Question of the week #37

[treonb]

Do you think Stan can salvage his marriage?

You can expect spoilers for the entire first two seasons in the comments.

(There's no expiration date on these questions, so if you're reading this post months later and feel like jumping in, please do.)

Comments

[apolla_savre]

Ok, so I'm the opposite of everyone else: Yes, Stan could save his marriage - if he wanted to and put the effort into it.

If they got it all out on the table: what Sandra wants/needs and what she's gone through, what Stan wants/needs and what he's gone through, if they find a way to talk about work so that Sandra knows/feels like she's part of his life more than she is now.

I don't know how they would do it, I don't think it would be easy, but I'm sure they could do it if they put effort into it and actually want it.

*Will* he? Well, that's a different question and I'm not sure.

[sistermagpie]

I agree with this answer, actually. I don't think Sandra's over marriage in general, but so far Stan just hasn't really shown a willingness to do what he has to do. I think Sandra would if he would, though.

[lovingboth]

What's in it for her though? He'd have to quit the FBI and get a job that he didn't see as more important than her = he'd effectively be written out.

[sistermagpie]

I think what would be in it for her would be the guy she used to love. I don't think she'd ever particularly need him to quit the FBI. I don't think her problem was that she thought the FBI was more important than her. It was that he wasn't sharing anything about himself with her at all. She knew that a lot of his claims that he was at work were fake and that he was having an affair etc.

But even if they never got back together as a couple I think she'd want to feel like she got the guy she used to know back. Maybe he's changed a lot, but he's not just this ghost person.

[katiac]

My take on why and how Stan screwed up in his marriage has less to do with the FBI and more to do with the trauma of his life undercover. I would assume he's always done similar type work in the past before leaving for the undercover gig and Sandra indicated they were happy. Gaad, for example, is able to be an FBI agent and be in a happy marriage, it appears, so I'm wondering if he's not just using work as a way to escape intimacy with Sandra who knows the real Stan, rather than that he couldn't be a perfectly good husband and agent if he chose to start working on his issues.

And of course it's very likely the marriage is over. But Stan may also be in a "rock bottom" sort of place if he thinks he almost betrayed the US and Nina got sent back. Might he get the wake up call he needs? Stranger things have happened.

[jae]

I'm with you, too. I think Sandra would take him back tomorrow if he came to her, repentant, and agreed to stop seeing Nina, to stop lying about things he didn't have to lie about, and to actually communicate openly with her. I just don't think he's going to do that (and, as wendelah1 points out, he may not currently be psychologically able to).

-J

[sistermagpie]

I was thinking in reading this thread how towards the end of the season he slips in another level of deceit about his home life when Philip asks him if Sandra is home and he says something about her being out or something. Totally understandable that he doesn't want to admit that his wife left him, but it's just another one of those times when the show reminds us how people lie all the time in every day life because sometimes it's just easier. But sometimes that has consequences.

Stan's been more open with Philip than many other people on the show, but he's not ready to open up to him yet to talk about this. Sadly he's far less ready to talk to Sandra about any of it.

Of course, poor Stan has once again chosen unwisely in important ways, choosing to confide exclusively in Russian spies.

[jae]

Hmm, interesting. I had been assuming Stan only kept that from Philip because he's not yet willing to admit it to himself, but you're right that it's another level of deception.

-J

[sistermagpie]

Oh, I think that's true as well. Saying it out loud makes it true. But he did tell it to Nina, didn't he?

So I sort of saw it as Stan on multiple levels just not wanting to deal with that for himself in that moment, so of course he'd just say she's out. But in the context of the show he just put up another little compartment in his life about something he's keeping from somebody in his life--and in a way it's a funny mirror of the premise where Stan's kind of pretending he's married when he's actually not (in a way that Philip might relate to even more than Elizabeth).

Interestingly he also continues to follow the pattern of that season in that iirc he says that in the scene where Philip is telling him Henry wants to interview him. And it's Henry to whom he ends up confiding something. No big secret or anything, but I did get the impression that he answered Henry's questions about why he wanted to be in the FBI truthfully and that it meant something to him and was clarifying. So it was like an echo of all the scenes where P&E speak in disguises to other people while working through things they're not saying out loud to each other, if that makes sense. Sometimes those scenes lead to some clarity (Elizabeth seems to come out of her convos with Brad and the AA woman with some direction) and sometimes not (a lot of Philip's convos with Martha seem to be no help at all).

It's also interesting with Stan, who knows that he chose Philip, alone, to confess his affair to, yet in this moment he's certainly not eager to talk about his wife's affair (to himself or to Philip). I think he definitely will talk about it with Philip next season, though. It just seems like a no-brainer. Which might be really juicy because given their current conflict Philip might have some of his own things he would want to say that he could totally work into a conversation about marriage in general to Stan.

[soupytwist]

That is fascinating that you think that, because I totally read it the other way - there's a big part of Sandra who would want that, but that her faith that he'd be able to follow through even if he DID come to her like that has gone. Does that make sense?

[jae]

You may well be right! Either could be true, I suppose. And I suspect we'll never get a chance to find out for sure one way or the other, because Stan wouldn't put in the work at the moment anyway.

-J