No, I haven't found out what's bothering June.
She seems to be over it, at least for now. She's relaxed and friendly around me again, so that's good, but I'm fairly sure that whatever it is will erupt again unless it's dealt with--it's lot like I don't know there was an underlying issue driving that argument.
I asked Allen about it, when I happened to see him, but he just said "couples counseling costs extra," so I suppose he didn't want to be bothered. I talked to Ollie about it, and he had some interesting things to say, but nothing that ultimately proved helpful. I even said something to Eddie, who said "do I look like a man who knows anything about marriage?"
"What does how you look have to do with it?" I asked.
"I am way too cute to be monogamous," he replied. And then he went on for some length about how much progress Elmo, his dog, has made. This is the supposedly untrainable Elmo, and apparently he's doing very well, now. He has basic obedience down solid, knows a few tricks, and as his confidence grows his fear-aggression has backed off dramatically.
"I even have an idea for what kind of therapy task he can do," Eddie said, excitedly. "Elmo has a lot of energy. He needs to run every day, and he's not shy about asking to go. I'm thinking he can be a jogging partner for someone with depression, you know, the kind where you just want to stay in bed all day? Now I just need to find the right person to match him with."
All that's very good and all, but it doesn't help me with my wife. I kind of feel like I'm walking on egg-shells, not that I'm worried she's going to attack me, I'm just thinking about what random thing might trigger whatever it is next.
Finally, I talked to my therapist. Remember that I have a therapist? It's part of the program here, all candidates need to do at least one year of individual therapy, and while I had my doubts at first--I was pretty sure I don't need therapy--I've come to like it. I get to talk about whatever I want for fifty minutes a week, without worrying about whether I'm being boring or sounding stupid or something, and sometimes our talks help me sort things out. My therapist is a man about ten years older than I am who graduated from the school but didn't come back for his ring. So he knows all about the school, and we get along.
But he didn't help me much with this thing with June, except to ask, quite perceptively, whether I was concerned about my issue or hers. Keep the focus on yourself, as they said in the few Al-Anon meetings I went to as a novice.
So I went to bed last night, puzzling about all of this, and then June came in. She turned on the lights, undressed and then put on her pajamas (an unfortunate side effect of winter--it's too cold to sleep naked, now), went back out to the bathroom to fill a cup with drinking water in case we got thirsty at night, turned off the light, and crawled into bed. She wrapped her fuzzy feet around by bare toes.
"Word out on the street is," she said, "you've been asking everyone and their brother's lover's cousin why I'm mad and what to do about it."
"Yes, I suppose so." Dang, foiled by the rumor mill. I wonder who talked?
"So how come you didn't talk to me?"
No comments:
Post a Comment