Of worry and conspiracy theories
Well, life is getting weird.
First I have the problem of my wife... there is a huge part of me that wants to keep tabs on her, what she's doing, and another part that just wants to give her some space. I've thought about a few ways to keep tabs on her, and they just haven't worked.
First I tried this livejournal thing. I saw mike fiddling around with it, and thought it would be a good medium to allow HER to keep tabs on ME. Which is pretty much how I'm using it. So... logic would follow that I could check out HER livejournal and at least see how she's doing. No dice. Turns out livejournal has the worst search engine known to man, and after about a half an hour I gave up on finding her. I tried everything.. looking up her email address, her usual handles, I knew who some of her friends were - one of our friend's father is an author, and on her friends list, so an author must be easy to find, right? Nope. Couldn't find him either. Perhaps they need to hire a 12 year old to do some programming for them and build a search engine that has a hope of working.
The next idea... well, I'm kind of paranoid lately anyway, and I fear that a friend of ours wants to sleep with her, but he IS a good friend, so I figure I can kill two birds with one stone. I ask him to watch out for her. She really needs a good friend now anyway, and he's pretty much the only one she's got right now, so perhaps he can keep an eye on her, and make sure she doesn't go over the top overreacting to such a bad situation... and if she does, let me know. Don't worry about constant updates or anything, just let me know if anything's WRONG. Because that's what I'm worried about. I think my letter fell on deaf ears, however, because his response was that he didn't want to see me again, ever, nor does he want to see any of our group of friends, and didn't really want to see christine again either, but would because he still intends to hang out at a certain place on monday nights that she'll probably want to be at too.
That's just weird. It clearly has nothing to do with what I asked him (I made sure and worded it in a nice, benevolent way, I wanted a hand, not a spy). Now on one hand I understand when someone needs to move on with their lives. I had to do that once... I was living in portland and within the matter of a week I decided that the life I was living was not enough for me so I moved up to bangor, got a job, and a month later started school. I had a really good friend down there who was quite hurt by feeling abandoned, in fact, and now I know how he feels. I suppose the difference is that when I went down to visit again a few months later, I was not welcome. My former friend treated me like an ex girlfriend. I won't make the same mistake - if Aaron wants to hang out at some point and be a friend again, he'll be welcome. I think that's important.
But on the OTHER hand... I am feeling a little on the paranoid side lately, and I was just sick about this for a couple hours yesterday. I didn't even know how worried I was until I started trying to draw (I'm doing a little art project) and I couldn't because my hands were shaking so badly. I was dreadfully worried that aaron was lying to me, and so was christine. I had called christine to invite her to lunch, and she sounded like she didnt' even want to talk to me.. and that she was busy or something and wanted to hang up as quickly as possible. I started to think that perhaps he just didn't want to see ME because he thought that I would hurt him if he dated christine... and the two were spending the day together and just lying about what they were doing. This really ate me up for a couple of hours... it took a while to realize that this sounded like a conspiracy theory. Christine isn't a liar.. and even though she's really confused lately she's always been honest. I expect her to do some uncharacteristic things, but that is REALLY uncharacteristic. Aaron.. well, he's not exactly the honest type... not dishonest too, he lies to himself more than he lies to others, but he IS a good friend, in the true sense of the word, and disloyalty of that sort would be very uncharacteristic of him as well. At this point I just keep telling myself that the two people dissapearing from my radar at the exact same time with either no explanation or a bad one is just a coincidence and that the whole thing is just a conspiracy theory... but it still knaws at me unfortuantely.
I really want to see her... because I keep getting worried about her. I feel I've been broken for a long time, and I was broken for so long that she got broke too. I think I'm better now, or can be anyway, but she's still broken and I feel really bad that I messed her up. She has to deal with the aftermath of MY mistakes, and that just really sucks. I don't know how she's doing... she doesn't have a friend to lean on anymore, our friends are either unavailable or living here with me, (which makes them feel less available to her I'd wager, although I've been VERY pleasantly surprized at how great mike has been, both as a friend, person, and exactly how much he's developed over the past few years) and the only person she seems to be able to talk to is her shrink... who is a really, really, really bad influence on her. I talked to the shrink once, and while I was talking she wasn't listening to a damned word I was saying, and either is dumb as toast, a REALLY bad therapist, or has developed some blind, irrational hatred of me as a person. It's really weird, I haven't been treated that badly by someone in years, she even threatened to call the cops if I showed up to talk to her, she was THAT bad. When that's the only person to talk to, that's pretty bad.
I have been tempted to get christine a new therapist. I can do that... her therapist's blind hatred of me is HIGHLY unethical. There are all levels of unethical associated with giving theraputic advice to someone with whom you're emotionally involved, and for whatever reason, she is either very emotionally involved with christine (overprotective and sheltering) or emotionally involved with me (hatred due to christine's discussions and countertransference). I can call the ethics board (we experimental folks have one, I'm sure clinicians do too, it could be the IRB, the same one) and force her to find christine a new therapist, but that may inconvienience christine, and I don't want to do that. I broke her once, I don't want to inconvienience her as well. I think her therapist is really bad for her, but I don't think christine WANTS me to protect her, even in this case when I think she really needs the protection. And I don't think christine even realizes how emotionally involved her therapist is with me, someone she's never even met. If I protect her I seem like a monster.. if I don't, I could fuck up our relationship even more... it's a tough decision. I can only hope that in the next few weeks her therapist will start giving her more advice, and I can't imagine any of it being good, only causing more worry and trouble, probably trying to get christine to worry more about herself, and less about our relationship, (when the opposite needs to happen, christine can be fixed when WE are fixed, since WE are the major broken part of christine right now) and christine will just start to trust her less and less, and then she'll be less of a threat.
Man, I just have to hope that christine's wisdom is good enough to recognize what her therapist is. Personally, I think christine needs hug therapy.
Man, this is ranting and rambling... so I'll depart.
First I have the problem of my wife... there is a huge part of me that wants to keep tabs on her, what she's doing, and another part that just wants to give her some space. I've thought about a few ways to keep tabs on her, and they just haven't worked.
First I tried this livejournal thing. I saw mike fiddling around with it, and thought it would be a good medium to allow HER to keep tabs on ME. Which is pretty much how I'm using it. So... logic would follow that I could check out HER livejournal and at least see how she's doing. No dice. Turns out livejournal has the worst search engine known to man, and after about a half an hour I gave up on finding her. I tried everything.. looking up her email address, her usual handles, I knew who some of her friends were - one of our friend's father is an author, and on her friends list, so an author must be easy to find, right? Nope. Couldn't find him either. Perhaps they need to hire a 12 year old to do some programming for them and build a search engine that has a hope of working.
The next idea... well, I'm kind of paranoid lately anyway, and I fear that a friend of ours wants to sleep with her, but he IS a good friend, so I figure I can kill two birds with one stone. I ask him to watch out for her. She really needs a good friend now anyway, and he's pretty much the only one she's got right now, so perhaps he can keep an eye on her, and make sure she doesn't go over the top overreacting to such a bad situation... and if she does, let me know. Don't worry about constant updates or anything, just let me know if anything's WRONG. Because that's what I'm worried about. I think my letter fell on deaf ears, however, because his response was that he didn't want to see me again, ever, nor does he want to see any of our group of friends, and didn't really want to see christine again either, but would because he still intends to hang out at a certain place on monday nights that she'll probably want to be at too.
That's just weird. It clearly has nothing to do with what I asked him (I made sure and worded it in a nice, benevolent way, I wanted a hand, not a spy). Now on one hand I understand when someone needs to move on with their lives. I had to do that once... I was living in portland and within the matter of a week I decided that the life I was living was not enough for me so I moved up to bangor, got a job, and a month later started school. I had a really good friend down there who was quite hurt by feeling abandoned, in fact, and now I know how he feels. I suppose the difference is that when I went down to visit again a few months later, I was not welcome. My former friend treated me like an ex girlfriend. I won't make the same mistake - if Aaron wants to hang out at some point and be a friend again, he'll be welcome. I think that's important.
But on the OTHER hand... I am feeling a little on the paranoid side lately, and I was just sick about this for a couple hours yesterday. I didn't even know how worried I was until I started trying to draw (I'm doing a little art project) and I couldn't because my hands were shaking so badly. I was dreadfully worried that aaron was lying to me, and so was christine. I had called christine to invite her to lunch, and she sounded like she didnt' even want to talk to me.. and that she was busy or something and wanted to hang up as quickly as possible. I started to think that perhaps he just didn't want to see ME because he thought that I would hurt him if he dated christine... and the two were spending the day together and just lying about what they were doing. This really ate me up for a couple of hours... it took a while to realize that this sounded like a conspiracy theory. Christine isn't a liar.. and even though she's really confused lately she's always been honest. I expect her to do some uncharacteristic things, but that is REALLY uncharacteristic. Aaron.. well, he's not exactly the honest type... not dishonest too, he lies to himself more than he lies to others, but he IS a good friend, in the true sense of the word, and disloyalty of that sort would be very uncharacteristic of him as well. At this point I just keep telling myself that the two people dissapearing from my radar at the exact same time with either no explanation or a bad one is just a coincidence and that the whole thing is just a conspiracy theory... but it still knaws at me unfortuantely.
I really want to see her... because I keep getting worried about her. I feel I've been broken for a long time, and I was broken for so long that she got broke too. I think I'm better now, or can be anyway, but she's still broken and I feel really bad that I messed her up. She has to deal with the aftermath of MY mistakes, and that just really sucks. I don't know how she's doing... she doesn't have a friend to lean on anymore, our friends are either unavailable or living here with me, (which makes them feel less available to her I'd wager, although I've been VERY pleasantly surprized at how great mike has been, both as a friend, person, and exactly how much he's developed over the past few years) and the only person she seems to be able to talk to is her shrink... who is a really, really, really bad influence on her. I talked to the shrink once, and while I was talking she wasn't listening to a damned word I was saying, and either is dumb as toast, a REALLY bad therapist, or has developed some blind, irrational hatred of me as a person. It's really weird, I haven't been treated that badly by someone in years, she even threatened to call the cops if I showed up to talk to her, she was THAT bad. When that's the only person to talk to, that's pretty bad.
I have been tempted to get christine a new therapist. I can do that... her therapist's blind hatred of me is HIGHLY unethical. There are all levels of unethical associated with giving theraputic advice to someone with whom you're emotionally involved, and for whatever reason, she is either very emotionally involved with christine (overprotective and sheltering) or emotionally involved with me (hatred due to christine's discussions and countertransference). I can call the ethics board (we experimental folks have one, I'm sure clinicians do too, it could be the IRB, the same one) and force her to find christine a new therapist, but that may inconvienience christine, and I don't want to do that. I broke her once, I don't want to inconvienience her as well. I think her therapist is really bad for her, but I don't think christine WANTS me to protect her, even in this case when I think she really needs the protection. And I don't think christine even realizes how emotionally involved her therapist is with me, someone she's never even met. If I protect her I seem like a monster.. if I don't, I could fuck up our relationship even more... it's a tough decision. I can only hope that in the next few weeks her therapist will start giving her more advice, and I can't imagine any of it being good, only causing more worry and trouble, probably trying to get christine to worry more about herself, and less about our relationship, (when the opposite needs to happen, christine can be fixed when WE are fixed, since WE are the major broken part of christine right now) and christine will just start to trust her less and less, and then she'll be less of a threat.
Man, I just have to hope that christine's wisdom is good enough to recognize what her therapist is. Personally, I think christine needs hug therapy.
Man, this is ranting and rambling... so I'll depart.