Apologies
Chapter 15 of The Anatomy of Peace
By The Arbinger Institute

Editor’s note: The Anatomy of Peace, an important new book by the writers of Leadership and Self-Deception, shows us the cause of human conflict so that we can learn to live in peace. Look for the continuation next Monday.

Lou barely slept that night. He tossed and turned as the mistakes of the last thirty years or so played themselves over and over in his mind. Cory was an object to him, he couldn’t deny it. His heart stirred in anger merely at the thought of Cory’s name.

But there was a new feeling this night —a desire to be rid of the ache he felt regarding Cory rather than a desire to be rid of Cory himself. He was wanting his son back. Or perhaps more accurately, he was beginning to feel the desire to be Cory’s father again.

Speaking of ache, the pain he felt for banishing Kate was now acute. As he replayed what he had regarded as the mutinous meeting in the boardroom, he heard his words and witnessed his scowl afresh. He had been a child! He couldn’t afford to lose Kate, but his pride had driven him over a cliff and blinded him to a truth he suspected was obvious to everyone else — that Kate, not Lou, was the prime mover behind Zagrum Company’s success. How could I have been so blind! What am I going to do? How can I rescue the company?

But by the wee hours of the morning, his thoughts and pain were located elsewhere. For thirty-one years, Carol (who, he noted, had slept soundly through the night) had given her life to him, while he had given too little in return. They met at a dance at Syracuse University. Carol was on a date with one of Lou’s friends. Lou, alone that night, couldn’t take his eyes off her. He began the evening wondering whether it would be ethical to move in on his friend. By the end of the evening, it was no longer a matter of ethics, only of strategy.

Over the months that followed, Lou came to see Carol as a contradiction. On the one hand, she had an amiable, easy air about her — quick to laugh, always ready with an engaging, sometimes witty response. In a word, she was fun. Fun to talk to, fun to joke with, fun to be around. On the other hand, she was instinctively cautious. The obedient daughter of a preacher, she was raised to be wary of men and their intentions.

Her father was fond of asking all of her suitors to come down into his basement to “see his trains.” Whereupon, without turning on the lights he threatened them life and limb if they were to do anything unseemly with his daughter.

As the latest in a long line, Lou received this lecture as well. He thought it might have had a strong effect on a high school-aged boy who lived in the preacher’s home town. For a junior in college, however, with no attachment to her father’s congregation or faith, the lecture simply raised practical roadblocks. By then, he had completely fallen for Carol Jamison. Now he knew that Mr. Jamison had to approve of Lou before Carol could fully fall for him.

He spent a lot of time with her father and his “trains.”

Between dates with Carol and lectures from her dad, Lou’s grade point average took a beating. But there was no turning back. He thought of Carol during class and study time anyway, so it was no good trying to rescue his grades by pulling away. Ultimately, Lou, who had been raised a nonpracticing Christian, won the trust of Carol’s religiously devoted father, and he proposed.

It was then that Lou learned a lesson about Carol’s independence. She might have shared her father’s caution, but she did not blindly act upon his approvals. When Lou first proposed, she told him she would have to think about it. He held onto the ring for five months before she finally allowed him to slip it on her finger. The moment would stay with Lou forever: “Yes, Lou, I will marry you,” she suddenly told him out of the blue, as they were driving home from a church service one rainy Sunday afternoon.

“Excuse me?” Lou couldn’t help from blurting.

“I’ll marry you, Lou. I’ll devote my life to you and to our family.”

And she had.

As Lou remembered this, he knew he had not returned the single-minded devotion. Oh, his eye never wandered to other women. That was not his vice. No, his problem was not occasional lust for others, it was rather a constant lust for himself — for his own success, his own station in the world.

It had started innocuously enough with his decision to enlist in the marines and go to Vietnam. He started toying with the idea while Carol was mulling his marriage proposal. Perhaps out of fear of rejection, or maybe as a way of avoiding what ultimately would be a public embarrassment if she were to finally reject him, or still yet out of a fervent patriotism, Lou had enlisted two days before Carol surprised him with her acceptance. It would be five years before they would walk down the aisle.

That was twenty-five years ago. Their first child, Mary, was born less than a year after that, and their second, Jesse, followed two years later. Lou’s first company was “born” shortly thereafter, and with it a workplace obsession that left Carol to play the part of a single parent — emotionally in any case, if not physically as well. Cory, their third child, was more than a day old before Lou made it to the hospital to see him, and to see Carol. “The meetings in New York just couldn’t wait,” he had told her. They never could. Even though Yale Hospital in New Haven was only a ninety-minute excursion from Wall Street.

Carol had been hurt by his absence, but she had by then grown used to it. Lou didn’t take well to being told what to do or when to do it, so she had learned over the years not to ask much of him. The contradictory combination of her fierce devotion and steely independence is what held the family, such as it was, together.

He blanched in memory of the time, ten years or so after they married, when, after Carol had asked him to do something, he had asked her to come into their walk-in closet. Unsure why, she had timidly followed. Lou had then instructed her to put on a pair of his pants. She looked at him quizzically but played along. “Now Carol,” he had said, “What do you notice about those pants?”

“That they’re too big for me,” she had said, as the waist gaped open around her.

“And never forget it!” Lou had answered emphatically, referring not to the difference in their waist sizes, but to the weight of the responsibilities Lou felt he shouldered.

He shuddered at the memory. If Carol’s father had still been alive, Lou knew he would have deserved a violent meeting with his trains.   

These cogitations remained with Lou the next morning as he and Carol drove in silence to Camp Moriah. As they neared the offices, he could keep his thoughts to himself no longer. “Carol, I’m so sorry,” he said. “Deeply sorry.”

“For what?”

“For everything.” He shook his head pathetically. “For not loving you as you have deserved to be loved. For not being there for you as you have always been there for me.”

Carol didn’t say anything for a minute. Her eyes started to water. “You’ve been there, Lou,” she finally said. “Sometimes you’ve been other places as well, that may be true. But you’ve always come home to me. Many women are not so fortunate. Not many can say that they’ve never had to worry, but I’ve never had to worry about you, Lou. Whatever else you might be devoted to, I’ve always known that you were devoted to me too.”

“But it shouldn’t have been a ‘me too,’” Lou said. “That isn’t good enough. Then he set his jaw. “I’m going to make it up to you. I promise.”

After a moment’s silence, Carol said, “You’re not the only one who needs to apologize.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean,” she said. “I’ve been there for you, I suppose, but my heart hasn’t necessarily been there. I’ve been blaming silently for years.”

“But you’ve had every right to,” Lou defended her truthfully.

“Have I?” She turned to him. “The more I’ve become consumed with how my own needs aren’t being met, the larger those needs have become, until I think I have numbed myself to the needs of others — to your needs, to Cory’s.”

“There you go beating yourself up again, Carol.”

“No, Lou, beating myself up is what I have quietly been doing for years now. I’m not beating myself up now, I’m just finally noticing the internal fight.”

“But all you’ve done for years is meet everyone else’s needs, Carol. You’ve never lived for yourself at all.”

Carol smiled weakly. “That’s what I’ve been telling myself too, Lou, but it hasn’t been true. I see that now.” And then she added, “I’ve been hating you, Lou.”

This rocked him.

“Hating me?” he repeated lamely.

“Blaming you, in all kinds of subtle ways.” She paused. “Have I dutifully performed the household work? Yes. But that’s just a behavior, don’t you see? Every time I’ve cleaned the house, I think I’ve buried myself a level deeper in self-pity. And I have spent years now feeling guilty for not feeling about you the way I know I should. It’s been a downward spiral.”

Lou didn’t know what to say. “So what are you going to do?” he finally asked.

“I don’t know for sure. I hope to get more help with that today.”

At that, the conversation went quiet, and Lou and Carol pondered their situations in silence. Two minutes later, they arrived at Camp Moriah.

It was time to go deeper.

Copyright © 2006 by The Arbinger Institute
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