Is love a form of insanity?

[Bill Stewart-Cole]

I know, it's an old question.

I guess it would help to set the stage. Especially if there might actually
be someone reading this group which has no traffic.

16 years ago I met a girl named Sandra. She was only 17, but since I was
only 17 as well, it wasn't cradle-robbing. We dated. I fell in love. We
broke up and got back together many times over the next 3 years, but she
was unwary enough to always let me stay her friend so despite not
attending college in the same city I always managed to get her back by the
time September rolled around, and eventually managed to get her to say yes
to a proposal of marriage (I started asking 3 weeks after meeting her...)
and stick to it all the way to the wedding.

Long story made short: we have been married almost 11 years now. Much of
that was very hard financially, and we both have resentments about the
others failings over that time and the sacrifices we've made. The worst
part is that for some time now I've been sinking into something that
matches the symptoms of depression, or maybe computer addiction, or maybe
some mix of those with a bad attention problem that makes me prone to
saying 'just a minute' and taking an hour. I was withdrawn and grumpy and
ill-groomed and often slightly tipsy and always smoking my beloved
cigarettes. She found an external social life centered on a live action
role-playing game club and used me as a live-in babysitter for our (now)
7-year-old daughter. Last fall she started having sex with another man,
someone who I thought was a mutual friend, who was in a much more
obviously lousy marriage and also deeply into the LARPing group. I hit the
realization of my problems in January, but it took a week of being sober,
clean, smokeless, and almost computerless for me to realize that my
changing was not obvious to her because she was always out, except when
she was having a game or club organizational meeting here. I begged her to
reconnect with me, she responded that she thought she should move out and
we should start seeing a counselor. A week later after not getting
anything else from her, I blew up and accused her of infidelity weith the
aforementioned friend, not as a real suspicion but as a way of shocking
her into some response. She was instead shocked into silence, which told
me a lot more than I thought I could learn.

So I kept up my reform, we went to a counselor, and at times during
February and March it seemed like we were going to get it worked out for
the better. Yet she kept feeling put-out by having to give up her
boyfriend, and kept waffling on what she wanted and repeatedly expressed
her regret at not being able to really see what her options were. One
night at a gaming club meeting, He showed up with hickeys and she got
madly jealous. 4 hours after we had come to a decision that another child
was a real possibility, she was making plans to move out into an apartment
with Him. 2 weeks later she did so. I walked the edge of psychosis and
constant panic during those 2 weeks, and have been in individual therapy
since.

So back to the original question... All through this she has said she
still loves me but that she also loves Him. Leaving is a huge disruption,
because we were only barely comfortable, not comfortable enough that she
could just take her paycheck and walk without threatening rather swift
destruction of both our credit ratings and losing our house. So with some
difficulty I managed to get her to look at the numbers and see that she
had to keep contributing for our daughter's sake, especially if she wanted
to keep the option of changing her mind back. The bottom line is that now
both she and I are living quite frugally, but in essence, she gave up for
love a lot of security and a lot of comfort, and a little more than half
of her time with her daughter. If she does not change her mind (and soon)
she is very likely going to end up losing even more material comfort and
even more of her motherhood. For what? Love. She loves him. A woman who
has for as long as I've known her has said very ugly things about anyone
who would consort with a married person is now throwing away a life she
has worked like hell to get in order to be with just such a man.

But yes, there's another amorous insanity here. Read carefully the last
paragraph. My wife is living with someone I used to consider my friend,
she has refused at any point to join me in recommitting to work on our
marriage, she wants to be 'fair' about us both taking our daughter
alternating weeks, except when it happens to be more convenient for her to
shave a day here or there to fit her schedule. She still has a choice
available to her of coming back. I am as much in love with her as ever. I
ache to have her back, I write her long e-mails begging, making cogent
arguments, whining, appealing to her guilt, appealing to her sense of
responsibility, invoking cherished memories, invoking fearful futures,
doing everything I can to persuade her to return. And every night I dread
my bed because it feels too big, it no longer smells right, and I can no
longer read myself to sleep because I cry myself to sleep. I love her. I
can barely speak to my own father because I still resent his leaving his
family for a woman, yet I would take this woman who has left me for
another man back as my wife, to have and to hold, 'til death do us part. I
look at the reflection in the eyes of people I talk to about it, and I
appear quite mad. I hug my daughter when she cries about it, and I wander
this empty house like a ghost when she is gone, and wanting BOTH my girls
back does not feel mad. I remember all the good times, scattered thickly
across 16 years, and it does not seem crazy to still be in love with this
brilliant, beautiful, multi-talented, passionate woman. Except that she
has hurt me more deeply than I ever imagined it was possible to be hurt,
and that when I am most hurt and most in need of her she refuses to keep
her promise to be with me forever.

So who's crazy? This is a somewhat silly question, given that I have a
stack of copay reciepts and a bunch of pill bottles proving at least that
I am not naturally attached to sanity...

Anyway, I figured I could do my part to get a real post into yet another
U2 group.

--
Bill Stewart-Cole bi...@scconsult.com
If you really want a response, e-mail me.
If you DEMAND a response, you had better be paying me.
Life is too real right now for me to read news religiously.