Kobayashi Maru

How many of you are Star Trek fans?

If so you'll know what that reference means, but for those who don't: the Kobayashi Maru was the name of a disabled spaceship in a computer simulated test for Starfleet Academy students. It is designed to be unwinnable.

An illustration of the no-win scenario, and the name Kobayashi Maru has become a synonym among geeks for that situation. For another geek reference, you might remember the movie "War Games" in which the intelligent computer decides at the end that in some games, "the only winning move is not to play."

Many times I feel like I'm in the middle of a kobayashi maru situation. As I write this I am on the verge of quitting this quest - at least for a few years. but to do so will be spiritual death for me. The thing is, if I don't, it will be a similar fate for my wife.

I told her the last time (previous to this morning) that we "discussed" the situation that I had to face the fact that for me to live, she must die, and for her to live, I must die - emotionally and spiritually speaking. As long as I presist she is in pain - ev en if we split she will continue to suffer because I have "killed" the man she loved. On the other hand, if I revert and repress, things still can't be the same as they were before for either of us, but especially for me.

So what is to be done?

By all the rules of honor and ethics, I should be willing to lay down my life for my beloved - and physically I am. If repression means my spiritual death (when I use the word spiritual I do not use it in the religious sense) and transition means hers, am I any less oblidged to give myself up for her? I do love her that much, as much as it would be agonzing to do.

But the problem is that it just reverses the problem. She loves me "that much" too. And whenever she sees the pain it causes me to consider giving it up, she insists that I must press on if it's what I must do. You can't say that to me and me not take advantage of it, I'm too weak to resist. So back and forth we go, each offering to fall on their sowrd for the other, and each tortured by the pain the other one is caused because we can't give them what they want.

Both of us understanding that seperation would lessen the pain but neither of us wanting to be apart.

I don't begrudge her her feelings. she's entitled to hate me and she doesn't (yet). I do take exception to the fact that she cannot surrender her assumption that feeling this way is a choice and not an inborn condition. She's been SO conditioned for SO long to see people like me as people who have chosen to do something she thinks is wrong, that she can't see past it. the problem is that logically, if that is true, then the only reasonable conclusion is that I willfully decieved her when we married, that I was using her as "cover", that I am now chosing to induldge something I don't have to do in spite of the pain and loss it might cause.

How could you NOT hate a person who would do such things?

So you see what I mean about the no-win scenario. I can (emotionally and spiritually) kill myself and give her at least some shadow of the man she wants back - even though everyone would know it was a blatant lie (I suppose those of you who really think I'm just choosing to indulge a fetish would think something had been accomplished). Or I can press forward and try to live an authentic life and steal from her everything (except her kids) that she ever wanted in life (and compound that by asking her to somehow tolerate the person who hurt her so deply still being involved in her life at least where it comes to the kids).

I have no solution. It feels like making up you mind to jump off the bridge except that you don't even get the satisfaction of bringing the matter to an end.

So why am I spilling my guts here? Well, if you see me out town bare faced and "male" - please know I'm not undecided about my identity. If that happens you are simply looking at someone who laid down their life for the one they love.