Endurance

An hour nap in the late afternoon works wonders...

I've been thinking a bit since meeting a new climbing friend this past weekend. My friend R has the amazing ability to connect with ten billion people, and it seems half of them are because he has twins and he meets tons of other people with twins. In this case, it was a friend of a person with twins. G is an ex-cop who used to be a 5.11/5.12 climber (of offwidths!) until he got seriously injured in an accident.  He's starting to get back into it, but taking it slowly by starting with us... Really a great guy - doesn't have twins, but has a 13/16/19 year old.

In any event, he and I had to drive back together because R's car died and he had to be towed. As G has no radio, we got to tell each other stories, though, he told most of the stories since as I mentioned I'm just not that good of a storyteller despite having tons of stories to talk about!  He mentioned one guy who he worked with told him the story of his life, or at least a part. It's common, at least there, for men to have 'other wives'. Well, this one made a mistake and got her pregnant. So for 18 years he paid child support - making it home EVERY week (month?) before his wife to get the mail and the child support payment vouchers, made it over to the other wife's place to visit with the kid, etc.  Until the very last payment was due, and he didn't make it home in time. He got home, and his wife was sitting there with the record of payments.  18 years worth.  She just sat there and asked him questions very calmly, and then finally said, well, seems I need to meet him.  She had been through so much with him over 30+ years (40+?) that she saw no reason to make it the end.

And G himself said that his wife said he's a different person since leaving the force; that he's finally going back to the guy she knew when she met him.  And my friend from back east said that his wife for a while was actually almost scared of him, he was so angry at one job he was at.

And so, my thought is, how easy it is for some people to get up and leave and not wait through these bad periods. Is it right? Is it wrong? How does one keep the faith?  Or is one just too scared to leave? Or doesn't have the energy?  Whatever the reason is, as I sit here and watch another relationship go down the drain, it amazes me.