There was recently a news story of a man who won the lottery. He had been divorced for a long time. The first person he called was his ex. When interviewed, he referred to his former wife as his "significant ex". I love that expression. It resonates deeply with me.
Despite the pain my wife caused me, I find my self unable to hate her. To the contrary, I find myself seeking out her company, yearning for someone to talk to who understands me. I have been attached at the hip to my wife for 25 years. She is part of me, we grew up together. She understands me like no one else. A 25-year relationship cannot be explained any more than childbirth or parenting can be. While I do not wish to live with her, sleep with her (in any sense of that phrase), I also do not wish to "get over" the deepest friendship and most important relationship of my life. I have not forgotten the reasons we split up, not at all. Yet there remains a soft place in my heart for the person who helped me through some terribly difficult times. I am not able to envision a time when we will be able to be together again, but I am equally unable and unwilling to envision my life completely without her. She is part of me, I am part of her. We wish the best for each other: I sincerely hope she finds happiness and joy in life, that she finds someone to love her, live with her, be her lover. My wife gave me my beautiful children. For that, and for all the good times we had together, I thank her. I love my friendship with my wife, I hope it continues for as long as we live.
The astute reader of this blog will note the striking dichotomy between this entry and the one a couple back. Both are true, both reflections of what's going on in my head.
I would like to take a moment to note that the friendship described above is universally viewed with suspicion by all my friends, counselors, and observers of my situation. With the solitary exception of one person (out of perhaps 15), everyone is telling me that I need to cut the tie, sever the bond between my wife and me. Everyone tells me that my friendship with my wife is unhealthy, unwise, unsustainable, that I need to "move on". I don't know if I should believe them or not. It seems unreasonable that I should sever our friendship "on principle", yet I wish to be open to what people have to say.
Interestingly, the one person who is sympathetic to my continued friendship with my wife also had an amicable divorce, and also had people telling them the same thing. Perhaps we are all so trapped by the immediacy of our own experience that we are unable to see outside of it.
To the wonderful complexity of human interaction, may our relationships always be "complicated" and confusing.
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13 comments:
I don't know if you read your comments, but I've spent the last two days reading your blog and I've been in tears and turmoil over it. I want to thank you for your honesty, and frankness about what has happened in your life. It has helped me so much to 'cross-over'. Thank you for writing these words... every single one of them.
Becky,
I certainly read my comments and read yours. I must tell you that I am overwhelmed by the fact that my words have touched you. I don't think I know how to tell you what it means to me to know that I have manged to "connect" with you at some level. I mostly just write for myself, to sort out my own thoughts and emotions and keep myself sane. I am always amazed and happy when someone else finds my experience useful, interesting, relevant to their lives. *I* am grateful to you for having taken the time to read what I wrote. That, and your comments makes me feel very... special, understood appreciated.
I didn't understand exactly what you meant by "cross over", but I understood that my words were useful to you.
I find this process magical: I type some stuff, make some dark shapes appear on a screen miles away, and emotions result from it. I was also surprised by how the pieces that people like are so often not the ones I think are good. I *love* that too.
Anyway, thank you so much for reading my stuff and commenting on it.
This is the blog right after I found out about my wife's past. Before then I was dealing with an unsatisfying and passionless marriage, after that I was trying to figure out what to do, and remain sane.
http://mylifeasme-dana.blogspot.com/2008/01/day-earth-stood-still.html
Yeah I watched the process of your story unravel for that is how one reads a blog. I read every word.
I was captivated by the way you esteem your wife in friendship to this day. I appreciate the way you express yourself... you've gone through hell while allowing yourself to have some emotionally penetrating moments! Man! I was charmed and touched to read about grocery shopping with your little girl. I totally saw myself when you wrote about living in the present rather than the future and past in Instant Zen.
Not only was it a good read -- I felt it was an answer to my recent prayer. I sat here all afternoon reading, with a box of tissues. I kept getting interrupted, then back to your blog.
My cross-over, --hmmm, I thought I needed to confess something to my husband. I realized reading your blog, what my confession would do to him. What would happen to any hopes of restoring passion if I destroy the trust in our marriage with a confession that frees MY soul? ... (Then, I read... NEVER NEVER NEVER CONFESS!)
So, I won't humiliate him with a confession. I'll change things, and make things right.
Yeah... confession may be good for the soul, but whose?
The practical reality is that confessing will usually terminate a marriage, certainly damage it by obliterating all trust. Confession will absolutely always hurt the other person, usually badly and permanently. The latter is the real reason not to tell. Even if one decides to end the marriage, I think confession is always a Really Bad Idea. Living with the guilt could be viewed as part of atoning for past wrongs.
Holding a secret does get in the way of true intimacy but, if the marriage is to last, probably the least of two evils. Of course some times the marriage shouldn't survive. Mine was probably at that stage even before I found out.
Perhaps most important is how one uses the guilt. If it motivates one to really stop (leave behind) the hurtful behavior and fix the marriage, making it the beautiful thing it can be, then it need not be all bad... as long as you don't tell. Shame and guilt are good: they remind us of what we are supposed to do.
The thing that finally led me to terminate our marriage was my wife's unwillingness to fully recognize the absolute wrongness of what she did and completely change her behaviour: she insisted on keeping in private contact with her last lover, over my objections. She seemed (to me) to morally equate what she did with my inability to "get over it". She never appeared to fully own the damage she caused. She ran away from the guilt rather than embracing it and using it to change her behavior and thinking. She wanted to keep her lover "around" in case it didn't work out with me.
People usually make mistakes (eg: have affairs) for very understandable reasons. That doesn't make them right, or the damage/pain they cause any less, but the reasons are usually very human and "reasonable" in the context of that person's life. I feel that way about my wife: in many ways her dreadful choices, even at the very end, were inevitable.
I have recently asked myself if I'm happy my wife told me or not... I guess I have mixed feelings: on the one hand, my life as I knew it is done, finished. I am having to start over at 44 years of age with two young kids. That is hard. The loss of my investment into my marriage is also hard, biding adieu to getting old together, not sharing an entire life with someone, having all that pain and effort be for nothing. Also difficult is the hurt, feeling betrayed, feeling stupid, feeling taken advantage of.
On the other hand, my wife's confession has given me the chance to become someone new, to do the things I wanted to do, but felt I couldn't while married. I'm not talking about romance/sex either, just the freedom to go out, spend (or not spend) my time and money as I see fit, take a writing class. If I am able to let go of the pain, I can use this as a pretext to re-energize my life. Kind of like getting rear-ended in a stalled car and using that impact to jump-start it. Yeah, your rear-end is banged-up but so what, we all have scars.
For the first time in years, perhaps since I was 20, I feel like my future is open, unscripted. I am enjoying the euphoria that comes from the wonderful illusion of free-will.
The truth is that I am also afraid of being lonely, but part of what I want to change about myself is always reacting out of fear, so I am trying embrace solitude and use the freedom and quiet that comes with it.
As I read your blog, I realized you were mourning. Mourning the death of a marriage... death of dreams... death of comfort (even if sometimes 'uncomfortable') You have embraced entering the unknown and I think that is very brave. My confession would change my husband and it would change our marriage. I did not have extramarital sex, but I fell in love and that is more damaging. Feelings for my husband changed a bit although I told myself for a long time nothing was different between he and I. It wasn't until I found myself weeping after intimacy that I realized... something in ME changed for him and it wasn't because of anything HE did. My passion shifted and I didn't/don't know what to do about that. I have been drowning in guilt. I changed 'us' and he doesn't even know it.
I love how you talk about her though. That makes me know what a profoundly good soul you are. I love that you treasure friendship with her and that makes me want to be a better friend to my husband.
Becky,
I agree with you that emotional intimacy (love) is the key. I think sex is really secondary: one can have sex without intimacy and have it mean nearly nothing or intimacy without sex and feel like your soul was laid bare, left breathless for days, weeks, by its intensity. I've had both and it isn't even a fair comparison. They've done studies that prove it by the way(http://mylifeasme-dana.blogspot.com/2008/01/sex-vs-romantic-love-love-wins.html)
The problem, and it is a problem, is that I don't think we choose who to fall in love with. It's a bit of a cruel joke that God played on us. I didn't chose it, my wife didn't, I doubt you did. (I wrote about it back in November: "Monogamy"). It just happens. We are responsible for what we do with those feelings, and it is indeed a "problem": I only have room in my head/heart for one person. I was able at some point to accept the fact that my one-time lover had genuinely returned to her husband in heart and soul. I haven't forgotten what happened, I have no wish to as I really loved her, but I have really given up on the fantasy of "having her" in any sense that would violate the letter or even spirit of her marriage. That was a very hard thing for me to really "let go" of. My fondest wish is that her marriage thrive and be fulfilling to her, even as I long in some ways for that feeling that existed between us: that of absolute and reckless love. Who wouldn't? It was beautiful at the same time as it was a betrayal of my wife's and her husband's trust and thus simply wrong.
I don't know how one revives those feelings for a spouse once they are gone. I don't know if it is possible or even realistic. Yet there are many people, 40+ years married, who swear they are still in love with their spouses. That is the dream, the ideal of marriage, the one I am indeed mourning. How they make it happen, I don't know.
Late in our marriage, my wife said she had come to view marriage as simply a practical, comfortable arrangement by which to raise children. Although I hate the idea, it isn't that unreasonable either. Perhaps this romantic ideal, which I so very much wish to believe in, is a 15th-century fantasy with little basis in reality. I honestly have no clue.
What does one do then, change partners every 7 years?
The hope, which I still entertain, I'll admit, is that there is someone out there I can fall in love with and stay in love with for "a while" (10 years, do I hear 20?). I might be setting myself up for disappointment. I think I was in love with my wife for a good 10 years. Maybe I can do it again.
I have no answers, I would be suspicious of anyone who did, beyond "it worked for me".
I feel for you, I don't know what to say, but I admire the honesty, self-awareness and integrity with which you are approaching your decision. As much as it pains me to hear the suffering in your voice, I love to see you struggling to do what is right, honorable, decent. Thank you, you are one of the "heroes" I was thinking of in an earlier post.
(PS: it is *much* easier to be a hopeless romantic about marriage when you aren't married, I understand that and laugh at myself)
I'm no hero Dana, I read that post you refer to. I'd of felt heroic if I had never let my friendship ever go 'too far'. For whatever reason, I started thinking of myself, and rationalizing my actions--so I could live with myself. I allowed a "practical, comfortable arrangement by which to raise children." start to set in because it 'worked' I was still having sex... but seemed kind of absent from it at times, if that makes sense? I hate the idea of an arrangement like that too... but like you say, it is reasonable when you have or are building a 'corporation' together.
I've mixed mortar and laid tile with him... held sheet rock to the ceiling while he screwed it in... I've stay'd home to raise our children and keep the home fires burning until he gets home.
There is an immediate 'non' chemistry that comes through the door sometimes. The necessary tasking that comes with that arrangement of raising 4 children, and trying to make this household run like a well oiled machine is not very romantic. I read about your happy hour on the patio and realized... that's just right and good no matter how you look at it.
I gotta say, you make me smile. I believe I have finally met someone with more words in them than me! This is a good thing because I like how you express yourself.
You're no hero? So why exactly aren't you sleeping with your "friend"? You don't want to? You don't think he wants to? Wouldn't it be fun to do so?
You wake up every day and decide to do the right thing, to honor your promise, even though you want something else.
Where'd you put your cape?
I understand you fell in love, inappropriately, with someone else. I don't know how much we control that, not much I don't think. That is small comfort when trying to decide how to deal with it, in Real Life, but maybe it will make you feel better about yourself. Your brain hasn't caught up with the social mores of anything past the Bronze Age.
And you're right, I have only rarely been accused of not writing enough, and even then not every convincingly.
point well taken... but it is not heroic to do the right thing- any more than it is an accomplishment to graduate from the 8th grade. it is expected... not always easy. It's hard to convince myself I did anything 'right' when I imagine how many times I found myself in my friends arms... 'wanting' and how much I loved that, wether I DID it or not seems beside the point. It's been 7 years like this with my friend. We spend minimal time physically alone together because it always goes that same way. So there is almost always someone else with us, usually my husband, often my kids. We spend several hours together every day on the phone or chatting though, and that is no secret to anyone. It is not a sneaky stolen moment thing, I talk while I cook dinner, when I'm alone at the house or in my car... or in front of my family - I tell him everything and I"m completely drawn to his presence. He seems to be the same way with me.
Presently we are changing the friendship because we want to keep it- I guess that means we'll stop feeding moments that end up in embrace, stop seeing ourselves as a couple he's open to allow something else for romance in his life (hasn't happened yet) and he knows I'm trying to add those parts back to my marriage if I can.
Do you think either of those things are possible? Keeping the friendship... renewing romance and passion where (wether I did it single handedly or not...) it had faded?
btw... thanks for talking with me about this. I've never told a soul about any of this (cept my friend)
Reading your blog and watching you adjust and morph through your experience... has moved and inspired me to change my heart... if I can.
Well it's heroically hard to do the right thing. Many people: myself, my wife, my lover did not. It's expected, but in 80% of marriages, it doesn't happen for at least one person.
An argument could be made that you obeyed the letter of the law, but not the spirit. How compatible that is with keeping your marriage is something only you can answer for you. If I had to *guess*, I'd say most people would find it hard to be both that intimate (emotionally) with someone else and their spouse. My wife claims she could. I couldn't.
The parallels between our experiences are eerie, except I did cross the line. After we called it off, my lover and I kept it very cool, censoring what was said or communicated, how much time we spent alone and where we spent it. There is no doubt that if we were both single, things would be different, but they weren't and we had made a decision, which I wanted to truly and genuinely be supportive of. I love her. I always will, but part of that means doing what is right for her, her kids, her husband. Life is full of choices.
She meant more for me than I can really explain, If would have loved to have her in my life for the next 30 years, as a friend. A continued long-term friendship with her would require us to be very careful to not allow our friendship to threaten her marriage, because damn her, she would eventually always do the right thing and sever our friendship if it did. How possible that is for you and your friend, I don't know.
You have a limited number of choices, stating the obvious, I would think them to be:
- Somehow restore the passion for your husband (a marriage counselor might help, although ours sucked). Keep (or not) whatever level of friendship with your friend is consistent with that. This is the best solution of course.
- Live with the status quo: have a nice, if somewhat passionless marriage and life. This is nice, simple, uncomplicated and doesn't violate trust.
- Stay married, but get your passion elsewhere (the idea being that no one person can be everything to you). Whatever line allows you to look in the mirror and like what you see is what I would recommend. Maybe light flirting is enough to remind you how attractive you are, perhaps the occasional hug, although you seem to say not, I don't know you. Nothing is worth your self-esteem though. Don't cross your own line.
- Stay married, but negotiate an "open" marriage, using whatever definition of openness you both are comfortable with (flirting, hugging, kissing, sex), but starting with the openness of honesty. I tried that and was denied, even as my wife was cheating and having sex on the side. The dishonesty was the worst. When she was doing that, I thought she was just flirting and I *was* ok with that. I would have been ok with an open marriage too I think.
- Get divorced.
The choices are simple, but hard. I also don't know how possible any of these is for you and your spouse. Some people are happy (enough) with a passionless marriage. I was for a long time, then stopped being so. Some people are able to rekindle the romance, others not. Some couples might be able to negotiate a non-conventional marriage, others not.
The one piece of advice I am comfortable giving is to be true to yourself. Don't do anything that will make you hate yourself. You haven't yet, although you feel guilty. Guilt is good.
I would also take a bit of a position and say to try to not do anything that would deeply hurt your spouse. If you do get your needs for passion (whatever that actually means) met by your friend because you just can't stand the other options, and it would kill your husband to find out (as it did me), make sure he never does.
I would also say don't delude yourself. If you decide to do something that would hurt your husband and likely terminate you marriage, be clear with yourself that that is what you are doing. I am still amazed that my wife could do what she did, right up to the very end, and now be surprised that we couldn't "work it out". The time for that decision is now, not after you have crossed a marriage-fatal line.
I think Dr. Phil had better watch out, here I come!
If you would prefer to continue this conversation in a less public venue, you can mail me:
WiMoose7@gmail.com
I should clarify, when I say "start with the openness of honesty", I didn't mean confess any past wrongs. Just be honest about what you want in the future.
Past betrayals should stay in the past.
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