Tell Me Lies, Tell Me Sweet Little Lies

 Entry 1     10:49 p.m.

I posted this picture on FB tonight. It was taken October 11, 2011. Jenny and I were barely speaking since she had changed her mind and stayed in Washington with the kids. I was up from California, for what had become and would remain my regular weekly visit. By this time Jenny was certainly having an affair with a family friend, Jason. They started regularly having dinner 1-2x a week almost as soon as I left town. But here we are smiling, cheek to cheek. While the picture masks the strife, it is reflective of much of our lives together since 2011. 

Mind you, I suspected nothing of the affair. For my eldest, who saw it up close and personally, it was different.

 Leiney, when she found out about the affair with el pinche in 2020, after she stopped crying and could talk again, immediately asked me about whether Jenny had been having an affair with this guy. I asked what would make her think that? She said that each week Jenny would take Leiney, in fifth grade, and Abby, in first grade to Jason's for dinner. The kids would be given spaghetti, placed in front of the television, watching the same movie every time. Meanwhile, Jenny and Jason would disappear upstairs until the movie ended. Leiney, the young girl, suspected something was afoot. 

I trusted Jenny, up to that point. Was I wrong to trust her? How else do we function, if we can't trust the person we love? 

As I analyze it, once I discovered the affair, I blamed myself for moving away. I haven't spoken with anyone about that, but it is simply true. I blamed myself. Intellectually, I know it is bullshit. And it is consistent with the narrative thread in our marriage that everything was my fault. Not earning enough money? It's Geoff that needs to earn more. It's Geoff that won't work on the relationship. It's Geoff that needs to change. And, as I learned when we tried to sort out the el pinché mess, it was my fault she had a many years long affair.

I share a lot of fault for what went wrong in our marriage, to be clear. But, I tried to make it work. But the mood swings were hard on all of us. I also, while not of sunny disposition all the time, am predictable in mood. I never knew, on any day, which Jenny I would get. Happy Jenny, sullen Jenny, sad Jenny, or angry Jenny. And her moods could, and often did, change on a dime. A minor disagreement could ruin her, and thus our day. What one would think was a harmless utterance could cause the world around us to crumble. This was true well before we had kids. 

We experienced these mood swings as a family, never (or perhaps rarely) in front of others. It wasn't the public face that people saw. I don't mean to imply she was Jekyll and Hyde, more like Hillary Clinton's having "both a public position and private position" on Wall Street. As the kids got older, Jenny would on occasion get mad at all three of us and leave. Storm out the door. We'd scratch our heads and proceed with our lives like nothing ever happened. We'd check ourselves for reality. Eventually, Jenny would calm down and return home, often rushing to the room to bed. I would, when I cared to do so (and frequently I didn't, as it had become exhausting) ) attempt rapprochement. When the children were little, the problems were all my fault. When they were older, her conclusion after the inevitable meltdown would routinely be that she had  the wrong family.  She would tell me that, and at times told the kids that.

She had the wrong family. While it became a routine claim when the kids were older, that isn't where it started. I may have written this down before, but it is so shocking to me, even today, that I have to retell it here. 

We were hiking in Issaquah on a rainy day at Poo Poo Point. My recollection is that it was a cool day and the four of us, the kids, Jenny and I were dressed accordingly. Abby was in third grade, maybe fourth. She hated hiking. She also had an ankle problem for which she received PT. Now, whether it was psychosomatic or real (I have my suspicions), she had seen a doctor. She was receiving PT weekly (I was taking her).  We start up the trail, and within 10 minutes, Abby began to complain about her ankle and lag behind. I offered to carry her, she declined. The only option was to turn around. I tell Jenny. She is furious. I try to defuse the situation by claiming my knee hurts a lot too (it didn't, I was trying to redirect the wrath). It made Jenny only angrier. We had no choice but to turn around and head back down the hill. To be disappointed is understandable. We were there, Jenny loved to hike, and we rarely had a chance. So, okay, be disappointed. But this wasn't mere disappointment. Jenny says to us, the kids and me, that she"has the wrong family." That we don't like all the things she likes and therefore this family is the wrong family for her. She went on to note how her sisters' families are out hiking all the time, and lamented we don't do the same. She was ignoring the fact that our kids, even then, were at  class acting 5-6 times a week, and were so programmed on the weekends we rarely had time for anything else. Sunday was devoted to homework and relaxing, generally. She was yelling when she said this to us. I was upset. When we got home, I told her what she said was inappropriate. She didn't yield. She had zero remorse. Zero sense that to tell your young children that you wish you had a different family is incredibly terrible. 

The old saw, "A picture is worth a thousand words" is perhaps true,  but those words may be telling lies.