We were at an extremely low point before she left. She'd brought up the question of how we'd work out custody, and unemotionally.
She read it then when she got back we went and parked in the foothills and read it together. It felt like we were an item, a team.
Receptive. Went well. A feeling of teamwork and even sweetness. No, it didn't unleash her inner tigress. But I'm questioning whether sex should be that important.
In the spirit of reconciliation and "microdecisions" (see below), I've tried for several days (individual days) to not look @ women. Impossible. Svelte joggers, the latina fax-runner (named, appropriately, after an Aztec goddess) who passes my office several times per day, etc. Impossible.
Foreword (June 5, 2011)
Much of this letter was written in miscellaneous bits and pieces over the last few weeks -- mostly on post-it notes that I’ve kept in my wallet, and in chunky, cryptic emails I’ve sent myself when I’ve had meaningful thoughts that I didn’t have time at the moment to fully flesh out. The timing of your custody question Saturday afternoon was laser-like in its precision, because while [#3] and I had been sharing our burger and fries just a couple of hours earlier, the table next to us was occupied by what I quickly inferred from their conversation to be an early-40s divorced dad and his two daughters, both under ten, who were with him for the weekend. Seeing it there in front of me, as I relished my time with our amazing little [#3], took it out of the realm of the abstract and into the tangible, and it was utterly dreadful. Nightmarish, really.
Letter
To my wife, [her name],
The volatility of our relationship is something remarkable. Several nights ago, while it’s possible that I was actually asleep and dreaming, I could have sworn that you kinda sorta cuddled up to me; then within a day or two, you told me I should start looking for an apartment. (Which I did, incidentally, in addition to a few quick googles re. Utah divorce law, until I stepped back, took a deep breath, and thought it was all pretty absurd.) On my side of things, on many occasions I have a “Wow…[her name]” moment or warm up—and even well up—with deep and cozy gratitude at a sincere smile of yours, a gesture of kindness (like an after-the-bewitching-hour rosemary treatment or a meal that I know took extra effort), or something I hear you say to one of the kids; on other occasions, the idea of deep and lasting happiness (whatever that means, although it probably includes the absence of a really extended sense of crustiness) or “successfully” (whatever that means) raising these kids with you is a struggle. Depending on one's view--or mood at the time--one could see in this volatility either resiliency and dynamism, or advanced cancer that chemo kicks back but not for long, creating every-more scar tissue with each resurgence.
Dr. Joyce Brothers said that "Being taken for granted can be a compliment. It means that you've become a comfortable, trusted element in another person's life.” I don’t know who she was referring to, because as it applies to us, I couldn’t disagree with her more. In fact, I think that so much of what we struggle with stems from a simple and fundamental issue of focusing so much on the negative in each other that we take the positive for granted.
Here’s a little exercise. I’m not sure where this will go, but stick with me on it:
Had someone told you 15 years ago that you were going to marry someone who (A):
- Is reasonably intelligent
- Takes OK care of himself physically
- [something that has to do with my church calling]
- Basically kicked porn (which, at first glance, seems like it would be a negative; but knowing what you now know about porn—via your brothers’ experiences, conversations with others, church discussions including stats re. its epidemic usage among otherwise-active LDS males pretty much aged 15 and up, etc., —I think we can list it here among the positives. At the very least, its value as a symbol of self-control and commitment to “something better” really can’t be over-emphasized – ask anyone who’s been affected by it.)
- Has a decent and sensitive heart
- Applies himself professionally and provides a steady and, all things considered, comfortable income (yes, by American, not Tibetan, standards)
- Adores and is for the most part a very good father to the four incredible children you'd brought into the world together
…you would have slaughtered the fatted calf in celebration. Or at the very least, you would definitely have been intrigued.
But if they'd told you that this man also (B):
- Has had to work hard to become truly comfortable with his "expected role" as a provider, and that this long process had inflicted some wounds along the way
- Has come to feel something oddly like ambivalence about the church, struggle with many of its core doctrines and historical elements, and not appreciate/value/use the priesthood
- Is neither mechanically/industrially inclined nor particularly interested in becoming so
- Emphasizes sex & physicality beyond what you think is a rational or appropriate level
- Falls too easily into “condescension mode” and often uses withdrawal as a coping mechanism
- Too-often lets himself slip into focusing on your “negatives” to a point that he can overlook your “positives,” which moves things nowhere good, and quickly
…you would have run in the other direction.
By the same token, had I been told my wife would be (A):
- Tall, slender and strong
- Musically talented
- The best cook I know on the planet who’s not running a 4-star restaurant
- Health conscious
- Clean, organized and orderly
- Rugged, assertive and determined
- Remarkably able to process, organize and retain facts and information on topics that are important to her
- Spiritually sensitive (don’t dismiss this one off-hand)
- Sincere and straightforward
- Beautiful
- Emphatic about the value of work, especially with the kids
- Greatly capable of compassion, sympathy and care
- Extremely patient with my spiritual sluggardliness
And that, over time, I'd come to really value her "Smarts (In Ways I'm Not)" and impressive mothering/domesticizing/etc. toolkit–not really even on my radar 15 years ago–I would have thought I was in for something pretty cool.
But if they'd said that (B):
- $ would be a constant topic of discord
- She’d not be especially interested in other cultures or their histories
- Sex would become maybe not entirely vanilla but not pralines & cream (“oral sex and certain positions Need Not Apply”), and fitness maybe not a total afterthought but not much of a priority
- She’d let her musical talents stagnate
- Deeply-entrenched vestiges of bad parenting models would manifest themselves too often in her treatment of our kids
- Her strong emphasis on eternity (no problem) would sometimes create a sense of world-weariness (problem) that could make her company a drag
- She’d appreciate some things that I do, but, after all is said and done, didn't respect or admire me, or if she did, it was lost somewhere in translation
…that info, especially the last one, would have put a damper on the outlook.
[One of my sisters] once told me, “[My name], you can’t love a list.” But it would be pointless to deny that, when things get tough, we fall into the practice of consciously and/or subconsciously assessing whether the As outweigh the Bs. While there are myriad, fascinating facets of this type of assessment (and some conventional wisdom to liven things up along the way: “the devil you know,” “the grass is always greener,” etc.), I’m not going to attempt an academically airtight treatise on the topic -- which I’m sure will disappoint you, since nothing thrills you more than anything involving Me, Academic, and You. So I just have a handful of related ramblings, which I imagine will pretzel around themselves and present neat contradictions, etc., but here they go…
Biggest Area of Potentially Positive Impact: Me
You’ve sometimes called me selfish. And it’s usually confused me (and I’ve usually dismissed it) because I don’t tend to see myself as selfish. I’m not the most generous guy in the world, but I wouldn’t place “selfish” on my top 10 or 20 list of descriptors. Which may be delusion – I mean, who really thinks of himself as selfish? I am seeing more and more, however, that so much about me is selfish as it relates to our marriage. Not only selfish in the traditional “what I get out of it” sense (see your “A” list, for example!), but selfish in the sense of the marriage being about me.
With respect to the “what I get out of it” aspect: In my life, when I've been honest enough with myself to recognize manifestations of selfishness in the rear view mirror, I've invariably regretted them, and, having recoiled in horror, have usually tried to make good. (Remember the colossal box of Italian goodies I sent a friend from [city where we lived while I was in grad school] as a wedding present? I may or may not have explained to you at the time that it was in large part an overcompensation for an “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I did that!” retrospective realization.) Our marriage would, of course, be a bad context in which to run that cycle again. And this view has been a long time coming, because, as you’re aware, I’ve insisted on evaluating how so much of our marriage either adds to or takes away from what “I'm” expecting to get out of “my” mortal experience – this despite, for example, my having had a dramatically positive turn of affairs on my mission once I stopped focusing on “me” (not in a traditionally selfish way, but just on how I was performing as a missionary) and started truly focusing on everybody else…the whole “lose life/find it” thing in action. As a little experiment, I played with this mindset a few days ago – I think I was just at work, eating leftovers you’d made, and I tried to imagine what it would be like to just stop worrying about myself. It was actually pretty liberating…for the 20 minutes it lasted. But “complete self abandonment” is also admittedly more into the realms of idealism than I, at least, am ready to dive into and hope for any success. We still have needs, individually. Some of them may be considered less selfish than others, but they’re still “what [we] get out of it” needs. The CD I’ve been listening to explores in depth what marriage means across different modern, first-world cultures (the U.S., France, Japan, Germany, Italy, etc.; NOT Saudi Arabia, Kenya and Thailand), and what is normal for spouses expect from each other. It’s fascinating. In some cultures, for example, even the idea that one spouse should be the primary “facilitator of happiness” for the other would be laughable – a bit extreme, but you get a sense of the breadth of ideas at play out there. Anyway, it got me mulling over the idea that an underlying expectation that each of us be the “all-in-one” source of tons of neat and cool stuff for the other (an expectation largely unique to American culture, the author notes) is unrealistic, unattainable, and unfair. That in mind, maybe it would benefit us as a couple to open up a little more to opportunities for enrichment that come from individuals outside of our marriage, including—where it doesn’t cross lines of impropriety…which rules out your “mistress” suggestion—with members of the opposite sex. I get a lot of this type of interaction (humor, intellectual engagement, etc.) at work, of course, and will continue to seek the occasional ad hoc outlet (like “dudefest” overnighter mountain biking with the guys in Moab), etc. It’s obviously MUCH less organic for your circumstances (near impossible, at times), and even though you’ve seen yourself throughout your life as being largely contented to be on your own, you’ve also seen the benefits of meaningful outward interactions. Understanding this, I can make more effort to facilitate those, whether it’s us getting out with other couples more (and I won’t ever again insist that we tour downtown [city we live in...long story] by foot) or me taking the kids more so you can go somewhere with whomever. As I type, I’m reminded that [her business] can have value for you in this—something for me to keep in mind as I work through my feelings there.
Regarding the “about me” part: It’s not a huge breakthrough to understand that a spouse (spouse 1) will often see others’ views of his or her spouse (spouse 2) as a reflection on him or her (spouse 1)—hence the ancient idea of the “trophy wife”—and I’ve been dwelling for a long time in that pit. (Exhibit A: Correcting your grammar when we’re with others, in part so that whoever we’re with clearly understands that “at least one of us knows that little rule!”) But a while back—I may have shared this with you—I heard a quote that attributed lots of Americans’ financial problems to “spending money we don’t have, on things we can’t afford, to impress people we don’t like.” This could be translated to the Spouse-As-Symbol-Of-One’s-Value view, in that just about everyone who knows and likes me and also knows you, either really likes or absolutely adores you. So since they already have a high opinion of me, it’s ludicrous to think that I’m going to gain anything in their estimation by nitpicking you (of whom they also have a high opinion) – in fact, being a jerk to you would generally have the opposite effect. And about the people who don’t like me—I’m sure there are a few out there—who cares? Why would I want to impress them, anyway? And even if I did, does anyone really think this would be the way to do it? Duh. (Duh, but a very recent Duh.)
Biggest Area of Potentially Positive Impact: You
I’m not going to load you up with a how-to guide; that’s well-trodden, rocky ground, and I’m hardly in a position to be doling out advice. But I will touch on one item. (Plus another bonus in the Afterword…) I think I told you once of my mission roommate who said, “Elder [me], you’re like one of those big Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon floats – you’re big and cool and impressive and everyone can see you, but you rely on everyone else down here to be holding you up.” Much of that was right for who I was at the time, and some of it for who I remain fundamentally today. Circumstances have helped me, for the most part, to get over (or at least dramatically subdue) my compulsion for the limelight, but core elements of those needs remain. And as it relates to us here, I desperately need you, [her name], to respect and admire me. I know that I don’t deserve it all the time, and I know that there are important fronts on which, understanding your perspective, I may not deserve much of it at all. But if there’s one way in which you can fertilize this thing and work miracles on me as a man and your husband, it would be to respect and admire me, and show that respect and admiration in ways that unambiguously mean to me, “Wow, she really respects and admires me!” Tall order, I know.
About the Kids
The economic theory of “sunk costs” (i.e., in a nutshell, that past investments in a project are irrelevant; all that matters for today’s decision is whether further investments are warranted) doesn’t apply to the kids. They are an uninterrupted bridge from the past to the future and can’t be dropped or shopped like commodities. I truly believe that, our difficulties notwithstanding, the two of us are infinitely more likely to raise the kids well together than we would separately (meaning—let’s be honest—you alone, in all likelihood). But we need to make some serious adjustments there. I need to be home more (see “Dinner,” below), and need to better distinguish (and help the kids distinguish) between play and seriousness. (Yes, you can insert here "And you need to be a Priesthood Leader.") I’m not sure how else to put it, but you need to figure out how to do as good a do job with these kids emotionally as you do physically, and you do a fantastic job with them physically. Until I manage to work my way back up your "most important living person" list, the kids, as I mentioned the other night, need to be the #1 priority and everything else (people, projects, things, etc.) a very distant second. Which I know is already the case – I’m neither an idiot, nor entirely blind, nor entirely clueless. I get it. They already are #1; how could any non-lobotomized observer think otherwise?! You invest an immeasurable amount of yourself in the kids and…and right now I just typed “and I love you for it” but that seems so incongruous with our dealings of late that it makes me pause. But I’ll leave it. Because I feel it. And my heart just warmed up a bit when I decided to leave it. So there. And I'll try to help more. I know that if you and I are in a better emotional place with each other, it will reflect in how we deal with them. I feel (perhaps appropriately?!) like Maria pleading to the Captain after capsizing the canoe, “Love them!!!” but if it’s like a brick to the side of my head when I hear you grinding maybe a little too intensely on them, it must be a multiple of that for them, and the clock is ticking on their little hearts and minds. Let’s make it happen. Aye?
A Couple of Other Thoughts
Dinner: This CD I’ve been listening to goes into great depth about the significance across many cultures of sitting down at table together. Sounds pretty important; I wonder why you’ve never suggested that I make it home for dinner, or why nobody has mentioned family dinnertime in general conference, say, at least half a dozen times in the last few years... Right. But for whatever reason, the tremendous upside for the family of my presence at dinner has finally dawned on me with what this guy covers on this CD. And I see at the same time the downside of my absence, in compounding your Single Parent feelings. Not good. Sometimes I have stuff that simply must get done, period, but sometimes I think I may stay late at work to get stuff that could wait until morning because I want to see myself as the kind of dedicated employee who…stays late at work to get stuff done that could wait until morning. I don’t know that I can do an 8-5, but what would you think about a concerted effort for 7pm dinners, and go from there?
Home: We need to own a home. Not because We’re American And Americans Own Homes, but because I suspect that converting our perpetually transient condition as renters (albeit long-term renters) in a perpetually unfinished dwelling to something decidedly more permanent can’t help but have a residually positive effect on our relationship. So whether it’s [our current residence] and we somehow figure out how to swiftly make it work financially and with my commute (see “dinner,” above), or another house elsewhere, I think we need to take some decisive steps in that direction. There is so much to like about [our current residence]; there is also so much that I just don’t know can be overcome to make it what we want on any reasonable timeline and without pawning off our financing future. (I’m very concerned about the bottomless time-and-money pit potential here.) But that’s an ongoing topic, of course. I actually think you would have liked the [house I looked at on my own several weeks ago, and really liked but it sold the next day before I could convince her to give it a look], had you seen it in person. Ho-hum (but tidy and uncomplicated) from the outside for sure, but a phenomenal location and spectacular inside -- but it’s sold, so it’s moot. Regardless, we need to own a home.
Well…
I had thought to write in here that what it all comes down to (for me) is that “I need to sail to the island of this marriage and burn the boat.” But it’s not that. It’s an ongoing process – similar to the repentance process, in a way…in fact, not “in a way” but “precisely.” It’s not just one big miraculous earth-stopping decision that makes everything work; it’s a series of big and medium decisions interspersed with millions of small decisions along the way – decisions regarding how to respond to a question, when to smile, whether to glance again at those passing legs that caught the corner of my eye, when to offer a hand, when to practice industrial-strength patience, when to just listen “actively” and understand, when to just shelve whatever little nit comes to mind, when to understand and address your need before mine, etc. They’re ridiculously easy little decisions individually, little “microdecisions,” but I haven’t been doing so hot at them, especially not lately. And once you slip on a few in a row, the accompanying results of grumbliness and crustiness avalanche into an environment in which it becomes progressively easier to make more of the wrong microdecisions, then more wrong medium decisions, then a wrong big decision or two, then…poof. (or fizzle)
You’d asked for a love letter for your birthday. To claim that there’s been a lot of love swirling around here in either direction lately--and therefore fertile soil for a bed of literary roses--would be, I think, inaccurate. But to say that there’s more good than bad, and still a whole lot worth “efforting” for, is I think very accurate; that we should be massively wary of the allure of the greener grass; and that a series of good microdecisions will get us back on a good path, probably sooner than later, a path of warmth, kindness, mutual interest & concern, and love. Yes, at some point we’re going to slip off that path again (to think otherwise is naïve and a recipe for disillusionment), and again, and again, and again, but hopefully the general pattern over time is that each slip will be less severe and more quickly recovered from, so that at some point we can look back and correctly associate volatility with resiliency and strength, not cancer and scar tissue.
Now that I’ve plunked through all of this, I really want to kiss you. And not a token peck. A real kiss. Because you are my honey, [her name]. And you really do put up with a lot from me. And you deserve a good, real kiss -- and, if you pause and think about it, you’ll probably see that I’m a jerk only some of the time and a good kisser most of the time.
[my name]
Afterword
Helpful Hint 1
I don’t think you really need this hint, but I’m going to provide it anyway, for your convenience and ease of reference.
If I’m being grumpy, sullen, etc., there’s a 90% likelihood that it’s related to one or more of the following:
1) Our money
2) Our sex
3) Our kids
4) My inadequacy and/or “life direction stuff”
So next time I start doing the quiet/withdrawn thing—which I will at some point—just ask: So, do you want to talk about it now, or later? Then (now or later, depending), just go through the list, and productive communication will likely follow.
Helpful Hint 2
I’m hesitant to emphasize sex as a stand-alone topic here at the end, because, no, this is not “all about sex.” But a lot of it is about sex. Which we haven’t had, incidentally, for going on three months. (Yes, I’m counting, in case you haven’t been.) Someday, you’ll come to fully appreciate how important physical attraction and sex are to men – yes, even men you really respect. That this disproportionate emphasis doesn’t really, really make sense to you doesn’t make it any less real, and it doesn’t make it debased. I hope that appreciation comes soon, and, yes, with me.
The circle turns a little something like this:
The longer our intervals between sex and/or lovemaking go—and, yes, I’m distinguishing between the two; sometimes we make love, sometimes we have sex, and unless things are going really, really badly, I really think we shouldn’t not have sex because we’re holding out for lovemaking—the less I see you as my partner (and the more I “see” other women and wonder); the less I see you as my partner, the less I treat you as my partner; the less I treat you as my partner, the less you’re interested in “partnering” with me (for perfectly understandable reasons), and around and around we go. But sex is up to you – meaning, it’s pretty rare that I won’t want to have it, so you’re basically the goalie. Yes, I absolutely have to contribute to an environment in which you want it, too. But ultimately, whether it happens at all is up to you. Few things will help jumpstart us out of a phase during which you think I “haven’t shown much affection” than you saying, “Hey, why don’t we put the kids to bed early tonight and turn on some quiet music?” (And this one just occurs to me now: I imagine that very few things will a desired message across, more quickly and with greater impact, than responding to something lame that I’ve said or done, than a wrinkled smile and, “Hmmm…funny, the more you say that, the less interested I am in letting you touch my body.” Wowza! Works instantly! Guaranteed results!)
But back to the hint – here it is: If your husband texts you "nice ass" not just once, but twice, don't ignore it. Don’t ignore it the first time, and especially don’t ignore it the second time. Respond however you want, but don’t not respond. This may make him wonder whether he’s married to a Relief Society statuette – i.e., the actual cold, rigid, faux stone statuette available at a Deseret Book Near You, not the woman who posed for it. While we’re at it, here are some ideas on how you might even respond, verbally or in writing, were you to receive similar texts in the future:
- think so? it doesn't look so bad in my lace panties, either
- maybe u'll get a closer inspection when i’m back from my trip
- preview of coming attractions, my boy
- i know it does because i went 2 the gym 2x this wk, so it could use a good massage (and maybe other attentions?) - let's schedule 1
- if u behave urself while i’m gone, maybe we’ll misbehave a little when i’m back
THESE ARE OK TO SAY. And my referring to some part of your body in PG-13 terms does not mean I see it as a piece of meat at Smith’s; it is an intentionally sexual code phrase, mildy edgy in order to catch your attention, that translates as, “Hey, YOU are my sexual partner, and I just caught a glimpse of you that reminded me of that. I liked what I saw, the resulting thought of us being together even turned me on a bit, and I wanted to remind you of that, as well. Have a good trip -- I’ll be here for you!” Engaging in this type of dialogue does not make me a pervert or you a whore. (In fact, I’ll bet that far more than one GA has at some point referenced his wife’s rear to her as her “fanny,” which, believe it or not, was the 1949 equivalent of 2011’s “ass” – how far we’ve fallen!) And yet for some incomprehensible reason, our communication about sex is in hushed, almost ashamed tones, r-a-r-e-l-y using the actual terms, and when we do, often getting giggly about it. (Although I must admit, and with no little relief, that it’s been many years since you’ve referred to my penis as a dingelhopper. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!)
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