Separate vacations

[PRAYER51]

I’m not plain’ anyone…maybe I’m just being paranoid…I never would have thought she could be like that before…it’s the influence of her friends I’m worried about…things have been so bad here lately that I’m worried something could happen…

 

[PRAYER51]

See, I’ve seen posts with innuendo between her and her girlfriends…a lot of double-entendre stuff…it has me wondering if I truly know her or if she’s been playin’ me all along…

 

[on_the_hill]

I’m not plain’ anyone…maybe I’m just being paranoid…I never would have thought she could be like that before…it’s the influence of her friends I’m worried about…things have been so bad here lately that I’m worried something could happen…

If that’s the case, I think you need to insist on having a heart-to-heart with her.

 

[EasterJoy]

If her friends have read 50 shades and are constantly making sexual jokes, it is still entirely possible that your wife would just as soon check out of the world of sex entirely. This is not good for marriages, but it isn’t atypical.

They may not know it, but your wife and her girlfriends may be setting themselves up for a de facto Divorced Girls Club or a Merry Widows Club, one that doesn’t bother itself with the inconvenient fact that none of them are divorced or widowed yet. Who needs the trouble, bother to the conscience, and hit to the emotional and financial bank account of a civil divorce, when a “mere” emotional divorce will accomplish all the desired ends?

I mean that none of them may be looking for casual sex, let alone a man other than their husbands. Instead, little by little, whether they’ve admitted it or not, they may have decided to live their lives “on their own terms,” with female friends who can be looked for to give unmitigated approval as their main friendships. They are becoming more and more willing to make their moorings to their marriages ever-more negotiable and their moorings to their own self-centeredness ever-more unassailable.

Again: This is something they might deny with total white-hotness and without any awareness they are deceiving both themselves and the person(s) questioning them.

Let me illustrate, with one of the Screwtape Letters, but with the caution that maybe your wife’s friends and her problems with you aren’t particularly related, excepting that time spent with you includes tension and unresolved problems and time with them does not. Read what I’m saying not as a diagnosis, but as a third possibility.

 

[EasterJoy]

(In case you don’t know the background, this was written as a letter of advice from a senior demon to a new tempter trying to catch a soul…)

MY DEAR WORMWOOD,

I was delighted to hear from Triptweeze that your patient has made some very desirable new acquaintances and that you seem to have used this event in a really promising manner. I gather that the middle-aged married couple who called at his office are just the sort of people we want him to know-rich, smart, superficially intellectual, and brightly sceptical about everything in the world. I gather they ore even vaguely pacifist, not on moral grounds but from an ingrained habit of belittling anything that concerns the great mass of their fellow men and from a dash of purely fashionable and literary communism. This is excellent. And you seem to have made good use of all his social, sexual, and intellectual vanity. Tell me more. Did he commit himself deeply? I don’t mean in words. There is a subtle play of looks and tones and laughs by which a Mortal can imply that he is of the same party is those to whom he is speaking. That is the kind of betrayal you should specially encourage, because the man does not fully realise it himself; and by the time he does you will have made withdrawal difficult.

No doubt he must very soon realise that his own faith is in direct opposition to the assumptions on which all the conversation of his new friends is based. I don’t think that matters much provided that you can persuade him to postpone any open acknowledgment of the fact, and this, with the aid of shame, pride, modesty and vanity, will be easy to do. As long as the postponement lasts he will be in a false position. He will be silent when he ought to speak and laugh when he ought to be silent. He will assume, at first only by his manner, but presently by his words, all sorts of cynical and sceptical attitudes which are not really his. But if you play him well, they may become his. All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be. This is elementary. The real question is how to prepare for the Enemy’s counter attack.

The first thing is to delay as long as possible the moment at which he realises this new pleasure as a temptation. Since the Enemy’s servants have been preaching about “the World” as one of the great standard temptations for two thousand years, this might seem difficult to do. But fortunately they have said very little about it for the last few decades. In modern Christian writings, though I see much (indeed more than I like) about Mammon, I see few of the old warnings about Worldly Vanities, the Choice of Friends, and the Value of Time. All that, your patient would probably classify as “Puritanism”-and may I remark in passing that the value we have given to that word is one of the really solid triumphs of the last hundred years? By it we rescue annually thousands of humans from temperance, chastity, and sobriety of life.

Sooner or later, however, the real nature of his new friends must become clear to him, and then your tactics must depend on the patient’s intelligence. If he is a big enough fool you can get him to realise the character of the friends only while they are absent; their presence can be made to sweep away all criticism. If this succeeds, he can be induced to live, as I have known many humans live, for quite long periods, two parallel lives; he will not only appear to be, but actually be, a different man in each of the circles he frequents. Failing this, there is a subtler and more entertaining method. He can be made to take a positive pleasure in the perception that the two sides of his life are inconsistent. This is done by exploiting his vanity. He can be taught to enjoy kneeling beside the grocer on Sunday just because he remembers that the grocer could not possibly understand the urbane and mocking world which he inhabited on Saturday evening; and contrariwise, to enjoy the bawdy and blasphemy over the coffee with these admirable friends all the more because he is aware of a “deeper”, “spiritual” world within him which they cannot understand. You see the idea-the worldly friends touch him on one side and the grocer on the other, and he is the complete, balanced, complex man who sees round them all. Thus, while being permanently treacherous to at least two sets of people, he will feel, instead of shame, a continual undercurrent of self-satisfaction. Finally, if all else fails, you can persuade him, in defiance of conscience, to continue the new acquaintance on the ground that he is, in some unspecified way, doing these people “good” by the mere fact of drinking their cocktails and laughing at their jokes, and that to cease to do so would be “priggish”, “intolerant”, and (of course) “Puritanical”.

Meanwhile you will of course take the obvious precaution of seeing that this new development induces him to spend more than he can afford and to neglect his work and his mother. Her jealousy, and alarm, and his increasing evasiveness or rudeness, will be invaluable for the aggravation of the domestic tension,

Your affectionate uncle
SCREWTAPE

 

[EasterJoy]

XI

MY DEAR WORMWOOD,

Everything is clearly going very well. am specially glad to hear that the two new friends have now made him acquainted with their whole set. All these, as I find from the record office, are thoroughly reliable people; steady, consistent scoffers and worldlings who without any spectacular crimes are progressing quietly and comfortably towards our Father’s house. You speak of their being great laughers. I trust this does not mean that you are under the impression that laughter as such is always in our favour. The point is worth some attention.

I divide the causes of human laughter into Joy, Fun, the Joke Proper, and Flippancy. You will see the first among friends and lovers reunited on the eve of a holiday. Among adults some pretext in the way of Jokes is usually provided, but the facility with which the smallest witticisms produce laughter at such a time shows that they are not the real cause. What that real cause is we do not know. Something like it is expressed in much of that detestable art which the humans call Music, and something like it occurs in Heaven-a meaningless acceleration in the rhythm of celestial experience, quite opaque to us. Laughter of this kind does us no good and should always be discouraged. Besides, the phenomenon is of itself disgusting and a direct insult to the realism, dignity, and austerity of Hell.

Fun is closely related to Joy-a sort of emotional froth arising from the play instinct. It is very little use to us. It can sometimes be used, of course, to divert humans from something else which the Enemy would like them to be feeling or doing: but in itself it has wholly undesirable tendencies; it promotes charity, courage, contentment, and many other evils.

The Joke Proper, which turns on sudden perception of incongruity, is a much more promising field. I am not thinking primarily of indecent or bawdy humour, which, though much relied upon by second-rate tempters, is often disappointing in its results. The truth is that humans are pretty clearly divided on this matter into two classes. There are some to whom “no passion is as serious as lust” and for whom an indecent story ceases to produce lasciviousness precisely in so far as it becomes funny: there are others in whom laughter and lust are excited at the same moment and by the same things. The first sort joke about sex because it gives rise to many incongruities: the second cultivate incongruities because they afford a pretext for talking about sex. If your man is of the first type, bawdy humour will not help you-I shall never forget the hours which I wasted (hours to me of unbearable tedium) with one of my early patients in bars and smoking-rooms before I learned this rule. Find out which group the patient belongs to-and see that he does not find out.

The real use of Jokes or Humour is in quite a different direction, and it is specially promising among the English who take their “sense of humour” so seriously that a deficiency in this sense is almost the only deficiency at which they feel shame. Humour is for them the all-consoling and (mark this) the all-excusing, grace of life. Hence it is invaluable as a means of destroying shame. If a man simply lets others pay for him, he is “mean”; if he boasts of it in a jocular manner and twits his fellows with having been scored off, he is no longer “mean” but a comical fellow. Mere cowardice is shameful; cowardice boasted of with humorous exaggerations and grotesque gestures can passed off as funny. Cruelty is shameful-unless the cruel man can represent it as a practical joke. A thousand bawdy, or even blasphemous, jokes do not help towards a man’s damnation so much as his discovery that almost anything he wants to do can be done, not only without the disapproval but with the admiration of his fellows, if only it can get itself treated as a Joke. And this temptation can be almost entirely hidden from your patient by that English seriousness about Humour. Any suggestion that there might be too much of it can be represented to him as “Puritanical” or as betraying a “lack of humour”.

But flippancy is the best of all. In the first place it is very economical. Only a clever human can make a real Joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny. Among flippant people the Joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it. If prolonged, the habit of Flippancy builds up around a man the finest armour-plating against the Enemy that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers inherent in the other sources of laughter. It is a thousand miles away from joy it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practice it,

Your affectionate uncle
SCREWTAPE

 

[EasterJoy]

I will not go on with Screwtape, except to make the obvious point that the wrong friends can ruin a soul very quickly, without any of the souls involved being any the wiser.

No matter what the issue is with your wife, I’d think the best thing to do is to attend to your friendship with her and her feeling that you prize and cherish her. When she goes off with her friends, the way you treat her ought to be something she can brag about. Take care of that side of your romance with your wife first, and don’t rush on re-knitting the sexual side. That will be very hard for you, but repairing an eroded foundation and serious drainage problems that could undermine the structural integrity of the whole home is not done in an afternoon. I think that is what you might be dealing with, regardless of what the primary and precipitating causes were.

A heart-to-heart with your wife is an excellent idea, but I would very strongly suggest you try it in a role-playing way with a therapist first. Learn the difference between the message you are trying to send and the other messages you might send instead. Learn how to deal with corrosive responses she might be tempted to throw back at you. IOW, do the discussion and the ensuing fight several times on the practice field, and you may not open the way for any fight at all when it is really game time. Know how the game is played and where things can go wrong. I think you will be very glad you did.

 

[styrgwillidar]

Yes, the eldest is very responsible…she’d just much rather go away with her friends than me…and I’m not allowed to bring up the sex issue again either…I’m retreating more and more from her as she seems to have no concern for my feelings on the matter…if I don’t like it I can leave according to her.

Uh… no. If she doesn’t like being a wife, being there for you. If she’s decided she can no longer be someone you can depend on, if she doesn’t want to be a respected and cherished partner in life… she can leave. Point her to the door. You’ll take care of the kids, you’ll keep them safe, she can visit.

Tell her if she doesn’t want to be married anymore- pack her trash and go. If not, she needs to work on the relationship with you. You can not do this by yourself. Good thing you’re in counseling, but it’s going to take active participation and effort on her part to do any good. She has to want things to get better, she won’t do that if she’s fine with the status quo. She will view it as your individual problam vice a shared/mutual problem.

Sorry, been there, done that, got the t-shirt and the scars- although mine are on the inside. My kids do as well- emotional, spiritual and physical. Far worse than mine. Many women go through mid-life depression. Depression isn’t being sad-- clinical depression is a lack of feeling, many depressives behavior will change markedly and they will do outlandish things in an attempt to feel something. Anything

• I highly recommend reading, and asking (not begging, pleading or demanding- simply asking) her to read the book “Depression Fallout” by Anne Sheffield. Also, “Should You Leave” by Dr. Peter Kramer. She may recognize herself, her feelings in some of this. The book was responsible for my putting my marriage back on track for 5 years after her first serious bought of depression. Fell apart when in her words, ‘the meds weren’t working’- but she wouldn’t do what most experts recommend in trying different meds and continuing to see a therapist. Difference of 5 years with my kids believeng they had a mother who loved them they wouldn’t otherwise have had.
• I think you’re behind the power curve in this, I think you’ve felt you’ve been supporting her and trying not to be too demanding, hoping things will change, allowing yourself to feel guilty over reasonable expectations of support and your needs/desires. It will get better when the kids are older, etc. etc. I think she’s already out of the marriage in several ways.

I’ll be praying for you, but especially your kids.

If your youngest is a girl, it will be better for your daughter to keep your wife in the home until your daughter completes high school. I can not emphasize this enough. Folks will tell you that a mother never loses their feelings for their kids. That’s a crock. They can. They do.

Strange thing a therapist tried to convince me of-- this isn’t about you and her at all. This is all about her.

 

[EasterJoy]

Uh… no. If she doesn’t like being a wife, being there for you. If she’s decided she can no longer be someone you can depend on, if she doesn’t want to be a respected and cherished partner in life… she can leave. Point her to the door. You’ll take care of the kids, you’ll keep them safe, she can visit.

Tell her if she doesn’t want to be married anymore- pack her trash and go. If not, she needs to work on the relationship with you. You can not do this by yourself. Good thing you’re in counseling, but it’s going to take active participation and effort on her part to do any good. She has to want things to get better, she won’t do that if she’s fine with the status quo. She will view it as your individual problam vice a shared/mutual problem.

Sorry, been there, done that, got the t-shirt and the scars- although mine are on the inside. My kids do as well- emotional, spiritual and physical. Far worse than mine. Many women go through mid-life depression. Depression isn’t being sad-- clinical depression is a lack of feeling, many depressives behavior will change markedly and they will do outlandish things in an attempt to feel something. Anything

• I highly recommend reading, and asking (not begging, pleading or demanding- simply asking) her to read the book “Depression Fallout” by Anne Sheffield. Also, “Should You Leave” by Dr. Peter Kramer. She may recognize herself, her feelings in some of this. The book was responsible for my putting my marriage back on track for 5 years after her first serious bought of depression. Fell apart when in her words, ‘the meds weren’t working’- but she wouldn’t do what most experts recommend in trying different meds and continuing to see a therapist. Difference of 5 years with my kids believeng they had a mother who loved them they wouldn’t otherwise have had.
• I think you’re behind the power curve in this, I think you’ve felt you’ve been supporting her and trying not to be too demanding, hoping things will change, allowing yourself to feel guilty over reasonable expectations of support and your needs/desires. It will get better when the kids are older, etc. etc. I think she’s already out of the marriage in several ways.

I’ll be praying for you, but especially your kids.

If your youngest is a girl, it will be better for your daughter to keep your wife in the home until your daughter completes high school. I can not emphasize this enough. Folks will tell you that a mother never loses their feelings for their kids. That’s a crock. They can. They do.

Strange thing a therapist tried to convince me of-- this isn’t about you and her at all. This is all about her.

There are so many reasons that could be behind the problems in a marriage that the husband will honestly describe as the OP has done. We can suggest reasons that the OP may not have considered as possibilities, but we can’t know what is going on between him and his wife based on her lack of libido, his feelings of hurt and distance from her, and her interest in going on vacations with her friends when she doesn’t go on vacations of similar length and extravagance with him.

If he can find a marriage counsellor who can help him to narrow down his guesses and focus on some positive actions he can take to improve his marriage for both his wife’s sake and his own, that would be time and effort well-spent. A stab in the dark can do a lot of damage in a case like this. Doing nothing at all can also lead to disaster. It is time to do some guided investigation, so he can make well-informed guesses about the problems he is facing, and take some action that has the best chance of success.

 

[styrgwillidar]

There are so many reasons that could be behind the problems in a marriage that the husband will honestly describe as the OP has done. We can suggest reasons that the OP may not have considered as possibilities, but we can’t know what is going on between him and his wife based on her lack of libido, his feelings of hurt and distance from her, and her interest in going on vacations with her friends when she doesn’t go on vacations of similar length and extravagance with him.

If he can find a marriage counsellor who can help him to narrow down his guesses and focus on some positive actions he can take to improve his marriage for both his wife’s sake and his own, that would be time and effort well-spent. A stab in the dark can do a lot of damage in a case like this. Doing nothing at all can also lead to disaster. It is time to do some guided investigation, so he can make well-informed guesses about the problems he is facing, and take some action that has the best chance of success.

Of course, you are correct as usual Easter Joy. I 'am HEAVILY biased by my and my child’s experience. Which, is very similar to this man’s. I could be wrong.

A priest once told me, that often we wonder why God is doing this to me. Or allowing this to happen to me. Often, he claimed, it is not being done to us, but for someone else. In that light, I feel compelled to try and get some good from my experience by sharing it with others.

Several things he says make me wonder. “If you don’t like it, you can leave.” It’s your problem, not mine. It displaces the blame onto someone else if the marriage crumbles-- even if we aren’t making an effort to keep it together. Even if we’re doing things deliberately that we know are driving our partner in that direction. I’m going to abuse you, but it’s your fault if you leave. I’m going to show you a complete disregard for your feelings, but that’s your problem not mine.

Heres’ an interesting perspective that my kids taught me. (and a therapist concurred with later) If he didn’t marry an idiot or a fool, why think that the obvious consequences of actions are unfortunate side-effects, or unintended? Collateral damage? If these outcomes are foreseeable, they can well be the goal. Probably are the goal.

She may not be going on these vacations despite their creating feelings of concern and alienation, but to deliberately ( conciousely or otherwise) invoke those feelings.

Sorry, again I could be tragically wrong. But, I do feel compelled to provide some insight as much of what he says resonates with me. If that can assist or ease some of the pain, than my experience may produce some good.

I think we would agree though-- this is a shared problem between them that can only be resolved between them. It will take both of their cooperation.

I strongly encourage the OP to pray to the Holy Spirit for guidance for the good of his family.

 

[PRAYER51]

She seems so down on herself as well. I’ve asked her if she’s seeing someone else and she says no. I go to confession weekly before mass…she comes with me to mass but not confession. I asked her just now if she’s down on herself and she just said she didn’t want to talk about it…which makes me wonder if something’s been going on with her all along???

 

[Xantippe]

She seems so down on herself as well. I’ve asked her if she’s seeing someone else and she says no. I go to confession weekly before mass…she comes with me to mass but not confession. I asked her just now if she’s down on herself and she just said she didn’t want to talk about it…which makes me wonder if something’s been going on with her all along???

Please got off this train of thought.

Presumably, she has a guilty conscience about turning you down. That in itself would be adequate to explain her not going to confession if she didn’t have any intention of changing her ways.

 

[Xantippe]

Or she may feel that she has been to confession recently enough.

Or she may feel like she keeps confessing the same stuff over and over and it’s not working.

Or she may be having some sort of crisis of faith.

You have literally no evidence of an affair, but if you keep mentioning it to her, she may take you up on it.

 

[PRAYER51]

Well, she’s Catholic but doesn’t believe you have to go to confessions for youR sins to be forgiven…you just need to go to God and change your ways…

 

[styrgwillidar]

She seems so down on herself as well. I’ve asked her if she’s seeing someone else and she says no. I go to confession weekly before mass…she comes with me to mass but not confession. I asked her just now if she’s down on herself and she just said she didn’t want to talk about it…which makes me wonder if something’s been going on with her all along???

Easter Joy is correct. None of us on the internet/forum can determine with accurancy what is going on. Again, I strongly recommend “Depression Fallout”. Just ask her to read it, it may provide some insight or it may not. But it’s something you can do. Going to counseling/a therapist, having a checkup are also positive steps you can take.

Very similar to my wife-- she was always down on herself. A perfectionist who was their own worst critic. I could objectively point to tons of things she did that were great and it didn’t matter. (Always easy to discount a spouse’s praise. “You have to say that as my husband” etc).

 

[Xantippe]

Well, she’s Catholic but doesn’t believe you have to go to confessions for youR sins to be forgiven…you just need to go to God and change your ways…

In that case, I would put no weight at all on her shying away from confession. It sounds like that’s normal for her.

 

[PRAYER51]

She hasn’t been to confession in years…not saying she has to that’s up to her…

 

[EasterJoy]

She seems so down on herself as well. I’ve asked her if she’s seeing someone else and she says no. I go to confession weekly before mass…she comes with me to mass but not confession. I asked her just now if she’s down on herself and she just said she didn’t want to talk about it…which makes me wonder if something’s been going on with her all along???

I think I would try this: Ask her what she would do if you were having chest pains and shortness of breath. Then ask her what she’d do if you refused to go to the doctor. Then tell her you are concerned about how down on herself that she is, how she is not her happy self, and how long it has been going on. You love her, and you want her to get herself checked out, because mood disorders are very hard on a person’s body, not to mention quality of life. Extract a promise that she will do it, and see that she does. If she doesn’t, then keep after her a bit, as you would if she had a mole that she wouldn’t get checked out or her hearing or eyesight was going out on her. Treat this as a health problem that should not be ignored, because until proven otherwise, that is how it ought to be treated. (There are far fewer minefields in the direction of showing a reasonable concern for her health, besides.)

Once you’ve done that, make an extra effort to do little things to please her and strengthen your friendship, to let her know you are thinking of her fondly. (No pressure for romance, just yet, as if she had just had a baby or had surgery or something…)

Try that.

 

[EasterJoy]

Well, she’s Catholic but doesn’t believe you have to go to confessions for youR sins to be forgiven…you just need to go to God and change your ways…

Don’t go there. Pray for her, and let the Holy Spirit convict her, if she won’t take your invitation. You can lead a horse to that water, but there is no making one drink of the waters of grace.

 

[EasterJoy]

Well, she’s Catholic but doesn’t believe you have to go to confessions for youR sins to be forgiven…you just need to go to God and change your ways…

She hasn’t been to confession in years…not saying she has to that’s up to her…

You are right to avoid pressuring her. Pray for her, and let the Holy Spirit convict her, if she won’t take your invitation. You can lead a horse to that water, but there is no making one drink of the waters of grace.