Chapter 14 - Robert and Margaret
Robert stayed separated.
Three months became six.
He rented a small condo.
Margaret called it humiliating.
Robert called it peaceful.
They attended couples counseling twice.
Stopped.
Margaret said Robert was:
“rewriting their marriage because of Claire.”
Robert told me later:
“No. Thanksgiving gave me a photograph.”
“What does that mean?”
“I had spent years seeing moments one at a time.”
Her mocking Daniel’s childhood food issues.
Her contempt for Mark’s wife.
Her tendency to punish people socially when challenged.
Robert avoiding.
Smoothing.
Leaving rooms.
“Then I saw Evan.”
There.
A nine-year-old receiving a behavior pattern developed long before he was born.
Robert said:
“I realized my silence had been part of the system.”
That sounded dramatic.
He hated dramatic.
Which made me believe him.
“Are you divorcing?”
“Yes.”
By month eight, he filed.
Not because I asked.
Not because of one bowl.
Because once he stopped minimizing Margaret’s patterns, he did not want to return to the marriage structure.
Margaret blamed me for a while.
Then Daniel.
Then Eric.
May you like
Then therapy.
Eventually, maybe, herself.
