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.