I slept a little better last night, though I still woke up a few times. I popped another Valium at around 4:00am and it gets me through until around 7:15am, fifteen minutes before I have to start getting the kids ready for their last day of school. Not bad by current standards.
Helen has her appointment with the psychiatrist early this morning to determine if there are any psychiatric issues with her behaviour in all this. From there, she will proceed directly to work for the day. I’m interested to hear what the psychiatrist has to say. I have an appointment with her myself later in the week.
I spend the day running the household errands. I notice we’re low on white wine, so I pick up a couple of bottles of Sauvignon Blanc – Helen’s current favourite. I also pass by a florist’s and decide to pick up a big bouquet of flowers. This should be a pleasant surprise for her when she gets home tonight. We have arranged a sitter for the kids so we can spend some time alone together this evening. We’d intended to go to dinner, but now Helen says she needs to go shopping for some new clothes for her upcoming business trips. I agree to go with her to do that instead. Spending time together is the important thing, what we actually do is of little consequence to me.
Upon further investigation of the Raleigh-Durham trip in two weeks, Helen and I decide it’s unfeasible for me to accompany her due to too many practical difficulties involving flight schedules and fares and the issue of child care. That’s okay. It’s only an overnight trip and the trip to New York will suffice as a substitute. We’re still working on whether I can go with her to Caracas, with child care once again the key issue to overcome. I really feel this is an important trip for us to take together and that every option must be explored to make it happen. I suggest Helen find out if one of her sisters can come down to stay at the house and look after the kids for those five days. She agrees to look into it.
The babysitter arrives at 6:00pm and Helen gets home fifteen minutes later. I am anxious to keep our shopping date, though in the past I'd have considered having my fingernails pulled out as an alternative to accompanying a woman on a shopping expedition to the mall. Now, I want to try and rebuild the connection between Helen and I any way I can. She notices the flowers and is delighted, which makes me happy. We head for the mall, with me driving and Helen in the passenger seat. She’s tired after her long day but we talk a little. I ask about her meeting with the psychiatrist.
She tells me that while the psychiatrist identified certain individual traits in her of various disorders such as hypomanic tendencies, elements of sex addiction, and an excessive need for excitement and pushing acceptable limits, they didn’t add up to a disorder as such because they don’t impair her daily functioning. The psychiatrist concludes that Helen’s behaviour is mainly situational (i.e., that the affair is a direct result of her dissatisfaction with me) and that there’s no reason for her to continue looking for psychiatric explanations. This surprises and disappoints me, because I feel that there’s more going on here than the psychiatrist thinks. If so, I’m worried that Helen isn’t working as hard on her issues as she should, but I don’t say anything because I’m trying to keep the atmosphere between us upbeat.
I’m also concerned because it strikes me that this is of a piece with Helen’s tendency to engineer the advice she wants to hear rather than the advice she should hear. She refuses to speak to Angelina or any other mutual friends who know us on a day-to-day basis because she doesn’t want to hear the criticisms of her own conduct and personal deficiencies she knows they’ll offer based on their own observations. Her main confidante is her eldest sister Lisa, who lives the farthest away, has spent the least amount of time with us during our marriage, and consequently only knows what Helen tells her, which doubtless omits the things about which Helen is in denial and paints a one-sided picture with me as caricature villain. How can advice based on such an incomplete picture be sound? It’s a definite worry, because whether or not we can save our marriage, Helen’s failure to resolve her own issues will very likely see her back in a similar mess again a few years down the road. That could involve our kids again, and I don’t want that.
Helen drifts off to sleep for the last fifteen minutes or so of the ride to the mall. I let her have her catnap and keep snatching glances at her as I drive, thinking how beautiful she is and how much I still love her, and most of all how deeply I wish this mess had never happened. We arrive and hit the shops. Helen remarks how odd it is for me to accompany her shopping, normally one of my least favourite activities. I tell her my perspective has radically changed on many things in the past two weeks. We try a few shops until she finds one with something she likes. She tries it on and I tell her how great she looks in it. She purchases the outfit and we head home. I tell her how much I enjoyed being with her. I think she appreciates it.
When we get home, I take care of getting the kids ready for bed while Helen works on the lecture she’s giving tomorrow. Before that, we have our second couples therapy session in the morning followed by my appointment with a psychologist. Helen is sitting up in bed working on her speech when I pop my head round our bedroom door to say goodnight. She smiles at me. I head downstairs to the guest room. It feels like we’ve made another tiny bit of progress tonight. I try to cling to that.
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
