He’s had an awful tragedy to deal with this week, but even this event he can only view through his usual prism of narcissistic injury, i.e. his failed marriage.
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Yet things could not be the same again. Everybody involved had become vigilant, anxious. What would happen? Would he be able to cope with the academic demands of his engineering course? Would it all be all right in the end? Would he follow the course of his younger brother? The family had coped with that as best they could, but also could not regard these events as anything but a sad and profound disappointment.
Looking back, it is clear now that Thomas and I were at an impasse because neither of us could bear the thought that he was irreparably damaged. And it was only when we were both able to be sad, to despair because we couldn’t fix what was broken, that his spitting stopped serving a purpose for us and we were able to move forward.
She emerges from the confessional in a state of unease, far worse than when she went in. No penance to ease the burden! She knows she must end the affair but doesn’t think she can, a common human dilemma, not only related to romance. Shouldn’t have gone to the priest, not before she was ready. Who knows what she wanted when she went in there, but certainly not this outcome. Now she’s having a crisis.
Truth is, for him marriage has been like two people coming together to make a third, a mischievous extra presence working against them both, cooking up trouble, subverting his good intentions. But all that is too complicated, when right now he’s angry about something simple.
Odd that, how certain blindnesses are revealing. But you can tell from the level of anxiety it provokes how her imminent arrival has disturbed him.