So we tried date day again
This time we got a bit more daring and went to NYC. For me that is not daring but for my wife it is. As I have said before, she hates NY. Too crowded, too much noise...all that. And yes, she is a "country mouse" and that is fine, but I LOVE New York!!!
So first this was her plan that I sort of hijacked in a sense. She wanted to go
to the Museum of Modern Art, but I felt that The Met was better. It was larger, more too see, more diverse things. So maybe we both might find things we liked. And since we only are going to New York "because you like it", why not go where I preferred and a place I had a sense she might also enjoy?
Now why plan a day in the city, when you can not start till 1 at best? And then with a two hour drive/ride in you are not there till 3, and then once we stop at the store she needs to stop at, and eat lunch and make another stop, and then have the crazy cab driver that had no idea what I was talking about when I mentioned we wanted to go to the Metropolitan Museum, or when I suggested we take the 79th street cut-thru that runs accross the park, so you finally give up and and tell him pull over and you will walk thru the park you not get to the museum till 4.
But let me back up a bit to the park and here is one of the moments that made it a sad, informative, useful date day. These days were divised by me to be a day when we could do something, mostly a walk or lunch, where we could talk and reconnect. Let me relearn my wife and her relearn me and see frankly if we are still people that should be married. And also, I hope, that either way this all goes, I want her to be a better person in terms of liking herself and more self realized. I know, I know I am a horrible devil that should have called myself Rosemary's Baby and not WhiteKnight but....
So one of the things she claims is that I show her far too much where she does things wrong. She may be right. For the reason she thinks but for another that I discovered in our walk. There was this cute puppy that was chasing a squirrel in the park. She laughed and pointed out another for him to get when the first one found a tree. She was laughing, smiling, having a great moment...and I saw this and said to her that that side of her was what I am looking for, what I am wishing she would show more of...the funny, funloving, silly, goofy almost, side. I smiled and said I loved seeing her like that and this was great.
What I heard back was that day to day life has no fun in it. Yes it was easy to show that in Central Park watching a cute puppy be funny, but where can you find it in real life?(OK all the "she never gets to defend hersef "crowd..these were her exact word!!!). Now I get that everyday is not Christmas morning, kids get sick, you get a headache, the car will not start, your boss yells at you, or maybe it is just Tuesday and nothing bad or good happens and it is just a day like a thousand others. I get that. But I think that everyone, even my worst critics, even those that see me as a horrible husband and a man not worthy of my wife will say that you need to find the joy in day to day life. A flower garden you see while stuck at a red light when you are late to work, making a silly face at a baby while in line at the DMV, or whatever. To say that day to day life holds no opportunity to find joy is sad. I will add that there were other moments where she showed that side Saturday, but that she felt she could only show it there is what made me really sad.
Which brings me back to a few weeks ago when my own mother told mywife to enjoy the city, on an earlier trip in..and added that she should be a spectator in the city. The city is not to be just watched, it needs to be lived. Life is that way too and if you do not find joy in the day to day you are not living!
So we go in the musuem and I have to say that place is AMAZING !!!
I loved it more than I ever thought I would. I do have one question that I think someone on here must be able to answer: In the case of the ancient statues that they have, how do they know what it looked like originally? The might have a good guess but how do they know?
I will be back as the American Wing was shut off due to renovation and the closing of the only way in there now. And no one could do the entire Met in a day. I saw maybe 1/8th and took in 1/20th of the place, it is as one of my artistic friends calls it, the American Lourve.
So we leave there about 7 and I decide to walk and talk our way to Time Square. We talk about our son, life, what we saw(which you will see later was a short talk) We talk about her therapy. As you know if you read here, she is going to her own doctor. I think this guy may be good if she wil listen. He told her that while you may not realize it, your decisons now are based on things that happened to you when you were much younger, and that the fact the little girl in 1st grade told you that you were ugly is why now you did not take the big promotion, even if one seems so distant from the other.
This sounds alot like what I have told her for years, and no I do not expect to be called Dr Frued because I figured out what is a keystone of human behavior.
She sees that this is all nonsense, she claims she has no event in her background, no hidden event or events that triggers her now. Even when I said we all do, she still says she does not.
We stopped at a bar I have always wanted to try, ate a late dinner close to home and even tried something that might have been sweet had things gone differently, and that will be discussed later....but the thing that hit me is that she can not stop herself.
KP often told me to not go places with NQRW and think how this would be more fun w/ KP. And it was hard but I usually try. I slip, but I try.
With my new and best attempt to rekindle this all I really do try more. But NQRW can't pull it off. We have drinks in a really great NYC bar with a view that is unmatched, the gifts come up. I tell her they are not coming, "but even if they don't you want them to.".
We get on the subway, she mentions KP.
We have dinner, she mentions it all again.
She is hurt and I caused that hurt I see that, despite those that will call me blind in their comments. But the only way she, we, the marriage has a shot of moving on is that we make it two people, not three. But maybe I am asking for too much....three examples:
I brought up her Wizard of Oz views, which I posted about before. I even tried to get her to see that her moral of that the whole world you need is inside you is really another way, a maybe more limited way, of seeing my moral. Mine is that deep inside you is this much better person, all you need to do is see it. The scarecrow was not a moron even though he thought he was. Someone told him he was smart and he started to see it. And even when I tried to show her that if you follow her thinking, then we wasted a day looking at lovely art that enriched us, she looked at me and said none of it did. She felt nothing looking at some of the greatest art ever made!
Painting that made men cry, did not move her. She is too concrete.
Then I asked: You have no son, no husband and you have all the wishes you want, all the money you want, perfect health, what would you do? She came up with nothing. She might quit her job. She might see Ireland.
Nothing else. I would see the world, have homes everywhere in and outside the US, but more here. A ranch with cattle, a Manhattan apartment, a mansion somewhere...I would never stop until my body said to and then I would just go somewhere for a rest and pampering only to go again...
Then came the moment that I thought could have been the point that 10 years from now we looked back and said this is where it all got good again...
that is if we had had the moment.
We had dinner at the spot where we had our first date
Then she told me to pull into the park where we went to walk and talk.
It was raining and it was late so we stayed in the car. We were going to make out like we did on that date...this is one of her mistakes I mentioned where years ago she denied me this moment because she had to be a good girl and was afraid the police would see us... I know that it will never fully heal the wound that that rejection caused, but it would have helped....
We could have kissed, and fell back in love....
then she had to ask...she could not get KP out of her mind....she let her into the car
"If you had all those things, You are richer than anyone, and could do anything you want, and were single, you would go to her wouldn't you?"
I did not answer and said lets not ruin this
Lets not destroy what good this moment can bring
She asked again, stressing that there is no marriage, maybe I had not even met NQRW but I had met KP...would I go?
Again I tried to dance the question by saying who knows....but I knew I would, hell give me the genie I gave her in my question and I park Melbourne off the coast of NJ !!!!
She then throws a fit, saying she sees it in my eyes.
We try to make out but the moment is gone.
I really wanted to try, although again I am sure my chorus of critics will find a flaw in my responses....
She is too concrete
She has no real dreams
I am pretty sure that I will never get completely over KP, but I am trying to see if I still have a marriage so I am leaving that as a slight distraction in my life and not the glaring issue. She also will never get over KP. NQRW already thinks we are doomed and can not give me one good reason why she tries anymore. She says it is like keeping a car going that you know
you are pouring good "money"(read love, passion, effort) after bad into it for no real reason.
I want to try
I want to give her the just and true try she deserves, but you need to think you deserve it to have it even have a shot at working.
I even did not point out that she had planned the make out session, it was her idea from an idea I suggested numerous times before, but it is her idea to do it today, yet while she knows I hate kissing her when she just smoked, she could not keep herself from a smoke in the 2 minute drive it is from the resturant to the park. I saw it. I saw her lack of thinking, Yet I said nothing. I am not going to be critical, but she seems to be doing that part to. She is doing a one woman show now where she just plays all the parts in this marriage while I watch her hit herself over the head.
She should give herself a gift, and not worry about gifts that right now are not coming, and give herself the gift of loving herself enough to stop driving herself nuts.
I can leave, our son will leave, but she will stay as she can not walk away from herself.
