Stories
Midterm Report on Culture of Peace - 2005
Youth Report on Culture of Peace - 2006
A trilogy of books for a new strategy
Final Report on Culture of Peace - 2010
Struggling with the United Nations
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The Culture of Peace News Network continued
Missions for the Culture of Peace
Travels with Lindsay in the USA
Vacations with Lindsay in the Caribbean
Over the years of my relationship with Kiki it became more and more burdensome for me to live with the fact that I was hiding it from Lindsay. Not only was it burdensome from day to day, but the contradiction troubled me that I was advocating transparency for the culture of peace, but betraying the principle in my life.
Kiki and I began to talk about a "revelation/revolution" in which I would tell Lindsay about us. But how could it be done without hurting Lindsay deeply and destroying the marriage? It was more than a year that we discussed and I thought about this. Finally, I decided to tell her in the belief that over time, perhaps six months, she would come to accept that I loved two persons, both her and Kiki, and had to continue seeing both of them, but openly rather than secretly.
Our Christmas Card around 2003
Before telling Lindsay I did what I could to strengthen and celebrate the marriage. We had a wonderful vacation in Maui in January of 2009 and I bought air tickets to take a 25 year anniversary vacation in Tuscany in September. The night before we watched on TV the romantic film "The Bridges of Madison County" in which the children open a trunk after the death of their mother and discover the diary and photos of a passionate affair that she had kept hidden from the family.
The next day, Sunday, February 22, 2009, I told her that I had a secret affair in a trunk, and I did not want to wait until I was dead for her to know about it. And I told her about Kiki.
As I had expected, Lindsay was devastated. We could no longer live in the same house and so I rented a very nice apartment nearby and moved out. A few weeks later, Lindsay threw all my possessions into the backyard and told me to come and get them.
As I had hoped, Lindsay agreed to see a marital therapist, Dr. Ringwald and each of us engaged personal therapists as well. But the joint therapy did not last long as she demanded that if I would not renounce Kiki, she would not continue the therapy. I said to my therapist it was like the story of King Solomon and the two women who claimed a baby. "Cut it in half" said the King, and the true mother then said, "I'd rather give him up than cut him in half." In my view, Lindsay was asking to cut me in half.
One of the 60 frames in the book that Lindsay brought to therapy with Dr Ringwald two months after the "revolution/revelation."
To my surprise and disappointment, Lindsay emptied all the savings accounts and savings bonds and filed for divorce. A dynamic had been set in motion that could only lead to bitterness and alienation. For perhaps six months, Lindsay kept hoping that I would give up Kiki and come back to her, but instead I went to France and later traveled with Kiki in Brazil, and at one point when Kiki came to visit me for a few days, Lindsay arrived and in a scene out of Shakespeare, she confronted us on the fire escape and balcony of my new apartment in New Haven.
It was an extremely painful time for both of us; in my case at one point so intense that for the first time since my initial suicidal breakdown, I even had suicidal thoughts. It was particularly difficult because both of us were hurting, but in the past we had turned to each other for healing, and now whatever we did seemed to make matters worse for the other. We needed friends around us to help, but our culture does not have rituals to do this for divorce in the same way as it does for marriage and death.
Several times Lindsay said to me "Why did you tell me? Why not just keep it a secret so that we could save the marriage?" But it was not so simple. When I first started talking to my own therapist, I compared the situation to when I was 18 and felt that I was betraying my mother to fall in love and leave the nest which led to breakdown and suicide. In one sense I had unconsciously decided that I had to leave "the nest" of the marriage but I felt that I was betraying Lindsay to do so (and in her eyes, indeed I was). At one point during our months of separation, Lindsay sent me the photo of two empty beach chairs with the caption that these were our retirement chairs that I had abandoned. In fact that photo and caption expressed eloquently my unstated fears of staying in a nest that I had outgrown. I did not feel ready to retire.
For a long time, Lindsay would not talk to me at all, and my only relation was to see Georgie on a regular basis along with Roy at Burger King in Hamden. Finally, on our anniversary, June 2, in 2013, we contacted each other by email and went to eat at our old favorite restaurant, formerly known as the Chart House, in City Point. She courted me, at the same time as telling me of her new lover, a progressive trial lawyer from Providence. I resisted her advances courteously, but we agreed that I would go with her to Gaylord to see Georgie. Hence, as of this moment in 2013 we are speaking once again.
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Stages
1986-1992
Fall of Soviet Empire
1992-1997
UNESCO Culture of Peace Programme