I speak to my friend Jay in the morning. He and his wife Natasha are our oldest and best friends since Helen and I have been living in this area for the past sixteen years. They’re both obviously distraught at the turn of events.
Jay tells me that he had lunch with Helen several months ago, when all this was building up, and she told him she felt that, having just turned forty, she either had to “get out now or be trapped forever.” Classic mid-life crisis bolt instinct, with nary a thought to the real world practicalities and ramifications involved. Understandable perhaps in a bad marriage, but ours wasn’t.
Jay tells me he’d told her to calm down, reminded her of all my positive qualities, and tried to focus her attention on the big picture. Every marriage has its difficulties. He and Natasha have had theirs. But you hold onto the good things, try to fix the problems, make compromises for the greater good, and only consider divorce as the last resort. He says he regrets that he obviously failed to get the message through to her.
Helen and I plan to attend an event at our kids’ school this afternoon. It’s a presentation of stories written by the kids in our daughter’s class during the school year. Helen comes home early from work to attend. We arrive together and see my friend Scott and his wife Marcy, with whom we’ve become friends through our daughters, who are in the same class. I’ve discussed our situation with them, and the meeting is clearly awkward. They’ve been very supportive of me and take a dim view of what Helen’s done.
“I can feel the cold shoulder they’re giving me,” she whispers to me. “I suppose this is something I’ll have to get used to,” she laments. My initial instinct is to regret talking to so many people about our situation and thus humiliating Helen like this. I’m so desperate to smooth things between us that I feel bad for her and kick myself for blabbing too much.
But then I catch myself. Wait a minute, I think, I’m not the one at fault here. If Helen feels bad about people’s attitude toward what she’s done, she shouldn’t have done it. I need make no apology for trying to deal with the worst crisis of my life in the best way I saw fit, including talking to friends for their advice and support.
Somehow, we get through the rest of the event maintaining the mostly positive vibe between us. When we get home with the kids, we take them to the neighbourhood pool and talk a little more while the kids swim. Again, the communication feels constructive and I feel as long as we keep it going we’re making tiny steps forward, which is all I can hope for. Maybe if we’d communicated as much and as effectively throughout our marriage as we’ve done in recent days, we wouldn’t be in this mess. What a tragedy. I just hope it’s not too late, though I fear it may well be.
I make arrangements to meet up with my new friend Tim tonight for a beer and to borrow his fishing tackle box so I can take my son fishing at the weekend. Tim is the singer in a new rock band I’ve been putting together for the past few months. The pressures of parenthood made me quit my last band seven years ago, and I thought I was done playing rock and roll guitar. But I’d been missing it more as the years went by, and finally about six months ago I decided to try and get back into playing music again. I ran an ad in the local paper and assembled a lineup. Tim as singer was the final piece of the puzzle.
Tim is everything you want in a front man – garrulous, loud, brash, upbeat. I knew he’d been through a divorce, so he was among the first I contacted when all this happened. I value the input of people who’ve experienced what I’m going through. We meet at the house, he gives me the tackle box, and we head for the nearest bar for a beer and a chat.
Talking to Tim really lifts my spirits. He’s forceful, positive, and makes some really good points. His energy is infectious. I give him the lowdown on the situation and he tells me I’m being too hard on myself and that I have to be more assertive. I’m the wronged one here, damn it, and I should be angrier. He tells me I should march back home and tell Helen to pack her bags and get out if she wants out of the marriage. Let the lawyers go to work and get this thing done if that’s how she wants it. He says she’s given me the ultimate “fuck you” with the affair and has dared me to pick up the gauntlet. He says it’d probably blow her mind if I did, since that’s the last thing she expects. But he also cautions that this is a game of high stakes poker, so I shouldn’t make a bluff I’m not prepared to see through.
It’s good advice, though I tell him I’m not yet ready to play my trump card. That will come if I feel I have nothing left to lose because the reconciliation is doomed – for instance, if I discover Helen and Pascal are still in contact with each other. I tell him my game plan is to do everything I can to work on my issues and the problems in my marriage and hope that that combined with Helen coming to her senses and realising what she’s risking on the biggest gamble of her life does the trick. I realise that I’m being more accommodating than most people would be in my situation, and Tim’s point that I’m becoming Helen’s doormat is apt. It doesn’t sit well with me, but it’s a position I’m prepared to take at this stage. Still, I feel empowered by my conversation with Tim.
I return home and Helen and I talk again. She notices my more assertive, upbeat mood immediately and responds exactly as Tim said she would, positively. We have another long, constructive talk. The mood between us is so good she suddenly insists on giving me my Father’s Day present a few days early. It’s a sterling silver key chain from Tiffany & Co. I thank her, we embrace, and I kiss her. It really feels great when we maintain the flow of positive energy between us. It’s a confidence builder that the reconciliation can succeed, though that’s still a long way off, the journey is fraught with peril, and I don’t kid myself about the likelihood of success. But if we keep making tiny forward steps, maybe, just maybe, we can get there in the end.
We say goodnight and head to our separate rooms. Another Valium and it’s time for bed.
Excerpted from Diary Of A Divorce, by Richard Pearce, available for £8.99 from www.amazon.co.uk or for $14.75 from www.lulu.com
