"Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" and other romantic songs

I'm in Huntsville, Alabama for work where there seems to be a pretty limited selection of radio stations and content on the FM dial. The upside is that I hear a lot of old songs on the radio that I heard and liked when I was a kid. Sometimes I'll hear one of these songs, such as "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)," by one-hit wonder Rupert Holmes. Today I heard it in the car and I sat and waited for it to finish after I'd parked. I could hear all the lyrics. For the first time I "got" the song. It bears a message of irony, love and recognition, and is a catchy tune.

Escape (The Piña Colada Song)

I was tired of my lady --
We'd been together too long;
Like a worn-out recording
Of a favorite song.
So while she lay there sleeping,
I read the paper in bed.
And in the personal columns
There was this letter I read:

"If you like Piña Coladas
And getting caught in the rain,
If you're not into yoga,
If you have half a brain,
If you'd like making love at midnight,
In the dunes on the Cape,
Then I'm the love that you've looked for
Write to me and escape."

So here's the protagonist of the song talking about being bored with his mate - maybe he's been married a few years or something - and out of boredom he stumbles across a personal ad in the paper that catches his interest. Everyone can relate to this, right? But then he goes on to act on his curiosity, admitting at the outset to his awareness of the morally dubious nature of his step toward infidelity:

I didn't think about my lady -
I know that sounds kind of mean -
But me and my old lady
Had fallen into the same old dull routine.
So I wrote to the paper,
Took out a personal ad,
And though I'm nobody's poet
I thought it wasn't half bad:

"Yes I like Piña Coladas,
And getting caught in the rain.
I'm not much into health food,
I am into champagne.
I've got to meet you by tomorrow noon
And cut through all this red-tape
At a bar called O'Malley's,
Where we'll plan our escape."

The protagonist seizes the moment and seeks to resolve his relationship issues the way so many of us have, by starting a new relationship. He puts pen to paper and writes his own ad. Then he follows through, throwing himself into the unknown to meet someone sight unseen. The song elides any of the usual complications and realities involved in dating through personals, blind dates with no introduction or prior interaction on the phone or even a picture, etc., but we allow the unrealities for the sake of entertainment and cutting to the chase - we want to know how will this turn out?

So I waited with high hopes
And she walked in the place
I knew her smile in an instant
I knew the curve of her face
It was my own lovely lady
And she said, "Oh it's you."
Then we laughed for a moment
And I said, "I never knew:"

"That you like Piña Coladas,
Getting caught in the rain,
And the feel of the ocean,
And the taste of champagne.
If you'd like making love at midnight
In the dunes of the Cape,
You're the lady I've looked for.
Come with me and escape."

The woman in the personals ad turns out to be the very mate he was bored with. Turns out she felt the same way. They learn something about each other and reunite afresh. Like most so-called "love songs" there's an edge of suffering, expressed here as boredom and attempted infidelity, underlying the joy and romantic feeling.

Love versus "being in love" versus caring for or about someone

The meaning of true love, the ultimate and deepest kind of love, is a tricky thing to understand or explain. The lack of specialized vocabulary for love in the English language and the way we use that one word in so many different contexts really contributes to confounding understanding. The biggest confusion, in my personal experience, is that many people are unable to distinguish or have not noticed the differences between so-called "romantic love" (and the feelings associated with what the Freudians call cathexis) and love in the sense of "I love my partner by remaining faithful to him/her." I argue that in a marriage or any relationship over time, romantic love may come and go, but this sense of deeper, non-sexual, familial love only grows stronger and is only possible through choices and actions.

I like some of how this person put it, from journeythroughdivorce.com:

A person who says, “I love you, but I’m not IN LOVE with you,” is making a distinction between 2 different feelings. But NEITHER of those feelings are love!

When a person says, “I love you, but I’m not IN LOVE with you,” they’re saying that I CARE about you but I’m not EXCITED about you.

CARING about someone is a good thing. It’s reflective of CONCERN. But it’s different then [sic] love. [...]

Being EXCITED about someone is also a good thing. But it’s different than love. I might be excited to have a relationship with the President of the United States or a Hollywood star, but that doesn’t mean I love them.

I also like this quote from William Bridges' book "Transitions," which he quoted from Ruby Dee at the start of chapter 3:

It takes a long time to be really married. One marries many times at many levels within a marriage. If you have more marriages than you have divorces within the marriage, you're lucky and you stick it out.

I would add that conscious choice must be involved: in many cases you must choose your marriage or your relationship many times over the years for it to last, especially in this age when we all seem to think there's a quick fix or easy solution for everything, and everything is replaceable. As I've said before here, the marriage vows are most meaningful when the marriage is challenged, not when it's easy.

When I read these things I feel hope that some day I will meet a woman who sees love as I do, who is aware of and sensitive to the distinctions. I think shared values are extremely important in a relationship. Sharing an understanding of love and sharing a practice of it in choice and action is a key, I think, to the best kind of relationship.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Transitions

Before I forget, a great movie for one who is going through or has been through the grief of divorce (or the ending of any long relationship) is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

I am participating in a divorce workshop with a group of men and women going through and recovering from divorce. It's really a great experience and I wish I could have found such a group 2 years ago (when all I wanted to do was lie down and die if I couldn't be with my wife).

A great book recommendation I'd like to pass along too is William Bridges' Transitions (Amazon referrer link via one-journey consulting, the folks hosting our workshop), which talks a lot about divorce and other major transitions in life.

A couple things I got out of Bridges' book so far:

1. A lot of people experience a major, age/maturity-related life transition around the age of 30. It's well documented by researchers. My ex-wife definitely fits the profile of the young woman coming into her own and drastically changing her life in the process of coping with it.

2. A marriage can survive major personal and interpersonal transitions, but it's not entirely clear what the recipe is or whether there is one. I truly believe that my marriage could have been "saved" if some things had been different. I also believe that it was worth saving but I really didn't believe my wife was willing or able to at the time and I wish I'd had more experience and awareness and been able to say or do some things differently to help and understand her.

I do not believe at all that there was anything inherently incompatible about us (we were together for 8 years, so how could that be?) or inherently irresolvable about the problems in our marriage. But if you aren't lucky, the timing isn't right, the support structures aren't in place to help you both, your not ready to see certain things or your partner isn't or a myriad other reasons, personal transitions can and do lead to the break-up of marriages. People make moves, take actions that either really are or seem to be irreversible. New paths are bushwhacked when the old one seems unnavigable.

I also think, after tonight's workshop, which is composed partly of people who initiated their divorce and those who did not, that one can learn to be open and understanding and compassionate toward the plight of one's ex-spouse, even if they were unfaithful, without being required to condone their actions or even the divorce itself.

Thank you

Values

You think you know someone's values. Then you experience that person in a situation where their values are challenged to the core. How do they act? Are their actions consistent with their professed values?

People themselves may not even know what their true values are until they are tested. You can't trust what people say not only because people prevaricate but also they do not know themselves.

Practice trusting yourself. Your intuition is your best guide for matters that cannot be cracked by reason alone. Regardless of what someone professes about their beliefs, values, aspirations, listen to your natural intuitive response to the person's behavior, not just their words.

Clearing the Deck

January 3, 2007 marked the second anniversary of my divorce hearing. I once regretted my willing compliance with that ritual of matrimonial annihilation. I thought I should have protested, refused to play along. But I remind myself that the battle was lost. She had turned away to some other man, some other life, another identity. There was nothing better to do than appear in court to disavow my wife as she wished.

Some of the women I took up with after my wife have moved on, the ones who kept in touch. One has a boyfriend and is much happier than when we met, both of us recently abandoned by our spouses at the time. Another is engaged and bought a house with her beau. These two women were lovers and close friends. Now they drift away with their own lives, our relationship diminishing as their lives turn inward toward their romantic relationships.

All I know about my ex-wife is that she moved out of state. I have no idea where or why or with whom. That person completely abandoned her previous life, including all relations with me, pets, and belongings. Her identity change was symbolized by reverting her surname to her maiden name. Her attitude toward me altered considerably. We haven't spoken for, I don't know, two years or so, though it wasn't that long ago that I still wished I could speak to her. As far as I have been concerned, I have considered my ex-wife to be as irretrievable and non-existent as if she were dead. For all intents and purposes, there is no friction between that belief and my reality. Legally, Catherine Stirling no longer exists. The world acted accordingly and I complied, altering my life as if she no longer existed. It is a strange, painful experience and process: the legal abnegation and dissolution of two identities; one person freed to a new identity by another person being forced to relinquish theirs. But changing one's true identity is not as easy as uttering the speech act to declare it.

I am currently romantically unattached. I could be, but I am not ready yet. I am barely divorced, in the sense that "divorced" is a new identity that I have just barely established for myself. For the past two years I spent most of my time dealing with the end of my "married" and "husband" identities and beliefs and feelings and then establishing a new identity and set of beliefs as, you could say, "a man in his mid-30s with an established career, divorced by his college sweetheart a few years ago."

I think I have fully absorbed and yes, even recovered, from the drenching grief and stress and shock that comes from having one's identity forcibly and radically altered and a beloved spouse suddenly absented from one's life. But I have just barely realized benefits from my new freedom, which seemed a burden and a thing to escape at first. Along the way I discovered and learned ways to turn freedom into possibility and I have worked on "progressing" in various areas of my life such as financial, professional and physical. After all, what else is there to do but make oneself busy with life?

It's amazing how memories can be unlocked in great richness by investigating things, by smelling, feeling, seeing things one has not handled or seen for some time. I took my time sorting through papers and other things from my marriage. Gradually and sometimes abruptly over two years I threw away things that belonged to her or us, or I donated them to charity. I still have (why, I'm not sure, maybe in case I never marry again) a small collection of mementos -- my wedding band, the poem she gave me on our first anniversary, some pictures. Other than that, nothing remains. I went through the last pile of miscellaneous clothing a few months ago, pulling out napkins to throw out that we'd used during several family holidays, piling up hats and scarves to donate, separating out a few old socks that I could match for myself from a wicker basket neglected since I moved it from my marital house to my townhouse.

Divorce teaches one about the lack of intrinsic value in things, the variable identities of things as well as people, that value depends on relationship. What were once meaningful symbols and valued artifacts become disused tokens signifying nothing, as words in the lexicon of a dead language from a lost world. Their value can be remembered, even desired, but it's gone.

My ex-wife left pretty much all her and all what you'd call "our" stuff with me at our house when she left. From my perspective, she seemed really irresponsible. I was working full time, like always, and she had the summer off, like usual. She could have helped out a bit but she was, I later learned, suddenly wrapped up in a new relationship (which she never, to me, admitted or discussed at all, which shows how much a person's identity can chage -- i.e., to such an extent that they no longer recognize or respect any personal connection with you). She asked me to store all her and our things indefinitely. I said no. She said she didn't care what happened to any of it. There was a mountain of stuff. As far as selling the house, taking care of the two cats, paying bills -- all me too. She skipped out on a life, which is what happens when one's identity is changed radically. It was really weird. I thought she'd had a psychotic break. Her skin broke out something fierce. She lost weight and looked emaciated. She started a new relationship immediately, as I mentioned, months before the actual divorce. She expressed seething anger and contempt for me, which seemed, to me at the time, fool that I was still living in a world that no longer existed, irrational! I watched my loving wife of 6 years transform into a vicious, uncompromising, ruthless adversary in a matter of months, maybe weeks. That experience changed how I view many things (I'd be a complete fool if it didn't!).

Its been two and a half years since she left and I finally feel OK, like normal, like I have established the foundation I need to go forward from here as a fully functioning, happy and healthy individual and not just some wounded victim of love.

Time is an undeniably important factor in getting over the end of a relationship. I won't say it heals all. But it is important. There is no magic cure, no drug, no philosophy, no affirmation, no practice that can shortcut you past the suffering and work required to get back on your own two feet. Suffering and work both take time.

I think I am lucky to be able to say that I have dabbled in relationships since my divorce, but I have spent most of my time single, especially the past 7 or 8 months. I have accomplished a lot since she left me. One finds ways to turn water into wine, spin essence out of existence, watch what happens and learn as one goes. That's all there is to do.

Transition in Heart and Mind

At this point in my divorced life I have begun to reflect on my marriage and divorce with melancholy equanimity.

There was for me a long period of grief* during which my mind exuded so much negative emotion and, feeding upon itself, thoughts, memories and dreams that released more and more painful emotional experience. It is a cyclone, feeding itself, generating new pain and dredging deeper memories and fears as it grinds and tears in your mind.

As it begins to clear there is a new experience of freedom. It is dry and plain. It is there, was always there. But now it is impressed on the mind as a fact of life to be reminded of daily. The bald, basic facts of divorce and going alone are your aloneness and your freedom. You might jump out of your seat and race for the nearest party place if you had been released from a prison and had this freedom and aloneness. And you would quickly do what we all do, what every freed prisoner does: begin to slice away at your freedom and aloneness as soon as possible -- run from it, build on it, hide it, relinquish it to others, cash it in for a new relationship, pursuit or distraction.

But, back to the desert, where the bereft find themselves. This is where I am. I was not the prisoner escaping a marriage that I had come to view as a jail cell. That was my wife. And she duly ran off to the party, by all accounts. I can't say personally because I can't say as I know her anymore. We are estranged. I have been disowned as husband and friend. I can say, so far, for close to 18 months, that has been the truth.

So where am I going with this? I guess I have been thinking about the earlier writings I did when I was able to articulate ex tempore what I experienced during some of the most intense times of my divorce. What do I do with them? Where do I stand today? How do I incorporate my present and my past? My future would seem to depend on it -- not a future that repeats the past after perhaps 8 more years of blindly running in a circle, but one that asserts a new trajectory with regard to my personal relationships.

A transition in heart and attitude begins to take place naturally. Answers to questions I asked with utmost seriousness and earnestness while suffering the grief of divorce begin to take a more final shape. Ignorance begins to cede to knowledge as grief finally subsides to melancholy reflection. The intense pangs of grief seem to diminish eventually. But the mind is still attracted to the whole experience. Where feeling is no longer the most obvious guide to the mind's activity, the way is cleared for reason and contemplation to satisfy themselves.

It holds much challenge to set your jaw and face this desert landscape for any adult whose life is already filled with responsibilities and challenges. And few in your day to day life will know this desert you are wandering, which is just a quieter, clearer, less tumultuous stretch than that you have already walked. Aloneness accentuates itself given opportunity. Sitting with these things -- aloneness, the freedom, large questions and memories -- while the impetus of life undulates forward in time . . . is very hard to do. But it seems to be possible to some extent, with a little effort. The main effort that seems to be required is to quell the desire to leap away from it all, which is to invent or be graced with the will to see that desire, accept it, yet not act on it.

Well, as I said, aloneness can become accentuated by time. You do need to get out and see people and do things. But there is no rush. "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread," as Alexander Pope said. I've tried leading with my heart. It needs the temper of learning from the past though. And I think that takes some time and contemplation and aloneness. This is me trying to realize the statement from Susan Anderson's The Journey from Abandonment to Healing : Turn the End of a Relationship into the Beginning of a New Life:

It is important to realize that only when you stop fighting the fact that you're alone can you recognize its purpose in your emotional recovery. - p. 80

*I was going to qualify this grief as grief "of divorce," but after reflecting on my experiences and works such as C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed and Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, the grief of divorce, for some people at least, is no better, worse or qualitatively different from the grief of death.

Trust

Trust: Good thread on trust on a "dating after divorce" forum. I can totally relate.

After someone told you repeatedly that they'd NEVER leave you, for years, and then they do . . . how do you trust anyone again? Short answer: you don't.

My Mind a Year Ago

I found this email draft to myself, dated 1/5/05, while searching my old email for some information. What a horrible time. And that wasn't even the worst of it. Around this time I was pelted by waves of grief and depression daily. I was on antidepressants, which had saved my job. I couldn't have functioned otherwise, unless you call sobbing uncontrollably, quivering and staring at a computer monitor all day "functioning." Even by January, 6 months or so after my stupid wife left I was practically useless and had taken a new, less technical job that was less demanding. Anyway, here it is, a nasty little reminder. I am in a much different place today, though far from where I was once. Warning, what follows has several expletives. I'm not editing it except to remove my ex-wife's name. It wouldn't be honest or helpful to anyone to expurgate what is essentially an objectionable experience.

- want to bargain with C.: come back and I will: let you get a 3rd cat, let you live in my big new place, take you traveling, go to therapy w/you

- every day is a struggle. A fucking struggle, especially the morning

- Monday night was horrible. Fucking horrible. I wept and sobbed. I want to help C., so much. I feel so strongly that she's fucking her life up. I felt to sorry for her and so helpless to help. I think she's lost, and I think part of that is what fucked up our marriage. I fear she'll come to some realization that the marriage was a good thing, but it will be too late. I'll be gone or have given up. How do I move on? I want to wait, but I don't have the strength or the greatness to wait for something that might never happen. I feel bad. I feel I should be able to wait.

- Suicidal thoughts. Not emotional ones, just rational ones. Why live? Why not die? Reading book on euthanasia. With my marriage over, what's my purpose for living? It was my #1 purpose

- Life should be good, and it is at times. But it's shot through with remorse and sorrow. My successes and happiness undercut by the world and people in my life who aren't doing as well.

- I want to be normal. Just normal. Not sad, not great, not depressed, not ecstatic. Just normal.

- I wish I could erase my memory. That's how bad it feels. I totally empathize with the characters in the movie "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."

- Seeing C. again rips open the wound I thought was almost healed. All this shit -- the pleading, the wishing I could erase the memories, the suicidal thoughts, the daily struggle -- I'VE BEEN THROUGH THIS!!

- cleaning the house, shit even living in it, is hard. I get flashes of memories that are psychologically painful. How do I deal with these? One of the worst is the memory of the first day we moved in here -- how happy we both were, both coming in at the same time, the place all empty. It's devastating to think of.

No kidding. It was horrible living in that house alone. I worked my ass off to sell it and so did my realtor. She was a savior in the regard. It took months of keeping the place constantly clean (with two cats, one of whom puked in some random place once a week or so) so it could be shown at any time. It was shown almost daily for months and there was an open house most weekends.

I was so desperate to get out of there that I made an offer on and bought a condo for myself before I sold that one. I was looking at paying two large mortgages concurrently if the old house didn't sell. I did it though, or we did it, the realtor and I, in the nick of time.

At the time I wrote these thoughts down I had no idea how hard the year ahead was going to be. I kept hoping the suffering would end, kept thinking I might be about to turn the corner. I stopped the antidepressants during one of those wishful periods and never took them again. But no, it dragged on and on. And I grew more and more tired of living. I started reading everything I could about depression and psychology.

Less than a month later my octogenarian grandmother, an avid walker for decades, would fall and slam her head on the ground while out walking, losing the ability to walk. The event and its immediate aftermath, which was grave and nearly fatal for my grandmother, devastated my grandfather, putting much stress on his heart and setting the rest of the family on edge to await death, which suddenly seemed imminent for both of them. I sent an email to my ex-wfe. I had no one else in place to help me cope with this sort of tragic event. I got a brief "sorry to hear that" response that was apparently not good enough for me at the time. Looking back at my follow-up response, I don't see anything I really disagree with today except the obviously misguided and pointless attempt to engage her and get attention with a screed, beseeching and accusing simultaneously, to listen, show some compassion, share this life with me, help me, even if it hurts. But no. You can see her flat response, which had become old hat, but I was lower than ever and still adjusting to the new menu of pain. She read the passion and hurt in my words as simply "yelling" at her, ever the daughter to be placated, never to placate. I wasn't saying anything she wanted to hear, like "thank you for the stock response, and enjoy your rapturous liberation (it'll only cost me a year and a half of emotional blitzkrieg, but don't worry hon', I always picked up the tab, didn't I?)." If there's one thing she taught me, it's to be a professional ex-husband. Ah, all the sarcasm in the world buys nothing. I'm sorry.

--- Scott Stirling wrote:
> My grandparents stuck it out for 62 years. I had hoped
> to do the same. I've never seen such love as I saw
> between the two of them yesterday. Human love can only
> be so good. We're not gods. I don't think it gets much
> better than they had. And he, taking part in WWII bombing
> in the Pacific, the two of them raising 4 sons and traveling
> the world -- this is the end, and that is how he and they
> will be remembered.
>
> You can never be trusted again, can you? You're like
> a traitor who flipped and went to the other side. After
> 8 years you flip and say your past was a lie, a mistake
> and that love wasn't love. Funny thing, there is absolutely
> no reason to believe that you would not go right ahead and
> do the exact same thing again with someone else, whether
> it's 1 year, 3 years, or 8 more years. Could take a while
> to find out. Only naive optimism and early passion
> of a new relationship could fool someone (including
> you) into believing you would be able to commit and endure
> for the kind of relationship everyone really wants --
> lifetime love and commitment, someone to care for them in
> old age, "when I'm 64."
--------------------
Scott,

Let's please be cordial, or at least "professional".
I don't need to be yelled at by you anymore. Please
don't send emails of this kind to me anymore.

Thanks,
C.

Better to be Left than to Leave?

Imagine, if my ideas about the underlying causes of my divorce are more or less true, what other outcomes could have happened. There were two main forces to drive my marriage to divorce: one was my desire to be free from taking care of the needs of a person who was in many ways immature and a pain to be with because I wanted her to embody more of what I expected from a grown up (more and more over the years), the other was my ex-wife's desire to grow up and out of a protected, supportive environment that gave her more freedom and responsibility than her parents allowed.

Had I left her without resolving her issues, which I considered at one crucial point in my marriage a couple years before she ended it for her reasons, my immediate problem would have been alleviated (in return for an unknown but likely list of other issues to work through). But she would have been left, in the worst case, to repeat this cycle with someone else, perhaps having children in an unhappy second marriage, perhaps never growing up in the way she needed and wanted to. In the best case she would have realized she needed to grow up on her own and done that and then married again or whatever she chose to do.

What happened is that she left first and dealt with her problem and, in a way, mine. But I think this was done in the worst possible way for me. It couldn't have been more painful if she suddenly died. The unbearable image in my mind of her broken-hearted by a fatihless husband was enough to stop me. For her, since she refused (or was possibly incapable to do due to her maturity level) to compromise or be compassionate for me in the situation, I think she probably bought her own share of issues to resolve at some future time. But I can never be sure of that.

On second thought, I don't know if anyone really won. I was trying to make a case for it. I know my ex-wife thinks she won, though. She told everyone how happy she was to be free of me (and, I suppose, every adult responsibility that went with being married and a homeowner). Maybe in the end that's all that matters -- that she be happy and think she did the right thing. I will survive. Following through on my role as surrogate father, shouldn't I be happy that my daughter grew up and left the nest? Maybe someday that will be my consolation.

Look at me . . . I just can't let my marriage collapse into an abyss of meaninglessness, can I? My ex-wife and many others were content with her simple version of events. But I can't let things go like that. I can't look at life and
let it devolve to the meaningless absurdity that nature gives man raw. A loving relationship of 8 years should mean something. I have to create something to make sense of it, to put things in order, and I put a lot of energy into it -- A LOT over the past year and a half. That, I think, says something about me, how I am, what I am. And of my ex-wife? I know nothing, have nothing -- just a story I tried to concoct for both of us that would, to my surprise (though not entirely), honor the humanity in both of us, our love and our marriage, even though she doesn't care.

Divorce: a Year to the Day

On this day in 2005, with deep regret and sadness, I peacefully allowed my marriage to end in a divorce sought passionately by my then wife. I've had a tough year full of questions, depression, grief and anger. My marriage ended quickly, as I know it did for many people who have found my blog and written to me about their divorce experiences. Recently I feel I have turned a corner. It's been a year to the day. And I survived the lonely holiday season this year better on my own. I feel I have reached a better, however imperfect it may be, understanding of why she left, why she left when she did and why she left the way she did (which I have documented in some of my previous posts). There will be more questions, but I understand more than I did for a long painful period. I am sharing my thoughts here to express myself and to share with others who I hope can find some value in it.

Like many who have lived through divorce, I wonder how I could have avoided the whole thing. What could I have done differently to prevent my marriage from ending so painfully, from ending at all? Even before my divorce I had internalized the view that the happiness of others is not, generally, my responsibility or something I can control. There was nothing wrong with me that made my wife leave. Anyone who has bought that tale of blame from their ex should take what I just said to heart, rather than any message of self-blame, self-hate (which, of course, a bitter and resentful ex-spouse will encourage you to accept). Aspects of my personality and hers and the changing dynamics of our relationship over the years led to both of us experiencing unhappiness. But unhappiness does not itself lead to a sudden and one-sided divorce. My ex-wife like many unhappy people in relationships, tried to sell me and all her friends and family that simplistic story. And she seems to have been satisfied with it herself. Don't buy it. You'll probably never have a satisfactory understanding of what really happened if you believe their words prima facie and try to find the primary cause for your spouse's despair in yourself.

For me, I found it necessary to understand what beliefs, needs and motivations were behind my wife's actions -- and not just her final departure, but her whole mode of existence for years, even before I knew her. And I quickly realized (though the understanding and the heart took a long time to find their union) that this short-tempered, stubborn person who made me her worst enemy was not capable of the calm lucidity and self-awareness needed to give me the answers through self-report, though her blame, accusations and actions around the divorce would provide plenty of data for reflection in the painful months ahead.

Sure, my interpretation of her actions and my analysis of her behavior and our history and her family history is open to error. But I have come to trust my own intuitions and observations above all else when it comes to my life. And I've had a therapist to check my story and give me her own candid feedback. And I've had some interaction with somewhat objective family members, mostly mine, to help me see where I could be on the track or offbase. In the end, this is the best I or any of us who have had a total communication breakdown with another can do -- hypothesize, consider the facts and keep trying until as many pieces as possible fall into place.

In my case, I think it's clear that my ex-wife wanted and (for her development to maturity) needed an authority figure -- a surrogate father figure to replace the one for which she lost respect or never respected, due in part to her unhappy mother's undermining her respect for the man for years and years, and also due to some character flaws in the man, worse than most if you believe my ex-wife, but no worse than most if you knew the man or asked his sons or knew the impossibility of perfection that all humans are born to. He died a couple years after I married his daughter. She never got to resolve some important open issues that she had with him, I believe -- not just with him, in particular, but with a male authority, masculine being, leader and protector -- the figure of father we all have to deal with somehow in our lives.

The model of the strong male authority/leader figure with a subordinate, sometimes
subversive, feminine woman is one I consciously and intentionally tried to follow from my paternal grandparents' example; my grandparents, who had the only enduring and, from all outward appearances (to a child), happy marriage relationship I could observe while growing up.

It has become clearer and clearer to me that over the marriage I tired of acting as the authority figure but also resisted changing the model because I didn't know any other. Like a father with a teenage daughter I was often expected to make decisions and lead the way, yet always a potential subject for rebellion, anger and dissatisfaction when my way wasn't completely satisfactory.

There was an incident involving our swimming pool that contributed to her final break in the last year. I first suggested that we remove our above-ground pool (we had no children and I never used it and found it an eyesore and an unwelcome chore to open, maintain and then close each year) and replace it with a stone patio and landscpaping designed with my brother, hoping to create a sanctuary in the backyard and increase the value of our property. After a couple years of the subject remaining unresolved, I had had enough and insisted on it. She angrily relented. But she had an enduring, unexpressed unhappiness about not getting her way, which she threw in my face a couple months later, after I thought everything was, as she assured me, fine, and the pool had since been removed.

So many things fall into place with this view of the relationship. I told people at the end of my marriage that I felt like the only adult involved in the divorce -- she just left all her stuff at "our" house and moved in with a family member across town. She planned to leave it there indefinitely. She didn't care about it. She had just finished another undergraduate degree after years of searching and thinking about what to do after her first college degree and, just like a daughter leaving the parental nest, she left me immediately. She left me, all her things, a nice, big house and her two cats to live in the basement of a family member, working an entry level job like any other recent college graduate.

I think she was just living out a story or a stage of life that she didn't get to do when we graduated from college. And she wasn't primed or prepared to uphold a marriage through difficult times, in part due to her immaturity and inexperience with relationships (something we all suffer) and in part due to a definite negative example of a very dysfunctional marriage by her parents. I entertained her, took care of her, gave her an income to spend and manage in a safe environment, sheltered her, encouraged and funded her schooling and career aspirations. She in turn cooked for me, cleaned the house much more than I did, and did fun things like decorate for holidays. I got a nice, old-fashioned wife out of the deal and got to act as an old-fashioned husband. But eventually I tired of living and spending all of my time with someone who had, in some ways, still some growing up to do. She left me to grow up and be an adult, finally. Believe me, this is not how I saw things when she was leaving me.

Now, what did she tell me was the reason? Well, she seemed to zero in on the authority thing, though she wasn't able to admit or see that she had chosen me to play that role for her in life (much less why). She also couldn't see how any of the traits she suddenly claimed she hated (after 8 years) about me were character traits of her own as well (I did try to get there by "going first," taking some of the traits about her that bothered me and explaining how I could see those things in myself, which was new for me at the time). She was totally resistant to accepting blame, which would have been a sign of maturity had she been more willing to picture a truly balanced version of our relationship.

The only story I got from her was, in short, "we are too different and I am not happy with you anymore." I hope you can see that that explanation is no more useful or penetrating to the truth than silence. Getting one person's raw perspective is one thing, getting the truth is another. Even if you are dealing with a very self-aware, lucid and compassionate person willing to collaborate, some analysis, digging and, hard as it is, neutrality and compassion are required to reach an understanding that takes both sides into account and treats them both justly.

What could I have done differently? I could have not shirked my authority role, but I did. I didn't know the consequences that would have and I was uncomfortable doing it at first, but I did it anyway. I think one event that undermined my authority (much to my later relief, though not at the time) was when she saw me give in to another person's influence about a year before the break-up and, in turn, enable her to try smoking pot for the first time. Drinking, smoking, pot were not part of our relationship at all for 6 or 7 years. There was one erosion of the Scott she knew, the uncompromising man of principles gave in and smoked pot after 10 years of total abstinence.

Another thing I could have done differently was be more open to communication at certain times. There were a couple times over the years where she expressed dissatisfaction with our relationship and she bought a couple books, but I didn't see anything seriously wrong. I tended to believe that minor chronic and acute problems in a marriage were normal. My grandparents told me that marriage was full of compromises. I'd had several girlfriends and dated a lot. I saw nothing like the violence, infidelity and communication breakdowns that I witnessed between my parents growing up. I figured I knew all I needed to know. I should have been more open to my own ignorance. I could have listened more at the right times, which I didn't realize
were the right times until later.

That's about all I have at the moment. Explanation doesn't make me happier though. It just makes me sad. It makes me pity myself for what I've been through, makes me mourn lost opportunities to do my part to fix things, makes me feel more lonely than ever.

But it also helps me realize that the way she turned on me and threw away our entire past was to an extent appropriate to her level of maturity more than to any factor attributable to me. She wants nothing to do with me, doesn't want to hear from me or about me, much like an angry, somewhat maladjusted teenager rebelling against a parent. I don't deserve to be involved romantically with someone like that. I am better off alone or free to pursue grown up relationships with other like-minded adults.

Does all this mean I think my divorce was inevitable? No. I will always think that people can collaborate and communicate to solve problems. I think my ex-wife had the potential to do that a year ago. But if one is unwilling, then the willingness of the other is for naught. And that, that fact, is where, for me, human life clarifies its nature as not just a duality of opposing forces -- good and bad, happiness and sadness, man and woman -- but an absurdity. And that's what I am dealing with now: how to live in a world that I know is absurd and always will be.