I am about to do something that my husband hates more than almost anything in this world. Mark hates it when liberal arts types (like me) try to stretch their overly simplistic misunderstanding of scientific theories to help them explain this thing called life. Of course, I do this all the time, because I love geeky science concepts but am a, ahem, less-than-detail-oriented, liberal artsy thinker.
There is a concept in quantum physics I particularly love, in spite of the fact that I once argued with Mark that it sounded suspiciously like the result of a lot of sloppy experimentation. It goes (to a liberal arts type) something like this: the act of witnessing, of observation, changes reality. See! Come on. How irresistibly cool is that to the philosophically inclined?
Let me begin by simplistically (and probably erroneously) explaining the experiment that demonstrates this. Light, as you will recall from high school science classes, can behave as either a particle (like a ball) or a wave (like water). So, let's say you throw light at a screen, but before it gets to the screen, it has to go to around a partition. If it's behaving like a ball, it will have to go either to one side of the partition or to the other. If it's behaving like a water, it will flow around both sides of the partition.
The trick is that when you throw the light, you don't know what you're throwing: to find out, you have to measure it, check it, look at it. And that's when things get cool, because what it is depends on when and where you look at it. If you just look at it when it hits the screen, it will appear to have passed around both sides of the partition in a wave. But if take a peek in the middle, to try to see it as it is passing around the partition, it will appear to be a particle, visible on just one side and it will still be a particle when it reaches the screen. The act of observing it defines it, changes it.
Those crazy ass physicists explain this by saying that the light is both a particle and a wave simultaneously, and that it is the act of measurement, of observation, that makes it pick just one state. Schrödinger used the example of a cat in a box with a device that has a random 50/50 chance of releasing poison to kill the cat. (No, I don't know what Schrödinger had against cats.) As long as the box is closed, the cat is simultaneously both dead and alive, but as soon as you open the box and look at the cat, its state resolves and you see a cat that is either alive or dead.*
Now I know, that was an awful lot of high school physics (more than I actually learned in high school, in fact), but it was cool physics. And I hope you're still with me, because we've finally gotten to that wonderful part that Mark hates: inaccurately applying it to life, or in this case, marriage to an addict.
When I first found out about Mark's addiction, it was as if I couldn't tell what was real anymore. He had been lying to me about so many things from the day I met him, and I believed so absolutely in his honesty. If I couldn't believe in him, what could I believe? One day, early in recovery, he was late coming home from work, and I spun into craziness, wondering where he was and what he was doing. He assured me that he had been working and volunteered to let me talk to any of his colleagues to verify it. I screamed at him, "But you lied to me, and I trusted you more than anyone in this world. Why would I believe people I don't even know? How do I know you haven't told them all what to say? How do I know they're not all collaborating to deceive me too? I don't know what's real. I don't know if you even have a job. You could be out robbing banks and transferring the money into our account every two weeks to make it look like you're working. I don't know anything."
I wanted some way to know again, to feel I was standing on solid ground, rather than falling through a mirage. I looked for signs. I tried to learn to trust my intuition. I went crazy trying to figure out what was illusion and what was reality. I thought about doing what many involved with addicts do, having Mark submit to polygraph tests to reassure myself that I knew what was real. I wanted to know; I wanted to measure; I wanted to open Schrödinger's damn box and see once and for all if that cat was dead or alive. But it's not that easy. Open the box, see the cat, and you only know what happened to that cat. Life is moment after moment, box after box, cat after cat. What happens to the next cat and the next after it?
I felt like something enormous changed in my life when I found out about Mark's addiction. I felt that I no longer knew what reality was. The truth is, I know it better now than I ever did before. Reality, life, marriage, quantum physics isn't about knowing definitively one way or the other what's going on at each and every moment; it's about accepting things in two opposing states at once: light as both particle and wave, cat as both dead and alive, husband as both faithful and lying.
When Mark tells me what he has been doing now, I don't believe him, but I don't disbelieve him. I accept what he says as the only version of reality I am capable of knowing at this moment, aware that it may shift and change if I get more data, if I am able to measure more accurately. I trust that he is doing his best, and I act on the assumption that the worst could always be true. I make sure we use condoms, so that I don't have to regret anything later. I don't accept phone calls, gifts or visits from female coworkers or acquaintances, so that I don't have to resent them later. And I enjoy the beauty of the light, whether it's particle or wave.
Geek Notes
*Mark said that one of these scenarios has to do with light polarization (whatever that is) and the other does not, but that "the concepts are similar enough that it is still fair to use the two together." Then he rolled his eyes at me over the phone when I told him I was asking because I wanted to use it to write about marriage. He really did. I heard him roll his eyes.
You have to watch it all the way to the kicker finish, but according the clip the grandaddy of all quantum wierdness is how the electron acts differently when measured and observed.
Same with addicts and alcoholics!
http://www.clipstr.com/videos/QuantumPhysicsDoubleSlitExperiment/
Ah, the polygraph. This is what I try to tell parents who ask me to drug-test their teenagers: testing doesn't really answer the question. It doesn't solve the problem. Different issues, different approaches, but I see a real similarity.
(and when I read your first paragraph, I pictured Mark rolling his eyes. Really.)
Wow. This was really quite amazing.
We want a certainty that does no exist. And even if we did manage to find it, what would it really change?
Because the second we knew "for sure" life itself would have changed and moved on.
Great, really great, post.
I don't think I would like neither believing nor disbelieving. I like to know for sure what's going on and I need that foundation of knowing to stand on. I suppose before the addiction came to light you did have that foundation. If something similar happened in my life, I too would be in a world of unknowing. I don't think I'd be nearly as strong as you are and have been. I think I'd be packing up my stuff and moving back home. Thought it's easy to say that now since there are no kids involved...
Schroedinger's Cat!!!!
A wonderful and mind boggleing possablity! You know there are many realities! In this reality you are who you are but in the quantum...the possabilities are endless!
Then you brought up "The two slits" and the "light bulb".
As you can tell I am very smart.
I learned it from listening to
"coast to coast" LOL! Thanks Art Bell!
For me, once I accepted that what my stupid and wonderful husband was doing really had nothing to do with me, and that he's an addict, and that addicts lie and steal, and that sometimes, he's going to be lying and stealing...I found all this peace. Yep, he's going to fuck up sometimes. And when he's doing it, or when I think he's doing it, I'll just go in another room and think about other things until he pulls himself together.
Applauding madly.
This goes on my list of favorite posts of yours.
Awesome, witty, writing and thinking. No eye rolls
Peace,
Scout
i can't understand...
beautiful...real...complex. Glad I clicked on your site (found you through BlogRush). Tia, sixredheads.com
That cat sounds like my ferrets. Or my sock monkeys. Before I open the door, that apartment can be clean and orderly, or ripped to shreds. And it will only settle on one state when I actually open the door. But believe me, it is not a 50/50 chance.
And there is the matter of ferrets and sock monkeys running for cover and peeking out behind the closet with a big "it wasn't me" plastered to their face.
But here's the thing about Schroedinger's cat: the CAT knows whether it's alive or dead! Well. At least, it knows if it's alive. It's always seemed incredibly solipsistic to me to assert that reality can be defined by our knowledge of it. Which I guess goes for marriage as well. Anyway, I'm no physicist either and those who are assure me that there's some incredibly significant subtlety to that thought experiment that I'm just not getting. I can live with that.
I do get the thing about your world feeling totally untrustworthy when you got the learned your husband had lied to you. I've felt that way several times in my life: When my grandparents died, when my parents divorced, and after the big earthquake in 1989. All those events altered the conditions of my existence; I literally felt shaky for months afterwards. And I was completely unprepared for all of them, even though, if someone had asked me whether any one was theoretically possible, I'd have had to say yes. Funny how that works.
It's the day of posts about light and reality and deep thinking ... it's all around my blogosphere today! I love it. Great post ... way to nail it. I imagine that we all kind of live in that purgatory of our own reality of what is true and what is not -- and what we just want to be true today.
So nice to have you back, writing.
From another liberal arts type who loves to use science terms I vaguely know about to make inferences about life, that was a great post.
ahh, what a wonderfully geeky post. It was the best non fattening desert EVER. I live to ponder and poke grey matter. The word quantum physics gets me all hot.
It takes a real star to articulate all that. nice work. Thanks for the trip
My sex addict husband and I also enjoy talking physics. And he's the more science oriented one, and I'm the liberal-artsy absolutist who likes to extrapolate.
Your post was so moving - it's a beautiful thing to see my husband as a wave and a particle at the same time. I struggle with this duality on a daily basis, and your analogy has given me insight that I didn't have before. I can't wait to tell him about this!
Oh, I woke up today and sweet-talked geography and astronomy, while cuddling in bed. How sexy is THAT?
I really loved your post, it got me thinking about trust. This is goooood blogging stuff. Meet you out there!
I really enjoyed reading this post. I'm also a big fan of geeky quantum physic theory stuff, string theory, relativity, etc.
To respond to another poster who commented that the cat itself knows whether it's alive...true. But, to play the devil's advocate, the cat doesn't know whether or not the person on the other side is dead or alive (assuming we apply the same standards outside the box as inside - toxic poison thing). And so, from the cat's perspective, there can be dual realities until the box is opened and reality is resolved.
But what happens if the cat is dead and there is no perception on its end? Or more intriguing still, what happens if both human and cat are dead? What to make of reality then? What is simultaneously occuring? Four separate realities?
This just tickles my brain! I love it!
This is a wonderfully sophisticated set of ideas for dealing with other people in general.
Look, I know I'm behind the times on this posting, but I'm just now discovering your site and am loving it.
I like the comparison. It's true... the unknowing can drive a woman mad. We just have to be at peace with what we know, and do the best we can from there. Then make tough decisions with the information we do have. I am starting a new blog on my trials and triumphs. Thanks for your excellent inspirations and resources. BattleofJoan.blogspot.com
(Also behind the times, but:) Man, those eyerolls can be SO LOUD.