There's Something About Harry

Would it trouble you if your wife starts getting email from another man?

Odds are she gets emails from other men every day, all day long, just like everyone else in the world.

Its a little different however, when that email comes from a man that you have recently seen man handling your wife a bit . . .  hmmm maybe touchy/feely/patting/rubbing your wife might be a more apt description.

That was the surprise that I had to deal with last week, when I wrote ‘Things that completely Derail your Week: Server problems, Noisy Neighbors Construction and Your Wife’s boyfriend ‘.  I was having a great week, things were coming together, life was good.

Then a brand new reality hit me between the eyes.  A reality that was there before, just out of my range of vision.

Becky, my wife of 16 years, had met another guy on our anniversary (Halloween).  I was there, sitting next to her.  We were all having a good time and I was happy for her, getting attention from other guys.

One of those guys Friended her on Facebook 3 days later.  I didn’t notice nor see it in her stream.

I don’t pick apart my wife’s Facebook stream and read every single thing she writes or that others write in it.  I’m interested, but the way Facebook works it just doesn’t show me everything, unless I go to her profile and look at her Wall every day.

So I missed that new friendship she created with a guy she had been heavily heavily flirting with a couple days before when we were out celebrating together, our monthly date night amplified by our anniversary, and the first time we’ve celebrated it alone since we had kids 11 years ago.

There is no real significance other than unfortunate timing that my wife picked up a guy on our anniversary I guess. I suspect there are some serious fucking taboos for a husband to pick up a girl while out with his wife on their anniversary, but I’m not sure if that goes both ways.  Maybe its a double standard, maybe its just a silly taboo in my own head, but for whatever reason, it did not bother my wife that night.  It did not bother me, that night either.

I did not expect that bond/phsyical relationship to go anywhere else at all afterwards.  So I was not worried nor concerned about losing Becky.

Ironically and BIG FAT DISCLAIMER HERE . . . SOMETHING Becky reminds me that I have failed to mention, that night on our anniversary, I did know about the flirting and groping.  I did not discourage it.  I was fine with it, even encouraged it, not in a goading sort of “Hey why don’t you go rub up against that guy so I can watch.” kind of way, but more in a “if you are having a good time flirting with the guy sitting next to you when I’m here and more fun when I’m in the bathroom, have fun.  Enjoy yourself.”

But we live in an extra connected super social world these days.  I should know, I work as a web designer, blogger and social media type.

I know the ins and outs of the business pretty well at this point, and I know social media pretty well as well.

So it shouldn’t have surprised me that a Facebook friend connection developed afterwards.  In general, in my business, many many people friend each other extremely casually, for almost no reason other than networking.

Personally, I’m not as cavalier with my Facebook friends.  I will connect with anyone on LinkedIn for business networking.  I will selectively follow people that carry on conversations on Twitter and allow anyone short of a spammer or stalker to follow me there.  But on Facebook, I try to limit my friends to people that I have met in person, know somewhat well and generally, like.

Those categories all fit for my wife and her new man friend.  They met in person, they got to know each other fairly well physically.  They had a good time together singing along to music all night, and a Facebook connection even by my crusty old standards was not terribly nuts.

I just never saw it coming.  I never saw it happen.

I don’t tell my wife every time I make a new Facebook friend.  I don’t tell my wife every time I add a new Facebook friend that is a woman.  I do tend to tell her if I have added a Facebook friend that I have slept with (decades ago before we got married and that list is pretty short).  She tends to mention that to me as well.

But this situation seemed different to me, still does.  I’m not saying it is or isn’t, just feels that way to me due to everything involved:

• Our Date Night adventure
• Our Anniversary
• The significance of our first anniversary away from the kids
• The fact that they met and had a lot of physical contact, then became friends.
• Take that last item and add to it that she did not tell me that she was still talking with the guy, who I’m going to call ‘Hobie’ (that’s not his name, but is a code word that Becky will probably understand when she reads this.  I feel like I have to give him a name, and I do not want to use his real name.  I’m not convinced that he has any blame in this situation (its possible but I’m deferring judgment)
• Despite having my business card (and hers I think) Hobie, chose not to Friend me on Facebook.  I never expect gratitude, but if a guy lets another guy fondle his wife at a bar, you’d think the beneficiary could at least be civil after the fact and offer to be a friend, or mention, I had a good time hanging out with you and your wife the other night, hope things didn’t get too carried away and that we can be friends, so I’m sending you and your wife a Friend request.
  • He didn’t do that, so in my mind even though she may not have been sneaking around, I think he was.
  • I think she did not see that he was sneaking around, but she should have because lets face it, guys tend to have sex on the brain.  Especially single guys, and especially single guys that have just spent the night fondling a woman that continues to talk with them on Facebook, Yahoo chat, Yahoo email, and on her work email. 

Whether Becky realizes or realized it or not, she was continuing to send out steady signals to Hobie that she was interested in him after a sexually charged introduction and encounter and unlike the night when we were out together and she was flirting with another guy in front of me, she was now sending off these follow up signals where I could not see.

I don’t think I’d mind this half as much if she had slept with him that night and I had known.  I probably would not have participated but knowing and giving my blessing as her husband would have made it ok in my book.

This doesn’t feel OK because it got hidden behind closed technological doors.

Helicopter Parents and Helicopter Spouses

A friend of mine shared this article from Time Magazine called “The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting”.  It is a very good article and as the parent of 3 kids, I completely relate with the article.  (The article also talks about Lenore Skenazy and her experience being dubbed by Google as one of the worst moms in the world or something.  I think she’s a great mom from what I’ve read myself.)

We’re not on the worst end of being helicopter parents, but due to the culture of so many families all operating at this over parenting level, our kids literally can not play with other kids outside in our neighborhood.  The other kids just do not come outside to play.  They only go where there are organized sporting events.

It is terrible. 

I was reading this article while I still had the situation with Becky and myself on the brain.  In particular, late last night, a casual comment she made on Facebook about going running with a friend (female) from work last night caught my attention.

Two people had pushed the ‘Like’ button on Facebook.  One of those people was Hobie.

I suddenly felt all the crap and bad shit all over again (at a smaller level).  This guy is in my wife’s life and he’s not really going away.  I do think my wife has the capacity to love, friend, help other people, not just me.  I’m not selfish for her attention, but the injury that I felt from some of the things listed above and more, are still fresh wounds.  So every time I see Hobie connect with Becky online or in the real world (see Recovering After the Date with My Wife’s Boyfriend ) it rips open part of that un-healed wound all over again.

Yes it is scarring over and not as raw as it was originally, but its not fully healing each time either before its split open again.

I realized that one of the things that makes parents, ‘Helicopter Parents’ is that all this extra connectivity from cable news about molesters and child abductions, to mobile phones and text messages and emails with their kids and teachers, to web cams and much much more.  It all pounds us with this extra information about the perils and evils and dangers of life.

Our natural reaction, is to shield our kids behind us with our backs to the fire and fend off the danger.  That is just how we are wired.  The more danger that presents itself (electronically) the more we get our hackles up and try to fend off the perceived danger.

That’s what is partly happening with Hobie and Becky’s online relationship.

I’m seeing small snipits of their online relationship, things in her Facebook stream like them Friending each other early in November.

I went back and looked after the fact, she also friended 2-3 other guys this month.  I have no idea how many people I friended in the same time period nor how many may have been women.

I have seen snipits where she has talked with him back and forth in chat messages on her computer.  I’ve seen emails (subject/sender not body) that he sent her on her computer, when she left her screen open one afternoon for several hours.  Not exactly hiding from me, but seeing his name after I realized they had a relationship in emails bothered me.

As a guy that loves Becky and doesn’t want to lose her, I see a handful of danger signals

• Physical flirting >
• Turned to new online relationship >
• Grown into continued conversations and relationship >
• Resulting in invitation by him to her to go out again, oh and ok bring your husband too if you need a designated driver (btw Becky doesn’t remember passing on the invitation to me only to come as the designated driver, but she did want me to be the designated driver.  )
• And then following that night out (almost can stop calling it a date) they are still in contact

I have not asked Becky to stop talking with him.  She has stated that they are friends.  I would not be happy if she asked me to stop being friends with someone, and I will not ask it of her.  I have not asked her not to un-friend him on Facebook either.  Although last night in a week moment I seriously though of doing the extremely stupid and immature thing of changing my relationship status from ‘Married’ to ‘Its Complicated’.

I think those relationship status things are really stupid in general, but I felt like doing it (tired from night of work and emotionally disturbed from seeing his latest contact with her) . . . I felt like doing it to signal to her that I do see a problem in our relationship.

I have mentioned before that a bunch of this is my own issue.  Something I need to work through and get out of my system.  But we are a team, a couple, we love each other.  If something hurts me, its hurting us.  If something hurts her, it hurts me.

Hobie’s relationship with my wife has hurt me. 

I wish it hadn’t.  I wish I wasn’t vulnerable like that.  I think if Becky and I had simply been dating or living together for 16 years, I might even be a little more equipped to deal with this, but that’s one of the problems with marriage.  It makes you believe falsely that your relationship with the person you love is safe, just because of some stupid promise and a document.

Relationships are never safe.  They have to be protected and worked at all the time.  I know this, because I’ve seen to many fail from lack of protection and work.  Or in too many other cases because the couple lost or never had the key to making the relationship work from go.  That fatal flaw in their relationship that ultimately breaks them apart.

Becky and I have a fatal flaw like that in our relationship.  We have built up these barriers to protect ourselves over the years, protect ourselves from each other, and that is the weakness in our relationship that opens the door for disaster.

It could have probably happened the opposite way as well.

• Becky needs someone to lavish affection on her in front of other people.  She needs to be flirted with, and touched.
• I need someone to have deep conversations with.  I need to have that love for their thoughts and mind rekindled all the time.
• Becky can’t talk with me in depth, if I’m not lavishing affection on her.
• I can’t lavish physical affection on her if she’s not talking with me in heart to heart conversations about what is important.

Our needs are caught in a catch 22 (she abhores the concept and the word ‘paradox’ and ironically I love it).

We have to do something about this weakness together I think.  We have to be aware that it is a weakness.

Superman can’t defend himself from kryptonite if he doesn’t know that kryptonite can hurt him.  Same goes for our relationship.

In this case, something came between us because she was not talking with me and I was not lavishing attention on her.

In many ways, I think we are safe because it happened this way.

If it had happened in reverse.  If I had met a girl in that bar that night and instead of touching her and fondling her, but had had this amazingly deep conversation with her that night, and then a few days later engaged in the act with that girl that Becky needs most ‘lavishing of physical attention’ but done that in a setting where Becky could not see and then Becky later found out.  I think Becky would have been extremely hurt, as I have been.

So the two of us have to be aware of this situation and problem so that we can work to not set ourselves up in a situation where we are superman walking into a kryptonite esspro shop needing a shot of caffeine and not realizing that it comes with a kick of kryptonic self destruction.

Its All in the Unveiling of the Bad News

When I was young, I read the book the Hobbit about 7 or 8 times.  I read the Lord of the Rings a few times as well, but the first book was my favorite.  There’s a short story that is part of that book where the group of elves and hobbit and maybe gandolf too have been traveling for days and they desperately need refuge for the night.  There is a character whose name might be Beoren or something.  He’s a half man half bear, looks like a man during the day and changes into a bear at night.  He’s a hermit, bear man too and doesn’t like large groups of people.

So there are like a dozen/maybe 14 people in the group and that is far too many, so they devise a plan where a person or two will go introduce themselves and then additional people will show up at intervals by twos.

The first two arrive, introduce themselves and start to tell their tale of adventure, and then they hint at the their friends (not present) and just as Beoren is asking about these friends, two more dwarves show up.  This repeats over and over until the entire band of travelers are present and Beoren has been able to accept them all a bit at a time.

In this situation with my Becky and Hobie, the situation was revealed to me in a fantastically terrible way.

I didn’t know about the new friendship after our anniversary celebration and my Becky meeting Hobie.  I didn’t know that the relationship was kindling into a friendship or anything.  Then suddenly I was hit with the existence of the relationship, the invitation that sounded as if it were designed for them to meet together again, and my bit role in that future meeting, followed by evidence on top of evidence in the cyber world that indicated that their relationship had grown over the previous 2-3 weeks, but none of that evidence was qualitative, ergo I couldn’t read the chat messages, the emails, the facebook chats or messages.  I had no grounding for how fast or serious things might have developed.  I didn’t know if there were cause for alarm in this situation or not.

But I did immediately realize that are relationship had a weakness, I wasn’t keeping Becky happy, and that our barriers could be used to split us apart.  That knowledge drove the fear of my first article, and I’ve been striving to keep up with putting a cap on that fear and moving forward in a positive way since.

I’m getting there.  Becky and I are getting there.  We are making progress, but I do desperately look forward to the day where the reminders of this situation stop piling up on top of me at all the wrong times, in all the wrong ways.  I say that after I just spent 2 hours writing this article, relatively short at around 3,000 words compared to some of the others.  If total word count indicates my passion on the topic, or my pain spilling over, I think I’m over the top of the bell curve of pain right now and on the downward slope.

I hope its a slope and not one of those fucking long tails.  I need the long tail of pain like I need my wife to have a secret boyfriend. 

Addendum – About 4 paragraphs up or better, Becky and I talked on the phone several times as she was driving home.  It was one of the best conversations we have had on this topic yet, and might also be part of the reason why I was capable of slimming this article down a bit.  Thanks Becky, I know you are not trying to hurt me.

Love Brett