Chapter 9

Steph kissed me as I left her condo to return home.

We'd already had breakfast, and showered. By this time, I had my own toothbrush and other necessities that Stephanie kept for me in her bathroom.

Nevertheless, there comes a time that we have to face the music, and this was mine.

I was in a cheerful mood, though, as I drove home. One thing that I had become sure of over the last couple of months; I would survive, and I would be happy, if I wanted to be.

Parking the car in the garage meant that the noise of the opener would announce my presence. I sauntered into the house, and there, waiting in her tatty old robe in the kitchen, was Martha.

Martha was crying, or at least had been crying, by the look of her eyes and face.

"How can you be so cruel to me! You humiliated me in front of everyone last night," she wailed.

Automatically, after a life of responding to the sound of my wife in distress, I walked towards her to embrace and comfort her. As I got close and she understood my intention, she suddenly hissed at me,

"Don't you touch me. You keep away from me."

It startled me momentarily, and immediately brought back my anger that she had already found a way to reject my offer of physical contact within a minute of my returning to the house.

Turning away, I quietly said,

"Fine. I'm going to change out of this monkey suit, and into my regular clothes," and I walked away.

As I entered into the master bedroom, and began to undress, I put my clothes down on the still-made bed, never used the previous night.

To my complete surprise, Martha followed me in.

"Where were you last night," she demanded.

"What possible difference would it make to you where I was?" I asked abruptly, shrugging my shoulders, as I rehung the tux on its hanger, "It's not like you turned over and checked to see if I was in bed with you."

"I'm your wife, and I'm entitled to know," was Martha's instinctive response, asserting some sort of territorial claim.

Looking at her, I spoke,

"Go and get cleaned up and dressed. Then we can sit down and maybe we can have a civilized discussion."

Martha must have seen my resolve, because without a further word, she did leave and go to 'her' room.

When she returned, her hair still damp, pulled back in a pony tail, in a baggy gray sweat-suit, I just sat there not saying anything, content to let her vent and get it out of her system. She might be more reasonable once she'd had her say.

It was an angry Martha, reminiscent of the woman the night before, flush with anger who spoke,

"You humiliated me last night. First, I find out that you returned the pendent that I was planning on wearing. I can't tell you how angry I am about that. You had no right to do that.

"You danced with all of those women; wives of people I work with every day, and you had never even let me know that you were taking lessons. They were all laughing at me, that I was the oblivious wife, whose husband never bothered to tell her that he was taking ballroom dancing. That also let them all know that it wasn't something that we were doing together.

"And then, worse, when they announced my promotion to fill the V.P. slot, they asked you and me to come up to the podium, and you weren't there anymore. They had people looking all over for you; in the men's room, outside (in case you were smoking or talking with someone), at the bar, everywhere. But you were nowhere to be found. You had just left, without a word. I had to get a taxi to bring me home. And all I know is that you've left a message on the answering machine 'don't worry, don't stay up waiting."

She paused, waiting for my apology, which was not to be forthcoming. Instead, I said,

"Congratulations on your promotion, it's a wonderful move up for you. As for dancing with all of those women — I asked you first, and you blew me off; in fact, you blew me off with a little 'joke' intended to be a put down. The other women didn't seem to mind dancing with me, despite your attitude.

"I left when you decided to order me around — let me make it clear — 'order me' around in public, like I was a child, not your husband. You say that I humiliated you by being social and dancing with other women, but you expected that I would accept your treating me in a manner intended to humiliate me, and just put up with it. Then you're offended when I refuse to let you," I explained, in a still calm voice, although I was getting a little hotter under my collar. I stopped and took another sip of coffee, more to give myself a breather to try and regain my self-control.

"Don't you love me anymore," Martha asked, with a demanding tone that seemed to imply she didn't love me very much at that moment.

"Of course I love you Martha," I replied.

"If you love me, why don't you show it?" she answered, jumping on my response, trying to put me on the defensive.

"What do you mean, exactly?" I queried, using the old tactic of answering a question with a question.

"Well, for example, when I asked you to fix the sink in my bathroom, you just ignored me; even after I asked you a couple of times. You completely neglected me on Valentine's Day. And then, I find out, that you've returned my Christmas gift, without a by-your-leave. That's what I mean. I spoke with our son, Dan, and he assured me that you remembered all of the things I asked.

"You seem to have given him some cock and bull story that explains it all away, but it all comes down to: you are intentionally ignoring anything I ask of you," she told me, getting rather heated as she spoke.

I paused and considered how I would answer her, trying to communicate my long simmering frustrations. I put my hands together behind my head, and leaned back in the chair.

"Let me get this straight: for me, to show my love for you, requires that I do things for you when you ask me to, that I give you gifts, and that on special occasions I take you out to dinner, or acknowledge you in some special way. Am I stating it fairly?" I asked.

"Yes!" was Martha's immediate affirmation, which her body language, echoed.

"OK," I said.

Martha took my OK to be a sign that I agreed with her. Far from it. I was just preparing the soil for my point.

"Do you love me?" I turned the question around on Martha.

"Oh, don't be silly, of course I do," was her almost annoyed reply.

"Doesn't your vision of our marriage seem a little asymmetric to you?" I leaned forward as I started my argument.

"What do you mean by 'asymmetric'?" Martha questioned my use of the word.

"One-sided. After all, you've just put forward the proposition that for me to show you my love requires acts and gifts; but I'm supposed to simply accept your verbal assurances as proof that you love me, even though you refuse to reciprocate and show your love by acts and gifts?" I told her, presenting the crux of my problem with our marriage.

"When have I ever refused to get you anything that you needed?" Martha asked, honestly mystified.

"How about last Christmas when you refused to make love with me?" was my quiet and simple reply.

"Oh, so that's what this is about — sex! You are trying to use guilt to convince me that I have to have sex with you to demonstrate my love!" Martha's voice rose in volume and intensity.

This was my opportunity to give her my viewpoint, so I wanted to make the most of it, as I explained it to her,

"Is this about sex? Well, it is and it isn't. First, sex is only a part of it. My suspicion is that you have been avoiding basic intimacy, like touching, hugging and kissing which are equally important to me, to avoid having it lead to confrontations about making love or sex as you call it.

"But that aside, it's a broader issue about 'needs.' It seems to me, that you want — no, demand — that I fulfill your 'needs', but you are unwilling to satisfy mine. Or, for that matter even acknowledge that the physical intimacy, the closeness, and yes, the sex, are as necessary to me as my being available to clean out your bathroom sink is to you.

"Imagine — you are complaining that I don't love you anymore, because over a couple of months, I've ignored your requests to do a few tasks around the house. I took your antagonism against being romantic with each other to its logical conclusion, and ignored you on Valentine's Day. Then you're outraged!

"Yet, you still don't see anything wrong with the fact, that you've been depriving me of affection for literally years. Do you understand how it offends, angers and humiliates me every time that I have to beg you to make love?

"It's bad enough when you finally give in, and even worse when you don't.

"When I think about it, I have to wonder if the whole denying me the physical part of our marriage hasn't just been some sort of way of asserting your dominance; that you could hurt my ego and humiliate me by withholding your sexual 'favors.'

"And you know what — it worked until recently. I always thought that you didn't know how much it hurt me when you moved out of our bedroom and stopped being intimate with me. Now, I don't know, maybe you were aware all along."

Martha's face was livid, when I finished speaking.

"That is just so much hog-wash! I've never tried to hurt you. You are letting your obsession with sex color your entire view of our marriage," she exclaimed, by this time almost unable to control herself.

"I'm soooo angry, I think I'm going to..." she went on, although at that moment I interrupted her,

"You're going to what? Move out of the bedroom and stop having sex with me. Ooops! Too late. You've already done that. What else can you do? Divorce me?"

That stopped Martha for a minute, and she seemed to shrink a little. But at least she was considering what I'd said.

"I suppose that you are going to tell me that to get back my loving husband, I have to accommodate you by having sex more often, or something," she almost sneered.

"Not if that's your attitude. For one thing, to be brutally honest, you're simply not that sexually intriguing. There are other women who are more experienced than you, who want sex as much as I do, and will do sexual things for me that you've never even been willing to consider," I said, letting the cat out of the bag.

The light bulb finally went on.

"You've been cheating on me. You've been having an affair!" she whispered half to me, half to herself, her face suddenly focused, her shock palpable.

There was a moment of silence in which I simply looked Martha in the eyes, before I replied,

"I don't know how it could possibly be 'cheating' on you, since 'cheating' in this case implies taking something from someone that they want, and giving it to someone else. You've made it clear that you don't want sex, and you don't want the intimacy." I turned my hands up and shrugged my shoulders, signaling with my body language 'What can I say.'"

I continued,

"Of course, the unintended consequence of shutting down the intimacy is that the emotional bonds that hold us together have been melting away. Slowly, day by day, rejection by rejection, humiliation after humiliation, my love for you has been diminishing.

"In fact, it is you who has been cheating me. You've accepted my love, my devotion, and my acts of giving for all of these years, while refusing to provide for my needs," I concluded.

"There are a lot of people who can love each other, and communicate and remain emotionally close as they grow old without the sex," Martha informed me.

Since I'd already considered if that kind of arrangement was acceptable to me, I was quick to answer,