A schizoid personality

Turns out, I am harder to leave than one might think.

Apparently, my other half cannot imagine her life without me dixit herself… So I guess all is patch-up for now.

Just so you know, that puts me pretty much in same mood than the day she announced she wanted to leave. It is just one of the two possibilities her last talking could end up to. Either way I will have bounced back. But I have to admit it makes it more practical to move and leave the country as a whole rather than separately; Less paperwork and easier organization.

Terrific news for our daughter though (who never suspected anything).

Yes my wife is missing a lot of emotional comfort because of me, and with a big thing like moving out the country it is harder on her as she is looking for more support on my part to validate the decisions made and reassure her.

But, overall, looking at the state of average male behavior, I guess she did realize I am one of a kind; With my hideous flaws and with the better sides. It’s the whole package, can’t separate them and get only the good sides, it’ll be too easy.

If I was more “emotional”, I’ll be less “sentimental”, tricky difference I know, but that is what she loves in me. My calm, the way I see life so serene, and I am 100% reliable, when it really counts I am here and I am a pillar of rock thru tough situations. I might be absent/distant most of the regular time, but I will never let her go in any extreme situations, and she knows it: I don’t crack under pressure, and I cannot flee my responsibilities… For better or worse…

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Well, my wife and I finally got that discussion. Turns out I was right; she did make some reading on SPD. So I explained to her those were “clinical” symptoms and where I was located in all that medical mambo jumbo. (she was quite worried about the lack of sexual drive usually tight to SPD, but when I explain to her that I could not force myself to make love to her if I was not feeling up to it, that I had never faked it nor will ever fake it, then she was reassured! [And I am supposed to be the male...])

See my wife she’s very intelligent and extremely pragmatic (there was bound to be reasons why we ended up together, don’t you think?) So with some down to earth explanations and zero emotional involvement she saw a glimpse of my reality.

I understand her late reaction. I mean she is highly empathic. So any physical or emotional pain I might feel, she will too, and identify to it, and try to help. But give her a husband that lack empathy and yet does not feel any emotional pain, and she is quite at a loss there…

So she can intellectually conceive part of my day to day reality, but she is noticeably incapable of “feeling” it, and that, she does not like at all… She is a thinker/feeler and misses half the information she would like to have

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It’s not easy to be schizoid with a child. I am not a monster and I perfectly know what my daughter needs in terms of affection.

Since I cannot provide on a steady pace in that area, I came up with some strategies:

First: The “silly” Dad:

It’s easy to jump, say silly things, and do weird dances and funny faces. Of course she loves having a “silly” dad. As she grow up I shift a little bit towards sarcasms, counter truths and “questions out of the blue” this way she’s kept on her toes and her dad is present in her everyday life.

Second: The “serious” Dad:

When she started kindergarten, I became very involved with the homework (a little less now that my wife has more regular hours). It provides a face of seriousness and caring about school and activities there as well as her friends and teachers, a world she will navigate in more and more so it is important that her dad seemed involved.

Third: The “story teller” Dad:

This is OUR thing. Since she’s two years old I am creating a new story every evening for her (well excluding evenings where I am not here or when it is too late, on average it’s 275 to 300 stories per year). Of course it evolved from basic “good v/s bad” tales to full fledge sagas spreading over several weeks with hidden messages. Now days, she picks a main character (animal, fantasy figure, human being, plant, etc…) and a simple difficulty or problem the character will have to face, and I built on it. I now even push her to try and figure some solutions or plots in her story to build up her imagination.

This is by far “the bond”. If I was to disappear today, that will be how she will remember me: “My daddy was inventing a story for me every night”.

She is now seven and entering her phase of “role models”. I am being careful in my roles of silly, serious and story teller dad, adapting slowly to that important period. For sure she will not have a socially extrovert role model, but she should be polite, open to differences, and overall I am not compromising her being a “good citizen” one day.

Evidently will come a time where she will be able to tell her dad is a bit “off”, I hope by then she will have the fundamentals to understand, and that the link with the mother will have once again become strong, because I will not be able to deal in the matters of boyfriends and such with the emotional attachment a teen might be waiting for.

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We humans, never learn it seems…. Ok picture this: My wife and I are a bit on the fritz because I was particularly “distant” those past 3-4 weeks. (Imagine that).

I do have some of those streaks where it is “worse” than usual. I mean there was the decision to go back in France, I already forsee hordes of stranger visiting my home for sale (yark!)… Sure, I went a bit deeper to cope with all that.

It’s not the first time, and usually I resurface, we reconnect slowly and are back on tracks after a bit of a discussion about why obsessed me lately. Tonight we had that reconnection process well on the way when I totally fucked it up… I told her!

Shit man, after 14 years together, and at least 20 passed introverting, you would think I’d know better!!!

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