1/20/06

Awwwwww, Shiiiiiiit. Gary just mentioned in passing that he’s going to “call my mom” to “remind” her of Connor’s basketball game tomorrow. It’s his first game…it’s right over near her house, so I suppose there’s no way to not ask her. I just experience the thought of seeing her tomorrow with a feeling of aversion, like a dark cloud. And we’ve got weeks of this, since the season’s going on through March, I think. I hope she goes to the beach a whole lot.

This is how I experience the prospect of seeing her. A gynecological exam—although the exam is more pleasant. At least I like the dr.

1/21/06

Back from the game. As often happens it was a bit easier actually to be there and talking to her than the sense of dread beforehand implies. There were a couple of discomforts for me, though. One is that it’s very difficult to watch a game and watch Scott. So I’m not sure I’m ever going to get to see a game all the way through, because eventually Scott has to go outside, or needs me to be bouncing a ball for him. It also sort of bothered me when we left when Gary and his mother got way ahead of me and Scott, because Scott is just so slow and can’t be hurried. So I’m going to ask Gary if its possible that he and I switch off with managing Scott at these games, and to please wait for Scott and me.

The real blow was that Gary wanted to take the boys to a hamburger stand, and she said she wasn’t going to come. Gary & I had come in separate cars, so I followed him there—only to find her car there, too. SHIT! I’d been feeling the relief that I often feel after a visit with her is done, and there she was. She said she “wanted a coke”. It was a moderately uncomfortable time, too, with the boys fighting over the video machines. I simply told Connor that I didn’t have any money, and I wasn’t going to let them play, but then she took that prerogative away by saying she had money. I think at the time I thought that if she wanted to pay for it it was ok with me, but now it occurs to me that she didn’t ask me if it was ok for them to play, if she paid for it. She just assumed that she had the prerogative in that situation…I also noticed that she stepped in with being directive with them about things like when they would eat and when they could play, as if I wasn’t there. As if SHE were the mom, or the primary caregiver in that moment. Then, as Connor was playing a car racing game, she was standing really close to him and TALKING to him, and telling him he was in the wrong lane!!! He kept saying, nearly shouting really, “So! SOOOO!!!!! She really was annoying. She didn’t register that he’d just been quite disrespectful to her; neither did she get the message that this wasn’t the best time to be talking to him either. It seemed very weird to me that he could talk to her this way, with his annoyance and tone escalating, and she just kept at it, as if he weren’t talking to her that way. She’s usually so sensitive to any hints of criticism—makes me wonder if HIS opinion of her doesn’t matter to her, because he’s a child? I don’t know how she could have missed his tone. I spoke with him later about it in the car. I couldn’t bring myself to call him on it right then and there; for one thing, she WAS being annoying and was persistent in it, for another it seemed like just adding more strife to a stressful situation, where he’s trying to play a game, his way, and people are yammering at him.

I had an insight the other day when I was writing about the difficulty of my position with Gary—me having the skills needed for emotional intimacy, as well as conflict-negotiation in relationship, and he not. Thinking about the things required in general to be successful in communication and in relationship gave me an idea. What about in the specific, as well as in the general? What if I were to name what is needed in a situation where there’s a rift with Gary—what if I were to NAME what is required to negotiate it successfully—that is where we have understanding, and therefore head off a negative spiral of increasing conflict. It gave me a solid feeling inside, to think about that. What brought me to it was thinking about being “stuck”. That it’s unrealistic to want or expect him to change, but also unrealistic to expect me to just absorb the maladaptive things he does as a result of not having basic skills. At the time it seemed either/or—either he needed to somehow see what he does and develop the self-awareness to change it so he can communicate functionally—or I needed to be a perfect absorber of the weird things that happen when people have no self-awareness and poor boundaries. Either he needs to quit doing the things he does, or I have to quit being bothered by it, was what it seemed to boil down to. One doesn’t seem realistic, the other doesn’t seem remotely palatable. But an idea crept in of another way: what if, in these conflicts, I were able to say, “You know what this situation needs in order to not descend into warfare is xyz”—and name it. Like this morning when I got home from the store Gary said that he’d talked with Leva, and that she was going to be in town from the 21st through the 30th. At the time my head was in the refrigerator and the motor was running, and I didn’t hear him. I thought he said the 21st through the 30th, so I asked, “She’ll be here about a week?” And he said, with just a hint of an edge: “From the 21st to the 30th.” He meant to show me he was annoyed, and I felt that annoyance as a barb. I experienced it that way, and there’s no getting around that. I can’t just not feel stung, when someone means to sting. But it occurred to me to say what was needed, and I said, “You could have just said yes. It (the way he’d said it) wasn’t necessary.” Something similar had happened just before where he said something that had a sting to it, when just the answer “yes” was sufficient. At that time I also said, “You know, you could have answered the question just by saying yes”(or maybe no) “and that would have been sufficient.”

So, I named what was needed in that situation. If it had deteriorated, I could have gone on naming what the situation needed—a respectful acknowledgment of what I said, maybe an acknowledgement that he had been feeling annoyed and communicating that through his tone.

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.

1/12/05

Yow, that feeling is so strong, the feeling that time is slipping out of the hour glass. It makes me feel anxious to see anything but a huge swatch of untracked time ahead of me, and I start to feel anxious about its passing, almost immediately. Already it’s almost 1;30, a little over an hour before I go get Scott, and it feels so not-enough.

It occurs to me to tell the truth here—I mean, to summarize in writing what I see the truth of this situation as…to try and get it down into as bottom line, bedrock language as possible.

How I see my marriage to Gary, my relationship with his mother, my own family.

I guess start with me and Gary. I see us as not being very good partners for getting things done. And the bottomline issue underlying that, which makes it unrecoverable, is that we have no mechanism to talk about it. His default is to resent, and get back in passive aggressive ways later. What I need from him is for him to have the capacity to observe himself, take note in a moment that he’s upset about something, and say it respectfully. Not ACT it, in irritated disrespectful tone of voice, or eye-rolling…or in making a negative remark later, under his breath, as he’s passing me. Yes, it’s a hook, yes I suppose I’d be better not taking it—BUT WHO THE FUCK IS HE TO INTEND TO HOOK??? Doesn’t he have a responsibility as well, being the person who starts something? I think what I react to is the underlying discount, and dislike that would give him the permission to treat me that way. This is not the way one acts toward someone that is loved.

OK. So put us, in with those communication strictures, in a situation where we have to cooperate with each other, and communicate with each other—to have to use words to bridge a misunderstanding, to get understanding, and if necessary, healing. We can’t do it. Time and time again, from something as simple as getting ready for a camping trip, to child raising, if we cannot agree on something then we have no language to negotiate it. For me to even use words offends him. He feels harassed by them. He will do something negative, out of something that he’s mad at me about but hasn’t told me. I call him on it, and he tries to brush it off. He doesn’t acknowledge that he just did something hurtful, and often, unreasonable.

Here is a place where I can change my behavior. I can refuse to call him on it. Let it pass. Then the argument that comes from him stonewalling when I call him on it (and then stonewalling on THAT, layer upon layer) will not be born. It’s just that it seems SO WRONG that he do what he did that I’m not able to be silent.

So, basically we are a married couple with no tools at all for handling conflict. Well, I have tools, but I might as well not because I need him to have tools, too, for these conflicts to be able to be worked through healthily. But he goes to his default, each time. Clam up about something he’s angry about or wants a change about; show his anger in unrelated ways, later.

I was thinking about this in terms of Peter Kramer’s talking about “differentiation”. I was first thinking about what this means, his theory that couples seek someone who has a similar level of differentiation. I was thinking that that’s not true, in Gary’s and my case: I have the tools to communicate, work things through to resolution, and heal. Gary does not. In light of that I think that I have more differentiation than Gary. Then it occurs to me that the way I express my lack of differentiation is in being susceptible to the passive aggressive things Gary does and says. My being unable to let them pass.

I’ve got to think about that.

Another bottom line I see in our relationship is his capacity to deny that something is wrong. How terribly far he has to be pushed before he looks at his responsibility, before he takes action. And how he chooses inaction, consistently. Even when he says something like, “This year, I need to win back the boys’ respect and yours too (I’m not sure he said that)” he means it in the moment, but then puts it away. He accepts a tremendous amount of pain in his life-enormous losses (a viable sex life with me, respect of his children, love of his wife) by refusing to acknowledge that he’s in pain.

These two things, the inability to communicate and his unwillingness to face facts, are things I see as bedrock in our relationship and I’m thinking that it’s not possible to feel love in a relationship like that. Oh, you can do what my family does: You’re supposed to love your family. Therefore, you DO. That means that you don’t acknowledge the things that are painful between you. You don’t acknowledge when something isn’t working, because to give voice to that is to NOT love you. It is better to have the appearance of loving, the agreement of loving, then to have the underlying intimacy that love springs from. The trouble is, to get to the intimacy, people have to go through what they’ve been denying. It really is like the woman said in her book: “She couldn’t see. But she believed she could.”

And I know we can’t. But the willingness of my parents, and Gary, for that matter, to be able to face certain fears about themselves, and pain they’ve locked away…is very unlikely. So I have to love on THEIR terms: which is, don’t admit that there’s not really much intimacy basis for the love that is professed, don’t admit that things are wrong.

Perhaps Al anon really would be a good place for me.

My boys are suffering from living in a relationship like Gary’s and mine. Gary may want to do something about it, when he thinks about it or I bring it to his attention, but he doesn’t follow through. I can’t model a good back-and-forth-using-words-to-resolve-differences example when my partner in communication doesn’t have the tools. It’s like trying to dance with someone who absolutely can’t dance…but thinks he can.