There's Something About Harry

Today is Monday, and all in all I’m doing better today.  After writing a significant amount yesterday about my wife, Becky’s ‘friend’, I then went out and ran in the cold rain for a long time.  It felt like 7-8 miles in a good way, but when I added it up a little bit ago, it was actually about 6.3.

I was running in my Vibram Five Finger toe shoes with my new toe socks that I picked up on Saturday at Rack Room Shoes.  The toe socks are a ridiculous multi colored affair, but the real purpose was to have something to keep my feet slightly warmer, and to reduce the amount of sweat in the shoes, until I can find some better actual running socks for toe shoes.

They make running shoe toe socks, but they cost $12 per pair, which seems kind of ridiculous to me.  I’m cheap and practical, function over form mostly, and I haven’t quite warmed to the idea of paying $12 for a pair of socks, 6 or 7 pair would cost more than the shoes!

For those of you that were wondering why my wife might look to some other guy for something missing in her life, you are probably not so surprised now that you’ve seen my new socks.

Anyway, all that writing, dumping my conflicted thoughts out on a blog, and then running off some of the built up anxiety and I don’t know what in my system definitely helped.  It actually helped a WHOLE lot.

I’d also like to clear up a couple points, even though I’ve kind of stated a couple of these before.

• My wife is not a bad person.
• I’m as sure as I can be that she has not actually had sex with her friend, and probably not with anyone since we have been married.  I say that not in a suspicious way, just pretty sure that it is the truth.
• She probably has not gone as far as to kiss another guy since we’ve been married either.
• She does read my blog from time to time (more so lately I think.)  And I guess if nothing else, this whole experience has probably locked me in with a solid new reader. 
• We are talking through this stuff both in person and via email.
• Finally, I’m going to stop calling my wife’s friend, her boyfriend.  I used that term quite a bit and it has certain emotional connotations, which signify the way I felt, the hurt I was feeling, the risk of things escalating and a bunch of other things.
  • • She does not view him as a boyfriend.  Other than me leaving her alone on a bar stool while I headed to the can at a bar with him on Halloween and Friday night, I don’t think she has ever been alone with him elsewhere, no dates, lunch, coffee etc.  If it were our kids (middle school and younger) we would jokingly refer to a similar type of friend as a boyfriend or girlfriend.  I specifically did not use the word lover or sexual partner for example when I wrote previously.  I use humor as a defense mechanism in part, and that is what I was doing when I used the word boyfriend.
    • I trust Becky.  In fact, she knows exactly how to hurt me, and I’m entrusting her not to do that.
• After writing the article yesterday and going running yesterday, I don’t feel like I’m going off the deep end nearly as much, but I think it might still be a good idea to find a counselor, mostly because I do not want to delay getting help and getting past this as a delay could increase the risk of our relationship getting into trouble and its that trouble I want to talk about today just a bit (have to keep this short and get back to work.)  One of my tricks here is that we know lots of people in the medical profession and I’d prefer to find someone that will not show up in our social circles.  (just a comfort thing)

Fear of Losing My Wife Due to Failure to Make Her Happy

I don’t really fear that I will lose my wife to another guy because of something he has that I lack.  I don’t necessarily feel that the friend in question is better looking or anything (not saying he’s ugly, but I’m not a good judge of guys looks.  Apparently, he’s a little shorter than I am (never noticed) and is probably a dozen years older.  This isn’t really about the ‘other guy’.

Its about what I have done wrong or failed to do right.

Not to toot my own horn (If I wanted to do that, I’d probably still be single), but I think I’m a relatively decent guy, a good husband and a good father.  I base my example on many of the other people I have known to fill that role.

I’m not perfect, and over time I think some of my imperfections have amplified as I get set in my ways a bit, and just get older in general.  I’m 37, even though some people think I’m younger.  I’ve been working full time for 20 years and part time in a family business for years before that.  Work is a key part of my make up, and also one of my faults.  I do work too much, but I’m getting better at it than I ever used to be.

I work from home primarily these days, which makes me ‘available’ significantly more than it ever did in the past.  The chief issue with working at home is one of ‘presence’.  I am at home when the kids leave for school and get home at night.  I’m at home for dinner most nights and all week long.  Due to the nature of working at home and trying to find quiet time to work and focus, that keeps me up late (after the kids go to bed working).  I fill in the quiet moments of the day with work, and try and be present when they are home.

That’s a huge improvement over the days when I worked in corporate America or worked full time and went to school full time both with and without children.

But work is distracting me from my family at times and vice versa.  Last week, I essentially worked 3 days, mostly because of this particular issue and the extra curricular activities with my wife on Thursday (New Moon midnight showing, shopping) and Friday ‘The date’ (still looking for a better description for that event).  I’m healing but not healed.

Becky seems to believe that I am still not ‘present’ near enough, if at all.    That bothers me quite a bit because on the one hand I feel a lot of guilt for not being present with the family even more than I am, but I also feel a lot of guilt for not working harder to make us more successful.

We have an upside down mortgage in Atlanta and since August are credit is pretty much falling to pieces after Bank of America spent the earlier part of the year raising our interest rates to 30% (just got off the phone with a bill collector).  That sapped all of the money we had for a rainy day, killed our credit, which up until August was stellar, and has put us behind on that upside down mortgage in Atlanta.

So part of me feels very guilty for not working 24/7 to make more money and fix that financial problem.  Hell, I used to be an accountant, and a credit manager running a billion+ line of credit.  the irony of that twists like a knife in my side.

Regardless, I’m sorry Bank of America, my wife and family are more important, and frankly your credit card practices (and I say this as a former credit manager with experience in the business) are responsible for the risk that you created for me and indirectly for yourself.

Stock Tip!  Short Bank of America, they did the same thing to over 4 million other people, this problem they created is likely growing nationwide.

ps I’m sorry to my friends that work for Bank of America, I hope you can keep your jobs, seriously.

We’ve come very close over the last few months to fixing the finances completely, but each time we got close we missed. Its not just me working to fix our finances by growing my own business.  Becky also works as a wedding photographer on the side, and when she finally passes her National Boards she will get a $5k per year salary increase and possibly some student loan forgiveness as well.

But it hasn’t happened yet for either of us.  Along the course of the last year, we’ve had to start doing some things on a personal level just to keep it together, and keep us together.  Last year around this time, we started going out on a monthly date night.  I think that helped us quite a bit.  We were having fun together again for the first time in a long time.

We weren’t really getting much closer or bonding more though because of the barriers I’ve mentioned in the past 2 articles.

One of those barriers from Becky’s perspective derives from my inability to show or show enough affection in a physical way.  I erroneously thought and wrote Sunday that this was public displays of physical affection, but apparently its also physical affection at home.  Not in the bedroom, but the casual stuff around the house, hugging, kissing, holding hands etc.  Becky needs this and I’m apparently not delivering enough if at all.  I think she also connects this dot to the ‘presence’ issue.

Now, I do understand her complaint, and I want to fix that, but my issue is that mentally/verbally we are very different and too disconnected, so its hard for me to get touchy/feely when she’s not talking and opening up to me.  Physically, I’m attracted to her even after 16 years of marriage and 3 kids.  That’s not the issue, but cuddling with someone that holds back and won’t talk to me about important things is difficult for me.

We have talked about this, and I think we are in a chicken and egg situation here.  I’m trying to reach out physically more, and so far she is talking with me more, but I feel like she is reserving or holding back still, one of her defense mechanisms against me that I mentioned yesterday.

So all in all the risk here is that if I can make her happy, I could lose her.  I don’t believe in the marriage vows of until death do us part.  I think that is crap.  I think that if two people are bad for each other, hurt each other, make each other unhappy, then they should go their own ways.

Becky has been pretty good for me over the years.  Very good in the early years of our marriage.  The last few years she has been very supportive, but at times our goals did not align and she did things and chose things that were good for her and not good for me personally.  I knew that then and was very supportive of those choices, because I wanted to support her best interests.  I feel that in a relationship, a consensus is not always possible nor right.  Some things just are not meant to be done half way (half assed), it can result in no one being happy.  So I gave in to some of her wishes, and have done my best to make lemonade out of some of the lemons that came my way due to those choices.  After all its her lemonade too.

But more to the point, or at least the important point.  In this whole affair (event, not affair, bad choice of word) she reached out and connected with someone that was touchy feely in public, some one that enjoyed flirting with her.  They not only connected physically on some level, but mentally on some level as well and became friends online as a result.

I’m envious as hell of that, because despite 16 years of marriage I haven’t been able to make that kind of connection with Becky myself.

In the early days of this thing, I was fearful that she might be looking to an older man, possibly a little more financially stable than we are, someone that she was attracted to from that first night out, and seeing some greener grass on the other side of the fence.

I think she was to a certain extent, but from talking with her, I think she thinks that I’m not all bad, and that even if the patches of grass are greener in some areas on the other side where I’m lacking, odds are that in the areas where I’m a good guy, worthy of her falling in love with me once, even marrying me and starting a family, the total package may not stack up.

I’m an accountant, but that sounds stupid to me, even as I write it.  hmmm, guess I just can’t do that particular thought justice yet.

Regardless, let me just say that if I’m the status quo, I think she feels that she hasn’t found some one to exceed the status quo yet.  Doesn’t mean I’m good enough to keep, but I’m not bad enough to get rid of yet.

  Sometimes you should just quit writing while you are ahead.

So my goal is to try and change again to make her happier than I have so far.  One of the things that I pride myself in is having the ability to change and drastically when the situation calls for it.  I’ve had to do this several times throughout the course of my life, but its been a while since I did it last and it gets harder and harder as I get older.

I am worried that even if I do change, she is not going to see the change.  Even if I am ‘present’ more, she may not think so.  I spend a great deal of time with the kids before and after school, which she does not see.  I think she doesn’t think that I do that because she can’t see that.

Plus, my work and business is increasingly calling for me to travel much more than I ever have in the past.  That causes all types of issues before, during and after the trips I take.  Typically small things, but regardless things that decrease her positive impression of me, stress her out, make her unhappy and increase her need to make friends with people (some guys and some girls) that are geographically present.

I’m navigating between a rock and a hard place, but I’m not giving up.  Stating the existence of the challenge helps me deal with the stress of doing it as well as the stress caused by the stakes, the risk of losing her, of then trying to also raise a family split under different roofs and households, and the fear of my kids living with some other asshole that they might refer to as step dad. 

I don’t think that is going to happen anytime soon, but if I am going to avoid it, stave it off, make my wife happy, I have to do things now because an avalanche builds over time.  She’s already very skeptical of my ability to fill in those other happiness gaps, she sometimes even seems a little apathetic about the loss of those areas in her life that she needs to be happy, and that makes me wonder if the potential for her to withdraw from trying might be closer to the surface than either of us realize.

Where there’s smoker there’s sometimes fire.

I don’t think she had an affair with this guy.  I don’t think she even exactly fell deeply in love (maybe a little, maybe a little infatuated with the idea of the attention he gave her).  But if I can’t do better, she may fall for him more, or possibly fall a lot for the next guy that does have more of the things that I have or even more than I do on all counts.

OK, so I’m feeling better today all in all, and as such, I’m going to chop this one off a little short and get back to work.  Deep Breath Deep Breath again.