Communication
1/18/06
I guess I have a little time for introspection. I have a sort of goal of painting one of the walls in Scott’s room, and to go for a 20 minute run, but I’m feeling a little stationery. I had an interesting talk with x that caused a little shift in the way reality is pictured to me. It’s the concept that the light we see is only a small part of the entire spectrum of light; I think I got it when I considered how human beings use light that’s in the non-visible spectrum.
Wow, I just feel so tired. The time alone just never seems to be enough. I got home from errands and visiting x around 11:20, or 11:30. It’s noon now, and only 2.5 hours before I need to leave to get Scott. And tomorrow, though Scott’s also in school, the fact that I’m going out with Kathy in the evening to see an author gives me that compressed feeling, like there’s not enough time. And it’s strange, I should be anticipating that as a pleasure, going out without the kids. Funny I should see it as rather a burden and something to get through. But that’s similar to how I experienced anticipation of the ski trip this weekend just past. That’s sort of how I experience just about anything that takes me away from home. I wonder if those are like agoraphobic behaviors, or feelings. Or the stirrings of them. Or a side effect of the wellbutrin, which sometimes has anxiety reported as one of them.
1/19/06
I just walked for about an hour and a half; came home and got something to eat, and thought I’d write down some thoughts I had while walking. Part of it was from a summary that Alan Lightman (on a recorded interview I was listening to) made of the creative process. He said the commonalities in the creative process of the geniuses who made some of the most important discoveries in the 20th century were: A prepared mind—a scientist that knows his stuff thoroughly, 2) Getting stuck, which seems to be a requisite for the next step which is 3) Creative breakthrough
I thought about being stuck. I am sort of stuck, if I don’t want to outright leave Gary (because living in this house we bought and keeping some sort of bedrock stability for the boys—where we live and where they go to school—is something I want and leaving Gary would disrupt that). So I’m sort of stuck. I’m stuck because I’ve tried everything and every explanation of what I want and it’s not getting through to him enough to make him want to change. Basically, I need a person who is able to engage in a conversation at the level required to be able to work out conflict. Period. What I have is someone who immediately defaults to passive aggressive behaviors and vengeance-seeking when there’s a clash of wills. So there I am.
I feel a little vulnerable to the criticism: “See! You can’t marry someone expecting to change them—you did that (finger-pointing here)!!!!! It is clear that he’s not going to change. I don’t know that I married him with the overt idea of changing him; I guess I married him thinking that we COULD have conversation on that level. And it’s taken these many years to see that not only do we not have that, but that appealing to his reason to explain what seems to be basic to me—is not working. And likely never will. I think what I’m facing if I don’t want to leave him is living for a very long time with a guy that at best I’m friendly to, and at worst disliking very much. So I’m trying to come to terms with that, because that’s really no way to live. To have this continuous fly right in the middle of my ointment—the fly is our relationship and how we relate to each other—doesn’t seem like a realistic idea—to somehow live around on the margins of “that fly” and try to form a life there doesn’t seem very desirable. I guess I’m having a conversation with myself about a fact in my life and how I see it, how I maybe SHOULD see it—just kind of facing down the shape of most of the rest of my life is going to take, given these starting points. I FEAR that what will come up in the conversation is that I SHOULD change MY behavior: stop reacting when he’s disrespectful and infantile in his communication of his needs. I also fear that part of this conversation means that I’m really the cause of the friction between him and me and between me and his mother—that it’s a meanness in my spirit that perpetuates this.
Here’s what it looks like. Gary, (and to some extent his mother),do a behavior I find unacceptable. I feel angry about this and try to address it using conversation. In general, the issue is not resolved in this way, in fact sometimes gets even more complicated by the way that Gary handles my using conversation to bring something to his attention. Usually when he either doesn’t acknowledge what I’ve just told him or dismisses it. Other things like this happen and are also not resolved and healed. I feel angry about the wound that can’t be healed because I don’t have his cooperation. Time passes. And what I wonder is, does the fact that I still feel angry about these things or feel dislike for the person as a result of them—does that mean this is a feeling-of-choice and that I’m choosing to have it, and therefore I’m perpetuating the bad blood between us; but not “just forgetting it”. I’m sorry, that seems too much to ask, to ask a person to ignore something that is in their consciousness, and is a disturbance in their experience. I just got an image of swallowing something too big to swallow.
But refusing to swallow also has unhappy results, even if I’ve kept my integrity.
I also just had an image of myself looking him in the eye after he’s said or gestured something hurtful: “That hurts me when you xyz (name the behavior”.
I listened to an interview with a playwright who also wrote the screenplay for a movie: “The Company of Men” I think. And his new play is called “Fat Pig” about a man’s romantic relationship with an overweight woman. They also mentioned a play called “The Distance Between Us” that sounds interesting to me. But in the conversation the playwright was so truthful and authentic and immediate, that I felt like I could get understandings from just peripheral comments he made. About there being a certain cruelty in relationships in only doing what was necessary to get through another day—minimally. He also talked about, I think a passivity in fearing engaging conflict—about, again, doing a minimum to just get by: it was in the context of talking about his main character hanging out with people he really didn’t like; how a lot of people do that because it’s easier than engaging it—and he said something about driving the people around you crazy—something to do with avoiding and avoidance. It made me think of Gary. Because I think his avoidance really hurts us—his avoiding engaging this big gulf between us—and what I think is his part, but what does he think if my part? How does he view how I contribute to it? I’ve invited him more than once to share that with me, to start our dialogue there. He has not ventured his opinion on this. So I am still left with the impression that I get angry with him when he does xyz (not keeping a agreements, say), and he gets angry because I get angry with him about xyz. And things would be fine if I’d just quit getting angry with him when he does xyz.
Leave a Reply