I came across the Dumas quote posted today while perusing yet another pro-con work over of the role of the mistress, this one conceding, as always a wee bit sheepishly for fear of being accused of less than stellar morals or lawfulness, mistresses are not always destructive but can actually spark renewed love and interest in a marriage. That they do have such a productive effect sometimes seems logical to me and has been my own experience.
In researching under the wide umbrella topic of the mistress, I have come across so many articles dissecting the causes for, effects of, and history of cheating spouses or partners. So much of what has been written, regardless of the insertion of a psychologist, sex therapist, counselor, attorney or theologian, are largely opinion pieces based on specific testimonials and experiences. People come to the subject with their own predispositions toward cheating experientially, religiously and intellectually. Generalizations in these writings and the overall attempt to be one size fits all denigrate what morsels of truth and advice there may be in them. The painfully obvious truth is, all situations are unique in so far as they involve individuals, who, though human and so patterned with some universal behaviors, are different from other individuals in their components and combinations, and so add the complexity to a very complex subject.
Reducing cheating to a ten ways, ten reasons or ten anything seems implausible to me. Most of those articles contain mere observations from specific experiences of specific people. I too have observed the behavior and words of cheating spouses–nearly my entire life. I have been cheated on and I have cheated, though not on my husband of 35 years. When he and I separated for six or more years in the late 80s to mid-90s and then again when we agreed to an open marriage in 2010, I engaged in long and short-term affairs/relationships including married partners. I did not seek married people; the relationships arose organically from circumstances I and the other party were in at the time. Like any relationship, they were based on mutual need, admiration, friendship, respect and often, love.
In addition, I was a divorce and bankruptcy attorney for 24 years. I heard so many stories of the whys, wherefores and whereabouts of the innumerable reasons for and circumstances of divorce, including cheating spouses, mid-life crisis dumps, long-term mistresses or misters, open marriages, and just a host of marital and non-marital arrangements.
The following list of 50 items is one I have compiled over the years by merely listening and observing (and yes, at times, judging). It is not a list I prepared with any intent. I am not sure I even prepared it at all. Living my life is all it has taken to come up with this list and remembering what I have done, what has been done to me, what I have thought and what I have heard. With respect to marrieds, I put this list together not to recommend, advise, admonish, judge or astonish. Nothing on the list is revelatory. These items do not purport to be causes, reasons, solutions or symptoms. They are merely observations about being human. I have no other intention but to share my observations, in no particular order, for whatever interest they may lend to the reader.
Married people I have had affairs/relationships with:
1. Are attracted to me because I am not their spouse.
2. Want more or different sex than what they get at home.
3. Want to be listened to and feel they are not.
4. Want to be prioritized over the kids, sacrificed for.
5. Love and are beholden to spouses who sacrifice themselves for the kids.
6. Want to be thought of as sexy, naughty, romantic and/or irresistible.
7. Want to be thought of as creative, intelligent and/or funny.
8. Want passion again or for the first time.
9. Want to live out their fantasies, some, all or any of them.
10. Want to be young again.
11. Want to have control and feel they don’t.
12. Want to be shown love and tenderness more, different or any.
13. Want to be the center of someone’s world, for the first time or again.
14. Want to experience vitality and power again.
15. Want a person with traits lacking in their spouses.
16. Want to conquer or be a savior.
17. Want to possess.
18. Want the excitement of risk.
19. Want their egos flattered.
20. Want to want their spouses.
21. Don’t want their spouses but don’t want to leave them.
22. Are very good at compartmentalizing.
23. Are very good at justification and rationalization–moral equivalencies.
24. Don’t want to disrupt their families: kids, parents, spouses, colleagues, friends.
25. Are afraid of divorce/loss of life they have known.
26. Are trapped in a marriage whether self-induced or otherwise.
27. Are guilty for perceived hurt of their spouse, for their own failures.
28. Are repressed sexually or otherwise.
29. Feel overburdened by the lives they themselves created.
30. Have overactive sex drives.
31. Express love through sex.
32. Escape into sex.
33. Need touch.
34. Are afraid.
35. Are angry.
36. Want to feel something.
37. Want to be understood.
38. Want to be validated.
39. Want to hurt their spouses.
40. Want revenge.
41. Are commitment-phobes.
42. Fear success.
43. Self-sabotage.
44. Have low self-esteem.
45. Are narcissistic.
46. Are sociopathic.
47. Are immoral.
48. Are amoral.
49. Are competitive, wanting to beat the system or someone else.
50. Feel comforted even as they are disconcerted by carrying a secret.
I could write at least 50 more, but they would be as banal as these 50.
These two articles, “How to be a Mistress, the 1/3 Method” and “How to be a Side Chick: 11 Steps (with Pictures)” from the Wiki How series are hilarious. Who is the audience for these two, people looking to get into the mistress biz? Really? Does someone actually think about being a mistress and research it before doing so? My guess is it is something that just happens, in most cases. Even if there were such an audience of advice seekers, what kind of advice or instruction do these articles give: To be whatever the married guy wants you to be? They assume that there are certain universals regardless of the parties to the relationship of husband, wife and mistress, that individuals cannot act otherwise because it is a mistress-married man relationship. But stereotyping and platitudes about human behavior are dangerous, often make for validating prejudice and de-humanization (think about history of any genocide attempt). The instruction needs to be first, decide on what is acceptable parameters to each of the involved parties, including a wife who knows but chooses not to know. The assumption is that adults cannot communicate about what they are doing and that they all act the same when it comes to sex and marriage.
The illustrations and instructions are amusing, but the generalizations and assumptions that men want what they don’t have and some women out there are “ambitious” enough to consult a Wiki How to make sure they know how to be what any man doesn’t have–someone who doesn’t wear sweats and sneakers in front of her man or ask him questions, of any sort because this is what these simpleton folks–men–want (since they’re cheaters)–are lame. I am hoping these articles are ironic or comical by intent. Otherwise, I smell some moralizing in the manner in which men and women to “this type of behavior” are assumed to be: selfish and low self-esteemed. Each basically intimates that if you’re going in for this type of thing, this is the crap you’ll get–and you deserve it or you just shouldn’t.
I want to write about you, tell them how good you are
Seated on the stool beside me in this old seedy bar
Where I feel like I’m the only one here on Main Street
As you dip me in dance-sway, swinging low on my feet.
And your wife is home waiting not knowing I even exist.
You tell her you’re working late-early to cover our tryst.
Even to my husband’s mind I work long for me and him
So he thinks nothing of my telling him, “I’ll be at the gym.”
The kids know no better since they have their own lives.
With need for money, your car and someone who drives,
Kids take your cash and don’t care much for your advice.
They say you don’t know their friends or music or minds.
Now you and me we have something surpassing it all.
We have heat and steam and fire inside the hotel walls.
You toss me and I stay flung while you flatten me in bed
And not a thought of her and him or the kids in my head.
There’s my coat, my hat and my shoes for running home.
Here’s my panties, my shirt in the dark room on my own.
I have nowhere to go, no one to confess my lover’s skill.
I walk home alone, buy me a beer for something to swill.
Life as a cheater, a wife, a mother, a daughter, a drunk
Hiding secrets and letters and love inside a rusty trunk.
Lonely as queer loving hags like me with no way home,
We tramp from room to room taking any a tossed bone.
Out of lies and tired of deluding yourself with lusty love,
You leave me, pretend your shiny life is high and above.
But you and I both know that underneath your floor is rot
And grown in the cracks of your loined heart a mossy sot.
So give me your number and tell me your name, my dove.
Show me your smile and your ass; I’ll take out my glove
And wind up my arm to let fly the anger-ful powerful sting
For love is a splendorous obsequious onerous ugly thing.
“It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. Each, in its utmost development, supposes a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent for the food of his affections and spiritual life upon another; each leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his object.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“This day of torment, of craziness, of foolishness—only love can make it end in happiness and joy. —W. A. Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte, Le Nozze di Figaro (1786)”
― Martha C. Nussbaum, Political Emotion
“What do you regard as most humane? To spare someone shame.” Friedrich Nietzsche
“Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power’s disappearance.
Hannah Arendt
Chinese mistress beaten in the streets by a mob of women marks new trend of wronged women meting out punishment in China. This disturbing bit of news brings to mind so many social, moral, and philosophical questions such as the meaning of justice, the role of power and violence and social contracts. But mostly, it is a disturbing lack of humanity to use shame as a method of punishment.
While this article has an intriguing title that is actually somewhat misleading (she devotes little if any time to the reasons for her wanting to cheat), it is, nevertheless, confirmation to me that being the object of desire is powerful, compelling and irresistible–in the gaze. She rounds out the article to craft the main idea as an honesty is the best policy moral of the story, but the writer appears to be trying to convince herself more than her audience that honesty will save the day–and her marriage–in the end. She devotes exactly one or two sentences at most to that notion, but the majority of the 35 micro paragraphs are relished details of the one who made her feel desired.
And why repeat so many times how she was not attracted to this man who she risked her marriage for just to see in the park or coming out of his place? The thrill she squeezed from this clandestine relationship was first, that it was clandestine, and second, that it was about wanting to be wanted. She said as much. The draw of those two potent potions is why the writer wants to cheat on her “soul mate.”
She has a lover, she says, who is married and only available for sex when his work and family life permit, which is sometimes frequently and other times scarcely.
According to Kant in his Lectures on Ethics, sexual relations outside of a monogamous marriage leads to objectification of the participants, particularly the woman, as she is used for sexual gratification and afterwards discarded (163).
She describes this relationship as non-vertical, meaning they never meet except in a hotel room or the apartment he leases for sex, a horizontal proposition. She says she has never met him but once in public for coffee, once for a martini.
More specifically, Kant writes in the Lectures on Ethics that “sexual love makes of the loved person an Object of appetite; as soon as that appetite has been stilled, the person is cast aside as one casts away a lemon which has been sucked dry. … as soon as a person becomes an Object of appetite for another, all motives of moral relationship cease to function, because as an Object of appetite for another a person becomes a thing and can be treated and used as such by every one” (Kant Lectures on Ethics, 163).
She must be ready at any time to jump at his call, email or text, when opportunity arises, if she is to see him, and she wants to see him. She believes she loves him and has always loved him since she first met him, even though from the start, it was a utilitarian arrangement. They were both looking for sex outside sexless marriages.
Again, Kant notes, the inequality inherent in the mistress or concubine relationship–the woman completely surrenders her sex whereas the man with multiple concubines or wife does not–even though not for profit is also objectification as she is still used and possessed by the man.
She and her lover have little in common other than sex. In terms of social position, career and ideology, they are worlds apart. He is owner of a multi-billion dollar company and she is an elementary school teacher. His views are diametrically opposed to her own: Tea Party Republican Conservative Evangelical Christian vs. Progressive New Age mystic. His world is black and white, the world of no bullshit commerce and the market: You are either contributing to the economy or you are a drag on it. She is about compassion and communitarianism: society is only as strong as its weakest members who need help from those who have more.
Only in monogamous marriage is the surrendering of each partner equal, each one claiming possession and property the other, and thereby avoiding objectification, mere using. It is the power differential that creates this inequality that Kant deems the core of objectification (plato.stanford).
They have been meeting for nearly 8 years, just this way, little talk, just about the areas they can find common ground like parenting, beer and sports, but mostly sex. Their meetings are always secret, discreet, and sexual. They meet, undress in silence and engage in sex immediately. After the act, they rest in each other’s embrace and only then will he chat about his work and family, tell stories about funny exchanges with friends. She listens and laughs.
By surrendering herself, her sex, to a man who does not equally surrender himself fully to her, she allows herself to be used as a thing and thereby loses her humanity, which Kant equates with rational choice. She is a means to an end, merely.
In between sex sessions is the only foreplay they engage in. They fantasize. His fantasy is to dominate, possess, humiliate and control. He emails her about all the things he is going to do to her, including rape, sodomy and confinement. She encourages him and participates in this fantasy, providing her own desire to be owned, possessed, abused and humiliated.
Feminists Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin claim that pornography perpetuates female objectification by catering to patriarchal socio-sexual objectification, making women the instrument of male pleasure or eroticism, sexual acts performed on women for men’s pleasure, a role constructed by society and perpetuated by pornography (plato.stanford).
MacKinnon writes: “… A sex object is defined on the basis of its looks, in terms of its usability for sexual pleasure, such that both the looking—the quality of gaze, including its points of view—and the definition according to use become eroticised as part of the sex itself. This is what the feminist concept of ‘sex object’ means” (MacKinnon 1987, 173)
She says she has fantasies that she imagines when she masturbates, fantasies about rape, domination, humiliation and control, ones she can never share. He uses a naked picture of her when he masturbates. It is faceless.
But other thinkers such as Ronald Dworkin and Martha Nussbaum attribute objectification to a host of images society perpetuates from soap operas to fashion, women as appearance only. Additionally, women are partly responsible for their objectification, for being objects of the gaze, as they conform to societal dictates for appearance, bodily appearance (plato.stanford).
She says she loves him, that he is a good man, tender and loving. He strives to please her and loves her, wants her to use his body for her pleasure. She gives her body willingly and he takes it greedily, hungrily. He desires her always, tells her she is beautiful and makes her feel beautiful and loved, even consumed, but in that consumption merged. They enter each other’s bodies and through their bodies, their hearts and minds.
Sandra Bartky in her book Feminism and Domination asserts women objectify themselves by internalizing the patriarchal gaze and living life through the eyes of the gazer, regardless of a specific gazer or societal gaze. She, woman, has internalized that gaze and lives under it herself. In addition, women are fragmented by being associated with their bodies rather than their minds and personalities. In Simone de Beauvoir’s words, they objectify themselves to obtain power over men, in seeing themselves as alluring objects of men and engaging in unilateral sexual acts of pleasuring men; this unilateral pleasuring gives women power. Women as ornaments, attention to body size and shape by dieting, surgery, apparel, mannerisms, taking up less space than men, these actions perpetuate and are the result of objectification.
He has said that he would love no other ever again, would go to his grave fantasizing about her, that she is all he could imagine wanting in his life and regrets not having met her sooner, when he was looking for a wife. He makes her feel desired.
Objectification, then, according to Langton, is a process in which the social world comes to be shaped by desire and belief. An objectifier thinks that her or his beliefs have come to fit the world, where in fact the world has come to fit her or his beliefs (plato.stanford).
And he is jealous and possessive. He claims he would own her, on a leash, not let her out of a cage if she were his, but also says he would treat her like the queen she is, if only she makes him feel loved: sex, food, tenderness and home. He wants to own her completely as his, his sperm repository, his lover, his wife, his mother of his children, his body to do with whatever he wishes with or without her consent. And he offers his body to her equally with the same rights and privileges. He believes it is biblically deigned it should be that way. She is not a believer but believes that his desire to possess her is what fuels her imagination and desire for him. She loves him and will always subjugate herself to him knowing he would treat her with respect and never harm her.
Alan Soble and Leslie Green believe objectification of people is not necessarily a bad thing. People in the pornography industry are willingly employed objects. People ARE objects. It is only wrong when people are treated merely as objects, as means and not as ends in themselves, to use the terms of Kant’s Moral Imperative. Martha Nussbaum agrees and expands objectification into categories one of which is instrumentality. Using each other sexually, as objects, can be enjoyable. Equality, respect and consent are the key factors to judge any act of objectification objectionable. It is contextual whether something is good or bad in terms of objectification. People may use each other as sexual tools, as mere bodies for a means to an end, if in other respects or overall, they treat each other with respect and act with mutual consent (plato.stanford).
Neither of them wish to leave their respective spouses but merely to spend time, more time, and sustain each other for the rest of their days.
Infidelity Statistics
Statistic Verification
Source: Associated Press, Journal of Marital and Family Therapy
Research Date: 1.1.2014
Marriage Infidelity Statistics Data
Percent of marriages where one or both spouses admit to infidelity, either physical or emotional 41 %
Percent of men who admit to committing infidelity in any relationship they’ve had 57 %
Percentage of women who admit to committing infidelity in any relationship they’ve had 54 %
Percent of married men who have strayed at least once during their married lives 22 %
Percent of married women who have strayed at least once during their married lives 14 %
Percentage of men and women who admit to having an affair with a co-worker 36 %
Percentage of men and women who admit to infidelity on business trips 35%
Percentage of men and women who admit to infidelity with a brother-in-law or sister-in-law 17 %
Average length of an affair 2 years
Percentage of marriages that last after an affair has been admitted to or discovered 31 %
Percentage of men who say they would have an affair if they knew they would never get caught 74 %
Percentage of women who say they would have an affair if they knew they would never get caught 68 %
Percent of children who are the product of infidelity 3 %
Tags:
what percent of married couples cheat on each other ? statistics on cheating marriage infidelity ? how many men cheat ? what percentage of women have affairs ? what percent of husbands cheat on their wifes wives men women spouses cheating infidelity reasons demographics ?
I know there is someone else. Well, I don’t know, but I sense something has changed. I am his wife. I should know.
There is someone else. I feel guilty and afraid, but I cannot seem to end it. She gives me what my wife stopped giving me a long time ago, respect, tenderness and yes, sex. She makes me feel alive. Unlike my wife, who should be doing that for me. But she hates me. Hates sex. She doesn’t understand my needs.
And I wonder how he, who needed sex from me every day in the early days and later upon demand and pleading and arguing, gets his needs fulfilled since I first said no. I denied him more and more frequently as time went on. I don’t know why or how it got to be so hard to want to. It just felt like more effort than it was worth. And I was always so tired. So much changed when we had kids. I was so tired and all he seemed interested in was getting his rocks off, even though I was so tired and worn out from feeding them, cleaning them, making sure they were safe every minute of the day and even when we slept, he did anyhow, and then woke up, he off to work and me to start the whole cycle again, feeding, cleaning, watching…
I work every day with people I don’t respect, who don’t respect me, and don’t care about whether the company survives or not. It’s my job to make sure that the company makes money and the people under me hate me for it and the people above me don’t appreciate what I do for their company. She has no idea what I have to deal with between employees, managers, vendors, consultants, shareholders, Presidents, and the public, all wanting something from me I cannot give, money and time. It’s a constant war. I feel like I get my ass kicked every day from those who resent me, and then I come home to more resentment. Where do I get my comfort and support if not from my family, my wife? She should be my rest, my place of refuge and my biggest cheerleader. Doesn’t she realize that I don’t want to be working a thousand hours a week and that I would rather be spending more time with my kids?
I do my job. She decided her job was the kids, even though she has a degree in environmental engineering. But she seems so resentful, accusing me of not caring enough about the kids and her, not spending enough time, not helping enough. I’m doing all I can.
The time when Joey was so sick, puking all day and sobbing all night for two days. And he came home from work late, but I got up from my sleep to talk to him. When else could I? I knew not to call him at work, not since a long time. Too busy, an interruption of his tons of work and people to direct and money to watch over. So I told him all about Joey as his eyes glazed over and his eyes drooped. But he stayed awake, fighting sleep to listen. And I cried and he cried, we were so worried about him. He was our first, and we could not imagine anything happening to him, anything making him hurt we loved him so much.
Don’t get me wrong, though. She’s a good mom, takes care of the kids really well. But she doesn’t seem happy doing it. I told her she should get a job outside the home if she wanted to, but she said she didn’t want to. She does a good job with them; they’re great kids.
And we had that moment, and then he caressed my hair and my face tenderly. But then his hands moved to my breasts, and that look in his eyes took over, the one that turns from tired to interested, the glaze turning into glare and gaze. I couldn’t believe it! I just told him how I had been up for two days and was wrecked and worried and beside myself in fear, and that made him hungry? It felt so greedy. I couldn’t get over it. Is he just always looking to get himself satisfied, clueless to how I might feel? He has no idea how that feels, how I feel.
But when it comes to me, she doesn’t seem to have the time or the motivation for me. She doesn’t want to go out and do things together like we used to like go to movies, dinner, basketball games…It’s like I Iost my best friend. It’s like I have no life.
Ever since then, and so many times afterward, I was reminded of how everything turns into sex with him, how thoughtless and selfish he is. How am I supposed to feel about him? And then there is the sex itself. It just doesn’t do it for me any more. It’s the same old thing and not as exciting as it used to be when we could not keep our hands off of each other, when we would just spontaneously rip our clothes off and fuck on the table, or leave a party after giving each other that leering look. And he was wild and I was always wet for him, just his kiss, his hunger for me.
When we talk about the kids is when we have a real connection. She tells me about what Joey said or Nita did, the teachers, their friends…she knows everything and she fills me in so I can be more a part of their lives; working twelve hour days every day as I do, I miss a lot.
And her eyes are lit up and she is full of pride or hurt or anger, and that’s when I feel close to her. I want to touch her and ease her burden, her pain. Show her love and give her some release. But she doesn’t want me to make her feel loved. She doesn’t want me to touch her, like I’m some kind of horny leper. It makes me so goddamned frustrated and angry.
But now it just seems like we’re both so tired, put no effort into it. He used to at least try to find my spot and a challenge to give me an orgasm. He doesn’t try and I don’t want him to. He has accused me of not liking sex, of being a prude, and closed up about sex. He has basically accused me of being a derelict wife. And to talk about it, that just makes it worse. What could I tell him? I don’t even know what I think, what I need. I just know it feels like he just wants to use my worn out body to deposit sperm into.
I don’t know how to please her. I let her take care of her job, don’t interfere, empower her, but then she accuses me of not caring about what goes on in the house I live in. I don’t want to have to come home after spending my day making a hundred decisions all which affect the future of the company, our livelihood that she certainly enjoys, the one that pays for Joey’s football, Nita’s dance lessons, her hair color, both their colleges and our retirement, and then have to decide which fucking plumber to use for the broken toilet in the kids’ bathroom.
So when I decided I wasn’t going to go through the motions just to please him any more, lose any more sleep so that my day is worse for the extra half hour I lose letting him have his jollies, he stormed, he argued with me, he threatened to leave me, but I knew he wouldn’t. He would never leave his kids and disappoint his parents, look bad in front of his friends and colleagues. It would tarnish his sterling silver reputation. So he came to me then in a standoff, given up, til today. He doesn’t even ask any more. We are roommates.
I’m convinced she just doesn’t like sex any more. Maybe she never did. Her parents were pretty fucked up toward each other. I don’t know. She’s a crazed bitch sometimes. I’m tired too, but that doesn’t stop my need to be close to her, for sex. She’s my wife. I think she just hates me. She won’t talk about it. And I don’t know where to begin if she were to open up.
All I know is I can’t keep jacking off the rest of my life to ease the tension of endless days, and I don’t want to fight any more. I just want to keep it peaceful for the kids, just have some peace and not argue.
He is still kind and gives the obligatory affectionate display of married people, a kiss on the lips hello, a pat on the ass, though without the leer. He has always said it is important that the kids see affection between their parents. Maybe that is why he does it. But I know the cold disaffection that lies deep in his pupils, in the lack of even the slightest glint in his eyes when he looks at me, even as the corners of his mouth are upturned. I feel him gone dark.
But when I’m with her, whether in her car or in our hotel room, I find my place of peace. She can’t keep her hands off me and has this total focus and excitement in her eyes all for me. And after we rock it hard and lie in bed, she listens to me bitch about work, laughs at my jokes, bad as they are, and holds me, caressing the hair on my chest. She wraps her arms around my neck so tight when I cum and makes me feel young, like I could go for round two and three in one session. I haven’t felt that with my wife in years, maybe ever. I feel young. She makes me feel alive, like rising from the dead after being buried for so long.
So how does he get by? I know he gets himself off. I have heard him in the bathroom and walked in on him in the shower once or twice, even as he disengaged quickly and covered up the act with an innocent turning into the raining water to hide the evidence. But I know. It’s been months, maybe years. How does he work his twelve hours a day and come home to tightlipped tenderness and feigned affection? Where does he release? He doesn’t seem crippled by the loss of our sex life. There must be someone else. How could there not be?
But I can’t help it. When I’m with her, I am afraid and feel guilty about my wife. How hurt she would be if she knew, if she found out. I don’t want to hurt her. She is the mother of my children and someone I basically grew up with. We have so much history, so much we built together like our good times, our house and our savings and our retirement money. She would go crazy and divorce me, probably. Bad mouth me to everyone, especially my parents. Yeah, she would make my life a living hell. She’s got a mean streak and is a fighter. It wouldn’t look good at work, maybe jeopardize my job. And what would it do to the kids? What would be left for them? I don’t want to fuck up my kids with a divorce. They’re really amazing kids, headed in the right direction, and a divorce would certainly derail them. And when would I see my kids? I want to see my kids every day. I can’t lose them.
But I will never ask, never accuse. I have no proof. I don’t think he would, after all. I don’t even think about it. I have to drive the kids to football and soccer and the dance, then the orthodontist and then make dinner. I don’t think about it, him, unless it is to feed him or ask if I should pay to get the toilet fixed or wait til he can do it, to which he usually replies, “Make an executive decision.” Except when I do, he asks me why I would spend a hundred fifty dollars on something that costs fifteen to fix. There is no winning, and he makes me feel stupid. It’s no wonder I don’t feel up to it, feel like fucking him. Let someone else.
And when I’m home and my wife’s bitching at me for every little thing I haven’t done or have done, just some days, or wake up in the middle of the night reaching for her warm, smooth skin just to be close to mine, I think about her arms, her touch, her scent and how I just want to close my eyes and fall into her in some dark hotel room. It’s like I can’t relax in either world. I can’t fully enjoy either.
But if I ever found out, I would divorce him and make him pay through the nose. I would make sure he never saw his kids again because they would know what a shit he is. I would be so hurt, so betrayed, so devastated. After 23 years, all we have been through. It would crush me to the floor. I wouldn’t know what to do, how to live. He would have to pay me to stay home with his kids, pay me for the rest of his life, pay a fortune. Then maybe he would regret having hurt me and his family so heartlessly, so selfishly. Fucker, he wouldn’t dare! I’d cut his balls off and serve them to him in his dinner, in his favorite dinner, steak and fries, the thin kind not the curly or the crinkled or the home fry cut, the bistro style thin kind that is easier to cook to a crunch. Fuck him and his fucking fries!! Oh please, God, don’t let him be cheating on me.
Every time I think it’s going to be the last, that I should stop before I get caught. But I can’t stop. Not yet.
I know there is someone else. Well, I don’t know, but I sense something has changed. I am your wife. I should know.
And I wonder how you, who needed sex from me every day in the early days and later upon demand and pleading and arguing, get your needs fulfilled since I first said no. I denied you more and more frequently as time went on. I don’t know why or how it got to be so hard to want to. It just felt like more effort than it was worth. And I was always so tired. So much changed when we had kids. I was so tired and all you seemed interested in was getting your rocks off, even though I was so tired and worn out from feeding them, cleaning them, making sure they were safe every minute of the day and even when we slept, you did anyhow, and then woke up, you off to work and me to start the whole cycle again, feeding, cleaning, watching…
The time when Joey was so sick, puking all day and sobbing all night for two days. And you came home from work late, but I got up from my sleep to talk to you. When else could I? I knew not to call you at work, not since a long time. Too busy, an interruption of your tons of work and people to direct and money to watch over. So I told you all about Joey as your eyes glazed over and your eyes drooped. But you stayed awake, fighting sleep to listen. And I cried and you cried, we were so worried about him. He was our first, and we could not imagine anything happening to him, anything making him hurt we loved him so much.
And we had that moment, and then you caressed my hair and my face tenderly. But then your hands moved to my breasts, and that look in your eyes took over, the one that turns from tired to interested, the glaze turning into glare and gaze. I couldn’t believe it! I just told you how I had been up for two days and was wrecked and worried and beside myself in fear, and that made you hungry? It felt so greedy. I couldn’t get over it. Are you just always looking to get yourself satisfied, clueless to how I might feel? You have no idea how that feels, how I feel.
Ever since then, and so many times afterward, I was reminded of how everything turns into sex with you, how thoughtless and selfish you are. How am I supposed to feel about you? And then there is the sex itself. It just doesn’t do it for me any more. It’s the same old thing and not as exciting as it used to be when we could not keep our hands off of each other, when we would just spontaneously rip our clothes off and fuck on the table, or leave a party after giving each other that leering look. And you were wild and I was always wet for you, just your kiss, your hunger for me.
But now it just seems like we’re both so tired, put no effort into it. You used to at least try to find my spot and a challenge to give me an orgasm. You don’t try and I don’t want you to. You have accused me of not liking sex, of being a prude, and closed up about sex. You have basically accused me of being a derelict wife. And to talk about it, that just makes it worse. What could I tell you? I don’t even know what I think, what I need. I just know it feels like you just want to use my worn out body to deposit sperm into.
So when I decided I wasn’t going to go through the motions just to please you any more, lose any more sleep so that my day is worse for the extra half hour I lose letting you have your jollies, you stormed, you argued with me, you threatened to leave me, but I knew you wouldn’t. You would never leave your kids and disappoint your parents, look bad in front of your friends and colleagues. It would tarnish your sterling silver reputation. So you came to me then in a standoff, given up, til today. You don’t even ask any more. We are roommates.
You’re still kind and give the obligatory affectionate display of married people, a kiss on the lips hello, a pat on the ass, though without the leer. You have always said it is important that the kids see affection between their parents. Maybe that is why you do it. But I know the cold disaffection that lies deep in your pupils, in the lack of even the slightest glint in your eyes when you look at me, even as the corners of your mouth are upturned. I feel you gone dark.
So how do you get by? I know you get yourself off. I have heard you in the bathroom and walked in on you in the shower once or twice, even as you disengage quickly and cover up the act with an innocent turning into the raining water to hide the evidence. But I know. It’s been months, maybe years. How do you work your twelve hours a day and come home to tightlipped tenderness and feigned affection? Where do you release? You don’t seem crippled by the loss of our sex life. There must be someone else. How could there not be?
But I will never ask, never accuse. I have no proof. I don’t think you would, after all. I don’t even think about it. I have to drive the kids to football and soccer and the dance, then the orthodontist and then make dinner. I don’t think about it, you, unless it is to feed you or ask if I should pay to get the toilet fixed or wait til you can do it, to which you usually reply, “Make an executive decision.” Except when I do, you ask me why I would spend a hundred fifty dollars on something that costs fifteen to fix. There is no winning, and you make me feel stupid. It’s no wonder I don’t feel up to it, feel like fucking you. Let someone else.
But if I ever found out, I would divorce you and make you pay through the nose. I would make sure you never saw your kids again because they would know what a shit you are. I would be so hurt, so betrayed, so devastated. After 23 years, all we have been through. It would crush me to the floor. I wouldn’t know what to do, how to live. You would have to pay me to stay home with your kids, pay me for the rest of your life, pay a fortune. Then maybe you would regret having hurt me and your family so heartlessly, so selfishly. You fucker, you wouldn’t dare! I’d cut your balls off and serve them to you in your dinner, in your favorite dinner, steak and fries, the thin kind not the curly or the crinkled or the home fry cut, the bistro style thin kind that is easier to cook to a crunch. Fuck you and your fucking fries!! Oh please, God, don’t let him be cheating on me.
I am not much of a television watcher. In fact, I was unsure of how to turn my t.v. on for many years, which remote and the sequence of buttons to click, but was never motivated enough to learn. That was until “True Detectives” with Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey on HBO last year. Now, Showtime is previewing a series entitled The Affair, which promises to feature an honest, slightly empathetic or at least justified look at the complicated and much maligned subject of marriage and cheating. As enticingly introduced in Cara Buckley’s write up on September 3rd in the New York Times (thanks to Frank Jelnicky for passing this on to me), “Imagine an extra marital love affair in which neither party can be blamed.” Cognizant of the touchiness of the subject, the Israeli writer Hagai Levi notes the challenge of writing something compelling and engaging, serious, without elicited “knee-jerk audience disapproval.” In addition to the promised feature of the landscape of beaches along Long Island, I am looking forward to seeing how the writer and producer’s efforts achieve that challenging goal in their measured choice in casting and intimate, dicey subject matter.
I guess it is time to take lessons in television operations.
In the gaze of the other 