tag/divorce

So I think one of the things that is most frustrating with the situation with Mo is how sudden it seems to me. In particular, at our anniversary last summer, I proposed a "State of our Union" dinner as an annual thing where we could talk openly and frankly about where we saw things, what problems we saw, etc...but no hint of the trouble to come in the Autumn was there.

Now Mo claims that the signs were there to see, that in the occasional spat we'd have (apparently a lot more to her recollection than mine, and I'd say a lot less than most couples) I should gotten an indication that things needed to change. But from my perspective, that way lies a paranoia that can ultimately be very destructive for a relationship...one person always looking for problems that may or may not be there ultimately can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's not that I'm blameless in this, that I couldn't have been more responsive, but if a woman can't talk about using words when directly asked, what's a guy supposed to? (I'm reminded of the old Deee-lite line: "I can't read your mind / So you got to let me (know all the time) / How it feels for it to be so real")

Of course, this kind of assumes that the problems in the marriage were fixable by conscious effort, which is a mighty big assumption. It could just be that Mo screwed up when she decided I'd make a good husband for her. But the problems we did have...I mean, compared to the awful fighting and neglect I know many marriages go through, our issues were pretty small potatoes. I think that there's a large number of marriages, my own included, that get killed for over vague and nondescript problems.

(Someone leave me some comments, I'm feeling all neglected, 3 days with none!)

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Quote and Links of the Moment

Buyers are liars.

from this fascinating Edmunds.com article Confessions of a Car Salesman, where they sent a guy "undercover" at a few dealerships for a while. Has an interesting glossary of the lingo at the end. So while car sales is indeed a sleazy profession, potential buyers lie as well, like that whole "I have to go check with my wife" kind of dodge.

The article talks a few time about how using the Internet can really give an edge to a smart buyer, but then again, it IS on an car internet site. Still, I think the 'Net provides a source of information that would be hard for the general population to get otherwise.

Another cool car-related link: Forbes' The Worst Cars Of All Time. The trouble is it's by default a slideshow...which is kind of dumb, considering the descriptions are part of the draw. And while it looks like you can turn off the auto-next feature, it reactivates when the next page loads....DUH! While I know some people think I've gotten arrogant about this, I really do think that some sites know much more about pretty design than they do about basic usability.

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Online Observation of the Moment
Hey, is it just me, or is the Internet kind of sluggish today? I think it might be that e-mail worm that's going around.

It's funny how I can see the distinctive footprint it's making in my crappy homebrew webmail spambox...usually that's full to the brim w/ the usual stupid ads, which all tend to have fairly long subjects. Now it's mostly these short like "Hi" and "test" subject lines, with the traditional SPAM subjects placed farther apart.

They mention that this might be used as part of an "Denial of Service" attack against SCO, who has annoyed many Linux users. It's certainly possible that it's being done by a pro-Linux activist, though you'd kind of hope not. I wouldn't be surprised if the SCO/Linux factor is just a red herring. Not that you'd think that was even a possibility from this CNN.com article, who are willing to take everything at face value. Duhhr. Ignore the fact that they are gathering all kinds of data and might be setting up some kind of second wave, and just play up the SCO angle, dirty Linux users. (Well, I certainly don't, but some of my best friends are Linux users...)

Dang. Verbose updates lately! But thanks to those who answered by pathetic plea for feedback... Link of the Moment
You have to be into some obscure bits of literary geek culture to get this, but what if Jack Chick wrote on the Cthulhu mythos?

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AIM Chat of the Moment

sarah: I can understand wanting to be younger again, or rather wanting to live out the freedom of singledom in the college years... we all probably feel that from time to time, but I think that I only feel that way because I forget all the crap that went along with it... the grass is always greener scenario
kirk: well, she doth protest that she's never really lived alone, except maybe a very brief time in college, and barely that, just doing the whole serial monogomy shtick
sarah: So she wants to go be a lonely slut?
kirk: well, that's certainly how I'd put it, yes.
kirk: well, no.
sarah: well... what's so great about living alone anyway... the longer you live alone the harder it becomes to accomodate living with another person... it's just the highway to crotchetyness if you ask me

Don't know if this is nice to post, but it feels good at this difficult time in my life. Plus I thought it was a little funny (Sarah did immediately say she was being facetious about the "lonely slut" remark, or rather "fecissuoaos... fecisous ...phecishus? Facicious?" ) and I do like the phrase "highway to crochetyness". Sarah and Dylan are great for snarky IMing with, except Dylan's never online. Hope everyone in nor'easter land is muddling through. We've shoveled 3 or 4 times. People just shouldn't be living this far north.

Anyway, in the interest of this blog's secondary function of keeping people informed about The Life of Kirk, I'm gonna mention that it looks like Mo and I are going to break up. I think it's fair to say it's her decision. There's a bundle of reasons, each one has had its turn feeling more or less important; her feeling there's a connection we haven't made all this time, not enough shared activities, that our admitted difference in ambition (she tends to be very driven to pursue various projects, I tend to have a less pro-active, take it as it comes approach) is something she can't deal with in a life-partner, the usual waxing and waning of sex drives, her feeling she's missed out by never having lived alone for any significant time. Over the past month or so we've been talking a lot, a bit of couples therapy, writing e-mail, I've been trying to convince her that our life together is really something good, and can be made better, especially now that she's finally talking about what's bugging her. But I fear she's not so easily persuaded.

I find giving up on a relationship or any commitment to be an incredibly painful thing to do (I really think that tenacity shows in weird places, like the strength of my commitment to music groups I've joined; if I'm not super-delighted about the direction of the group I'll gripe about it, but I'm the one that's always there) though I saw that possibility of giving up for the first a week or so ago, a line in the sand to cross, and yesterday when she said she'd be leaving me, I guess that was that.

It's amicable though, almost weirdly so. It's definately one of those situations where it would have been useful if she had identified some of these issues before the wedding and the purchase of our house, but hey. (Or as Brooke pointed out, it's like Adam Sandler says in The Wedding Singer: "Once again, Things that could have been brought to my attention YESTERDAY!") Still, within the context of doing what she thinks she owes it to herself to do, Mo is trying to be as kind and nice as possible, and does seemed pained by the hurt this kind of thing is going to cause me and also our families.

I'm glad to see she's started her own livejournal. You can see some of her thoughts and point of view there, but she wanted me to mention that it isn't the "true, deep representation" of how she feels about all of this.

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Art of the Moment
I was contacted by Marissa Saradpon, because for a Design Layout class she had illustrated my old story Yee and Lan...the resulting work is really terrific, and her timing was great...I made it the feature for this month's Blender of Love (which saved me from writing up some horrendous essay about the breakup of me and Mo.)

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Toy of the Moment
Your chance to rock the world of the holiday snowglobe dwellers. Really amusing. And a pretty good metaphor for how this holiday season is going for me...