CHAPTER 11
Amour! Amour!
Out beyond right doing and wrong doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
That night, charged up by all that had happened in the meetings with Alexa and Charles, I worked late. In fact, I worked till long after dark, making notes for the meeting the next morning with Charles and the team. I also sent an email to Alexa to check on Joseph’s availability for meeting with us within the next few weeks. Time raced by. When I remembered to check the clock it was two hours past the time I told Grace I’d be home. I considered calling but figured she’d be in bed sound asleep, so I decided not to disturb her. On the way home in the car I noticed it was going on eleven o’clock.
When I walked in the house I found Grace sitting alone in the dimly lit living room. She was in her pajamas, reading by a single lamp beside her chair. The moment I greeted her, I knew something was wrong. She silently set aside her book, walked up to me, took my hand, led me over to the sofa and gently told me to sit down. I sat, half expecting her to announce that someone had died—or that she was leaving me. She perched herself on the arm of the overstuffed chair across from me, leaned slightly forward and gazed into my eyes. This was going to be serious.
“Ben,” she said, “you have got to tell me what’s going on with you.”
Just as I’d done so many times before, my first instinct was to shrug it off. “I worked late. I told your secretary. . . I considered calling but figured you were asleep.”
“It’s not about that. You know it isn’t.” She fixed me with a look that told me she wasn’t going to back off.
“There’s been a lot of pressure at work. . . deadlines coming up way too fast. . . but I think there was some real progress today. . . nothing to worry about.” I knew I was waffling, but to tell the truth I was scared half to death.
Grace shook her head slowly, paused, then asked, “What is it you need right now?”
For a moment I was speechless. Wasn’t this the very question I’d asked myself about Charles? What does the other person need and want? Was she reading my mind, or had she somehow seen Joseph’s Top 12 Questions for Success?
“What do I need?” I echoed nervously. “You know, at this point I’m not even sure.” I wasn’t lying to her. I really didn’t know.
“Okay, let me tell you what I’ve been noticing,” Grace began. “Not long after you took this job, our whole relationship changed. You changed. I began to worry it was something about me. Did you suddenly feel that marrying me had been a mistake? Had I done something that offended or hurt you?”
I held up my hand. “Oh, Grace, it isn’t anything like that, not at all!” The idea that I had been so oblivious to her feelings made we want to weep.
“That’s what I realized after studying the Choice Map,” she said. “You know what became clear—we’ve both been going down the Judger path. I know I’ve been judging myself and you, and I see you being in Judger, too.”
I had been bursting to tell her about my breakthrough with Charles, how it had already changed so much for me at work. Suddenly even that faded into the background. I searched for words to tell Grace how sorry I was to have caused her such pain. But all I could do at first was nod and say I agreed with her.
“I’m filled with questions about us,” Grace continued. “But until this afternoon my questions were mostly Judger ones. Then I started looking for things I might do or say to keep us from getting stuck in the Judger Pit.”
“This is really hard for me to hear,” I said, bowing my head, “I guess there’s no easy way to say this. . . no other way through it. . .” I prayed I wasn’t going to lose it.
Grace suddenly looked as pale as a ghost. “Please let this not be what I’m thinking,” she said, her voice shaky and fearful.
“What?” An alarm went off in my head. All sorts of possibilities raced through my mind. She leaned forward from the arm of her chair, staring at me. I took a deep breath. “Wait,” I blurted out. “What are you thinking? You don’t think. . .”
“It’s all the long nights you’ve spent at the office, all the excuses for not coming home, failing to call even to let me know where you were, not having time for me. . . for us.” She paused. “What did you expect me to think?”
“Grace. . . I swear, it’s nothing like that.” This was really tough! It had never occurred to me that she might have interpreted my long hours at work like this.
I shook my head slowly, partly because I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and partly to assure her I was not having an affair. “I would never do that, Grace.” I paused and gave a lot of thought to what I was going to say next. “There’s something I want to tell you that I’m finding very difficult to say. I hope you won’t end up hating me for it. . . maybe even as much as if there’d been another woman.”
My face felt hot and my voice sounded shaky. I had no idea what Grace’s reaction would be in the next few moments. I was afraid that she might even walk out on me when I told her the truth about my failures at work.
“I didn’t exactly tell you the truth about Joseph and how I got the Choice Map,” I began. “I was in a real jam at work. Things were not going well at all. As I saw it, I had to choose between going to Joseph for executive coaching or handing in my resignation.”
“Your resignation! Is that what this is all about? Oh, Ben, I’m so sorry!”
“For months I’ve been afraid I wasn’t cut out to be a leader. Just the opposite! Everything I tried just seemed to get crappy results. I was letting down everyone who’d believed in me, you as well as Alexa. And certainly the team I was supposed to be leading! And if this job didn’t work out. . . well, I was afraid of how it would affect us. . . you and me. Frankly, I was afraid you’d think I wasn’t good enough for you.”
We were both silent for several moments, then she asked quietly, “When did you first realize things weren’t working out in the new job?”
“A few weeks into it,” I confessed. “At first it was great. I really thought I could handle the leadership thing. Then I was hit with one challenge after another that I couldn’t manage, until I felt like I was drowning. . . I just couldn’t find the answers.”
“Wait,” she interrupted. “You’ve had all of that going on for all this time and you never told me about it?”
“You’re angry, Grace, aren’t you? I just knew it was going to turn out like this. I’m really sorry. But I think things are turning around for me, in fact, I’m sure of it. . .”
“Wait a second,” Grace said. “Back up. You knew what? What did you think was going to turn out like this? Do you know why I’m angry at you? Are you sure you know why?”
“Of course I do. For screwing up at this job.”
“No! No! No! That’s not it at all!” She practically shouted this at me.
“Then for what?” I asked, totally taken aback. Had she found some offense that was even worse, something I didn’t even know about yet? I wracked my brain for an explanation.
“What I’m upset about is that you’ve kept your problems a secret from me. You’re my husband, and you didn’t let me know about something this important to both of us.”
“I had every intention of telling you but only after I got things rolling again. I was pretty sure I could get a new job right away, and things would get better and you would never have to know.”
“In other words, you were going to continue trying to cover this up and keep me in the dark.” Suddenly she looked like she wanted to punch me. “Good grief, Ben, how could you be so clueless?”
I stared back at her like she was a stranger. I really didn’t know what to say.
“Listen to me,” she said. “You better get what I’m about to say, or we’re never going to make it. I want you to share what’s real with me, your troubles, your doubts, your victories, all of it. I need you to. That’s such an important part of marriage for me. That’s what helps me feel connected. When I’m having trouble at work, I talk it over with you, don’t I?”
“Sure. I guess you do. I never thought about it.”
“You never thought about it! Are you kidding me? Do you remember what I asked you when you came in tonight?”
“Yes, you asked me what I needed.”
“You haven’t answered me,” she said. “You need to do that. I want you to. Right now.”
My jaw dropped and I just stared into Grace’s eyes for a long time. I don’t know how much time passed. Maybe it was just seconds, but those moments are imprinted in my mind forever. What do you need? Those four words, asked with so much loving care, were like laser beams cutting through a stone wall I hadn’t even known I had erected around me, around my heart.
“What I want. . .” I began, “I guess if I’m being totally honest right now, I want to tell you everything that’s been happening to me and not let my fears stop me.”
I paused to check out Grace’s expression before continuing. She was smiling but there was something else in her face that I couldn’t quite read. In spite of that, I had to press on.
“I’ve had to confront my own limitations,” I began, working up my courage. “I’ve spent way too much time in Judger and have made a lot of assumptions—hurtful ones—about myself as well as other people. All of this has caused major problems at work. And one of the toughest parts I’ve had to face is that. . . well, there’s more to life than being the answer man. I’ve got a huge amount to learn. At least now I’ve got some better choices, thanks to our friend Joseph.”
At that point, I poured out the whole story of what I’d gone through in the past few months, how I’d been scared to death that if I didn’t succeed in this new position, Alexa would conclude that I couldn’t make it as a leader at QTec. There had been so many days I’d felt like a loser that I didn’t dare admit I was sliding faster and deeper into the Judger Pit. When I got to the end of my story, Grace got up from the arm of the chair where she’d been sitting. She came over and sat down in my lap, enfolding my head in her arms.
“I love you very much,” she said. “I love you even more because of all that you’ve just shared with me. But promise me that you’ll never hold out on me again. Promise?”
“It’s not going to be easy,” I told her. “Habits are hard to break. Besides, at work I’ve learned that you don’t get ahead by whining.”
“You’re not whining! There’s a huge difference between being a crybaby and being honest. We should always be open to asking each other what’s going on and feel safe about telling the truth. Remember we’re in this together.”
There it was again. . . creating room for people to ask questions openly and to listen generously. This conversation was taking the breakthrough I’d had at work to a whole new level. Did I fully understand it all yet? I didn’t. But what I did see, quite clearly, was that Joseph’s methods worked as well at home as they did at work.
I don’t remember the exact words I used though I do remember telling Grace how much this conversation meant to me. I thanked her for asking the questions she had, for listening to my problems, and for putting up with me during a very difficult time.
Grace kissed me gently on the lips. In that instant, I knew something important had changed, not just between Grace and me but in the whole way I looked at the world.
As we headed for the stairs that night, our arms were still around each other, making it difficult to walk. We laughed as we stumbled comically on the first steps. I told her I didn’t want to let go but we’d never make it to the top entwined like this.
She smiled playfully, “But we could try!”
We kissed again and I suddenly got serious: “Can I ask you a question?”
“Anytime,” Grace said, with a sparkle in her eyes. “Just anytime at all.”