a very good friend. They were hard, but I still think about them 3 years after my last one. They were great bonding experiences.

When my last job ended, I happened to be looking for work at exactly the right time and found a better job in a much nicer location. I have made some good friends. I have been given this wonderful chance to reexamine my life and rediscover a sense of passion and excitement.


Much of my blog has revolved around the question of whether I should give up on my marriage or work harder at it; give up on getting my emotional and romantic needs met entirely/primarily through it or try harder. Unfortunately, I can't trust myself to give up, even if that is the best thing, and even if it would be obvious to others in a similar situation. Apparently, one can have too much of a good thing. And yet, there are times when toughing it out is the best thing to do.

It is a fine art to know what/when to quit and when to hunker down and tough it out. The thing is that you never know ahead of time what the best solution is, so you just do the best you can and what seems like a good idea at the time.

I wish I was better at that.

Acceptance

Living with people is hard.

About a year ago my spouse and I were getting along horribly. There were several reasons for it, but a big one was that I could not accept the reality of who my spouse was and some of the decisions Pat had made. It went from the small (household chores), to personal habits, to large issues (money, sex/intimacy). I was unwilling to accept the way things were but was also unable to change them.

I think some of my complaints/concerns were legitimate. I don't think it matters.

My big revelation was that I needed to stop trying. It dawned on me that my spouse is no more able to change who s/he really is than I am of changing who I really am. Besides, who am I to say who s/he should be? That being the case, there is no point in trying to change each other: my spouse and I will either be able to meet enough of each other's needs or not. My nagging and pressuring accomplished nothing except make us miserable. I realized that the only thing I could do is choose to stay or leave, if the situation was truly unacceptable. I had the option. Me. I took ownership of that decision and accepted that leaving really was a possibility. Paradoxically, this really helped our interaction. It allowed me to state what I wanted and let it be. I now have "simple" questions to answer: is XYZ so horrible that I should leave? If so, I should go, if not I should let it go. Simple. This one realization, while not really resolving the outstanding issues between us, has greatly changed and improved the dynamic of our interaction.

Of course it isn't really that simple: do you leave your spouse for insufficient passion or emotional intimacy? (I don't know). But there were other issues where I was able to come to some conclusions: it is not worth leaving over housecleaning issues. It is worth leaving if some basic trust/money issues aren't resolved. This simplified and clarified for both of us what I *needed*. I think it allowed me to also be more honest about what I wanted (but maybe didn't need). I stopped nagging and trying to control my spouse, became a lot less frustrated, more at peace with myself and my spouse and apparently more pleasant to be around, or so I'm told.

The downside is that I think I am much more prepared to leave. Pat and I are both certain that we would divorce if it ever got "bad" between us again. I am pretty sure I would also leave if my basic needs were not getting met, even if we were getting along. I hope that isn't the case, but am willing to contemplate the possibility.

That was a major step forward for me: to be honest with myself. Be honest about what I wanted, be honest about what my non-negotiable items were. It was a major step in self-awareness to be able to state those.

So that was my big epiphany or this past summer, well one of them.

Houses

I had previously posted a lament, well several actually, about how my spouse views marriage primarily as a vehicle through which to raise kids, build houses and make a life together.

There might be some validity to my spouse's view.

I am not saying that I don't miss all that other great stuff: intimacy, romance, (some) passion. I do. Desperately. I haven't yet figured out if I can live without those.

So what am I saying?

Well first some background. Two rather big things happened today:

First, we closed on a house. I guess it brought home the "intimacy" of building a life together. That reminded me that this is "for real" and we are doing something worthwhile here. It isn't romantic, is isn't passionate, but it is a quiet, calm kind of intimacy. Like sharing something important with a friend, or being an important part of someone's life. Exactly like that actually.

The second thing that happened is that one of our old neighbors filed suit against my spouse on completely spurious (invented) grounds. I'm biased, but you'll just have to take my word on this. This has been soul-crushingly painful (and expensive) for us and particularly for my spouse. Some people are just horrible. This elicited two reactions in me: first and foremost anger, even hatred I would say. Secondly, feelings of sincere love and caring for my spouse who is one of the nicest, most giving people I know. This view of my spouse is universally held by everyone who knows Pat. This emphasized the point that another part of marriage is supporting and caring for each other, presenting a united front to the world. We have that. We have been through blindingly painful experiences, I am so happy I didn't have to do it alone.

So I was reminded that marriage has many dimensions to it and all are important. At various times in our lives some are more important that others. For me now, for whatever reason, I am craving intimacy/romance/passion. For my spouse, the parent/roommate stuff is paramount. I don't know if this difference is resolvable, survivable even, from the point of view of our marriage, whether it will persist or diminish with time, but I guess I gained a bit of perspective on marriage about things that I might have been overlooking before.

While it is hard for me not to think about the stuff I feel I am missing, I need to remember the stuff I do have and not take it for granted or forget that it too is important.

To the wonderful and maddening complexity of life, love, marriage, raising kids, building houses and being there for each other... cheers.

Hill Street Blues

My spouse and I were both in grad school when we bought our first house for $26,000. Yes, you read right. 211 East Hill Street, just on the "wrong" side of University Avenue, within easy walking distance of the train station and downtown. The bank wouldn't loan us the money because it was too little to bother. We ended up borrowing from family and buying the house cash. We paid it off in 4 years on grad-student incomes. Gotta love it.

It was a simple two story, 1500 sq ft house. We spent 10 years fixing it: rewiring, finishing the floors, replacing the roof, painting, replacing windows, water heaters. Most of it with our own two hands. We loved that house. When we finally graduated and moved, we were traumatized by the loss of our house.

For years after moving, and up till now, 10 years later, my spouse and I periodically share exactly the same dream, a couple times it even happened on the same night. Here's the dream:

We go back to the house. The new owners are out. We sneak in, often go to bed, then realize that it isn't our house anymore. Sometimes there is a reason why it's ok for us to be there, sometimes we talk to them, but usually we end up sneaking out the back door as they come in the front door. It's exactly the same dream every time, for both of us. We call it our "Champaign dream", so named for the town we lived in.

At first is was an unpleasant dream, always leaving us somewhat disturbed. Now it is a happy reminder of a place we loved, where we had friends, life was simpler and we were happy. Well that's what I remember at least.

Freaking weird isn't it?

Happy dreams, y'all.