On Language and Friendship

I'm getting divorced. So is my wife. We have some friends in common as you would expect after 36 years of marriage. Some of them are more in touch with Janis than with me -- most of them, really. I got this e-mail from one of our friends (the wife of the friend-couple):

Perhaps Janis told you that she has let us know that you would like a divorce. The only explanation she has shared is that you want "emotional intimacy", but not with her. We are looking forward to her visit in January, and extended time talking about anything & everything that she wants to share & offering our support to a dear friend.

This is incredibly confusing...we regard both of you as friends, and don't want to form an opinion of you without first hearing from you, if you would like to share with us what has brought you to this life-changing decision. We will be sharing what we know with our kids on Thursday, and are hopeful we'll be able to present everything fairly about this situation, as you were a couple that they probably held as a model for marriage.

The language this friend used was striking to me. Especially these phrases:

• "don't want to form an opinion of you"
• "sharing what we know with our kids .... present everything fairly"

OK, I admit that it's difficult to hit exactly the right emotional tone in an e-mail, but the tone of this message was challenging rather than supporting. I felt as though I'm on trial and being given a chance to take the stand in my own defense before being judged around the table on Thanksgiving by this family.

Absent from this communication were phrases such as

• "we love you both"
• "there are two sides to every story and we'd love to hear yours"
• "divorce is hard for everyone: how can we support you"
• "this is really none of our business and we certainly aren't going to discuss this with our kids, but we just want to understand your point of view"

So I declined the opportunity to take the stand. Oh, yes, and I unfriended her and put a rule in my inbox to delete future messages from her. There! That'll show her to mess with me! Immature reaction? Probably.

Let them think what they want about me. If who I've been with them during the few years we lived in the same town and now over the past 20 years since haven't given them enough evidence to form an opinion of me, then my words in an e-mail aren't going to help.

Lesson here? It's hard not to take sides. Think about what you're writing before you press "send." Since there are few emotional cues in an e-mail, you have to spell them out in writing -- say what the feelings are -- if you don't want to be misunderstood on an emotional topic.

So taking my own advice: my emotions in this: hurt and angry. Oh, that was obvious from what I wrote? Well sometimes you can communicate your emotions effectively in writing.

Travis McGee, the philosopher

I love this passage from Pale Gray for Guilt by John T. MacDonald

"So they sat, holding hands, and Jan fell asleep.

Puss gave me a sleepy wink and then she was gone

too. I looked out of the jet at December gray, at

cloud towers reaching up toward us. Tush was gone,

and too many others were gone, and I sought chill

comfort in an analogy of death that has been with

me for years. It doesn't explain or justify. It just

seems to remind me how things are.

Picture a very swift torrent, a river rushing down

between rocky walls: There is a long, shallow bar of

sand and gravel that runs right down the middle of

the river. It is under water. You are born and you

have to stand on that narrow, submerged bar, where

everyone stands. The ones born before you, the ones

older than you, are upriver from you. The younger

ones stand braced on the bar downriver. And the

whole long bar is slowly moving down that river of

time, washing away at the upstream end and building

up downstream.

Your time, the time of all your contemporaries,

schoolmates, your loves and your adversaries, is that

part of the shifting bar on which you stand. And it is

crowded at first. You can see ·the way it thins out,

upstream from you. The old ones are washed away

and their bodies go swiftly by, like logs in the current.

Downstream where the younger ones stand

thick, you can see them flounder, lose footing, wash

away. Always there is more room where you stand,

but always the swift water grows deeper, and you

feel the shift of the sand and the gravel under your

feet as the river wears it away. Someone looking for

a safer place can nudge you off balance, and you are

gone. Someone who has stood beside you for a long

time gives a forlorn cry and you reach to catch their

hand, but the fingertips slide away and they are

gone. There are the sounds in the rocky gorge, the

roar of the water, the shifting, gritty sound of sand

and gravel underfoot, the forlorn cries of despair as

the nearby ones, and the ones upstream, are taken

by the current. Some old ones who stand on a good

place, well braced, understanding currllnts and balance,

last a long time. A Churchill, fat cigar atilt,

sourly amused at his own endurance and, in the

end, indifferent to rivers and the rage of waters. Far

downstream from you are the thin, startled cries of

the ones who never got planted, never got set, never

quite understood the message of the torrent.

Tush was gone, and our part of the bar was emptier,

and the jet raced from the sunset behind us to

the night ahead, and beside me slept the two

women, hand in hand, their lashes laying against the

high flesh of their cheeks with a heartbreaking precision,

a childish surrender, an inexpressible vulnerability."