Tag Archives: psychology

In Defense of Text Messaging

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It does serve a real purpose.

The other day, one of my Twitter/Facebook friends linked to an article in the New York Times titled “How Not to Be Alone.” In his words, it was “highly recommended.” So I read it.

The piece started out with a story about seeing a 15-year-old girl crying into a cell phone during a discussion with her mother. The story went on for four paragraphs, with the author, Jonathan Safran Foer, using his fifth paragraph to discuss his moral dilemma: talk to this stranger to try to comfort her or “respect the boundaries” between them. He never does say what he chose to do.

From there, the article launches into a discussion of how modern day methods of communication are dividing us, weakening our relationships, reducing our ability to articulately communicate, and making it easier to “avoid the emotional work of being present” to communicate. He argues that by diminishing our communication with others, we diminish ourselves.

He says:

We often use technology to save time, but increasingly, it either takes the saved time along with it, or makes the saved time less present, intimate and rich. I worry that the closer the world gets to our fingertips, the further it gets from our hearts. It’s not an either/or — being “anti-technology” is perhaps the only thing more foolish than being unquestioningly “pro-technology” — but a question of balance that our lives hang upon.

I read through the article twice without coming away with a one-line summary of what he was trying to say. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one having trouble with it because another Twitter friend replied to me and someone else with the simple — thank you, Twitter! — summary:

Don’t write when you can call. Don’t call when you can visit.

Simple enough. And I can certainly agree.

But it got me thinking about text messaging and the way it seemed to be painted, in the Times piece, as something that’s destroying society. And that bugged me.

Because I just don’t think it’s true.

Text Messaging for Work

You see, I use text messaging extensively for work. It gives me the ability to communicate instantly with clients and colleagues about things that they might want to know about right now. The key word there is might. If they must know about it now, I call their cell phone. But why bother them with a call when they might or might not be interested with the information I have to share? Or if I need an answer to a question but I don’t need it immediately — and know I will likely forget to ask if I do make a call later?

Here’s an example. My summer work requires me to be on call to fly over cherry orchards after it rains. The other day, there was rain in the area. I watched it move through on radar on my iPad. I saw it approaching an area where one of my clients has an orchard. I know he doesn’t live near there. I wanted to make sure he knew I was monitoring the weather and had some concerns about his orchard. So I texted:

Do you have someone at Malaga?

That was at 4:30 PM. His response came at 5:34 PM, after the weather had moved through:

Yeah. We made it through another close afternoon.

Communication accomplished. I didn’t have to call him to pester him with my question. He’s been growing cherries a lot longer than I’ve been drying them with a helicopter. I’m sure he had a handle on it. But by sending that quick text message, I communicated that I was aware of the situation and would be ready if he needed me. The fact that he didn’t respond for over an hour was okay with me. For all I know, he might not have even looked at his phone for an hour. He might have been busy watching the weather.

Do I communicate by text with all of my clients? No. Only the ones who have shown that they use text messaging to communicate by texting me first. When a client texts me, he’s telling me that texting is an acceptable or maybe even preferred means of communication. I’m okay with that.

I’m Not Alone

The title of the piece suggests that modern communication is making us more alone. I disagree wholeheartedly. If anything, text messaging has brought me closer to friends.

This morning, for example, while I was still in bed at 4:15 AM, I texted a friend on the east coast — where it was 7:15 — with a question. If he saw it immediately, great. If not, that was okay, too. He’d eventually see it and respond. But he was there at his desk and we had a text “conversation” about a bunch of things.

You might argue that when I realized he was available I should have picked up the phone and called him. But my friend works from home and uses his phone extensively for work. Chances are, our conversation would have been interrupted one or more times by incoming phone calls. Was our texted conversation important enough to disrupt his work day? No.

Although texting suggests a sort of immediacy to the conversation, it also makes it possible to put down and resume a conversation over time. Indeed, I’ve had texted “conversations” with people that have gone on for hours or days or even weeks. Could I accomplish this with phone calls? No — not without becoming a nuisance.

I can’t tell you how many friendships — including very old friendships — I have been able to maintain via text messaging and email. Sometimes it’s the best option.

The Trouble with Phone Calls

The problem with using the phone is that when you call someone, you’re saying, in effect, that it’s okay for you to bother him/her when it’s convenient for you. After all, you don’t usually call someone when it isn’t convenient for you, do you?

Of course, you can always schedule a phone call. Some of my publishing contacts do that. It makes sense. Take a meeting, on the phone.

But calling out of the blue? When someone might be busy? Just to chat?

I guess it depends on the kind of relationship you have with that person. I have plenty of friends who I feel comfortable calling to chat — at certain times of the day or evening. But if I don’t know a person very well, I think it’s rude to bother him/her with a phone call just to say hello.

Is that making me more alone? Not when I can fire off a quick text that might lead to a phone call when it’s convenient for both of us. Indeed, sometimes I’ll send a text message that says,

Are you around? Okay if I call?

Even if I don’t get a response, I get an answer to those questions: No.

Of course, this is assuming the person I want to reach lives with his/her cellphone at arm’s length all day every day. But that’s the kind of people I’m most likely to text anyway.

I’m not texting my mother or sister or a friend who keeps his cell phone packed away in a little backpack he uses as a manly man purse. (You know who you are!) I’m just texting the same people who text me.

In Person Meetings

When I was a kid, I’d go to my Aunt’s house in a nearby town. It aways amazed me how we’d be sitting around in the kitchen — the focal point for any Italian-American household — and one of her neighbors would walk right in. Often without even knocking on the door!

I’d love to live somewhere with all my friends nearby and be able to keep my doors unlocked at all times so they could walk right in and visit me. But that’s not my reality these days. Is it yours?

My world is bigger — my friends can be found all over the globe. They’ve chosen to live where they live just as I’ve chosen to live where I live. That doesn’t mean I won’t have super friendly neighbors when I finally build my new home. But I don’t really expect anyone to just “drop in” like we did in the old days.

Does that make me alone? I don’t think so. It makes me more likely to get out and about to get the social interaction I need with a wider variety of people in a wider variety of places.

So rather than sit around the kitchen table and wait for the same handful of visitors my Aunt’s family got, I’m getting out and expanding my world.

In Defense of Text Messaging

I’m not a kid. I’m in my 50s.

When I was a kid, we had three options for communication: face to face, telephone (which could be expensive if calling out of your immediate area), and mail (which took 2-3 days each way).

Today, we still have all of these things. Telephone use has become cheaper, mail has become more expensive. But we also have several free (or arguably low-cost) means of communication: fax (which is now, thankfully, almost dead), email, text messaging, and video conferencing. (And don’t get me started on self-publishing options — like social networking, blogging, print on demand, and ebooks — that make communication to the masses amazingly easy and cost effective.)

I can now communicate instantly for next to nothing with my friends and colleagues all over the world. I couldn’t do that when I was a kid.

I don’t understand how someone can argue that having and using more methods of communication — especially instantaneous, real-time methods — makes us more alone. If anything, it helps us connect better.

And text messaging is just one tool for doing that.

Your thoughts? Put ’em in comments so we can discuss.

Why I Made My Tweets Private

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The short explanation: I was tired of being stalked by a paranoid, neurotic, and vindictive old woman.

How To Make Your Tweets Private

Shame on you! You obviously didn’t take my Lynda.com course about Twitter where I explain how to do this. But since you were nice enough to come visit me at my blog, I’ll give you the simple steps here:

  1. Log into Twitter.com.
  2. Go to https://twitter.com/settings/account. This is the Account Settings page for your account.
  3. Turn on the Protect my Tweets check box.
  4. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Save Changes.
  5. Enter your password if prompted and click OK.

That’s all there is to it. From that point on, the only way someone can see your tweets is if they follow you — and they’ll have to get your approval to do so. While I don’t normally recommend doing this, it’s a good solution if you’d prefer to control who can see your tweets.

I just made my tweets private. It was the only thing I could think of to get my husband’s girlfriend — if you can use that word to refer to a 65-year-old woman — to stop stalking me on Twitter.

How It All Began

It’s been going on since at least November 2012.

Flushing Fish
I think the tweet text makes it pretty clear that the fish was already dead when I tried to flush it.

Back then, while I was cleaning my fish tank’s glass cover, I managed to get a cleaning solution in the water that killed four of the five fish in there. I removed the fish and attempted to flush them down the toilet. Unfortunately, the fish were large and they wouldn’t flush. For some reason, I thought that was funny and took a photo of it, which I shared on Twitter.

Well, my husband’s girlfriend decided that my flushing of a dead fish was evidence that I was destroying my husband’s property — namely, his “exotic” fish. (Nevermind that the fish tank was mine, purchased before marriage, and the dead fish were just tropical fresh-water fish costing about $5 each — if that.) She apparently convinced my husband and his lawyer that they needed an expedited hearing in front of the divorce judge to stop me from doing whatever it is they thought I was doing. They demanded an opportunity to inspect the house and remove his personal possessions so I would stop destroying them. She printed out 25 pages of my tweets — the vast majority of which had absolutely nothing to do with my divorce — and submitted them as “evidence” of my wrongdoing.

This is when I realized a few things:

  • My husband’s girlfriend was in charge of my husband’s side of the divorce. It all came from her; I had confirmation of that later by means I’ve promised not to disclose. My husband certainly didn’t read my tweets (or my blog) and he knew the fish were mine.
  • My husband’s girlfriend was paranoid, neurotic, and likely as delusional as my husband had become. What else could I think? She read a tweet about a fish being flushed and decided it was evidence that I was destroying my husband’s property. Seriously: WTF?
  • My husband’s lawyer was not giving them sound advice — or, if he was, they weren’t taking it. After all, if he’d read the 25 pages of tweets, he’d clearly see that there was nothing in there to indicate that I was destroying anything belonging to my husband. They’d simply look like idiots in front of the judge.

This kind of backfired on them — as so many of their court actions did. My husband was given a date and time to come to our house and retrieve any of his possessions that he was worried about. That meant moving a lot of crap out of the house that he would probably have preferred leaving right there. It also prevented him from accessing the house later, as he tried in May, because he’d already used up his only court-approved opportunity to remove possessions. Oops.

You think she’d learn her lesson. A smart person would. But no: she continued to watch my tweets and attempt to use them to harass me throughout the months the divorce process dragged on.

Show Me Your Weakness and I’ll Exploit It

I have to admit that once I knew she was reading my tweets, it was difficult not to taunt her. She had no life — that was clear — why else would she be so obsessed with what I was tweeting about? Despite my heartbreak over losing the man I’d loved for more than half my life, I had a great life and I tweeted every detail.

I didn’t work much throughout the winter and spring and I traveled a lot, making multiple trips to California, Florida, Las Vegas, and Washington. I shopped for a whole new wardrobe after losing 45 pounds the previous summer. I met new people home and away and did all kinds of things with them. When I was home, I had a steady stream of house guests in the house they supposedly couldn’t wait to get back into. They’d insisted on dragging the divorce on past the original January trial date by asking for a continuance — I made the best of the situation by having a great time while I was stuck there. I tweeted all winter and spring about my activities, making sure I mentioned every fun thing I was doing, knowing just how much it would get under her skin.

A normal person would have stopped reading the tweets. But she’s not normal. She’s obsessed. I accused her in January of living vicariously through my tweets. She read that one, too — I saw it later as “evidence” in court.

She was stuck with my sad sack husband, directing his divorce because he lacked the balls — or moral integrity — to do it himself. I was enjoying real freedom for the first time in nearly 30 years, doing whatever I wanted without having to look at his sour, disapproving face.

And, of course, I packed.

More Tweets in January

The tweets came up again in January when she attempted to get an Injunction Against Harassment on me. I fought it in court. More tweets submitted as “evidence.” I don’t even think the judge looked at them. Why should he? Pages and pages of my usual blather — those who follow me on Twitter know what I tweet about — all copied in triplicate as “exhibits” for the court. I could only imagine what those photocopies cost — law firms charge through the nose for everything!

They showed up with their lawyer. Three of them against me. I won. They had no case.

Another court action backfires on them. Another few thousand dollars wasted fighting the phantoms of her delusions.

The Ceiling Fans

Ceiling Fan Tweet
I really couldn’t resist. Note that I didn’t say here that I removed the ceiling fans; I just insinuated that I did.

When the divorce trial was finally over the other day, I admit I did send one last tweet intended for her consumption, one last thing to really piss her off. The ceiling fan tweet.

During personal property negotiations, she’d listed the ceiling fans as something I must leave behind. I still remember the discussion my lawyer’s assistant and I had about this demand. It went something like this:

Me: She thinks I’m going to take down the ceiling fans?

Her: Apparently so.

Me: Why the hell would I do that? They came with the house. What the hell am I going to do with six southwest style ceiling fans in Washington state?

Her: She’s just trying to get under your skin.

Me: All she’s doing is showing how stupid and petty she is. I don’t want the damn fans.

Of course, she also demanded the curtain rods. But in the final agreement, the curtain rods went to me. I took them, with the curtains — admittedly, mostly for spite, although the ones in the living room and guest room (which were the only ones I really wanted) will look nice in my new home. And although the ceiling fans were not on the list of the items they could keep — after all, I considered them part of the house — I didn’t take them. I just tweeted as if I might have. The ceiling fans had become a running joke with my Twitter and Facebook friends and I knew they’d enjoy the tweet.

Because my husband had refused to inspect the house with me present, it would be at least 36 hours before they could get in to see what I’d left behind. I’m sure her blood pressure was red-lining the whole time, thinking about those ceiling fans.

Sadly, she didn’t stroke out.

It’s Over. Really.

In my mind, the divorce was over. Everything was in the hands of the judge. We’d settled the personal property and I had come away with everything that was mine and the joint property that I wanted, leaving behind far more for them than I’d taken for myself. (My lawyer’s assistant thinks I gave too much away.) I had finally moved out of my house. I was back in Washington, living where I’d spent the previous five summers, working, playing, having a life.

My husband’s girlfriend, however, wasn’t finished with me yet. She just couldn’t let go. She just couldn’t stop harassing me. I guess that when you spend so many months catering to an obsession, it’s hard to call it quits.

I blogged about the latest hilarity here. No need to repeat the details in this post.

It does, however, all come down to tweets. She built her delusion about my ownership of property in Washington on her interpretation of my tweets. Apparently, plain English isn’t good enough for her. In her paranoid mind, she believes everything I’ve written contains a coded message. She reads my tweets and interprets the code she believes they contain. The result: “facts” to feed her delusions.

(A mutual friend of mine and my husband’s can’t wait to meet her. She’s an amateur psychologist and thinks she’ll have a lot of fun trying to figure her out. I’m looking forward to her report.)

Although I made it clear in a recent email to a bunch of people that I think her obsession with my tweets is evidence that she’s sick, I seriously doubt whether that’s enough to stop her from obsessing. And frankly, I don’t want every little thing I tweet about to feed her delusions and get her running to her lawyer to bother mine.

It’s over. I’m free. I shouldn’t have to deal with her crap anymore. Hell, I shouldn’t have had to deal with it in the first place — and I wouldn’t have if my husband was smart enough (or man enough) to rein her in. The only way to break her of the obsession is to take the object of her obsession away from her.

So my tweets have become private, at least for now.

Expensive Delusions

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When verifying the reality of a delusion gets expensive — and makes the deluded people look like fools.

I have to blog this. It’s the funniest thing that has happened since my divorce turned ugly last August.

The Back Story

As many readers know, I’ve been planning to buy and build a home on a lot in Malaga, WA. What some readers may not know is that back in July, when I thought there might be a chance of reconciliation with my estranged husband, I took him to see the lot I wanted to buy.

I envisioned us building a summer home there where I was making 80% of my income during three months. I envisioned him opening the bicycle repair shop he’d talked about on more than one occasion, possibly with bike rentals, along the nearby 11-mile bike trail in Wenatchee. I envisioned us living back in our paid-for Arizona home during the winter, taking it easy with a semi-retired lifestyle that would leave him plenty of time to fly his plane and build skills for his retirement career as a certified flight instructor.

I really thought that if he saw the land and the view that he’d envision the same life I saw for us. A life that didn’t include him being a slave to pay for a condo he didn’t need and I hated. A life with new, fun challenges in a beautiful place that wasn’t overrun with cheap retirees and rabid conservatives. A life with lots of recreational opportunities and a sunny future.

I didn’t realize then that he was already under the thumb of a desperate old woman who had seduced him with 30-year-old lingerie photos. I didn’t realize that he had stopped thinking for himself and was only doing what his new mommy told him to do.

That’s the back story: I found a 10-acre view lot in Malaga and I showed it to my future ex-husband, foolishly thinking he’d like it, too. Then I waited until the divorce was finalized and I got my settlement to buy it.

Fast Forward, May 7, 2013

My husband and his girlfriend/mommy managed to drag the divorce process out to April 2013. Other factors dragged it into May. On May 7, we had the first of two half-day sessions in front of a judge.

I was on the stand most of that time. During the cross-examination, their lawyer — I can’t really call him my husband’s lawyer since his girlfriend/mommy has been giving most orders to him since at least November — asked me a curious question:

“Isn’t it true that you own a home in Washington state?”

The question really took me by surprise. Me own a home in Washington? If that was the case, then why would I be living in Wickenburg, AZ, in a home filled with memories of a life I’d lived with the man I loved? The home I’d been locked out of by the man who obviously now hated me and had been harassing me since my return in September?

I answered truthfully: “No.”

He pressed on: “Isn’t it true that you have been living most of the past six months in Washington?”

I might have laughed. “No,” I replied. Other than a few short trips to Washington and California and Florida, I’d spent most of the past six months stuck in Wickenburg. Packing.

Afterwards, I talked about that question with my lawyer, family, and friends. It had seemed so out of left field. Did they honestly think I was living in Washington? If so, my testimony, under oath, should set them straight.

At least that’s what I thought.

Another Court Date

After another delay, we had our final appearance before the judge on May 31. My future ex-husband testified. Although most of his testimony was irrelevant and complete waste of time, he did manage to convince me that he’s become quite a liar. Or he’s more delusional than I thought.

My favorite piece of fiction: That during the six years of our marriage, he’d helped me with my helicopter business at least 100 times. That’s quite a feat for someone trapped in a 9 to 5 grind who uses his vacation time to visit family in New York and spends most of his other free time watching television. I was able to get back on the stand and insert a dose of reality for the judge’s consideration.

When we left the court, we all let out a sigh of relief. Now that it was in the judge’s hands, it was finally over. They’d finally stop harassing me.

At least that’s what I thought.

The Abuse Continues

The first indication that I was wrong came the day after the court appearance. He transferred the the balance of our joint checking account, which has always been equally contributed to and used for household expenses, to his personal checking account.

It’s not the money that bothered me. Frankly, it isn’t worth spending time worrying about the $445 that was my share.

What bothered me was the fact that the account was being used to pay our sole joint liability: the home equity line of credit. When the automatic payment came through, the payment would bounce and the account would be charged $35.

I knew this for a fact because I’d been watching my husband’s old checking account, which I could see when I logged into Bank of America. He’d drained that, too, but had stupidly forgotten to stop automatic payments from that account. Since September, he had bounced five checks and had been hit with a $35 fee for each one. (I knew because I still got low balance alerts for that account with all the others I monitored. That’s how I found out immediately about his withdrawal from the house account.) Some people just can’t manage their own finances. Good thing I was in charge of paying the bills all those years.

So by removing the money from that account, he’d set us up for bank fees and a possible hit to our credit scores for late payment of a loan.

And let’s not ignore the fact that he had no legal right to remove any funds from that account without the permission of the court unless it was to pay for house expenses. This money was true joint funds used for a specific purpose. Half the money was mine. He was stealing from me.

What a freaking idiot.

Amazing that it took him less than 24 hours to prove again how stupid he could be.

And Now for the Funny Part

On June 5 — still less than a week from that final court date — I was sitting at an outdoor restaurant, having lunch. I’d just spent the morning traipsing all over that 10-acre lot in Malaga with two surveyors, identifying property corners and the northern property line. I wanted to make sure I could visualize what my future 10 acre lot looked like. I wanted to see what land I had to work with.

(I was very pleased with the results. The lot appears about three times the size I’d visualized, working from incorrect corner markers.)

As I sat eating lunch, I checked my email. And that’s when I saw the latest bit of nonsense from my husband’s side of the divorce: They were insisting that I had already purchased the lot. In fact, they insisted that I had closed in January and that I was already developing it!

I really didn’t have any idea where they’d gotten these specific details. Although the email communication I’d been forwarded — from my husband’s mommy/girlfriend to their lawyer to my lawyer — mentioned tweets, I can’t remember having ever tweeted anything about having bought the land. Why? Well, I’d never bought it. So how could they have information about a closing date? And what made them think I’d started developing the land?

An earlier email message answered one of those questions. Apparently, back in early April 2013, they’d hired an “investigator” to snoop around the property I planned to buy. He’d photographed an RV (not mine) and cargo trailer (not mine) on a lot with a view a lot like the one I’d soon have. He’d provided details about septic system takeouts and obvious earthwork. The investigator’s report and some of the photos were included in the email forwarded from my husband to his lawyer to my lawyer. This was their proof that I’d lied in court — that I owned a home in Washington and was building on it!

Click play to cue soundtrack for this hilarity. (Many thanks to Facebook friend Dean for offering up this very appropriate music track.)

The only problem is, the photos showed the lot next to the one I was planning to buy.

You cannot imagine how hard I laughed when I realized this. My husband and his girlfriend/mommy had spent hundreds of dollars hiring an “investigator” to photograph my future neighbor’s property!

How they screwed this up so badly is beyond me. Who gave the investigator the address? Where did it come from? That has to be a story in itself.

How Delusions Become Costly

You realize that to find out what property I own in Malaga, all a person has to do is go to the Chelan County Assessor’s Office website and do a parcel search for my last name. If my husband or his girlfriend/mommy or their lawyer or the investigator had spent about 5 minutes doing this, they would have concluded that I didn’t own any land in Malaga or anywhere else in Chelan country. And if they thought they got the county wrong, they could have done the same for Douglas and Grant countries.

Did Dr. Tyson know I’d written about delusional people when he tweeted this more than 3 years later?

But the trouble is, they weren’t interested in reality. They were interested in producing evidence to back up their delusion.

They were convinced that I owned land in Washington. That was their delusion.

Maybe they did try a property search. They would have come up empty. But in their deluded minds, they knew I had property in Washington. They would have made excuses for why the tax rolls didn’t reflect their idea of reality. Perhaps they hadn’t been updated lately. Perhaps I’d bought the land in someone else’s name. Perhaps the Chelan County Assessor’s office was conspiring against them to hide the truth about me and my vast Washington real estate holdings.

Hey, anything is possible when you don’t rely on facts.

So they hired an “investigator” and told him where to take photos. Maybe they told him approximately where the lot was and he did some “investigating,” coming up with the only lot on that side of the road that was being developed. Having an RV on it must have sealed the deal that it was my lot, even though the tax rolls said it was owned by someone else.

Never mind that the RV on the lot wasn’t the one I owned, the one he claimed in court to have installed $5,000 to $9,000 of improvements in. (Another lie.) It wasn’t even the same make and model. And even though the “investigator” took photos of the Washington state license plates on the RV and the cargo trailer, no one had the idea to run those plates and see who they were registered to? If they had, they’d see that they were registered to someone other than me. Probably the people who owned the lot.

But that would shatter the delusion. Can’t do that. Delusional people only want evidence to support their delusions.

And apparently, they’re wiling to pay to get that evidence.

What Now?

Well, I’ve informed all parties that they investigated the wrong lot. I made it quite clear how amusing I think this is and how incredibly stupid I think my husband, his girlfriend/mommy, their lawyer, and the “investigator” are. I haven’t heard anything more about it.

But I suspect they don’t believe me. After all, they are delusional. I said in court, under oath, that I did not own a home in Washington. I said this on May 7, 2013. I did not lie in court.

But they obviously didn’t believe I was telling the truth then, under oath. So why would they believe me now?

Divorce and the Mental Fog

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A side-effect of long-term emotional turmoil.

I should start off by saying a few things.

Even though my husband cheated on me, lied to me, asked for a divorce on my birthday, locked me out of my home and hangar, and, with his mommy/girlfriend has subjected me to all kinds of harassment since I discovered his infidelity in August, I still love him.

How could I not still love him? We were together for 29 years. That’s more than half of our lives. You can’t suddenly stop loving someone you’ve invested your whole emotional being into.

At least I can’t.

He apparently can.

And that’s one of the things that I’m having so much trouble with. I can’t understand how a man who spent half of his life with me, a man who built four separate homes with me over the years, a man who cried in my arms when his father died, a man who traveled and laughed and learned and experienced so much with me — I can’t imagine how that man can simply flick a switch and begin hating me as he so obviously does. How else could a man subject his life partner to the things he’s put me through since May, when he first began looking for my replacement on an online dating site?

How?

The First Two Months

It’s been nearly eleven months since he asked for a divorce at the end of June, ruining my birthday forever with a phone call when I honestly half-expected a surprise visit. After all, he had been coming to see me at my summer job site on my birthday — even when it seriously inconvenienced me — almost every one of the previous four years. We’d been talking only a few weeks before about him coming to spend the summer with me. We’d been talking about which car he’d bring when he drove up with our dog. And where he’d work. I’d even begun making room in my closets and dresser for his things. And had bought new pillows to replace the wimpy ones I had.

At first, I didn’t believe he really wanted a divorce. I figured that something had happened, something had pushed him to say something to shock me — as I tried so many times to shock him out of the malaise that had overwhelmed him for nearly a year, turning him into a moody stranger. I knew even that day that the divorce wasn’t entirely his idea. I knew that he wasn’t willing to face life on his own, that he wouldn’t cut ties with me after a 29-year relationship unless there was a Plan B.

I asked him whether there was another woman and he said no. It was a lie, but I believed him. I’d never lie to him; I couldn’t imagine him lying to me.

I asked him to come see me, to talk to me in person. I offered to pay his airfare. He arranged a trip two weeks later. Obviously, there was no urgency on his part. That should have tipped me off, too.

When we met, he lied to me again. To my face. Multiple times. He watched me cry. He held me while I cried. He cried, too. Yet he seemed resolute. He wanted a divorce. Even when I showed him a wonderful piece of property where I thought we could make a summer home together, he didn’t seem interested in a future with me.

I asked to settle when I got home in September or October. I never told him not to file — as his lawyer suggested in court just a few weeks ago. I never dreamed he would go after the fruits of my labor — the things I had worked my entire life to accumulate and achieve: my investments, my business assets and savings, my personal assets. I thought he understood the meaning of the word “fair.” I thought he was ethical. I thought he had moral standards.

In other words, I thought he was the man I’d fallen in love with, a good man who knew the difference between right and wrong.

Understand that I still didn’t know he was lying to me. I didn’t know that the good man I’d fallen in love with was dead, shoved over a cliff by a desperate old woman who’d stolen his heart with promises and lies and old lingerie photos, eager to capture a new man so she wouldn’t have to grow old alone.

Throughout the first two months, I still had some measure of hope that our relationship could be mended. He didn’t want to be alone. We’d been though so much together. Surely this could be fixed up when I got home.

This idea was reinforced by a good friend of mine where I was living in Washington. He kept telling me that marriages are hard work, that I could make things work when I got home.

I didn’t know at the time that my husband had called him in July and had told him that he still loved me. My friend misunderstood the message and gave me all kinds of false hope.

The fact that my husband still hadn’t filed for divorce simply reinforced that hope. Not filing convinced me that he wasn’t serious — at least not yet. There was still hope that we’d resolve our problems.

At least that’s what I thought at the time.

Emotional Turmoil

Still, my mind was in turmoil. I was trapped in Washington for my summer work, unable to do anything about fixing the problem at home. I missed a deadline on the book I was working on because I was so caught up in my marital problems. And although I’d asked my husband not to contact me about the divorce or settlement for a while, he emailed, asking if I’d given it any thought. I replied that I thought we were going to wait.

That made the situation worse. I couldn’t understand what his hurry was. He’d told me there wasn’t anyone else. Why was he so eager to settle?

It didn’t make sense. He hadn’t filed for divorce yet. How could he possible expect me to settle? What the hell was going on?

The mental turmoil got even worse when he stopped returning my email messages and phone calls and texts. He was actively ignoring me.

It was in mid-August that I discovered that he’d hired a lawyer. I called him to ask him about it. I had to ring the phone at least five times before he picked up. He was rude and angry. He denied hiring a lawyer.

And that’s when I started crying. That’s when I realized that he was lying to me and had been lying all along. If he’d lied about that, what else was he lying about?

A little more fishing later that evening and I found out about the woman he’d been seeing since at least June — before he asked for a divorce.

Yes, he was too cowardly to leave me without having a Plan B. A 64-year-old desperate and vindictive bitch he met online was his Plan B. He was throwing away a 29-year relationship and financial security for a woman 8 years older than him who had some sort of decorating business advertised on the Web and was deeply underwater in a home that had two mortgages on it. A woman who was likely attracted to him because he owned three homes, a plane, and a Mercedes — and his wife owned a helicopter.

My mental turmoil went into full-swing when I made these discoveries — although I didn’t know her age and realize that their relationship was a baby/mommy thing until much later. It suddenly became clear that he hadn’t filed for divorce because he knew I made 90% of my income over the summer and was depositing money in my business bank accounts quite steadily. The more I deposited, the more they’d be able to get their hands on. Every time he forwarded me a check, his mommy/girlfriend probably thought cha-ching! I went into a panic. I was 1,200 miles away and I needed to file for divorce before I put any more of my hard-earned money at risk.

I clearly remember sitting at an outdoor cafe in Wenatchee early on a Monday morning, making phone calls to lawyers in Phoenix. My hands were shaking as I dialed one number after another. I finally got someone interested in talking to me. I hired him and got the wheels turning.

Four days later, at 7:30 AM, the process server turned up at my husband’s mommy/girlfriend’s house to serve him with papers. She slammed the door in his face, claiming my husband didn’t live there.

But he was there. I know he was. Yet another lie.

The emotional roller coaster I was on was still climbing the first really big hill.

A Different Person

It was around this time that my friends began noticing a very dramatic change in me. During the first two months — before I knew about the lies and the girlfriend, back when I thought there was still hope — I was sad but mellow about my divorce. I didn’t talk much about it because there really wasn’t much to talk about. I didn’t get very emotional. I just went on with my life, struggling in private to stay focused on the book I needed to finish, but otherwise keeping my marital woes to myself. I stayed on my diet, hoping the new, slim me would help energize the physical part of our relationship, the part that had grown cold in our final months together.

But when I discovered his lies and infidelity and their obvious plans to take as much from me as they could, I became unbearably weepy. I couldn’t understand how he could do this to us. (And I still can’t.) I needed to talk things out and there were very few people who would listen. I became a different person — not the strong, upbeat person they knew but a weak, tearful basket case who cried randomly throughout the day. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t go a few hours without breaking down into tears. Many of my local friends simply couldn’t deal with it. This made matters worse for me because I needed a shoulder to cry on and the shoulders I thought were available didn’t want to get wet with my tears.

It was the utter betrayal that was killing me inside. Knowing that the man I loved could lie to me, steal from me, and be so completely heartless after 29 years of life together.

It was around then that I started blogging vaguely about my situation. I’m glad I did. I managed to record most of my thoughts and feelings about what I was going through as I was going through it. The sadness, the anger, the confusion. Without those blog posts, I wouldn’t have a clear memory of how I felt.

Although I didn’t realize it, I had entered a mental fog.

The Mental Fog

Last month I was chatting with a friend about how I was feeling. After months of shocking developments and harassment that had trapped me on an emotional roller coaster, I had become somewhat dulled to the situation I was in. Yes, I was still in pain and I still cried a lot more often than what I think is healthy. But I had become able to talk about specific things that had happened without getting all worked up.

For example, yes, I’d found the locks in my Wickenburg house changed when I got home in September. Even though he was living with his mommy/girlfriend in Scottsdale and had a condo in Phoenix, he had tried to lock me out of my only home. It took me many, many months to even think about the cruelty of that one deed without crying. But now I could think and even tell people about it without shedding a tear. It was as if my mind had build a mental scab around that particular wound.

My friend told me that when she got divorced years ago, she’d entered a “mental fog.” Although she couldn’t really describe it, I immediately knew what she meant. And I knew that in certain times of my life — times when I wasn’t focused on something important to me like flying or driving or writing or having a good conversation with a friend — I was in a mental fog.

I thought about it one day and jotted down the symptoms I’ve experienced:

  • Feeling numb after months of riding an emotional roller coaster. There have been many ups and downs over the past eleven months. They’ve filled me with devastating sadness or euphoric joy — and all kinds of emotions in between. After a while, however, a sort of numbness sets in. Sometimes I’m not even sure what I’m feeling.
  • Acting on autopilot. In other words, I was doing things without thinking about them. Things like preparing meals, cleaning the house, and traveling to visit friends and family members.
  • Not fully aware of my surroundings. I don’t go here very often, but when I’m in a serious emotional state of mind — especially when I haven’t slept much — the fog completely surrounds me and I tune out the details of where I am. This often happens when I’m working with my lawyer and I get a flash from the past that reminds me of how good things used to be. It certainly happened in court on May 7 when I broke down in tears from the pain of seeing him sitting on the other side of the court, my enemy after 29 years of a loving relationship.

The mental fog is what makes it difficult to remember so many of the things I did or thought during this difficult time. I think it’s a defense mechanism that the mind automatically puts in place to defend itself. I think of it as surrounding myself in a cocoon of soft pillows before being bounced off of hard walls. The mental fog deadens the pain.

No Flying in the Fog

I should mention here that there is no mental fog at all when I can focus on something that has nothing to do with my situation. I’m talking about reading and writing, having conversations with friends, performing difficult tasks that require my concentration.

Wahweap Hoodoos
Flying over the Wahweap Hoodoos on a solo cross-country flight from Seattle, WA to Page, AZ in September 2010.

Of all the things I do to keep my mind off my divorce woes, flying is the best. When I fly, I focus on every detail of the flight, using my senses to accumulate information about the situation and using my mind to evaluate input and make decisions.

Looking at the aircraft during preflight, monitoring the instruments, seeing where I’m flying.

Listening to the sound of the engine on startup and warmup and in flight, hearing the odd sound of a strong wind in the mast and cowling while idling on the ground, hearing the blades slap at 80 knots.

Smelling engine exhaust when warming up on the ramp with the door open and a slight tailwind, smelling the heat on the rare instances when I use it.

Touching various components I can’t see on preflight, feeling for unseen leaks, feeling the controls in my hand and the way the helicopter responds to my inputs, feeling the force of the wind when picking up into a hover, feeling the shudder of the aircraft when going through a wind shear, feeling the motion of the aircraft when riding turbulence.

If there was something to taste, I’d taste it, too.

The experience of being at the controls of my helicopter is a joyful release from whatever else is going on. When I’m flying, there is no betrayal by a man I love, no ruined relationship, no desperate old woman sleeping beside my husband while itching to get into the home I made with the man I love. There’s only the amazing machine and sky around me, the ever-changing terrain below, and a feeling a freedom that can’t be beat.

I wish I could fly more often.

Other Emotions

Beyond the mental fog, I am feeling emotions I can clearly identify.

One of them is a weariness that periodically drags me down. Specifically:

  • I’m tired of having to explain myself to people who should understand. This is mostly the “get over it” crowd who have been through a similar situation and have worked through their own emotions, yet don’t have the patience to watch me work through mine. I’m also tired of having to explain why I’m fighting in court — that the simple fact is if I gave him what he’s been demanding since September, I would be financially ruined and unable to face myself in the mirror. Yes, I know the only ones who win are the lawyers. I thought my husband knew that, too. But apparently his mommy/girlfriend, who has been controlling his side of the divorce since November, doesn’t understand this. I sometimes wonder if it’s his money or hers that she’s pissing away on legal fees.
  • I’m tired of dealing with lies and misrepresentations. This is coming from their side of the divorce. After eleven months, they’re still lying and misrepresenting the events of the case. This came to a head recently with what I call “The Garage Fiasco,” where they lied and attempted to bully their way into the garage of our home to get their hands on some papers. (Blog post to come.) When will the lies end? How has dishonesty become a way of life for this man? Is that what she taught him?

But there are also positive emotions, most of which I’ve been experiencing recently:

  • Relief that the end is in sight. They managed to delay the court date until April by claiming that they needed more information to evaluate my business but then they failed to do any sort of information-gathering. This proves to me that it was all a ploy to delay things. I think he believed he could wear me down and I’d give in. (I’m not sure where he got that idea; he should know me better. Perhaps his mommy/girlfriend convinced him that I’d give up and go away. What the hell does she know about me?) But with half the trial done and the last court date less than 2 weeks away, I can clearly see an end to this ordeal. And that makes me feel good.
  • Hope that the justice system can be fair. I can’t say much more about this — at least not now. But case law gives me hope that the judge can do what’s right and fair for this situation.

  • My New View
    Having a view like this out the window of my home is something I can really look forward to.

    Positive feelings about my future. Remember that piece of land I mentioned earlier in this blog post? Well, it’s still there and it’s still waiting for me. It’s a 10-acre parcel high on a hillside, overlooking the Columbia River and Wenatchee Valley. It’s private and quiet but only a 15-minute drive into a great little city with everything a person could want or need. Seattle is 30 minutes away by airline or 2-1/2 hours by car. I’ve already drawn up plans for a hangar home that will house my helicopter, RV, and vehicles — for the first time since 1997, every one of my possessions will be under one roof. I’m looking forward to being able to fly from my home, have a garden, and keep bees for honey and wax. Maybe even have chickens and horses again. Best of all: I don’t have to deal with sour looks when I do something my “life partner” doesn’t like but lacks the communication skills to verbally object to. In other words: life without someone holding me back because he’s too fearful to move forward or really enjoy life.

  • Hope that what comes around, goes around. Yes, I’m talking about karma. I don’t believe in karma, but everyone tells me that it exists and is real. They all assure me that the lying, cheating bastard the man I love became will get his in the end. Frankly, I’m hoping that it comes in the form of his mommy/girlfriend having a stroke and him having to change her diapers every day. That’ll serve him right. I can say with certainly that just living with an evil, vindictive woman who lies and does cruel things to others to get what she wants should be enough punishment for any man. (It’s still so difficult to believe he’d wind up with someone like that, but beggars can’t be choosers, I guess. Their mutual desperation is likely what brought them together.)

The mental fog is lifting and what I see ahead of me is so much better than what I left behind.

Suicide, Revisited

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I get it now.

Back in August, 2010, I wrote a blog post about Suicide. I had just learned that a friend of mine from years before had taken his own life at work, leaving behind a wife and four daughters. At the same time, I was struggling to write a passage in a personal memoir about another suicide that had touched my life. I was trying hard to understand it all, trying to figure out why someone would take that drastic step and end his life.

I concluded then that people who commit suicide are selfish and cowardly. I concluded that the real “victims” of suicide are the people they leave behind.

I didn’t get it then.

I get now.

It’s all about relief — getting relief from feeling so miserable that you simply can’t go on.

I’ve glimpsed this feeling a few times over the past eight months. The first time was in August, when I first realized that the man I loved and trusted for more than half my life — my best friend, in many respects — had betrayed me by cheating on me and lying to me and planning to keep me out of my only home. I had no idea what was going on at home and my imagination took off with a wide range of worst-case scenarios. I had no way to find out what the truth was. The shock and grief I was suffering made it impossible to carry on my day-to-day living without breaking down into sobs at seemingly random times. My mind was caught up in the tragedy of the situation; it wouldn’t settle down. I was absolutely miserable — I cannot imagine being more miserable than I was.

My only relief was sleep, but because my mind couldn’t rest, I could only doze fitfully, never quite getting the relief I needed. This went on for days.

When I went to see a counselor for help, at the end of our first session, she gave me the phone number for the Suicide Prevention Hotline. She really thought that I might be at risk.

And that made me feel even worse.

Later, when my mind cleared a bit and I was able to look back objectively at that week in my life, I understood why some people turn to the final solution for all their problems. They just want relief.

I should mention here that this is probably also why so many people turn to drugs or alcohol. I’m a pilot and I can’t take drugs and I was on standby duty at the time so I couldn’t even drink. But if I could, I probably would have turned to either one for the relief I so desperately needed. I think a lot of people do. It’s sad; this is clearly the way so many addictions get started. The substance offers the relief a person so desperately needs. But the substance is not a permanent solution, and repetitively taking drugs or alcohol for relief will likely do more harm than good. It certainly won’t make the cause of the problem go away.

Why a person feels so miserable that they turn to suicide for relief depends on that person and what’s going on in his life. There might be psychological factors; the man who killed himself by jumping out of the tour helicopter I was flying back in 2004 had a history of problems, was on medication, and had even tried to kill himself with a knife five months before. I don’t know the details of my old friend’s situation, but I have to assume he was under a lot of stress at home — or more likely at work, where he did the deed — and perhaps had other psychological issues that came into play. For these people, suicide was the relief they so desperately needed.

In my original blog post on this topic, I said that people who committed suicide were selfish. I now don’t think that’s entirely true. I think that they’re so overwhelmed with their own misery that they simply can’t think about others. I think that when a person takes his own life, he’s only thinking about one thing: how he’ll finally make his suffering end. At that point, nothing else matters.

Suicide is a horrible thing — and it’s not the answer. Getting to the root cause of your misery and finding solutions to make things better might be more difficult than simply giving up, but it’s ultimately more worthwhile. Not just for you, but for the people who care about you.

If you’re reading this because you’ve considered suicide, do yourself a favor and get the help you need. Life is worth living; you can get past your problems and see that for yourself again.