Digging deep.

Ever since Eric had lost his job the dynamics between us has changed. He's been intellectualizing a lot more than before and I just feel that he's getting more and more emotionally distant from me. In the past week we have been reading a book together, "The Science of Trust" by Gottman on emotional attunement. Earlier in the week we had hours of text discussions on what we've read; at one point he even said, "Why do you trust me and why do I trust you? Even after 12 years of not talking to each other." Then through a series of banters he joked that he already had to let his wife win all the arguments and he couldn't let me win another one. That just hit me. It was already 2am that night so I didn't say anything then. Later in the morning I decided to voice something for myself:

That didn't feel so good to me. I know you were joking, but in that moment I wasn't trying to win--I was trying to connect. I didn't want to be another argument you feel like you have to manage. This space between us doesn't feel like that to me and I'd like to keep it that way.

He replied, "Sorry, I thought you were joking bc you said you were smarter than me so I was just joking back. You're not an argument I have to manage."

I replied, "ok thank you. :)"

Ever since there has been a lot more silence between us. On Friday, a graduating student gave me a book titled "Games and Decisions" by Luce and Raiffa with a really sweet note: 

Dear Ms. Johanson,

Thank you for teaching me in AP Economics this year. While I did not perform too well in semester 2 due to personal difficulties, my semester 1 performance was quite good. I plan on studying more economics courses at Berkeley, particularly in mathematical economics and game theory.

The book I gave is a favor on Game Theory first published in 1957, a decade after the second edition of Von Neumann and Morgenstern’s Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, which started the field. The mathematics utilized in the book is still quite elementary—more advanced treatments utilize assumption topological ideas and Banach’s fixed point theorem. This is just intended as an introduction to the ideas in the field.

I was so touched by this student because everyone finds him unbearably arrogant even though he is a total genius. I have been supporting him since the first semester when he had personal difficulties and I always choose to see the best parts of him. Then I decided to share a picture of the book and the student's note with Eric, but again, he seemed emotionally retreated and was deflecting with sarcasm and humor again.

Last night I reached out to him again to talk about my thought about Gottman's book because I already finished the first 7 chapters. I believe that Gottman has been focusing on only the skills of attunement that can be learned intentionally because that's what he can sell at his Love Institute that he runs with his wife. However, when I pay close attention to his interactions with his wife, I think he actually hit the jackpot on finding someone who could actually match him intuitively and resonate with him naturally, i.e. he got lucky in serendipity and they're trying to capitalize that. It's just like how I used to capitalize my linguistic abilities by teaching people how to speak English like I do--at a level that's equivalent to a highly educated native speaker but in fact, a big part of it was innate. I was just born gifted in this and most people, really statistically, cannot manufacture what I have.

Then as our conversation flowed, Eric told me he actually had to close some deals and is flying to Japan tomorrow so he had been busy over the weekend. He told me that his key problem still remains--he needs to change his geographic region or his career or both. He is indeed very confused about his current life structures right now and once again the universe has set us up in structures that just cannot align, unless the universe wants to do something about it. None of it is something I can control.

I do feel sad, and maybe I want to cry but I just don't feel sad enough about it. Maybe I've become jaded after all. The annoying thing was that every time when I talked to Eric late at night, I always felt some anxiety or heart palpitations when I was sleeping. Last night I even I had a dream of his wedding photo with his wife and she was so pretty. That just gave me an ache.

At this point of my life, I just feel that the universe has been pranking me again and again with everything, and I am just not surprised anymore. I look at the universe's pranks on me with some resentment and scarring and I just can't cry about them anymore. Is that good or bad?