Those Aren’t Fighting Words, Dear

On the contrary, I found the author to be remarkably mature. Not many people would have had the patience, much less the world-wisdom, to recognize what her husband was going through and let him get through with it ... on his own.

In one sense, this woman has an extreme faith in her husband. How many people would be able to believe that he would eventually find his own way out of the rut? Such trust, such maturity. Amazing.

> Ah, it was just a metaphor. That makes it alright then.

When we use car analogies to describe tech issues, does that mean we are calling those issues cars? You can try to read into the subtext of why she used that metaphor all you want, but you can't say with 100% certainty why it was chosen, other than to illustrate the point.

> "I am a 40-year-old trying to be a 20-year-old, and I realise my career is done with and I have to find something else" - not sure if that is really a victory to be proud of?

How so? I think that the 'victory' here is not of her over her husband, but of her over herself. The 'easy answer' to the problem would have been to kick her husband to the curb for being an ass (and basically abandoning his family to have his mid-life crisis). She stuck with it believing that he would sort out his issues in his own time. Sticking to her guns while feeling abandoned by her husband is the real 'victory' here.

As far as him coming home with his tail between his legs? He spent the entire summer basically trying to come to grip with reality. It was really his attachment to the past (and to wanting things to 'stay the same') that caused his 'defeat.' He was battling himself and his own misconceptions about how his life was going to be.

I'd like to make a thoughtful comment, but I'm struggling to get past the phrase 'age-appropriate'. As someone who has never been 'appropriate' to their chronological age in any respect, it always comes across as reductive, patronising and ultimately dehumanising. It seems to me to be the product of a worldview which sees children not as distinctive individuals with unique preferences and aptitudes, but as mere larvae passing through 'developmental stages'. I consider it an affront to the dignity of all children and my teeth are set on edge every time I hear it.

OK, .

If I expressed my deepest feelings to someone who was close to me, the most painful response I could imagine is "I don't buy it". If they spat at me or hit me, then at least they heard me, took me seriously and emotionally engaged with what I am saying. To hear "I don't buy it" is to be told "I don't recognise your feelings as valid", it is to be told "you don't matter, I'm the one in this relationship that decides what we feel about things". To hear "What can we do to give you the distance you need" is to be told what you need, not asked. When he said "I don't like what you've become", she didn't want to hear what he didn't like, she didn't want to engage, she didn't even acknowledge what he was saying, she just invalidated him and shut the discussion down with "I don't buy it".

There's a good chance I'm being grossly unfair, but I can't see anything but an emotionally manipulative woman, breaking the spirit of her husband by refusing to engage with him emotionally. I see a man who has had his every thought and feeling dismissed for years, who has become scarcely able to recognise his own emotional autonomy. When he says “You’re going to make me go into therapy. You’re not going to let me move out. You’re going to use the kids against me.”, I don't see paranoia, I see a man who had a damned good idea of what he was in for; Her only statements of any real meaning were to tell him “What can we do to give you the distance you need, without hurting the family?”, “[do] anything but hurting the children and me” and “It’s not age-appropriate to expect children to be concerned with their parents’ happiness. Not unless you want to create co-dependents who’ll spend their lives in bad relationships and therapy.”. They all sound an awful lot to me like some things you might say in order to manipulate someone into not leaving by using their kids against them.

Of course we know nothing about their relationship prior to this incident and very little about it since, but I find what we do know to be deeply troubling. It seems to me that every aspect of this situation screams "PATHOLOGICAL NARCISSIST". She seems completely unable to recognise the thoughts and feelings of others, and seems to simply refuse to acknowledge the possibility that there is an objective reality beyond her own imagination that she is unable to control. As I said, I could be being grossly unfair, but everything about this story sits badly with me and I find it deeply worrying to see this woman unquestioningly lauded as wise and enlightened.

Your last sentence comes pretty close. I have several passionate 'hobbies' that are each rather time-consuming, let alone all put together. I can't imagine even continuing a conversation with a woman after she'd suggested I give something up that I considered a part of me (and of course, in turn, I would pay her exactly the same respect). She would have to harmonize with who I am and what I do; but between two people with two sets of motives it is much easier to introduce dissonance. So in my case it is not about completion or finding happiness, it is simply about finding a pairing that adds more to both people's existing lives than it subtracts. You're probably right that she'd have to have a similarly driven independence and be unusually low maintenance. Tall order, I know, but unless the terms make both people better, I can't strike the bargain :)

It wasn't advice, it was an anecdote. I'm very sorry to hear what you're going through though, I can only imagine what that must be like.