Whatever You Do, Don't Put the Blame on You--Blame It on the Rain

Defensiveness keeps individuals from accepting responsibility for their actions. If a spouse is defensive, they are justifying their behavior, or blaming their partner for the problem.” 

--John Gottman

I am much more introspective when I begin putting down words.  At the outset, I want to be clear that our marriage has been far from perfect for a very long time, something we both have and do acknowledge.  A very long time.  Things started heading south on my end back when we began having fights about money, and Jenny would be angry I wasn't making enough, and wanted me to find additional work. Nevermind that I liked the work I did, even if I hated the job.  Nevermind that she worked in a field that paid far less than me, and that her ideas were gender bound. When I would suggest that, perhaps, if she wanted to have more money she should get a different job, she would retort that she was doing work she liked--even though I would often hear she hated to do that precise work--being a learning specialist--when all she really wanted to do was be in a self-contained classroom.  Also, like me liking my work, though she liked being a teacher, she hated her workplace at the time.  We would have rows over money almost every day.  The issue might be something else, but it ultimately came back to the fact that I was a public interest attorney, and we didn't live like her sisters, or her friends who had houses in Seattle, et cetera.  The anger directed at me would get so bad that I would come home from work, and head straight upstairs to be with the kids to avoid the inevitable shouting matches that would take place.  I recall so vividly explaining to my friend Eachean as we walked across the Renton Village parking lot back to our office after getting lunch at Uwajimaya that I hated being at work because of the nastiness of the leader. And yet, while I could work from home, I pointed out that if I did so, Jenny would be there (she worked part-time then) and I could expect a fight.  I had nowhere to turn.  

I wasn't an innocent. While I would avoid the interactions to the best of my ability, when yelled at, I would yell back.  It happened too often to call it regularly. No, it was constant. Poor Leiney would hide behind our Costco-sized giant leather sectional, scared to see us so angry with one another. Leiney told my mom at one point that she thought that Jenny and I could use a "peace table" like they had in use at Giddens for the kindergartners to resolve disputes.  

By the time Jenny was having her latest affair, she had already admitted to cheating once, which, of course, she now denies.  

When I was in California I had an affair after her first spree, although we had separated. I began seeing someone almost immediately after Jenny and I agreed to patch it up--because I'm an idiot--and wouldn't be together again for 2 months.  To be clear, there is no original sinner here.  We both fucked up, both acted selfishly.  I take full responsibility for my choices at the time--I did what I did not because of anything Jenny did, but because I made a choice.  Simple as that.  

Which brings us to the topic at hand.  I've been reading material from the Gottman Institute.  The Gottman's are psychologists who have specialized in saving marriages, and have quite a name in the marriage therapy community.  Couples trying to save their marriages spend incredible amounts of money and time to go to Gottman Seminars, and it seems very much like it works.  I'm not looking to resurrect the Titanic here.  That boat's sunk, and as the affair continues, keeps falling deeper into the depths.  Don't misunderstand.  I am sitting two feet from Jenny in repose, resting after a busy morning of acupuncture and giving away furniture--if you haven't noticed that's a thing these days.  Anyway, I will go to my grave loving and having loved her most of my life. To pieces.  But, I love Haagen Daaz, too, and living with it every day would cause me grievous injury.  I would convince myself that it's natural sweetness is good for my diabetic soul, and would end up killing myself.  

The Gottman's writings validate for me the beliefs that I have about how dysfunctional this entire relationship therapy is that we are doing.  Ostensibly, it was initially focused on learning to live together while Jenny is refusing to cease having an affair. The road has been meandering,

and while it has felt good to get occasional validation, mostly I get the sense the therapist doesn't know what to do, or isn't competent enough to do anything, really.  An example: Jenny invariably, when talking in therapy (and outside of therapy as well) blames me for her decision to have an affair.   Here is Gottman's take on such behavior:

"Any attempts to blame the affair on the 'problems in the relationship' will be heard as making excuses for their behavior, or even worse, heard as blaming their partner. That will certainly sabotage the conversation."

I have gotten so tired of the blaming and yet Jenny agreeing at the same time with me that having an affair is a choice, that in our last session, in response to her yet again blaming me, I told her that I had fallen in love with someone in law school, that I never told the person, never made any overt or covert moves, never acted upon it.  Because. I. am. married.  She, of course, misses the point and dismisses the entire thing with a magic word, Sonia.  Which, as I have said time and again, having an affair was a deliberate choice as they always are, and a bad one at that.

"It goes without saying that the affair must end and that all communication with the affair partner ceases."

Gottman, again. I am clear that I am not going to be able to reconcile.  It won't happen, I don't see how. I stay despite the fight or flight instinct--exclusively flight at this point.  Jenny somehow believes we can reconcile.  She now has declared she is polyamorous. I'm not.  Which poses certain difficulties, I suppose.  The idea of reconciliation isn't real. It's more gaslighting. Converting him to "just a good friend" in discourse with me leads me to feel like she views me as a pigeon, a mark, a rube, a sucker.  If she were at all serious about even rebuilding our friendship, she would need to follow Gottman's clear directive, and cut communication with the pinché motherfucker.