No Dress Rehearsal

After the four-year relationship preceding my marriage ended, my analyst told me to read On Death And Dying by the late psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. This seminal work on the subject of grief introduced the five stages of grief: denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. While at first blush, it may seem odd to read a book about a psychiatrist’s interactions with terminally ill patients when coping with something like the end of a relationship, but when I read it back in 2000, I could see the parallels in my grieving process.

While the decision as to whether or not my wife and I will remain married is far from settled, I have begun to make peace with the possibility that I will lose her, and am beginning to come to the understanding that my life will, indeed, go on. That’s not to say that I want it to happen, but I feel like I am becoming emotionally prepared to handle it if it does happen. I think that my ex and I could have benefited from this couples therapy way back when. I’m not saying that the final outcome would have been any different — and it probably shouldn’t have been — but I think it would have helped us to grow individually, and especially for me would have helped me to better achieve closure.

One of the coping mechanisms I employed early in this process was thinking about “plan B.” The idea of having a contingency plan was — and is — reassuring to me. I’ve had quite a number of plans, some more fanciful than others. Among them were moving back to Arizona, where I lived from 2004-2005, or else moving to my favourite city in the world, Montréal. Outside of geography, I have thought about (re)-learning the guitar, and improving my French (especially helpful in Québec). I know I’ve had other thoughts, but those are the four that are coming to mind right now.

Then I had a “Carrie Bradshaw” moment. I thought about sitting down to write this blog post, and beginning it with a rhetorical question: If these are things that I want to do, why do I have to wait for the end of my marriage? And if I am waiting without a good reason, does that mean that my marriage is holding me back personally? Of course, there are good reasons for not embarking on yet another move with my wife in tow. I am more focused, however, on the personal growth items. Why can’t I (re) learn the guitar or improve my French speaking now? I’m not sure really what the impediment is, or why I feel on whatever level that that should be part of my “single life,” should it come to pass, but these thoughts have crossed my mind and I think the underlying reasons deserve to be explored.

Because it’s been a couple of days since my last post, I actually had a second “Carrie Bradshaw” moment, with yet another rhetorical question popping into my head for use in my posts. Are relationships, like everything else in nature, tending toward a state of entropy? Well, I had it worked out in my head better before. It was totally cool, but it’s now nearly midnight, eastern time, and I should be asleep but I can’t find it it me to do so. Anyway, back to my thoughts on what I call “relationship entropy.” Everywhere I look in my circle of friends, marriages are on the rocks or ending. I have a relative who is two months my senior and whose husband just left her and their one year old daughter. (There were definite reasons for this, but it is not my intention to go into them here). As well, this relative also has a roughly 4 year old son from a previous relationship. So, this relative is in pretty serious trouble. She has no concept of money management, mostly the result of being coddled by her father for way too long. She has always been boy-crazy, and was definitely not the marrying type. However, she did, and the shattered lives left in its wake — especially those of the children involved — are the real tragedy. Speaking of children, one of my closest friends from college and his wife are on shaky ground. They have a beautiful baby boy at home, and from what I can tell it is not a happy home right now. Again, there are definite reasons for these problems, but my point is not to air the dirty laundry of everyone I know, rather to show the downward slope of the relationships I see around me as a composite. So, even though everything here is anonymous, that’s for them to blog *grin*. In addition to these marriages that may be in the final throes, I also think back to my friend from Ohio whose one-year marriage also recently failed. Not a lot of encouragement, there.

I am, however, heartened, to note that out of all the couples I know who are in danger of failing, my wife and I are the only ones seeking counseling. I do believe in it, and I think that it does improve our odds, even though I know that she will not stay with me if she doesn’t think that I am the right person for the her of today and going forward.

So, the sum total of this stream of consciousness is that I am a little more hopeful than I have been in the past, not necessarily regarding whether or not we stay together, but regarding my life after this problem is addressed one way or the other. Basically, it’s either that we will work on these issues and emerge a stronger, more mature couple or else the relationship will end and I will eventually become a stronger, more mature individual as a result. (I must confess that I have tried to ameliorate the pain with humour and have cracked the joke that if we split up, my next relationship will break the “five-foot barrier,” because the two women with whom I have spent the last ten years are both shorter than 5 feet tall — which is kind of strange because I always thought that I fancied a tall(er) woman, but love is what it is.)

So, that’s that.

Now for a brief rundown of the week so far: Monday was counseling session #2. Immediately following the session, I thought that we had made some progress, but now I am not so sure. Tuesday was my first class of the spring semester. Even though I am an information science master’s student, we are required to take a few business classes. One of these is on financial reporting, which is what I have right now. It’s not too bad, and miracle of miracles does not require a group project. Today, I officially entered into a concurrent degree program at my university. What this means is that I will be earning two master’s degrees — one in information science, the other in software engineering — at the same time. The benefit is that I will have to take 20% fewer classes to get both degrees (that’s a savings of 15 credits, or roughly $10,000 based on this year’s tuition). So, I’m excited about that. This whole week I have been looking to re-enter the job market, both because I am bored at my current job (which is mostly because it has zip to do with my chosen field) and because it has no long-term stability (I am a temp with no benefits such as insurance, sick leave or even paid holidays). I am working on polishing up the resume, yet again, and then pounding the electronic pavement. So, in the days to come I will be branching out in my blog posts to cover that search as well. Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that I have been to the gym once this week, and I am still hoping to get the other two times in. My workouts are good, but it’s the finding of time and motivation to get started that have been the problems. That and the self-sabotage of eating fast food after working out doesn’t encourage me to go either.

OK, this was a completely scattershot posting, so I apologize if you can’t follow it. You can at least be happy for me that I have gotten these thoughts off my chest.