So it turns out I was wrong. Yes, yes, I know that could mean anything, but in this case I’m referring to the consultation my estranged wife and I had with a marriage counselor yesterday. In recent weeks, the breakdown of our relationship has dominated my thoughts, but I’ve been painfully aware that I don’t have an objective perspective on it. This was to be the counsellor’s role: to provide that external insight to help us find our way back to one another.
Or not. My wife spent the session listing my myriad wrongdoings and complaining that literally everything I do irritates her. Whenever she paused for breath, counselor would narrow his eyes and ask me if I could understand how frustrated she is and how my actions or inactions would make her resentful. Whenever I tried asking what I should do, she would ignore the question and add another sin to the growing pile. Then the counselor would trot out a pointless platitude, like “when you deprive a fire of oxygen, it goes out”. According to him, I should have “stepped up”, but he wasn’t able to provide any clues as to what “stepping up” looks like. Also, it seems that my wife pushing me away was perfectly fine, but my subsequent withdrawal was nothing short of heinous. She had no responsibility whatsoever to communicate what she wanted in actual words. I should have been able to figure it out from her anger and loathing, because those emotions are so nuanced.
At the end of Joel Schumacher’s 1993 masterpiece “Falling Down“, Michael Douglas’s character, William Foster, is confronted on the pier by Sergeant Prendergast. Foster is told that he’s not the good guy in the story. The confusion on his face as he tries to process this information is heartbreaking. His entire world world shifts in that moment and he is utterly lost.
When our counseling session ended I knew exactly how Bill felt.
I’m the bad guy?
Yeah.
How’d that happen? Apparently, what you are seeing here is my villain origin story unfolding.
My engineering background has taught me that as long as your assumptions are sound, your conclusions will be reasonable. Obviously, you make adjustments as better data becomes available, but the point isn’t to hit the bullseye on the first try, it’s to get on the board so you can calibrate your aim. But how do you hit the target if the lights are off?
I’m the bad guy? I am as confounded by this revelation as Foster was and I feel the foundations of my reality crumbling. I have never been so completely wrong about something like this before. All I can say is thank god for my sister and my friend Schroedinger, who were both there for me when I really needed it and managed to talk me down from the edge. They don’t seem to mind that I’m a villain.
Then again, even Hitler had a girlfriend.