Dreams and musings

A week or so ago I dreamed that I was leaving Gary

and buying a house next door to a man who lived in our old neighborhood before we moved to our (now) pink house.

I'd had a short-lived crush on this married man with 3 boys a few years ago.

Last night I woke at 3 am

with a dream where I'm renewing my vows with Gary in some sort of hotel conference room. I'm in a dressing room immediately next door getting ready and Gary's mother is late. She finally arrives and is getting ready. We are polite but not warm. We've been waiting for her, but then I realize I don't have any stockings. I have the dress I was originally married in, a beautiful vintage gold dress my mother wore when she was pregnant with me, to an officer's wive's-club dance (it was not her wedding dress!), back in the mid 1950's. It's not full-length, but strikes me at mid-calf. I consider just going through the ceremony bare-legged, but I can't quite accept it. So I go to the little gift store next to the dressing room (glancing into the conference room and seeing that people have gathered and are sitting uncomfortably in the chairs. I remember the service was supposed to be at 12:30 and it's nearly 4:00, oh holy shit now it's me keeping them waiting. I'm sure there'd be nylons in the gift store, or maybe some leg make-up. I'm not finding any stockings though I do find a curious plastic envelope with something that looks like it could be stockings and some of those peculiar faux-beaded ballerina-type slippers that often go with elderly-lady robe-and-nightgown ensembles. I realize I don't have my shoes, either and so I should buy this. I ask the clerk to pull the flesh-toned stockings out just to be sure they're full-length, and it turns out they are only about shin-high. The clerk asks me if I've looked "upstairs" (is this a hotel, or a hospital?). She doesn't know if they'd carry stockings up there either.

I've had enough time to muse that the re-vowing is a mistake anyway. There's no life to it, we're just going through the motions. I really don't want to do it. It's hardly worth these machinations I'm going through of considering the various dilemmas: go upstairs in case there are stockings in that shop? But keep people waiting potentially even longer? What if I can't find that store? I'd be wasting even more time and not gaining anything. But I still can't see my going through the ceremony barelegged. Should I call the whole thing off? But these people have been waiting so long.

I wake with this dilemma and realize my dream self had not considered it a viable option to cancel. The ceremony was on a par with one of the everyday 'necessary' shams such as, "Fine, how are you?" or "I like that haircut." It was just easier to get through it, classic go-along-to-get-along.

The day that preceded this dream saw me joining two friends, Toni and Marti for breakfast. Toni is recently divorced after 23 or so years of marriage to her college sweetheart and 12 years of burning for the man who is now her boyfriend. I haven't met him, but she describes him as a man that women gravitate toward. This is a source of major anxiety for her. She's a woman who has always been envied in our group as having a perfect figure (petite height, but blessed with long, muscular legs, and, as Marti once said, "Not one speck of mis-placed fat!"). She's bearable because she herself doesn't see how gorgeous she is. Still, she's over 50, and there are many beautiful women in the world, many younger, and they all seem to find their way to her new love. So she's always in fear of losing him. We'd been deep in conversation about some serious issues Marti's been having with her husband, and her son from her first marriage when we'd arrived at the restaurant. I'd jumped out to secure us a place on the long waiting list and when I caught up with them again the conversation had switched to Toni's fears about losing Richard. That's essentially where the conversation stayed for the rest of the morning.

She no longer, at least, wears make-up to bed. But the other night she realized she'd left her curling iron at the office where she works; 9:00 at night and she decided she had to go and get it so that when the morning came she'd be able to plump up her wispy bangs before he'd see her. The office is at least a half hour away and across a toll bridge. Of course she couldn't tell him the reason for this excursion and he wasn't buying her attempts to distract him. He finally asked if she had a boyfriend there. She gave up then and didn't go. I told her I hoped she'd left him with a shadow of a doubt about whether she did.

Richard has a sister, who is married, to a man who is an education snob. It is very important to him that he went to a prestigious school, as did his wife, and Richard, and Richard's ex-girlfriend. Toni went to an "acceptable" school, for a year.

I realize I've known this woman for nearly 30 years now and I don't know what path her higher education has taken. I knew she'd met her (ex) husband in Bozeman, so I assume that she went to Montana State, since her home town's not far from there. I had no idea how long she was there, or how she'd ended up roommates in Spokane with Marti and what school they'd gone to. We'd all been out of college several years when I met them. (And we all came to Portland in the same year, late 1979 or 1980, through separate paths. It was only by coincidence that they'd met again; I'd met them through a boyfriend that was friends with them.) I do know that she graduated at the top of her class in the local community college's dental hygiene program.

But apparently this won't pass muster for Mr. BIL, who probed her credentials early on. When he heard she'd been to school in Montana he assumed that was her alma mater, and she allowed him to believe it, without baldly lying.

So she was going to be joining Richard and family at a concert in the Columbia Gorge and heard from a friend of hers she'd graduated with from the local hygienist program. Pat was going to be at the same concert, and was thrilled they'd see each other. Toni was terror-struck. Her true educational well-spring might be revealed!

I can't remember how our conversation led into this story. She may have been telling me this by way of filling in a background for some other story. I listened in disbelief as she related that she'd called Pat to tell her about Mr. BIL and to ask her to please not reveal that they had gone to the local community college together. She said, "And Pat said, 'oh Toni, that's ridiculous! You shouldn't care what that guy thinks!' " And then when they did run into each other at the concert, and Mr. BIL had asked how they knew each other, Pat had said, " 'Oh, at school' ", almost as if to emphasize it!" Toni was angry with Pat.

I can't help it; my head kind of lights up with the implications of stories like this. I was imagining that it must have felt almost like an affront to Pat; if Toni is attempting to deny her/their education as if it's something to be ashamed of, then to ask her to cooperate in its denial...well, that is a bit of a tall order. And by god, that did seem to be what Toni was asking her to do. And if Mr. BIL is this kind of education snob, my bet is that he can smell an evasion and will be hot on its trail.

So it was because I was startled and not thinking straight that I kind of burst out with, "Why don't you just disarm this weapon with the truth? Just brazen it through: 'I graduated from a community college ' ?"

"Well, he won't respect me. And I can't stand it if he doesn't respect me."

"But...then his respect for you is based on something you're not."

"Yeah. That's just what Pat said." She's shifting around in her seat now, looking in the glove box, shuffling through her purse. I can tell that Pat must have been critical, and this must have hurt her. "I can't stand it if he doesn't respect me."

"But...what's the worst that can happen if he doesn't respect you?"

"I can't stand it. I don't respect myself, and so I can't stand it if he won't respect me either."

"But..." I didn't know how to put into words the realization that she was assisting him in judging her. That she was believing herself that she was so repugnant that risking a quasi-lie and having it exposed was more acceptable then just telling the truth. "But... then you always have to live in fear."

Well, that's how I live my life, I guess." Defensive. This may have been as close to angry with me as I've ever seen her.

It's odd to me that it's easier for her to tell this truth about herself to me; that it is more important to her to maintain a false pretense and risk being called out as a fraud than to stand by a simple fact about herself. If she could say, "I went to a community college and what of it" to him in the same tone that she just said to me, "I'd rather live my life in fear because I don't respect myself--and what of it" this torment would be done.

I would have found it much more difficult to say that I didn't respect myself.

I said, "Well, I respect you. I think you're an admirable person, and a true friend with good character."

It ended there, but I was troubled for much of the rest of the day.

I was troubled that it may have seemed to her that not only was she feeling afraid, but I was telling her she was flawed for feeling afraid. It sounds like she feels flawed anyway, and I certainly didn't want to add to that. I wrote her an email to tell her that I understand that she's afraid and that I respect that she's making the best choices she can make.

When I slept on it I had the dream about renewing wedding vows. And I see some parallels. In the dream I too was going through a lot of gymnastics on behalf of the sensibilities of others. Not-going through with the ceremony seemed on a par with detailing various ailments instead of simply saying "fine" when someone asks how I am. It's allowing a fiction to continue unchallenged.

We're heading in to a holiday season again. I'd hoped to not go through another one under the pretense of us as a married couple. Parents are coming to visit under our roof. I'm not trying to promote us as a perfect couple, or even as happy. For my parents and his, status quo is more than plenty.

When I told Sharon the dream about buying the house next to the man I'd once had a crush on but had reconciled myself to the boundary that married men are entirely off limits and was glad when it had burned out--she said, "It's like there's something in you that can't quite let yourself see yourself in a different pattern yet. Even though you leave a bad pattern (marriage) in your dream, there's still a way it's perpetuated by moving next to someone unattainable. How's that for torture?"

Similarly, in my dream last night I'm about to go through with a status-quo preserving ceremony that's merely wearying everyone.

And too, I look at yesterday. I went for a later-than-I-wanted-to breakfast at a place that was farther away than I wanted to go, which was far more expensive than I wanted to spend, and took more time than I wanted to devote. Each step that I conceded made it more difficult to not concede to the next one. And this is a parallel with what my friend Toni must be facing. I wasn't trying to impress my friends that we were financially better than we are; I suppose I would have liked it if they'd been sensitive to it without me having to overtly call it out. Each stage where I didn't object added more momentum and made the next objection harder. I didn't fear they wouldn't respect me, but I did fear the discomfort of that period where several people want different things, and aren't sure how to stay present to negotiate it.

I guess my dreams, and life's synchronicities are telling me I'd better not cancel my therapy sessions yet.

As long as I'm sitting here idling...

Something about Mrs. Spit's latest post has inspired me to do some taking stock. I suppose that's a useful action to take when stalled, take inventory of what has happened to get me to the point where I'm stuck. Maybe a consolidated perspective can make some sort of jump-starting possible. At the very least it can help pass the time.

It was only upon further reflection last week that Gary's mom taking his picture against his will became remarkable. I've had a lifetime of people imposing their wills, and wondering if there was something wrong with me for my feelings of objection: "Don't take things so seriously", "it was nothing", "it's such a little thing", "you're selfish". Her behavior at Connor's birthday dinner once would have been well within the range of 'normal' for me--the only thing I would have considered was if I was wrong for being critical of her for it.

Though the act of taking the picture was seemingly minor (and the social contract is that Gary's obligated to dismiss it as such), at its core the message was, "it's not about what you want, it's about what I want."

It occurred to me that this fits into the bigger picture I've been working about differentiation and narcissism, and a new word (courtesy of Sharon), "perspective".

I see the parallel between what Gary's mom did to him, and what Gary does to me: if Gary, from Darlene's perspective is only an extension of her will and she therefore is free to overrule his objections, then I too have been seen as an extension of Gary's.

There are consequences to this. First, any conflict is an affront, as if a part of his own body has mutinied, when I disagree. Resentment and a sense of betrayal makes perfect sense from Gary's perspective. The idea of negotiation doesn't make sense in this context because 'conflict resolution' presupposes a party of at least two, and in this perspective there is only one.

What this has looked like from my perspective is that we are not good partners in accomplishing something, from carrying a table through a doorway, to planning a trip, to raising children. From my perspective I see many points where consensus, and thus discussion, and if necessary, negotiation are needed...Gary has no patience with this; he just wants it DONE. From my perspective it looks as if he's expecting me to know his mind without his having to state it; from his, I am an extension of his mind, so he shouldn't have to state it. What's remarkable is through countless encounters that end badly, he has never examined this.

My own background made me susceptible, so that I held my own objections in suspicion (the fact that I had objections seemed evidence of my own character flaws). I suppose in a way it felt normal to live like that.

And, this is what I've been coming to realize is the reason I've been considering ending this marriage. Because we're rendered unable to function as a couple in using the most important tool: communication to resolve misunderstanding, negotiate differences of opinion, and healing rifts. And so we're choking in the accumulation of years of unresolved resentment which lowers the threshold for causes of fresh incoming nearly every day.

If we can't function as a couple then the options diminish. Either I erase myself and find a way to become a more perfect instrument of his will or I leave.

The situation is definitely far more abstract than if he were physically abusive, an alcoholic, or compulsive gambler. Putting aside the inevitable opinions of my parents that there is no valid reason to end a marriage with young children in the absence of overt abuse is the more personal question as to the nature of harm being done to them.

Though both Gary and I love the boys, between us we can't provide an environment that has the conditions necessary for love to be a tangible atmospheric ingredient. It seems analogous to living next to a stagnant pond, as opposed to a flowing river.

Which will do more harm? Stay in chronic but 'stable' unhappiness, or undergo the trauma of radical change.

{Years ago my high school literature teacher read a story to the class by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. It's a short story called "Harrison Bergeron". In the story the goal of an 'equalized' society has been realized. People who are exceptionally beautiful must wear masks; athletes, dancers, or others who move gracefully are encumbered by weights and manacles. Brilliant thinkers must wear headphones that every few minutes emit loud jarring discordant sounds. Since my children have been old enough to locomote and talk I've often thought of the parallel of the thinkers with the headphones. I'm surrounded by children and if I'm not being interrupted I'm anticipating it...I can go no further with this thread}

Where things stand

James Hillman's essay has shaken loose a number of insights, mainly on the theme of differentiation.

I've realized this for a long time, but I get it more deeply now that the seat of the fissure between Gary and me is the fact of conflict.

After years of a similar pattern to our struggles I realized that part of what really twisted inside me about them was that they often rose when he held me responsible for something that I could not have known, unless my brain had been sitting behind his eyes. More and more it became clear that in his dealings with me he was fully expecting that my perspective was indistinguishable from his. A minor manifestation of this might be the two of us trying to maneuver a long table through a doorway:

Gary: "Move the end to the right...to the RIGHT! ...the right!!!!" Me, having moved the 'end' to the 'right', totally puzzled and stung by his tone. Then it turns out he means his right, and by 'end' he means the upper end, and by 'move', he means tip. I've pointed out to him before that because he can see something from his vantage, it looks different from mine, and more precise language rather than increased volume might get better results. I can tell by the acoustics that he doesn't 'get' this, that he really feels I had all the information I needed and if I didn't it was on account of stupidity (mine).

I see now that this is just one mundane example of a common thread that is pervasive in our marriage--he really believes that what he sees is what I see too. And when I differ to him it feels like a betrayal--as if I realized my eye had been 'telling' me the tree was green, but it really is red.

The fact of any conflict at all between us, and in this sense I define 'conflict' as a divergence in how we perceive a shared event, is offensive to him. Because if I were indistinguishable from him, then there would be no conflict.

So this is why we haven't been able to get a handle on even the basics of conflict management: we're not supposed to have conflict in the first place. Therefore attempts to resolve conflict, beginning with acknowledging the presence of conflict has already offended him and he is coming from a place of resentment--which creates more conflict.

This explains the curious spiral nature of the issues between us, where conflict A happens, I name it, he a) dismisses b) diminishes c) criticizes my response, and then conflict A is still unresolved and now there's conflict A1 to deal with too. Eventually we may come to a sort of resolution, but the cost has been that he harbors resentment toward me and feels I've brow-beaten him into 'admitting' he's 'wrong'.

I've not correctly apprehended the nature of this very basic problem. I have assumed that he is a rational person and tried to point out to him that essentially he's expecting me to read his mind and this isn't a reasonable expectation. I've been baffled by the fact that he doesn't seem to see this, and the basic problem recurs in a different form, at all levels of our relationship. I've wondered if it is me who is expecting too much, if I've made an error in my reasoning somewhere, or if I'm 'too sensitive' and therefore susceptible to his tone--in other words I've wondered if I'm at fault.

To consider that this is an issue of differentiation makes a lot of things clear.

What I understand about Theory of Mind comes to mind here. I hope I don't offend in mentioning it, because I know that many parents of autistic children dislike it intensely. But I think it applies in this case to a person with a typical neurology--it certainly explains what I've been experiencing. To illustrate Theory of Mind a child is shown a film of Millie who has taken a bar of chocolate out of a drawer, eats some, puts it back in the drawer, and leaves the room. A few moments later in the film Millie's mom removes the same chocolate, uses it in cooking, and puts it away in a different drawer. The child watching the film is asked which drawer Millie will look in to find the chocolate when she comes back. An immature child will think that Millie will look in the drawer that he saw the mother put the chocolate in, not realizing that Millie is carrying a different construct in her head based on her experience. In essence, Gary is not distinguishing his perspective from that of Millie--he expects Millie's behavior to be based on his perspective. Furthermore, he doesn't see that he's not separating his perspective from hers.

This would account for the sense of dead space between us, where I just don't feel I've connected when I try to explain to him that I couldn't possibly have known what he meant about something.

This is a big problem. It's a primary source of conflict in our relationship; it's a primary obstacle to being able to clean up after a conflict. It's a source of resentment from him toward me. It's the source of often poisoned air between us. It's like living on a fault line and at any moment a gap will open underfoot to fall into. It's difficult to anticipate the next time he will expect my perspective to be identical to his so I can compensate for it in advance. He is blind to it, so it is unrealistic to expect him to adjust his behavior.

The big question is, how is this affecting the boys? Is living in this zone ultimately more harmful to them than the trauma of a parental separation/divorce?