Turning outside

I've been dealing with a flood of insights from trying to figure out what is keeping me from feeding my wife's emotional hunger. I felt a need to unload some of these thoughts in a blog post. This is the first time that I've ever looked at how certain habits carry over from one part of my life to another. I wanted to write about the advantage to thinking about my problem holistically. How can my habits and approach to work, this blog, the way I thought about life in high school and college, the relationship I have with my birth family, and intellectual pursuits like this blog help me understand my relationship sabotaging behaviors? I thought about a blog post where I tried to figure out the most authentic experiences of my life. These were things that I felt were expressions of who I want to be rather than simply perpetuating the behavior patterns that were shaped by my childhood.

I considered plenty of other topics in this vein, but I obviously didn't write those posts (at least not yet). Those topics are interesting and relevant to solving my problem, but in a way they are also a perpetuation of my problem. Writing about those things direct my attention to my internal states. Inward directed thoughts are a huge part of my recurring pattern. I spend so much effort looking inside, I fail to offer Tiffy important parts of myself.

So rather than spend my evening focusing on me, I worked on putting together a new treadmill and writing Tiffy an email that told her about what I was feeling about something important in our life. I did some giving rather than keeping all my energy to myself. And I have to say that it felt pretty damn good.

How to fail as a husband

I am a seriously messed up motherfucker. I went to therapy once a week for most of last year. It helped me see that I'm a selfish prick, but that pile of shit was so high we never got to the really important stuff. All the talk of my behavior and little things that I should change in how I interact with my wife kept us away from getting to reason why I needed to change that stuff in the first place. My therapist thought I was a normal guy who just doesn't see that his wife needs to feel loved and appreciated. He thought that once I see how much small gestures matter to her that I would do everything imaginable to do them all the time.

Joke's on you doctor. Well, me really. Knowing what my wife needs doesn't seem to make it any easier for me to do those things. Just click on that link to Tiffy's one third life crisis and you can read for yourself some of the things she wants. She's making it pretty easy isn't she. She's been screaming at me, begging, pleading, pretty much doing everything short of writing me a damn script in an effort to get me to pay attention and notice her physically.

"Damn, you look hot in that dress!"
"You look really beautiful today."
"You're so sexy. I'm so happy that you're my wife."

These are simple things. Genuine appreciation for her physical beauty, an indication that she's what I want, that she turns me on, that I desire her in the most base way that we can imagine. That's all that she's been looking for. She wants to feel special and picked out from all the other sexy women. For three years this has been going on.

So what have I been doing for these three years. Working my ass off to figure out how I can let her know how amazing she is, how much I'm attracted to her, sharing how I notice all the little things that make her her and how much I like them; that's what I've been doing, you must be telling yourself, that's what any man with a wife as hot and smashing as mine would do. Wrong. That's not what I've been doing at all. I've pretty much been doing the opposite of that. I may have a few moments here and there, but by and large I have done very little to show her that I hear her, that I care about her, that I want her to be happy.

What the fuck is my problem? Things keep happening that tell my wonderful sexy wife that she's just a pedestrian, ho hum woman who doesn't really have anything all that great to offer. I've searched everywhere for something to blame, some explanation for my twisted behavior, but the pattern just keeps repeating. I always set out with the best of intentions, but I seem to have a knack for setting up situations that end up making things worse between us. I've never taken a deep look at the cause of this pattern. There were always excuses that helped me avoid looking too closely at what's motivating me to undermine the intimacy of my relationship. I didn't do these things with a conscious intent. I just pursued a course of action that would get me back to a place where things felt normal and comfortable.

Well, let's take the opposite road this time. I avoided a Big Conversation with my wife tonight. That's my standard tactic. I talk to her until we come to some kind of resolution and things get a little more comfortable. We slide back to our old ways, well, I slide back to my old ways, and go about doing things the way I've always done them until catastrophe strikes again. If this is the pattern, why haven't I searched for a way to break this cycle? What is my behavior telling me that I really want (or at least what does my behavior tell me about what my automatic, unconscious self is trying to achieve in my life)?

Round People and Social Strivers

The family and I went to a minor league baseball game tonight. The action on the field was decent, but I couldn't help noticing a common trait shared by many of the people at the park. Lots of people were round. I'm not slim by any stretch, but I'm not round either. We saw the other extreme as well. Some body builder type walked by. Of course, he's round too, just in a different way. His clothes were tight. Everybody who was round worn tight clothes. There's a certain statement in that. I'm just not sure if it's intentional (well, in the case of the body builder the statement is intentional) or just a consequence of limited clothing options.

A few people I enjoy judging were not at my daughter's soccer game this morning. There are three families that are clearly very good friends. I'm not a very social person. I don't crave social interactions, which I'm sure people judge me for just as much I as judge people who clearly need to be surrounded by friends all the time. This particular group of friends clearly think of themselves as the popular clique. There is an effort in their socialness that I've only even seen in high school. Everything about them is a social statement. Their clothes, their car, their music (that one of them was blasting in her car before practice on Thursday, it was Justin Timberlake. Maybe the fact that I recognized the song says something about me?!), the same brand of sun visor that they wear. They want to be at the apex of the social hierarchy and do all that they can to get there.

I like to pretend that I'm outside of this social fray. I would say that I don't participate, but the fact that I'm at these things and visible to other people makes me a participant. I'm not Round and I'm not a Social Striver. I don't cultivate a look that signals my social intentions. I don't really have any real appreciation for how I'm perceived in the social mix of a large group. I don't aspire to achieve a certain place, so I don't do things that will make me acceptable to particular crowd. I don't want to have my party chair in the circle around the blanket. What do I want? Honest answer. I don't know. I was going to say that I'm socially undefined. That's not true. My society, by which I mean those people who see me when I'm busy judging them, has defined me socially. I just don't know how they've defined me...

Always Forward?

My dad has read a bunch of books about Patton. I haven't read a single book about Patton, but I know that he had an affinity for the phrase Always Forward. I only know that because my dad has that on his license plate. Always Forward. It's easy to know which way is forward in war, at least the kind of wars that Patton fought. The difference between the good guy and the bad guy were clear. Victory was easy to differentiate from defeat. Patton always had a pretty good idea of whether he was progressing toward his objective or being defeated. 

The clarity of Always Forward is comforting. There's no waffling or doubt in a phrase like that. If you're not sure what to do, just keep moving forward. A step forward represents progress. It's a small victory that you can build on to find the courage and strength to take that next step. 

Always Forward also implies a yearning for something beyond where you are now. The allure of the now dims in the splendor of what may be. That next thing holds promises of praise and glory. You have to keep working towards that thing off in the distance because that's where you'll find the action. Don't stop to appreciate what you have now. Keep your eyes on that prize off in the distance.

I had a thing for taking walks at night when I was in high school. I don't remember thinking much about what was going on in my life at the moment. I was always thinking about what may be. Glory in football, the promise of college, I guess I was just looking to get beyond where I was at the moment. There was a dissatisfaction with where I was and those fantasies were my way of escaping. Those dreams never came to reality. I did a bit of the work to make some of those things a reality, but I was never fully committed to any one vision to pursue it with a focused intensity. Focused intensity is not really my thing. 

I'm not really an Always Forward kind of guy, but for whatever reason I've always had this sense that I should be doing more. Some part of me feels that there are other big things out there that I should be working on. But other parts of me just focus on what needs to get done. Which way is Forward isn't Always clear, but there are always clearly important things that need to get done. Those things are important because they matter to the people in my world. They have a huge impact on the people who are in my world. The whole big wide world may not take much notice, but the people I see everyday see the results of my effort.

My dad always yearned for more. That next big assignment, that next big job. He was always so focused on moving forward that he never really stopped and realized the value of what he already had. He's been chasing that next opportunity that will fix everything for his entire life. He still talks about that next job that will allow him to be all that he can be. He's in his sixties and he still feels like he doesn't have that missing piece in his life. He's always looked out there, trying to stay moving, Always Forward, but what he was missing was right there all along.

I don't want to repeat that life. I want to see what I have, appreciate what I have, and do all that I can to make my world that best that it can possibly be. 

A gauge of my fitness level

This morning was an annual 10K that's a fairly big deal around here. I ran it for the third time. I'm happy with my time, I kept pushing when I wanted to quit and feel like I ran the best time that I'm capable of at the moment, but it frustrates me that my time gets slower every year I run this thing. I've lost about a minute a year. I was thinking about this as I was walking through the rain back to my car. Other than getting older, what is the difference between this year and those other years?

That first year, I was going to the gym and running fairly regularly. I would go during my lunch and run at least one day a week. I may have gone twice some weeks. I would also run on the gym treadmills over the weekend. I had a trip for work that derailed my training right before the race, but I was pretty well prepared. I didn't run all that regularly before last year's race. I can no longer take a couple of hours to go to the gym during lunch, but I was trying to do the March rowing challenge last year. The challenge is to row at least 5000 m for 25 days of March. I missed it by a couple of days when I had to focus on getting some stuff finished for one of my MBA classes in the middle of the month, but all of those meters gave me enough fitness to get through the 10K. School messed up my training again this year. I was up late doing school work enough that I missed quite a few morning workouts. The cold weather kept me inside rather than getting out and running. An injury to my calf just as I was starting to pick up on my training also put me a month behind. I just wasn't as well prepared as I would have liked.

Some of that is circumstances, but I'm sure I could have done more to make sure I got my training in despite work, school, and other obligations. I saw a guy I work with in the starting corral. When I looked up his time, I saw that he beat me by about 5 minutes. We're comparable in size, and he's a few years younger than I am. So why did he get the better time. He runs at lunch almost every day. He's fanatical about it. Cold doesn't stop him. He goes out every day and gets in his miles. He pays a bigger price than I do to improve his fitness. A couple of neighbors beat me by an even bigger margin. Again, they're out there every day putting in the miles. Injury, school, and the weather are just excuses. I could have worked harder to get my body ready to run this year.

If I'm serious about getting in better shape, it's going to take more than one or two workouts a week. I need to be up and running every Monday and Thursday. On days I'm not up running, I need to be up and riding the bike. Saturday needs to be my longer run. Nothing crazy. Maybe an hour of running the neighborhood roads. The weather is turning. I won't be able to use the cold as an excuse for much longer. If I'm serious about wanting to get my 10K time under 50 minutes, I need to do the work to make that happen.

What gets me eager to get to work?

Problem solving and creating something. Or maybe it's problem solving as a creative process. Problem solving, at least the way that I go about doing it, requires knowing how all the various pieces are connected, what are they doing, why are things arranged in this way and not in a different order. Diving into a murky situation and figuring out what's really going on so I can see order where others see chaos. It's not knowing one thing really well, but knowing enough about a lot of things to see how they relate to one another and how to use those connections to fix a broken piece. 

That's my Big Project. That's the common thread that links all the activities that I find easy to pursue. This blog, my side projects at work, reading connect because they give me a chance to work on a problem and express my understanding in these blog entries, a presentation at a technical meeting, or some other entity that I can send out into the world. Even working on different aspects of the my personal life became much easier when I accepted the truth of the situation and started really digging into my behavior and what was driving me to do things that kept hurting my wife. It became a problem to be solved. 

My bouncing from topic to topic is essential for who I interact and deal with the world. I was fortunate to find a subject, chemistry, that allowed me to go deep while getting a graduate degree, but is relevant to so many different technical problems that I could pursue my penchant to flit from subject to subject as my interests jump from problem to problem. I can't pick some pick out there goal to work on because I'm motivated by solving problems. That's not entirely true. I want to figure out the best way to lead an R&D group and have that group interact effectively with the non-technical functions in the business. That's the problem that fuels my MBA studies. It's not career progression. It's figuring out how my R&D activities fit into the context of the company. 

What is your Big Project?

So I'm not the only person trying to figure out the best way to use my spare hours. Leo has chosen his Big Project. My last entry was my first effort to figure out what my Big Project should be. I don't know what prompted somebody else's decision to focus his energies on one project, but I can point to what got me thinking about a better way for me to focus my own efforts. If you take a look at my reading list, you'll see a book called Breaking BUD/S. That book offers all kinds of tips about making it into the Navy SEAL teams, but that's just one application of the strategy at the core of the book. If you want to make the teams, then you should make every effort to achieve that goal. Figure out why you want it, and do everything you can to make it real.

The book also has a not so subtle subtext that failure to make every preparation, to do the things that you know you need to do to succeed, is simply a sign that you didn't want it enough. Talk is worthless. Preparation is an indication of your desire to achieve a very difficult goal. If you didn't do the things that are necessary to make it happen, that means that you didn't want it enough. Simply saying that you want it isn't enough. Talk is easy. Making it happen is the hard part.

I looked back over my entries from the very beginning of this blog before I picked up Breaking BUD/S. I looked at where I was then and thought about where I am now. I've progressed in my career, I've read plenty of books, and I'm a better husband and father than I was four years ago. I still weight pretty much the same. My fitness is better, and I'm definitely stronger. But my gut persists. That's one thing that I was trying to take care of four years ago that I've made little progress against. That must mean that I don't really want to lose the weight. Or, probably more accurately, I value the pleasures of consumption more than I desire the effects of not consuming.

My progress against other professional and personal goals against my failure to lose weight (although I have to confess that I consider not gaining weight a win) as a sign that I may be doing what needs to get done to achieve my goals. I've managed to keep working on my MBA because I want the career opportunities that may come with improved management skills. It's easy to lose sight of my desire to lose the gut when I'm faced with delicious food. Keeping the goal in mind may be the best remedy to staying on track. And not forcing it. That's a lesson I'm trying to learn. Make the myriad of small things that you need to do to achieve a goal an integral part of your life. Make them automatic.

Perhaps that's my Big Project. Rebuilding my routines to get me where I want to be physically.