The day the earth stood still

My world, as I knew it, ended on Monday.

I have been married 21 years. Some of that time was difficult, filled with stress, conflict. Not much fun. Well, ok. A lot of that time was like that. There were also great times, intimate, close, wonderful times. Vacations in Florida, house-building, adopting children, starting careers, adopting pets, holding them in your arms as they died. Great and terrible stuff.

I had this memory, detailed in some of my posts, of the first 10 years of my marriage as incredibly tough, harrowing years that we survived as a couple because we stuck together and were totally committed to each other. I recalled occasional passion and intimacy in the midst of what was often a living hell. I missed that time in a way, at least the good parts.

On Monday, I decided, after months of waffling and soul-searching that I needed a change, some way for me to obtain the intimacy and passion which had left our marriage and which I now craved. We seemed unable to get it back, and I could not live without it anymore. We were distant and dispassionate roommates. I wrote my wife a letter telling her that I needed to take her up on an earlier offer to have an affair to get those needs met. I told her I was absolutely committing to our marriage, that I would no longer consider the possibility of divorce, that I would seek to improve our marriage through whatever means necessary, but that I need to feel free to look outside it for that missing spark.

I was proud of myself. I had finally made a bold, if imprudent decision for my own happiness while following the rules I want to follow for myself. I want to be an open, honest, truthful person. An honorable individual. Someone I can be happy to see in the mirror. I am not always that person. I am not always brave enough to do what I need to do either.

My wife requested a lunch appointment with me. We met and she started telling me stories. Stories about herself. Stories about those hard but good first years of our marriage. It turns out she had engaged in a series of sexual affairs during that period. The first was 17 years ago, after about 5 years of marriage. Most were short, but one lasted two years. That one cost me the most: it took away time, energy and passion that should have been going to me over an extended and very critical time of our lives. Most were 13-17 years ago. There was one more affair 5 years ago, while she was overseas adopting our second child. That affair briefly resumed last summer and again in fall. She will be going on vacation to reconnect and stay with an old flame for a few days next week. The number and scope of her sexual adventures was a shock in rather the same sense that a thermonuclear detonation is loud.

This confession of hers was her acceptance of my offer for an open marriage, and her first act of openness. To her great credit, it was an act of unparalleled bravery. It could have led to the end of our marriage, something I know she values more than almost anything else.

There simply are not words that can express what I felt. I could say shock, anger, surprise, bafflement, resentment, hurt. Those words are not inaccurate, but they utterly fail to capture the depth of the emotions they portend to describe. I felt like the biggest idiot on the block, the wide-eyed country bumpkin in the big city, the only person in the room not getting the joke. This is a woman I knew for 25 years, with whom I entered adulthood and now middle-age, a person I *knew* that I knew, to her core, as I know my right arm and as I think she knows me. I now feel like I know nothing of her. She is a stranger posing as my wife. Think of "Invasion of the body snatchers", in real life.

My life and universe kind of sucked before Monday. I was not happy, but I thought I understood my world, my life. I thought I knew the fabric and foundation of my life and that of my wife, the nature and challenges of our relationship. I thought I knew our shared history. The foundation that was my understanding of the world vanished. I now feel completely lost. I feel like everything before Monday was an illusion, a dream based on some story I read somewhere. I know intellectually that this is not the case, but this is what it feels like. My wife was the core of my world. As unhappy as we were, she was the center of this universe I thought I knew. I feel adrift, directionless. I know that all of this is just shock, I also know that reality is different than it feels now. But this is what it feels like right now. Some day I hope to gain perspective on what happened, who I am, who my wife is. That day is not today.

Do you recall me writing "I am not jealous. At all". No, really, I wrote that. I meant it too. The difference between theory and practice in this case should be noted as huge. I actually felt myself begin to lose contact with reality that first night. I think they call it a nervous breakdown.

I know that she is mostly the person I know. She just has a part of her which led this parallel life hidden from me all these years. A part of her that I had no clue of, completely opposite of the person I thought I knew. She loves me, she really does, I know this. She is still the good person I have described in previous posts, she just had this secret, this very big secret.

Having been so open about my wife's transgressions, I will say that I also had an affair last summer. While the core of that affair was the intimacy and romance, it did culminate in a sexual encounter. My affair was wonderful, beautiful, it transformed me and re-awoke the part of me that understood beauty and love. It was also wrong. I guess it is a good thing that I did, because I understand first-hand how two people meet, fall in love, connect and meet each other's needs. I should also say that had it not been for my lover's inerrant moral compass, I don't think I would have terminated the affair so quickly, if at all. In my more reflective moments I have a hard time being too judgmental. But I try anyway ;-).

My wife's affairs seem to be an escape hatch from bad periods in our relationship, when there was stress, conflict, or perhaps to get needs met that weren't being met by our marriage. Mine was driven more by the realization that life was passing me by and I had missed out on a lot of stuff (a.k.a. mid-life crisis). But I think for both of us the mechanism was that age old one: we met someone and fell in love.

The end of the story is still being written. We have decided to try this very, very strange thing called an "open" marriage. I have no idea if it will work.

The early indications are encouraging. Since she and I came clean with each other, the barrier that had existed between us has lifted. We are able to discuss, really discuss, our feelings, frustrations and hopes for ourselves, our marriage. We have been intimate and connected in all the ways that I yearned for in the past few months. The barrier and distance that this Big Secret had placed between us had limited our intimacy. That impediment is now gone. The irony of the situation is not lost on me.

I am certain I will never be able to trust my wife in matters of sexual fidelity again, and for that reason, the very notion of monogamy is absurd: I would never know if statements of fidelity were real or just another cover-up for another series of affairs the next time we hit a rough patch.

I am happy, excited, nervous, scared. This is giving me the chance to live that youth I always felt cheated of, but also putting me on a precarious path. The humor of this happening after all my previous posts is too precious for words. You cannot make this stuff up. Really. "I wish my wife would have an affair" I think I recall writing.

Life is full of surprises isn't it?

Take a good look at your spouse, friends, co-workers. They may not be who you think they are.

Do you know who you are? I'm about to find that out about myself.

I think I feel the planet begin to rotate again. Let's see what tomorrow brings.