Those Aren’t Fighting Words, Dear

I figure that there are multiple events in everyone's lives like this: quarterlife crisis, midlife crisis, tragedies, deaths of loved ones, broken relationships- these are part of the shared human experience. I occasionally try to remind myself that in all likelihood, I'll have to go through each one of these situations at some point in life. If I mentally prepare for them in the present, it usually doesn't take away the pain when I do find my world turned upside down, but it certainly helps me see the light at the end of the tunnel and think more clearly.

I remember reading a pedophile stating that all men were attracted to young girls, deep down in their hearts. Anyone who denied it would be lying, to their surroundings or themselves. It's easy to see how someone who has such desires would think that it applies to everybody because it feels so ingrained.

As I said, I am not disagreeing with your point, just making an observation about how easy it is to see one self as the norm.

I assure you that the significant part of humanity that is trying to track down enough food, clean water, or even a warm place to sleep each night - let alone adequate medical care or education, doesn't suffer from ennui. They, of course, suffer from hunger, thirst, and exposure - problems, yes, but they certainly have clear priorities.

Sometime happiness suffers when we are provided everything that we need, and we end up asking ourselves, "Isn't there more?"

...How does it apply to hackers?

Either I'm extremely dense, or everyone is projecting their own opinion on your vague comment.

"His sister got cancer and her husband had just left her and she had five children and she actually died last 4 July."

I know why his brother-in-law left his sister, but this event might make him more hesitant about leaving his own wife.

If you took a similar approach, refused to engage in the personal attacks, repeatedly tried to find common ground and ways to fix the problems, and your wife still left... well, you did everything you realistically could. Your focus now should be on maintaining your relationship with your daughter, IMO.

I oversimplify, but it's something to think about.

More to the point, what I read was a woman who heard a line influenced by society, and decided she wanted to deal with it in a way that would force her husband to decide whether he really meant that. My feelings are rarely so clearly defined that I can reduced them to a few sentences, and I'll often collapse them to a saying because it's accurate enough. Frustration is one of the hardest to pin down, and I don't think it's unreasonable of her to say, "I hear that you're unhappy, but I don't think I'm the cause." Of course, just saying this isn't productive, for exactly the reason you mentioned: you can't tell somebody "You're wrong" when they express their feelings.

So she did what she could -- she distanced herself from the turmoil, and she tried to let her husband figure out exactly what the problem was. If it truly was their marriage, he would grow distance, and the subsequent departure would be easier on him. My guess, which fits with the events, is that he found the distance didn't quell his frustration, and re-engaging with his family at his own pace actually brought him some happiness.

Relationships are so close to our emotional core that when something goes wrong, it shows up in them. Like failing at work will make us unhappy even after we go home, lacking fulfillment from our hobbies and career can appear to show up in a relationship. Good relationships recognize this, and can survive an event like the one described in the article.

As an aside, as someone who had a parent who made their own happiness into an ever-present concern for their children, I agree vehemently with the notion that it isn't age-appropriate to do that.

Do you have kids? Do you think a 4-year-old has "unique preferences" or feels de-humanized because he isn't given "ice cream" as a choice for dinner?

While your comment might be true of an adolescent, it is not true of all children as a category. There are very real and beneficial reasons for age-appropriate learning and guidance.

Regardless, he always had the option to leave. If he had a better plan, he'd have rolled with it. If he was self-actualizing greater destiny, I would agree with you but this guy sounds like he was under water.

With respect to her emotional distance, John Gray's book: "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" has some good insight re Men's need for space and distance when things go bad. I think her actions were very sensible for a long term relationship.

When a man needs to sort out his life, a wise woman gives him the space and doesn't freak out. Freaking out and scooping him for the answer would just drive him further away.

Such a life-reset is the result of ignoring your own life for decades and you need to take the time, either in small doses over the years or mentally going away once in ten years for a longer time.

When you're going through one, you can't take anything for granted, not your job, not your wife, not your family. You can't reset your idea of who you are now if you do it conditionally: if you don't dare to keep your options open, you can never see which of them you can safely close again.

She never once in this story actually sat with her partner and tried to understand what was going on with him. She gave him an answer, made a few demands, and flat out refused to listen.

Reading this story broke my heart. I couldn't believe her utter weakness and lack of compassion.

The truth is scary. Love is scary. Change is scary. These things loom over our comfortable lives threatening to expose us to the changes going on outside our realm of control. You don't own your lover, and the truth may one day be that they're unhappy, and need to leave. That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be.

If this is indeed a true story, I sure hope the guy has since managed to find a good divorce attorney.

ADDITION:

    I’d finally managed to exile the voices in my head
    that told me my personal happiness was only as good
    as my outward success, rooted in things that were
    often outside my control.

Whenever some says that they've "finally managed" to fix themselves in some major way, be very suspicious. It doesn't work that way. We keep our patterns, and they find new ways to manifest until we learn through repeated painful experience to turn them to our benefit some of the time.

There is no switch.

Her happiness was still clearly very much rooted in her "successful" marriage, her ability to provide a traditional two-coupled-parents environment for her children, etc.

The first step to Happiness is admitting one's neuroses.

The second is admitting that the first didn't make them go away.

And it was self-evident to any third party that he was lying to himself and to her. It was simply a move in the fight.

When I read the article, I also was surprised by the 'age-appropriate' comment, and wasn't too sure that she responded perfectly, but given my personal experience seeing this actually happen with a couple, I assumed that there was a good chance that her basic diagnosis was correct. And if so, the rest of your comment would simply be a misjudgment - even he would be happy with her response in the end.

She lets the guy get a broader perspective, by reducing her own importance in his life, by letting him discover a taste of a life without her, and yet you, and others, manage to interpret that as a sign of narcissism. I don't understand that one bit. It could as well have played out in a completely different way, where the guy liked his newfound freedom enough to go through with the separation. The fact that he stayed is a pretty strong signal that she was right and that it wasn't about her, as she guessed. A narcissist couldn't possibly guess that something wasn't about her.

Your story boils down to 'guy finally has the guts to tell her how it stands, because he is sick of her emotional blackmail, but he's actually a pussy, because a new bit of emotional manipulation is enough to make him reconsider'. That really doesn't sound very convincing.

For outliers, statistics doesn't work that well (and feels reductive of their uniqueness.... because it is!). And of course this is true of everyone - we're all unique and special and statistics doesn't get to the heart of our own personal story.

But this isn't the point of such things - terms such as age-appropriate are really aimed only at most children, most of the time. Anyone who's enough of an outlier to be offended and upset by the notion - and able to come up with a cogent argument against it - is probably not included within that set of most children.

Kudos to jdietrich for articulating so well what I was thinking. For this woman only thing that matters is her career as a writer. She is the definition of a manipulative partner. She makes material out of her husband's totally sincere mid-life crisis; she portrays her husband as a sentimental clown who needs her guidance; she portrays her husband as the week partner who is no longer the breadwinner; she portrays herself as the powerful woman who saves her family and so on... All this proves how much she loves her husband: none. Is there any doubt that she puts her career before her husband and her family?

She was using that as a metaphor. Using an image with which everyone (or at least most people) can identify. Being angry/upset with yourself (or just your situation) and taking it out on others is not something that is restricted to childhood. The metaphor works better in terms of describing the method of dealing with it (i.e. ignoring it, and not allowing the other person to drag you into what is their personal problem).

> 2. Proclaim that you're impervious to abuse by touting your toughness as if those in abusive relationships are not physically tough enough.

When people speak of physical abuse, the usual retort is that one is 'tough enough' to defend his or herself, even if the reality is that people in abusive situations are really emotionally weak/co-dependent. Most people that are trying to 'prove' to others that they are impervious to abuse are usually trying to display something that can be seen/evaluated by others so as to be interpreted as 'proof.' They are not usually thinking about the flip-side (the implication that people that do 'allow' themselves to be abused are lacking these traits).

> 3. Highlight your suffering martyrdom as much as possible while claiming that you refuse to suffer.

This was the only part that I found mildly annoying. She repeats "I will not suffer," while talking about the ways in which she was suffering, but trying to get on with her life. It may be a good internal motto to use in such times, but in reality she was suffering.

This is one of those rare cases where "passive aggression" (stonewalling) is actually the most effective thing to do. If your partner claims to be unhappy with your relationship, but you're really sure they're actually miserable with some other aspect of their life, then this seems like a workable strategy.

I think you got confused because another instance where stonewalling is an effective strategy happens to be dealing with childrens' tantrums.

I did find the litany of toughness a bit grating, but clearly it is something that she needed to convince herself of, never mind other people.

I think the article has some value as a parable, almost, that shows the value in not taking things personally.

It's unfortunate, because comparisons are really useful for illustrating ideas to pattern-matching machines like our minds, but people like this make comparisons almost useless because they always lash out at anybody who makes one.

In one sense, this woman has an extreme faith in her husband. How many people would be able to believe that he would eventually find his own way out of the rut? Such trust, such maturity. Amazing.