Letter to Sheila (unsent)

I believe that you are currently caught up in an illusion.  One that feels right, and is easy and satisfying, but which ultimately is not going to be fulfilling.  An illusion eventually runs into reality, and the reality is you have walked away from your responsibilities to your kids, your marriage, and your home.  They need you, and you need them.  We are a family.  In the end your greatest happiness will come from facing your responsibilities and working through them.  Walking away from them is just a short-term high.

 

We both need to make sure we don't burn any bridges with each other, and we need to avoid making rash decisions, especially regarding the house, that we will come to regret when you come out of your dream state.

 

I don't expect you to agree with my assessment, since it contradicts the spell you are under.  I think it is right, though, and I am going to act under this assumption.  For what it is worth, this is the belief most people I talk to hold as well.  We all could be wrong, but I think that unlikely.

 

Take time for yourself.  Enjoy friends, lovers, conversations, experiences.  Indulge in your fantasies, explore your world.  You have worked really hard all these years, and this illusion was probably formed as a reaction to the unhappiness, anger, sadness, aloneness you have felt.  I'm not interested any more than you are in returning to the old patterns of our former marriage.  I envision something much richer, more engaging, more satisfying for all of us.  What that will be we will only know once we re-commit ourselves to the marriage, and the family.  In the meantime, I hope you do not let your fantasies do irreparable damage to the family, and to our marriage.

 

I'm not sending this to you, because I don't think you will believe what I write here, and you will probably react angrily to it, which will not help things.  I'm mostly writing it because it feels real to me, and I am still searching for the truth.

The Truth Matters

Well, a lot of water under the bridge since my last post. Sheila and I now have separate apartments that we go to when it's not our turn to stay with the kids at the house. Not my cup of tea at all, and totally unsustainable financially, but tolerable in the short term, until this summer or so.

I have gone through a lot of changes. Steady therapy (individual and couples), part-time life as a single dad (cooking meals, organizing the kids, being a single adult around the house weekends and at night), self-reflection, some meditation. I opened up the floodgates of online dating, but closed them after a couple of weeks. It was good to know there are some excellent people out there who I can relate to, and I connected heavily with one woman in particular, but realized almost immediately that I wasn't ready for all of this. Too much else going on in my life that requires my attention, and I would be neglecting my real priorities if I flew off into a fantasy relationship, no matter how stimulating it might be.

But the real impetus for blogging again is that I still am not satisfied with the story of what really happened to break us apart. Sheila said last night that I was not a good husband for her, and that's got me stirred up. It wasn't said in anger, it was in one of our occasional (now) late night conversations that always end now with her saying we're talking in circles and she's tired and needs to go to sleep. I don't want to be talking in circles. I want to get to the bottom of what really went on to cause us to split up. We know pretty well that my inability to really "understand" her, and my benign neglect of even realizing how important this was, combined with her lacking the ability to help me to understand this point, led her to steadily (pretty much from the first year of marriage until a few years ago) lose interest in me and in our marriage. That much seems plausible, if pathetic because any kind of intervention could have helped lead me to the understandings that are all so clear to me now. But the part that I still don't "get" is this: why accept failure, and all the consequences of divorce, when there was a legitimate chance to fix things? That seems to be where we disagree: I think there was a legitimate chance, given that I'm not an idiot, and was just missing some important information/understandings of our situation; Sheila thinks that after she reached that point there was never, and will never be, a chance, because she doesn't love me anymore and believes that I am not for her. This is the crux. Once her will to carry on in the relationship was gone, there was no well to draw from for her, and she couldn't -- didn't even want to -- materialize one, so that was that. No pheonix arising from the ashes for her; no amount of pursuasion could bring her back to the table to consider trying to build something new. It took a few years (the past few years) to arrive at the decision to split up, but during that time she was really just working on overcoming her fear of the consequences. At no point was she questioning her feelings, or whether there was ever going to be a chance for us to get back together again emotionally. This strikes me to this day as immensely irresponsible, negligent, disloyal, weak, and any manner of other awful character traits I should want to avoid in my partner. Which doesn't make me want her any less (well, a little), it mostly makes me want to shake her and get her to acknowledge these things. We disagree about how responsible she is for the breakup, and I want us to agree that this is entirely her thing. I take full (half) blame for the dysfunction that caused us to become distant from each other, but I see that as entirely distinct from the responsibility we both hold for trying to bring our marriage back together.

I think it would be enough for us to finally agree on what really happened her, so I can be legitimately pissed off with her, and then go from there. What I can't stand is being expected to buy into a BS story about how she really did try to help save our marriage, when in fact the considerable efforts she expended were on enduring our marriage -- being a martyr -- instead of actually trying to help it. If I'm wrong about this (and as I write this, it doesn't make any sense why she would be all of these things), I need to come to a real understanding of the situation. It's not that I'm looking to absolve myself of guilt in our breakup -- I would embrace the reality that I am equally -- even fully -- responsible for our divorce, if that is the truth. I just need to know the truth before I can process it. Processing untruths is deeply unsatisfying, and immensely distracting.

Okay, so having written about my frustration, now I'm going to present her case as best I can. Maybe she really does have the story right, and it's just a very painful one to tell me. From her perspective, early in the marriage she started to realize that I wasn't satisfying something inside her. She yearned for a kind of connection that I was oblivious to. She didn't know how to explain this to me, and I wasn't clued in enough to see that I wasn't providing something for her that she needed. She thought that the problem was really hers -- that it was unrealistic to expect me to know what she wanted -- and so she internalized this unhappiness and soldiered on. And yet, her soul remained unsatisfied, and increasingly over time she felt angry at her predicament, and at me for being so blind. This anger spilled out sometimes, and she even articulated her discontent, but I seemed incapable of understanding what she was on about, and worse, not that interested in really pursuing it. She encountered this stark reality repeatedly, and yet even this anger she turned inward, since she didn't see any alternative but to carry on. Eventually, it got to be too much to bear, and she shut me out altogether, resolved to no longer look to me for satisfaction, comfort, connection, pleasure, happiness. There were many other aspects of our marital partnership, and our family, that were clicking along very smoothly, but this overriding reality that we were not "connected" became sometimes the only thing that really mattered. Only after she started to overtly express this detachment in a way I could really see did I clue in and wake up to the realilty that we were in a crisis. By then the damage was done. While I count time from that point on, for her the marriage had already ended, and the chapter that began for her then was all about what to do with this stark reality that the marriage was dead, not how to go back and try to resuscitate it. This was a terrifying realization, and her first plan was to simply endure it -- accept it -- and look elsewhere in her life for satisfaction. Divorce was off the table, because of all the hardship it would cause the kids, and the immense hassle factor. But over time, I became increasingly agitated by our situation, unhappy with the prospect of living a life in limbo, and irritatingly insistent that we try to reconcile things. She saw a therapist who helped her sort out her thoughts, achieve a compassionate detachment (through forgiveness) towards me, which helped her gain independence and strength to confront reality. Over time she grew to see that divorce did not mean the end of the world, and that it could open up new opportunities for happiness that were really inconceivable while bound to a tiresome, husband whom she didn't love. Once that vision became clear, it was unstoppable. In her mind, my beliefs, my opinion, my love, and my wishes were frustrating, but they didn't change the reality of her vision. Any guilt towards me that surfaced could be rationalized through the belief that all of this was a direct consequence of my blindness, my benign neglect. Life has consequences and hard lessons, and this is one of them.

So, some important elements that should probably be injected here. Loyalty, commitment, responsibility for the kids. No one, including Sheila, is perfect, and I can't fault her for making some mistakes, but it does seem short-sighted to me that Sheila could not consider the possibility that I could change, learn to meet her needs, satisfy her soul, mind, and body, and otherwise become a really excellent husband and all-around healthy guy. She has said many times that she has lived with me for 18 years, that she knows me, and knows that I won't change. I disagree. I have changed, I have learned, and I demonstrate my newfound abilities, and insights, daily.

Wow. As I write this, and explore the pieces of what she has told me, it does seem pretty believable that she could get to a point of no return. What's more, she has said that she forgives me, and while at the time those words irked me, I see now how this pieces well into her story. She developed a strong anger towards me over those years, even while she was rationalizing and outwardly tolerating my behavior. All that anger didn't go away, it got bottled up inside her. And her early sessions with her therapist were partly about learning to really forgive me for my negligence, and neglectfulness, over all those years. Whereas I would have preferred she go even a step further and accept that I have changed, and could now be a good partner for her, that seems to be too much to ask. Her forgiveness is for her benefit -- it allowed her to let go of the anger she felt for me, and agree to let it pass as water under the bridge -- but she cannot forget that it actually happened. I have asked her to come back to me, now that I understand what she needs and why it is important that I satisfy this in her, but she doesn't want to anymore.

Separation Plans

So the pressing question of the moment is now, what to do?  We need to come up with a concrete separation plan so that we can finally talk to the kids about all this.

 

Just yesterday I composed a long post about one direction, but we spoke again last night and I realized that plan wasn't going to fly, so it's already obsolete.  The main needs we need to satisfy are:

1. Sheila needs to have physical and emotional space of her own, so she can get on with her life apart from me
2. We don't want to go bankrupt buying another house, but we may have to buy or rent something
3. Sheila's parents have a largely unused condo nearby that we can use for the next year or so
4. We could add onto our existing house -- either another bedroom, or possibly a small in-law unit (BR/LR/BA, but no kitchen).  In this case, we would still share meals together and be like roommates, which at first sounded okay, but on further consideration Sheila thought that would feel too close
5. Although neither of us plans to start seriously dating anytime soon, inevitably we will, and we will need our own spaces to make that work
6. We want to keep the boys in the family house for as long as possible
7. We both want 50/50 access to the kids, minimum.  No way does either of us want to be a weekend parent -- it would be too easy to lose touch with the kids.
8. We want to stall the legal divorce as long as we can, to avoid the financial/legal issues that accompany that step

So, lots to consider.  We both need to balance access to the kids with our own privacy needs.  Timeframe-wise, in 10 years our youngest will be out of the house (presumably), but we would like to keep the family house at least until then.  In the nearer term I want to spend most of my time on myself, and with the kids.

 

My therapist proposed a straight 50/50 split, the "nesting model", whereby each of us stays alone in the house with the kids for half of the week while the other is in the condo, and then we switch.  At first Sheila didn't like that, since it would be a such a radical change, but I think it's the best plan and expect she will warm up to it.  We could ease into it over the course of a few weeks, with each of us spending a night or two a week up there, and then eventually settle into the full-on separation mode.  It's not that I don't want to be around Sheila, but I don't want to aggravate things any further, and I want to meet her on her needs.  The only way Sheila will ever be able to take a fresh look at our situation is if she is finally in a peaceful place, without the feeling that I am sitting on top of her or pursuing her.  Although I am careful to keep things very platonic and unobtrusive, she clearly needs to establish herself in a new routine, with me out of her day-to-day life.

 

For my part, once the dust settles a little, I am going to want some time to myself, too.  I need to get my head back into work, and into the work of knowing myself better with the help of my therapist.  In many ways Sheila has done me a huge favor by forcing us apart.  I am starting to see myself as an individual for the first time in a long time.  For ages I have really defined myself as a husband and a father, and while I've been self-indulgent about my immediate needs and desires, I haven't given any serious thought to what I want from my life, much less how I should go about getting it.  Stuff of another post.

Not Feeling Met

We met with our couples therapist yesterday for a long, deep session that explored in greater depth the reasons why Sheila wants to divorce, and why she cannot conceive of getting back together again down the road.

 

Sheila recounted her misgivings, and fears, throughout the years, and the evolution of her position from loneliness, to frustration, to anger, to numbness, to forgiveness, to letting go and moving away emotionally.  She now feels completely at peace with herself and her decision, and does not feel that further exploration will turn anything up that would dissuade her from this path.

 

The reasons she feels so sure of this boil down to one major theme:  she has never felt "met" by me, emotionally, and she doesn't think that will ever change.  She might be right, or I may find a way to finally relate to people in this way, now that I am getting help.  This is something I am working on with my therapist, and I look forward to gaining a better understanding of how and why this is difficult for me.

 

In any case, the course that has become clear to me is that I gain the most right now from believing Sheila, and meeting her at this emotional and spiritual level.  Ironically, the best way I can move forward is to align myself with Sheila over the decision to divorce.  It is an important test for me to be able to do this.  If I can't do this now, how could I be expected to meet her emotionally over other issues, down the road?

Pact With the Devil

Starting Monday night, and carrying over to Wednesday mid-day or so I felt the euphoria of having accepted our divorce, the relief of giving up the struggle. But by Wednesday night, a curious feeling started to creep in. The consequences of the decision started to surface again, and I looked into my heart again and realized that getting divorced was absurd. The euphoria was a short-term high from the relief of giving up the fight, but it was akin to making a pact with the devil. I realized that by selling my soul to this belief that divorce was the right path -- even a legitimate one -- I was trading in short term pleasure for long term pain. I realized there was going to be hell to pay (I know, sorry, but it was too tempting to milk this one).

Taking the necessary path -- the deep soul searching that both Sheila and I need to undergo, making the decision to re-commit to our marriage, challenging ourselves to face the mess we have in front of us -- is going to be a difficult struggle. But taking the easy path of walking away from this mess is hopelessly short-sighted. I know Sheila feeling there is no hope for us is an immense obstacle, but I'm no longer interested in rolling over and letting her have the final word on this when she hasn't done her due diligence. I was hoping that the door would be opened during our first couples therapy session, but that didn't happen. I need to be revisit this with more conviction next Monday. I need to make the case that although Sheila feels what she feels, she cannot honestly be sure of things until she has undergone a more rigorous analysis of what is contributing to those feelings. It will be a tough sell, but if I don't sell it, no one will.

Part of why I'm returning to this line of thinking is because of conversations I've had lately that made me realize I'm not alone in thinking Sheila may not be at the top of her game on this one. I also have come to understand more about the consequences of divorce, and in particular the consequences of destroying the wealth we have accumulated over the years. Throwing away our savings on this course of action means fewer options for the children down the road -- private schools and college, vacations and other travel, unforeseen medical costs, gifting to help them buy a first house, etc. We also make ourselves much more vulnerable to disaster in the event of an economic or medical emergency -- a serious injury or the loss of a job. Who knows what the future holds, but sapping our reserves is a boondoggle, no matter what the reason.

This is largely a rehashing of old stuff, but I need to do this type of brain dump periodically or else I'll burst.

Future Letter to my Youngest Son

Jason Sunshine-
When you were seven, Mummy and I were facing a difficult time in our lives. For a long time we had not had the feelings for each other that healthy married couples have, and we were seriously considering moving apart, keeping ourselves as a family somehow, but living apart. We tried that for awhile, and during that time, both Mummy and I spent a lot of time reflecting on our lives, our feelings about each other, and thinking about the things that were really important to us in life. We went off and did things we had never done before, found new things that were interesting to us, and found ourselves smiling and happy in ways we hadn't felt in awhile. Of course, we were doing these things separately, with friends sometimes, but not with each other. But these were also difficult times for all of us, because they were new and confusing, and we didn't yet have a clear idea about what the future would hold for any of us. For you boys it was toughest of all, not only because our everyday lives were so disrupted by Mom or I being away a lot, but because other things competed for Mummy's and my thoughts, and so we weren't able to give you all of the attention that you deserved. Mom and I were aware of this, and it made us feel miserable, but we had to know what was the right thing for all of us in the long run. Some families stay together even when the Mom and Dad don't get along very well, and that's not a great situation, for the kids or the parents, either. We needed to try something different.

So, as you know, during this time both Mummy and I started to discover a lot of new things in our lives. We learned a lot about ourselves, and the way we interact with other people, including each other and with you guys. We met with a special therapist, like a doctor, who helped us to understand our situation, and find ways to make it better. Mom in particular didn't think things were going to work out, but we were both surprised when, after a while, we were able to relax a little more around each other and open up to each other. We learned that there were things each of us were doing that we needed to change, and these changes made a big difference in how we saw each other. We spent some time alone together and really tried to see what life might be like if we were to get back together. It wasn't an overnight thing by any stretch, but we found that actually things started to click, in some cases for the first time since we met each other. Pretty awesome time of discovery, and of course it was no secret what this might mean for our family and for you guys in particular.

The rest is history, though not without its ups and downs. No marriage is ever without struggles; by its very nature, you have two people with their own interests having to also satisfy the other person. But it is where love happens, and our love for you guys was made all the sweeter, and stronger, because of it. We would never have stopped loving you if we had ended up moving apart for good -- one thing Mom and I agreed upon during the entire time was how much we loved you boys -- but I think that a family with two parents is able to spread the stress load around a little more, and that has made it easier for all of us to spend more of our time with each other. I will always wonder what it might have been like if we had taken the other path, but I have no doubt in my mind that we chose the right one.

A Necessary Step Before Deciding to Divorce

• Sheila's heart is closed to me. I accept that this is true, and that while this is true, reconciliation is not possible.
• Sheila thinks this will not change in the future (she thinks this, not feels this, since speculation on what the future holds is firmly in the realm of the mind, not the heart). I don't believe anyone can "know" anything with absolute certainty, much less what might happen in the future.
• Sheila has not undergone psycho-therapy to explore, in depth, why her heart is closed to me. She has met with a counselor who is a wonderful, sensitive human being, but who has not been formally trained as an MFT or in psycho-therapy. I am not privy to the content of their work, though I observe that Sheila consistently comes away from these sessions with renewed clarity that she needs to move apart from me.
• Sheila thinks she has undergone sufficient reflection on her situation to warrant a certainty that our marriage cannot be reconciled.
• Because she hasn't done the heavy lifting necessary to support this certainty, I don't believe she is making an educated decision.
• I do believe that our marriage cannot be reconciled unless she comes to this belief, but I cannot be the one to tell her that; she will not hear it from me.
• Sheila has not yet made plans to meet with a psycho-therapist, though has informally expressed a willingness to do so.
• Should she meet with such a person, who would challenge her to fully explore what she is looking for and why she has been unable to find it so far, I believe she might come to a new understanding of our marriage, and find that we could reach common ground, passion, happiness, and all of the things that one could reasonably hope to achieve in a lifetime.
• That's my personal opinion, and I have shared it with her enough times to warrant this as "covering old ground." Nonetheless, I have yet to get a satisfactory response from her on this critical point.
• Nothing will divert us from the path of divorce if she doesn't take this step of meeting with a psycho-therapist and beginning this hard work.
• Sheila has thus far shown that she is convinced that she can only find happiness by leaving me, and without having to take this route of serious analysis. Fortunately, there is still time for her to make this plunge.
  
• I think that while we both may find happiness someday down the road of divorce, it is no lock, and without serious exploration of the issues that divided us, it is even more likely that we will both get stuck in the same place down the road.
• I have begun the work of exploring myself through psycho-therapy, and fully intend to analyze the dynamics in my personality that I may not be aware of, and which can cause problems like the ones I have had with Sheila. I expect that this blog will begin to take on some of my thoughts/understandings/revelations from this work.
  
• I believe I should ask her to take on therapy before deciding to divorce. Separation during this period seems reasonable and perhaps necessary, if inconvenient. Jumping to the assumption that divorce is the inevitable conclusion is premature.
• Having found that I am now capable of taking a dispassionate view of things, I believe I can live in that comfortable state, while continuing to push for Sheila to launch into the heavy work I think she needs on the side.

I can live with divorce. I have come to that understanding within myself. I love who I am, and I know I am going to do just fine, as I have done all my life. I am confident that both Sheila and I will provide all the love and support we can for our kids to help them with this process, and that they may even come out of it okay. What will make divorce much easier for me is knowing that Sheila truly explored herself, under the guidance of an excellent therapist, before making this decision for our family. If she explores herself deeply and finds truths within her, and between us, that on balance lead her to believe that divorce is the right path, then I honestly believe I will be able to accept that. It will be much harder for me to bear if she decides she doesn't need to go through this process. That, for me, will be profoundly irresponsible, and something I will have a hard time forgiving.

Sheila and I have discussed how important it is that we are on the same page about this when we talk to the kids, and to our family and friends. I feel it is essential for us to be in agreement, too, and a couple of days ago I thought we were. It now seems clear to me that I can't agree with her that divorce is the right thing until after she's done her homework.