I love my wife. I think most of you that know me at all already realize this. Trouble is that my wife and I don’t get along as well as either of us would like. I can’t imagine happiness without her in my life, and she has made it very clear to me and everyone that knows us that she may leave me and kick me out at any moment because of her lack of satisfaction with our relationship. I’ve tried for years to alter my behavior to improve the relationship between her and I, but it hasn’t worked. I’ve realized that what I do isn’t enough.
Most people who know my wife know that the reality she inhabits is significantly different from the one percieved by the majority of the population. The differences between the two existances cause a significant amount of conflict. Most people who get along with my wife resolve this conflict through submission, and when the degree of submission required to resolve the conflict is greater than what they are comfortable with, they withdraw. Trouble is that I don’t do submission well, and I can’t handle withdrawing from her life.
So the only other option I can figure out is to participate in her reality with her. It is more than just letting her have her way, it is agreeing with her to a degree where I feel that the idea is mine in the first place, even when I know that it isn’t. The idea has been referred to 2+2=5, or as the Chinese refer to it “The deer is a horse”. It causes me a significant amount of distress, and the fact that it causes me distress makes me even more upset. Participating in her reality doesn’t require that you try to believe in it, but rather that there is nothing else to believe. Expierencing stress doing so is fundamentally wrong, as it argues the validity of the reality being believed in. Every day I try to, and I succeed to one degree or another, but it is definately exhausting. My wife isn’t happy with it, but that is only because I don’t fully participate in her reality yet. She tells me that this isn’t what she wants, but she isn’t able to even conceptualize what I am actually doing. For her, the reality she inhabits is the only one she knows, and feels that the conflicts between her reality and the one everyone else inhabits are just slights against her. Once I am able to fully participate in her version of reality, I’ll be able to stop bending her out of shape whenever I open my mouth or draw breath. It isn’t enough that I act as though I am in her reality with her, as my thoughts not conforming to her reality is an act against her in itself.
On top of the trouble I have already with what I’ve written above is that I, the same as my wife, live in a world populated with people who don’t subscribe to her reality. When I spend time with my friends, I find myself torn between two worlds, and it is incredibly difficult to reconcile in my mind. One element I’ve realized I have to deal with though for certain is my relationships with other women.
In my wife’s reality, I am a polygamist completely free to do as I wish with whomever I wish. However, in her reality there is no instance where she is ever effected or inconvienenced in any way by my other relationships if my and my other partners’ behavior is appropriate. Unfortuantly, since everyone else does NOT participate in my wife’s reality, there is no way for them to understand this, or even what the words I just wrote truly mean. What ends up happening, or will happen in any relationship I form, is that my wife’s reality and the reality everyone else belongs to will conflict throughout my relationship with the other woman. My wife will percieve this as a number of slights against her, and the external relationship will have to end. Since my wife’s universe states that I’m free to be with whomever I wish, not just does the external relationship have to end, but the idea of it ending and the desire for it to end has to come from me, and I have to feel that I never loved the other woman in the first place. To makes things worse, I tend to have very emotionally intense relationships, capable of creating great joy for those in them, and bring great misery when they end. This all adds up to making me a toxic person, poison to any woman I get involved with. Given this, I am going to try my best to not form new bonds so that I can at least not hurt any more people. I will have to believe that there is no reason for me not to form new relationships (since I’m a polygamist that is free to be involved with whomever I wish), but just not do so anyway. I haven’t figured out how to pull that one off yet, and it adds to my psychic discomfort along with the troubles I already have. I tried to explain all of this to my wife, but of course it didn’t make any sense to her.
I’m not sure what this will all bring me, but I’m hoping that it will at least let me hold onto my wife.
