Whose Day Is It Anyway?

Well, I tried. I thought that I'd be able to entice my wife into a conversation as a Father's Day gift. She didn't want to do something that would make her stomach hurt, so we watched a movie together, as she had planned for us. Spoiler alert: Harold and Kumar do make it to White Castle. Thankfully, it wasn't Sophie's Choice or Schindler's List, because the tears were at the ready.

Today, she has gone with the kids to see her dad, so I started writing. I'll share it with you:

How are you doing? What's on your mind? Is everything all right?

These are questions that convey concern for another. The answers to these questions create a sense of shared intimacy. That intimacy is the foundation of a successful relationship. These questions are at the heart of the problems in our marriage.

I don't ask these questions very often, but frankly, I don't need to. The answers to them are the content of practically all of our conversations. And that's fine. That's what I signed on for all these years ago. These conversations make us closer. I like knowing the ins and outs of your experience.

But there's a gaping hole here. I have been living what I will modestly call an "interesting" life. I'd like to share details of it with you. Not to make you feel bad, but because I need to feel that shared intimacy with my wife. We don't talk about my life.

I'll give you an example. Last week, I had a very rough time emotionally. My therapist has recently noted that she's seen me slipping into a bad place for weeks now. And I finally made it there last week. I fell into a heavy depression, mitigated somewhat by the Zoloft. I slipping down a hole and you didn't know anything about it, because you didn't ask those questions and I was uncomfortable volunteering the information without an opening. When I learned that my weekly session had been dropped from the schedule, I had a complete meltdown at work. My fallback, my release valve, was gone. We talked on the phone several times that night, and I held it together during those conversations. But I was dying inside with the desire, the need, to spill my guts to you. The invitation never came. We talked about the things on your mind. And that's fine. But it's incomplete. Without the face-to-face possibilities with you or my therapist, I fell back to the internet.

I wrote about my situation on my blog. Yes, I have a blog. Writing about my experiences has been very therapeutic, and I've forged a bond with a world much bigger than the inside of my head. There's a commonality of experience, a shared path, that makes us a community. There are many personal variables, but the standard story is essentially a sitcom formula: Boy meets girl, boy is girl, friction ensues. Like a sitcom, except nothing funny ever happens.

So, I wrote about the dire place I felt I was going, the despair that I was feeling. And the online community responded. My friends shared their stories, their empathy, some offered phone numbers because I was clearly desperate to talk to someone. They came through in a big way because they've been there themselves. They know the pain I'm feeling. But the one I wanted to talk to was you.

We chose one another 26 years ago. We've lasted through thick and thin (a lot of thin) against great odds, I think. I freely admit that I made egregious mistakes regarding disclosure of the truth, and the timing thereof. I wish I could change the way I've handled things. But until we can afford to buy that wayback machine, we're stuck with our present circumstances.

What I'm asking for, I guess, is that there be more give and take. I love talking with you about the difficulties you encounter, and trying to help you think through them. But I need the same consideration from you, some reciprocation. I need to discuss the successes and failures of myself and my friends, just everyday mundane stuff, the details that make life interesting. Without the opportunity to discuss a large chunk of my day-to-day life with my spouse, I'm feeling more and more disconnected from you. I need to feel the intimacy that naturally follows from easy, and hard, communication. I need to feel a sense of normality about my life, strange as it must seem from the outside. I need you to at least feign interest in my mental and emotional state. Or, ultimately, we have nothing.

I really do love you, and I just want to feel closer to you. Can we talk?

I didn't want to have to write this, but it seems the only way I'll get my point across. I'll let you know how it plays.