On Reassurance

When I arrived home two Fridays ago, Jenn was nowhere to be found.

"Hello?" No answer.

I worked my way through the house toward our bedroom to check out back where Jenn could sometimes be found gardening. She was lying on a thin, maroon blanket on a berm of sandy soil in our backyard, crying. She lifted her head to look at me, her face puffy and red.

Lets back it up a bit: When we spoke on the phone that afternoon, I was in the midst of a busy work day. In-and-of-itself, this was already a bit of a  miracle, since my schedule was (and is for the time being) extremely part-time. Until my caseload builds up, I have been spending my days seeing a handful of clients, studying DBT therapy, completing paperwork, writing, and looking for more contract work. I was in the middle of one of these activities when Jenn called. I could hear in her voice that she needed something, perhaps just to talk or some sort of reassurance.

"Hi, what's up?" I said.

Brief pause. "Nothing."

"Are you sure? It sounds like somethings up."

"No, I'm doing ... okay," she said. "What are you doing?"

"Well actually, I'm in the middle of a bunch of paperwork and some reading, so I don't have a lot of time. What have you been up to today?"

One thousand one, One thousand two.  "Working on some jewelry."

Under normal circumstances, Jenn can be a bit of a Chatty Cathy on the phone, so when she resorts to one or two sentence answers, it often means she is either:

a) Tired
b) Online, or
c) Upset up about something

This day, there was a subtle difference in the quality of her voice, a nuance that, to the unpracticed ear, might have gone unnoticed, but to me, her partner, it stood out in stark relief to the lovely weather that day. I silently chose C and glanced at the clock.

"Are you going to take a nap?" I asked.

"I don't know," Jenn said with an implied rather than stated question mark.

"Wellllll," I said, impatient to get back to what i was doing, "I have to get going,"

Another brief pause. "Okay."

"Look, are you sure you don't want to talk?" I was wanting to be available, but still kinda hoped she'd say no.

Jenn paused for a moment. "No, I think I'll just hang out with it for a while."

"Okay, talk to you soon."

Click.

On my way home, I worked myself into a slow burn:  Jesus Christ! She knew when we moved here that I was going to be gone a lot. What, does she expect us to live off. And what's going to happen once the baby arrives? I've been here for nearly two months and haven't brought in a dime.  What, does she want me stay home with her AND somehow make enough money for us to live off of? Fuckity-fuck-fuck! We've already spent a third of our savings, and what's wrong with that fucking HR rep from my old agency anyway? I worked there for five-and-a-half years, they're advertising for clinicians and she still won't return my calls. I don't fucking have time for this shit. And another thing ...

From the above rant, the astute reader may surmise that by the time I arrived home, I was totally, and I mean totally in touch with my Higher Self.  As many of my friends can vouch, I am nothing if not the picture of compassion and nurturance. So when I saw my pregnant wife lying on the ground in our backyard weeping, my instincts kicked in, and I acted. I went for a short, head-clearing bike ride, came back to the house, and laid down next to Jenn while she continued to cry. 

"Would you hold me?" she asked.

"Absolutely." I draped one arm across her pregnant belly and with the other stroked her hair.

I'm not a nap taker, never have been. This may be a little odd for someone with chronic insomnia and sleep apnea, but there's something in my nature that has always resisted lying down when it's still light out. While Jenn wasn't asking me to join her in a nap, as I lay with her while she deeply felt her emotions, I started to get a little, um, antsy.

"Wow," I said looking up at the sky, "check out those clouds."

Jenn gave me a you've-got-to-be-kidding sideways glance.

"Bad idea?" I said.

"The worst," she replied, not looking up.

I readjusted my cuddle and focused my energies.  A few more minutes passed.

"Would it help if I patted you on the back and said, There, there?" I asked. Running joke, bad timing. Jenn, once again demonstrating her good sense and declined to respond.

Mel Brooks defined humor this way: Tragedy is when I cut my finger; comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.

I'm not sure what it is about human suffering that makes me want to crack jokes. Or maybe I do. Freud theorized that humor was actually the unconscious negation of death. In the face of suffering, there is nothing quite so uplifting as a verbal (or literal) pie in the face. However, it is also a way of modulating my own feelings, as well as, in my own way, trying top help the person gain a little perspective. I have been working on reigning in untimely jokes a little, but it's a slow go. I guess this time, I simply wasn't in the mood to show some restraint.

I hugged Jenn a little closer and we lay there a while as she sniffled. Seven minutes passed.

"Do you want to talk?" I said at last.

It poured out of her as if it were the one question she had been longing to be asked:  "I've been feeling so raw today, and scared. I feel like I'm counting on you to help me feel safe and secure, but then when you're in your shit it's hard for me not to get drawn into mine, and I know it's my job, but when you're in your stuff around money, I don't know what to do, and then I remind myself to relax, that's there is nothing for me to do, but I feel so helpless because there's nothing for me to do, and I'm here away from my family and friends and don't have any support, which reminds me what Elizabeth said when we were up at their house -- that making a baby is enough -- but it doesn't feel like enough and ... "

 There's a great young comic named Mike Birbiglia. During his concert (free on Netflix) he relays funny episodes from his life without the angry "me-against-the-audience" vibe that so many comics exude. During one of his bits, he described how, when he was moving a mattress into his new apartment building, an attractive woman entered at the same time and held the door open for him. The woman said half-joking that she was letting him because "no rapist would have a bed like that."

"What I should have said," he tells the audience, "was nothing. What I did say was, 'You'd be surprised.'"

As the sun started to sink on the horizon, I had much the same feeling--I ought to say nothing, be supportive, offer a hug, but the vibe I worked up on the drive home was still rattling around inside of me. On top of that, I felt it was necessary to say what I was about to say for the pure pragmatic reason that it was true.

Here's what I said: "We talked about this when we decided to move here. You knew what you were getting yourself into when you agreed--"

"I know." she said, interrupting with a tone that said, "Don't lecture me."

Undaunted, I continued. "I'm not even working full-time yet, so I'm only going to get busier. It's the trade-off we made so you can stay at home and be a stay-at-home mom for at least six months, if not more."

Jenn listened, but was wearing an expression that said this was pretty much the last thing she felt like hearing in that moment.

I knew my timing was off, but kept going. "I asked you a couple of times what was going on, and you more or less said nothing. I knew this wasn't true, but I don't want to go fishing anymore. If you tell me nothing's going on or that you don't need to talk, I'm going to take it on face value. It feels like you not taking care of yourself. Meanwhile, I'm working my ass off trying to find work while our bank account is melting away like a fucking ice cap, and we've already spent more than a third of our savings ... "

Jenn has the special talent of non-defensiveness. Somehow, through my tirade, she was able to hear what I was trying to communicate without re-bursting into tears or soaking me down with the garden hose.

I mistook Jenn's reasonableness for agreement, we forced a few jokes, hugged, and headed inside toward the kitchen.

"Are you hungry," I asked hopefully.

She turned toward me and looked me in the eye. "You suck at reassurance." she said.

I didn't deny it. I knew she was right, but I also had a reaction to the observation and was just about to verbalize it when Jenn beat me to the punch.

"I know it's not your job to reassure me, that I need to be able to do it myself ... "

I nodded my head.

" ... but you still suck at it. All I wanted was for you to hold me for a while."

"I did," I said by way of clever retort. "I laid down with you for a while."

"Yeah," she said, "but you always do it with some sort of time frame." She mimed me looking at my watch. "It's like, 'Okay, I've held her for ten minutes, time to check out the scores on ESPN.' "

"Hey, be fair. The NBA playoffs are in full swing right now." The joke was met with pure steel.
"Look," I said, "if you're not telling me what you need, then I get impatient. At least give me a hint so I'm not left to guess."

"Yeah, but that's just it. Sometimes I don't know what I need or how to put it into words. I just want you to hold me."

Oh.

Externally I said nothing. Internally, I made a mental note: Must hold wife without knowing what's going on.

Fast forward to yesterday. Jenn and I woke-up early, took our friends to the airport, had a nice breakfast, and went to our first birthing class, called, "Ecstatic Birthing." We followed this by heading home, having some lunch, and discussed our reaction to the class. Jenn turned, grabbed me by my shoulders, and told me her love and gratitude for being in relationship with me was growing daily, and that she was happy and proud to be my partner.

Lovely : )

Shortly thereafter, we retired to the boudoir for a "nap," and after a time--miracle of miracles--I actually did fall asleep for a bit. When I woke-up, I had this thought: What a great day. I looked over at Jenn and told her I wanted to leave in a few minutes to go write--to work on this very blog entry, as a matter of fact. I'm not sure what was going on for her, but she started to cry. Jenn seemed to be in the middle of having more of those (insert eye roll) pesky feelings again.

This time, I was ready. She had told me what she needed in these moments. I'd like to say that this time I didn't ask what was going on or hesitate to act; I merely wrapped my wife in my arms and gently stroked her hair. However, that wasn't how it played out.

"What just happened?" I asked, feeling irritated. "I thought we were having a good time."

Jenn and I hung out for a bit, but I lacked the patience to sit in mid-day silence and the clarity to understand what was going on for her.  With some hesitation, I left to go do my own thing.

I am a professional Re-Assurer by trade--a psychotherapist--and I do it well, but in my own personal life, I am discovering, that, well, lets just say it's a work in progress.