We're Off to Never Neverland

Happy Loving Couples Make It Look So Easy

Tuesday evening.  I was hoping to escape any melodrama two days running.  I made it all the way until 7:45 p.m. before the sound of clanging piano keys were needed.  5 minutes until therapy would normally end, and Jenny brings up dinner with friends.  Earlier today, Cam of Cam and Leah, sent a text to Jenny asking if we would be interested in dinner tomorrow night.  He, Cam, offered to bring burgers.  They are couples friends, and he doesn't ever text or talk to me.  So, there's that.  Also, I am glad he doesn't ever text or talk to me because I find him, quite often, hard to take.  But that is neither here nor there, except that when Jenny asked if I wanted to have dinner with them, rather than saying yes or no, I said, that's a lot of work.  I am tired and stressed, and he is a braggart and a know-it-all.  Jenny concedes this.  I am not.  It isn't pleasant being around someone like that when you are forced to be in contact with them, but volunteering to do so?  Moreover, we are living tandem lives, Jenny and I. I sleep on the couch.  I SLEEP ON THE COUCH. This is the 8th month of couch surfing. Holy fuck.  Anyway, I don't want to perform as a happy loving couple to any other person, whether its a performance for a single person, a couple, or a whole audience.  I felt much of Jenny's behavior with Kim , our recent visitor, present was performative, and that is offensive. I am not a prop.  So, when the issue was raised in therapy about dinner with Cam and Leah, and Jenny complained that I hadn't answered her, I gave her an answer.  No. 

Jenny was perplexed. I had told them of the affair in September, she asserted, why did I do that if I don't like them?  Well, to be clear, I like Leah, and also I didn't tell Cam.  I called Leah because she is a family therapist.  I explained to Jenny that I was calling and talking to anyone that would listen. I was frantic. My wife of 23 years had been having a tawdry affair for years, I just discovered it, and she was (is) refusing to stop.  Jenny said that my refusal to assent to dinner meant that I only told people last September about the affair to hurt her.  Also, the only reason I called Leah is because I wanted to hurt her.  And?  That isn't true, I said, and noted I have stayed here and cared for her, and shown her nothing but kindness all this time. But was I feeling retributive when I called people? I am sure I was, but it wasn't the motivating force, or I would have posted about it on Facebook.  I didn't, haven't. My way of processing this betrayal was calling everyone that I could think who might have insight or offer me support.  I was flailing, a drowning man looking for flotsam to keep my head above water.

The  "couples" therapist (not to be confused with Leah), for once, pleased me this evening.  She made several very important points.  Among them, she  underscored Jenny and I live together in tandem, but that this is a different relationship than the marriage we had prior to the longstanding and ongoing affair.  Secondly, I have a right to decline this dinner invitation--and her point of view on this was based on the status of the relationship between us she had just described.  Third, this therapy isn't intended to be reparative, that if we were trying to fix the relationship she would expect us to do certain things, like stopping the affair immediately and forever dedicating ourselves to fixing this relationship. We aren't doing that, Jenny steadfastly refuses to do so, and reiterated her disinterest in response to this statement. Finally, the therapist pointed out that the idea that because I don't want to have dinner with Cam and Leah doesn't at all mean that I told people to harm her in September.  That is Jenny ascribing motive where no proof of such exists.

Jenny perseverated. She was unhappy with the answers from the therapist, who in my estimation started feeling bad for Jenny, and tried to soften her answers, but didn't back down.  Jenny said, because I won't agree, I control the decision as to whether they--Cam and Leah--come over or not. She actually argued this several times. I told her I would be happy to leave, so Cam and Leah could visit.  Jenny, thinking it would change my mind asked the therapist if she got to tell them the reason I wasn't there is because I didn't want to see them --I could not GAF--and the therapist said you can tell them whatever you want.  You can tell them Geoff didn't feel comfortable meeting as a couple, she suggested.  Jenny then started saying that I was interfering with her ability to see  people, and I explained again I was happy to leave, and noted her dance card is constantly full, and that I have chased no one off. True, Sheila and Jennifer aren't welcome in my home when I am here, nor Eric the pinché motherfucker, anytime.  

Jenny wouldn't let go.   She expects that if she wants couples time, I have to assent.  I asked her when, if ever I hadn't in the past.  There is no time, and hence, she couldn't and didn't cite a single example.  

Because Jenny always brings a blunderbuss to a knife fight, she now started talking about how I never bothered to arrange a date with her to a nice restaurant like she has wanted, and that was one of the big problems in the relationship.  She noted that she arranged a nice dinner for us in 2019.  I offered that it was kabuki theater, because she was having an affair at that time, so really any complaint of my failure over the last several years can't be material, given she had given up. I should note, as a friend pointed out when I was debriefing, that at no time did I factor in the impact of COVID-19.  Of course, the pandemic didn't ever inform Jenny's constant forays to see friends or Eric the pinché motherfucker.  But, me, I have been a hermit, as all of my friends will attest. Also, it would have made going on a date fairly difficult.  Thank God for the pandemic, given I thought the relationship was mending, before I discovered the affair.  Had we done more things together, I may have believed that we actually were completely on the mend, and would have been even more crushed, more bereft when I discovered the affair.

The poor therapist.  What had been muy tranquilo, became contentious  quite quickly.  I kept gray-rocking when the affair was raised, or the therapy would have lasted far past 8:17, which is when it actually ended.  I will be interested in determining what Jenny does. Ultimately, like the Easter shopping, this was about control, something which she simply doesn't have over me anymore.

Epilogue:  No idea what Jenny told them. I will ask, eventually.  But, she left that Wednesday for dinner with them.