We Just Do It Faster

I have often maintained that professionals in psychology seldom do magic. They are simply better able to size up a situation quickly, are more objective, know some promising leads to follow, and know some likely pitfalls to avoid.

That's a lot, actually, and sometimes it is magic, because it seems so out of reach for other people. But here is an example of a woman writing about her husband. She has no professional training. She is, however, an intelligent woman with a willingness to see herself clearly. That enables her to see others clearly, if she has enough data. A good professional could see in a shorter time what it has taken her years to see, and would have some ideas how to proceed with helping her husband, if he would wish it. But we wouldn't tend to see things more clearly than this.

Ken seemed, I think to all the rest of us (me and the two attorneys), not entirely stable tonight. He made opposite decisions within minutes of each other, very emphatically, in opposition to his lawyer, and according to an inner logic that is fracturing him.

The consistency I could see was that he wants to sign the proposal but wants to look completely innocent, perhaps victimized, while doing so. Even his explanation of why he is not currently asking for divorce included that he was not comfortable being the initiator of that kind of action. He seems to be avoiding all responsibility, while trying to minimize his costs/losses in the process. Even his lawyer was a bit flummoxed, not having seen this unworkable inconsistency and flip-flopping in Ken before. The two lawyers met at one point in order to find some gameplan for the discussion, which seemed to be getting nowhere with Ken's patchwork of rhetoric that he has been repeating over the past several weeks.

Ken said that he will sign the proposal tomorrow (none of us were comfortable with him signing it tonight, after the erratic nature of the discussion), and then he and his lawyer will not show up in court on Wednesday, because the agreement will be uncontested. My lawyer (Susan Lachman) and I will be at court Wednesday at 10:00a.m., and the judge will question Susan as he considers whether the proposal, even as signed by both parties, is acceptable.

My overwhelming sense is that Ken is completely deluded and is suffering from serious mental and emotional strain from trying to super-logically and consistently live out a lie. His eyes seemed red and his arguments less coherent than they were a month ago, and he sounds to me like a psychotic person explaining with clarity the situation which is apparent to everyone else as a delusion. Tonight I felt like the wife in the movie A Beautiful Mind, which Ken and I watched last year: calling the doctor about the one I love, who is living a nightmare and thinks I am betraying him. I love him and will do what I understand is best for him, even though he can't understand it. I ache to see him falling apart, and to see him in denial of the true reasons for it. I pray that he will come to know that true wholeness only comes from a truly broken and contrite heart before God, who raises the spiritually dead.