Saturday and Satriday in Book Five: Working Through the Maze 2018

If I stay married, there may be some difficult choices I have to make as far as my wife and any kind of social interaction.

This evening was time to spend with dear friends we hadn’t seen in a year. Apparently, these friends were ECSTATIC that I called because the last time they had a night without their child in tow was last year! The dinner was nice, expensive and lots of cocktails but nice. Then we went to a British Pub where I switched to non-alcoholic drinks as I was the driver; but Jane, Wife, and Jane’s husband each got two Rum & Cokes. Then Jane and her husband took a Lyft back home to relieve the babysitter and Wife wanted to check out the Martini Bar down the street because she really had to pee.

We get into the Martini Bar and decide on our drinks. I order something small, Wife orders something dark but doesn’t ask about the restroom. I give her a well deserved annoyed look because she was complaining about how horridly she needed to pee. She said she chickened out. Of asking a bartender about their bathroom’s location? Whatever. The bartender comes back with our drinks, she again refuses to ask about the bathroom… even though she is clearly experiencing massive discomfort. I’m starting to get annoyed. I offer to ask about the bathroom, and she tells me not to. “It’s my thing, I should ask” were her words. But she doesn’t. She doesn’t ask. She just complains about how badly she needs to pee. LITERALLY THE PERFECT METAPHOR FOR HER. In everything in her life, she’d rather bitch and complain and whine than do anything to solve a fucking problem or resolve an issue. She even “joked” about peeing herself, and I outright called her on it. My words: “If you’re sitting here saying you’d rather piss yourself than ask a bartender where a bathroom is; you’re deranged.” She finally got up and investigated for herself, discovering the bathroom that way. After she was in there for about five or ten minutes, she came out raving about the bathroom. She took pictures. She started showing me the pictures of the bathroom. Then she stops and says that she is sorry she is such a selfish bitch. Using those words. And tells me she thinks I’m very cute and is glad she’s with me. She finishes her drink, I pay, we walk out.

On the walk back to the parking ramp, she is focused on two things exclusively. (1) She doesn’t like how much she liked the bathroom. She is openly aloud chastising herself for liking a bar that she believes is “too hipster.” (2) She develops the hiccups. The more we walk, the more irritated she is getting that she can’t get rid of her hiccups. Like… swearing and punching herself in the ribs. For some reason, she even punches me in the tricep three times. I grabbed her shoulders, looked her right in the eyes and said, “Don’t hit me.” I’m very upset that this is something I’ve had to tell her several times in our marriage.

As we get to the car, things seem to settle down. Or so I thought. The hiccups go away. But as soon as I pull out of the parking garage? The sobbing and the high volume wailing (the toddler tantrum) start up. This is a pure signal that Wife has had too much to drink and her most basic “true self” emerges. When I get drunk? I go to sleep or experience extreme leg pain. Because my “true self” is a tired man with chronic pain. When Wife gets drunk? She goes full toddler. She’s screaming, she’s yelling, she’s sobbing, she’s having arguments with herself. At one point, I ask if she’s going to throw up and she says yes… so I get off the highway and pull into a residential street to let her vomit outside the car if she needs to. No sooner do I pull into the residential street, though, and she starts yelling at me for not getting us home. So I ask, “Are you going to throw up? Do it here if so.” She assures me, through yelling and sobbing, that we just need to continue home. SO I drive us back to the highway. Except as I’m driving, Wife starts arguing. “We need to go west why are you going east?!” I calmly tell her we’re going west. As I pull onto the highway with a LARGE sign that says 235 WESTBOUND. She’s still arguing. She keeps telling me “Stop going East! What’s wrong with you? You’re supposed to go west!” I get in my dark voice… the quiet calm one that still speaks volumes… and say, “Of the two of us, I’m the one that is not drunk and coherent. I’m driving us west.” This settles her for a good three minutes. Until she starts screaming that we’re going too fast. Speed limit is 60, I’m going 58. She starts slamming her fists into the car telling me to slow down. I don’t even listen. If she’s feeling nauseous because of the speed, she’ll have to deal with it as I am not going to do anything that makes this trip longer.

I get off the highway at our proper exit and she starts rambling “no, no, no, no” I pull over and unlock the doors demanding that if she vomits, she does so outside of the car. She doesn’t listen at first (big shock there, not) and just spits in my car twice. I command her to open her car door and she does so. Maybe she vomited, maybe she didn’t. It didn’t sound like retching but I was also mostly just focused on being upset. She pulls herself back into the car and I continue to drive down our street. She, however, again starts yelling at me to slow down. Louder and louder with more and more sobbing. I am now on a busy residential through street with a posted speed limit of 45 miles per hour. After five minutes on that road, it is a short 25 mph drive of about 3 minutes and we’re home. So I yell (to be heard) “SHUT UP” and drive us the rest of the way home.

Get into the house, she runs to the bed but doesn’t get in. I walk in after, turn on the fan in the bedroom for her, turn on her TV to Futurama for her (as she would prefer on a Saturday) and go out to the living room.

Strangely (how’s this for timing?) a friend of mine sent me a facebook message at about the exact time I got home saying “Never stare at a blinking curser if you want to reach out. You are not a burden. You are loved. We are here.”

How’s that for strange timing? I’m literally in the process of reconsidering my marriage (for the millionth time). So she and I start talking and I describe my considerations as ” After 13 years together… I’m still with the same toddler that refuses to ask how my day was, literally throws tantrums, and has to be reminded to treat me with respect.” And it sucks how accurate that description is.

Of course, while this is going on, Wife has refused to actually GET IN bed. Instead is lying half-naked in the hallway in front of the bathroom door. Calls out to me asking me to bring her a pillow and a blanket. Of course I bring them. She falls asleep almost instantly right there.

The three things that scream to me about this evening?
(1) She was genuinely having a good time with our friends there for the first 2 hours.
(2) She was able to open up a bit about her issues, identifying them and calling them out. Acknowledging her shit and openly admitting that she acts like a selfish bitch.
(3) Her behavior once we left the Martini Bar? The ENTIRE walk and car trip? Were like… the kind of behavior I grew to expect from my crazy ex that tried to kill me. Honestly. Aku, as I’ve referred to her before, was kidnapped and sexually assaulted when she was a little girl… so often, she would regress at weird times and it was creepy, weird, and scary. And yes, I’ve asked Wife about this kind of thing before. Wife is very confident that she did not have some deep disturbing trauma as a child.

It also creates some… very difficult questions.

(1) Why do I attract these types of women? Is my caring/giving nature attractive to the kind of people who desperately want it due to severe psychological complications or deficiencies in their own lives? If so, would the proper response be to remove my caring/giving nature or is there any way to attract the kind of person that would appreciate and/or reciprocate?

(2) How much of this am I willing to put up with, really? I mean… Psycho Ex Aku was given a free pass right up until things turned terrifyingly violent. Am I really going to let this marriage continue until that point? Or what is my proper “I can’t. I’m done.” point? I’m worried that I don’t have an answer for this question.

(3) Is the devil you know really better than the devil you don’t? I have to admit that is something I consider in these. THIS is my Wife. The only other relationship I had that lasted more than a few months was Aku. THAT is my life. A handful of “a few months” relationships, Aku for 3/4s of a year, and Wife since 2005. So yeah… I haven’t exactly experienced a lot. But the question remains… the devil I know… or risk meeting someone that actually would kill me? Yes, I realize the logical response to this question is “OR you could meet a woman that genuinely loves you and makes your life happier” and while that is a possibility… my personal track record doesn’t typically point to “expect happier outcomes.”