Chapter 9: Intimacy Discussion

Two weeks after we moved into the house Ryan and Roxie had helped us get, we were sitting on the living room couch with glasses of wine. The kids were at a playdate. Nick was still at work. Roxie came over to help me unpack the last of the boxes, but we ended up talking instead.

“Can I ask you something?” I inquired. “About you and Ryan. Have you two ever had trouble? Like ... intimacy trouble?”

Roxie laughed, a real one. “Oh, honey. About eight years ago, we were so close to getting divorced I had already been house shopping.”

I nearly spilled my wine. “What? You two seem so ... solid. Always touching. Always looking at each other like you’re still dating.”

“We are now,” she said. “It took work. And it got ugly first.”

She told me the story. Ryan had been the jealous type, the kind of jealous that made nights out tense. At one point, they went back to her hometown for a visit. One evening there, they went to a bar, and Ryan went to the bathroom. An old friend of hers from high school, a man she had not seen in years, saw her and came over and started to catch up. He hugged her; they started talking, and when Ryan came out, all he saw was a man leaning close, one hand on her arm, smiling near her mouth. Ryan walked up and punched him and knocked him out cold.

I stared at her. “Ryan? The Ryan I know? The one who lets you hug and kiss people like it’s nothing?”

“That Ryan didn’t exist yet,” she said. “That night was the low point. We went to a therapist a friend recommended. The guy was a little ... unconventional. Part of what he suggested was that I start touching people—men, women, whoever—in front of Ryan, over and over, until the urge to swing on them went away.”

I set my glass down. “And that worked?”

“It did something,” she said and then laughed. “While I was touching everyone, a lot of people, especially men, thought I was flirting. That turned me on. What we didn’t expect was how much it turned Ryan on. He would sit there watching, getting angrier and harder at the same time. When I saw him about to lose it, I would grab him and drag him outside or to the car or wherever we could get. I would suck him or fuck him until the jealousy was gone. And because I was already wet from the attention and from knowing what was coming next, I started looking for every chance to do it.”