I May Be Dumb . . .

Dr. Spencer had already been featured in numerous business and industry publications when he startled the university by announcing that he was leaving to start his own firm. Not content to work from within the halls of academia, Dr. Spencer now intended to consult full time with the giant corporations who made up the networking and telecommunications industry as well as the federal agencies which set policy in this fast-changing arena. And, he readily admitted, he intended to make a boatload of money doing so.

I hadn't studied with him when I was in grad school, but, like everyone, I knew his reputation. And I recalled how impressed Julia had been by him when she'd taken one of his courses.

Julia took to her new job like a wild animal returned to its natural habitat. I was delighted at the excitement and enthusiasm she brought home with her in the evenings, even though her descriptions of her day frequently included topics about which I knew nothing. I was tolerant as her work days grew longer and she began to travel. It was no great problem taking care of the boys and the house when she had to be away. Besides, I enjoyed my work, and I was equally glad she was enjoying hers.

But gradually over the next year there were other issues that were not so pleasant for me to deal with. First there was the question of her salary. Since I had been paying all the household bills when she wasn't working, I had expected we would be able to save most of her paycheck. That would enable us to build up our retirement savings and also start a college fund for Josh and Jake. But when I raised the idea several months after she started work, Julia quickly shot it down. She told me she needed to build up a wardrobe suitable for work, she needed a more reliable car, and she was now having to buy her lunches and sometimes dinners. I was surprised at her attitude, and the issue came up several times, but she always had some reason why she couldn't contribute to our savings account. It became apparent that she felt the money was hers to spend as she saw fit.

Another change was even harder to take. As I took on more of the childcare and household duties, I thought Julia would appreciate my efforts. At the least, I hoped she would see that I was trying to repay the time and effort she had put into being a stay-at-home mother. Instead, Julia grew increasingly dissatisfied with my efforts. She began to criticize the way I did things. If I ran a load of the kids' laundry, she criticized the way it was folded. When I mowed the lawn, she wanted to know why I hadn't used the trimmer afterwards. When she got home late from work, all she could see was the children's toys scattered about. It felt like nothing I did met her standards.

I didn't appreciate Julia's obvious displeasure, but I didn't want a major confrontation to upset our boys. I remembered having childhood friends whose parents were always fighting, and it deeply disturbed me. As a result, I desperately wanted to find a way to keep peace in our family, so I stifled my discomfort and began to tiptoe through our marriage, trying not to set off the next explosion.

"All marriages go through difficult periods," I rationalized. "We'll get through this."

I also began trying to find some way to win her back. I brought her flowers and small gifts; I undertook chores that would lighten her responsibilities at home; I gave her long foot- and back-rubs when she came home tired from her business trips. I was grasping at straws; nothing seemed to work.

Not surprisingly, these changes also showed up in the bedroom. As it usually does, parenthood had taken its toll on the frequency of our love-making. Anyone who says parenthood didn't hurt their sex lives is a liar. But now, Julia's frequent late hours and overnight travel brought this slow train to a virtual standstill. She was always too tired from working late, or had a big day ahead of her, or needed to catch an early flight the next morning. Our sex life wasn't dead, but it was definitely on life support.

Our lack of intimacy and her obvious unhappiness with me began to provoke paranoia. I began to wonder if she was being unfaithful. When she would go out of town, I began to inspect her lingerie drawer to see if she was taking sexy underwear and nightgowns along. When she had to work late, I began calling about innocuous matters just to make sure she really was at the office. None of these feeble efforts uncovered any evidence, but my sense of uneasiness continued to grow.

I found myself in that limbo where many husbands are trapped: suspicious of their spouses but with nothing concrete to act on, unhappy with their circumstances but unwilling to confront for fear of provoking the break-up they so want to avoid.

And, to be completely honest, I was still deeply in love with her, and the thought that our marriage might be in jeopardy was too dreadful to bear. I didn't want to lose Julia; equally importantly, I didn't want our sons to come from a broken home. The kids I had known whose parents were divorced wore the scars for a long time.

I don't know how long I could have continued in that state of paralyzed pain before it became unbearable, but I didn't get the chance to find out. One night after we had put Josh and Jake to bed, she took me into the den, saying, "We need to talk."

She sat down on a chair opposite from me and, without any preface to soften the blow, said, "I've been having an affair."

My heart fell. My mind flashed to the title of an old Tom Clancy novel: "The Sum of All Fears." That was me: he worst thing I could imagine was happening.

My mouth went dry and my throat contracted. "Who is it?" I managed to ask.

"You don't know him," she said calmly. "He works at the FCC in Washington."

I couldn't for the life of me think of what to ask her next. All that went through my mind was "So this is what it feels like to be a cuckold." Absently, I wondered if I would be one of those husbands who got vicarious pleasure from having his wife fuck another man. No, I realized, this felt more like I had just had open-heart surgery.

Julia sat there watching me expectantly. She seemed to want something out of me, but I had no idea what that could be. I couldn't talk, I couldn't think -- all I could feel was pain and misery.

Suddenly, in desperation, I decided, "No! It doesn't have to be that way. Our family doesn't have to break up because of this."

Turning to her, I blurted out, "We can get past this. We can go to counseling."

It was clear to me at that moment that this wasn't what she had expected to hear. I thought I saw a touch of annoyance flash across her face. But after a long pause, all she said to me was, "All right, we can go to counseling." With that, she walked out of the room -- our little talk was over.

Not surprisingly, sleep was slow in coming that night. As we lay on opposite sides of our bed, my mind felt like an engine constantly shifting gears. I felt deep sadness at the blow to our love, followed by dread that our family might break up and our boys become children of divorce. Then I shifted to elation: she had agreed to counseling; maybe the situation could be saved. And, deep within me, I was bitter over her infidelity. I knew that even if we could save our marriage, what she had done would leave scars of resentment no matter how deeply I tried to bury them.

The marriage counselor we contacted was a trim little man with a beard and a mustache named Harris Willard. We already knew him because his wife had gone to grad school with us. He seemed like a nice fellow, so he became our counselor almost by default. He had a drab little office on the upper floor of a strip mall not too far from where we lived, so it was convenient for us to make an appointment late in the afternoon.

For our first session, he wanted to see us together. After some initial pleasantries had been exchanged, he asked us how he could help us.

There was an awkward silence; neither Julia nor I knew how to begin. Since I was the one hoping for a miracle, I decided I had to start. "Julia and I have been having problems in our marriage, and we're hoping you can help us work through them."

That didn't satisfy Julia. She burst in: "I had an affair, and Mark wanted us to come see you."

Her view of our situation was deeply discouraging to me, but Willard steered us away from those shoals by asking each of us to describe our lives together.

He turned first to me, and I told him how much my family and my marriage meant to me. I expressed my fears about how we had pulled apart, and reiterated my commitment to trying to work out our differences. Willard pressed me on this last point: "You want to stay together even though Julia had an affair?" That question hit a nerve, but, ignoring my reservations, I reaffirmed that I wanted to stay married.

Harris then turned to Julia and asked her to give her perspective on our marriage. She admitted that everything seemed perfect initially, but as problems began to arise, she said she had become increasingly unhappy.

As I listened, I became incensed to hear her complaints. "Life isn't like some beer commercial where everyone is always happy all the time," I fumed.

But Willard jumped in before Julia could respond. "It's Julia's turn to describe her feelings, Mark. You need to hold your comments until it's your turn to talk again."

With Willard's prompting, Julia went on to describe how her growing unhappiness at home had made her vulnerable to the approach of the FCC staffer with whom she had had her affair. As she recounted our fateful conversation, she added that she wasn't in love with her paramour. That renewed my hope; perhaps there was a chance for us after all.

We'd been talking for almost an hour, so Willard brought the session to a close. For the next two sessions, he told us, he wanted to meet with each of us individually, starting with Julia. "After that," he said, "we'll all get together to see what the next steps are."

The next few days and nights were tense and uncomfortable. We weren't not speaking to each other, but what little we said was limited to our schedules and, of course, our boys' needs. I was glad that Josh and Jake were too young to pick up on the tension in the air, and I had no intention of starting an argument that might upset them.

When Julia went to her individual session with Willard, I was dying to know what they had discussed. But Julia made no mention of the session, and I felt that to ask would be a violation of some wnwritten law of confidentiality. Honestly, I doubt she would have told me anyway.

When it was finally my turn to see Willard alone, the session went nothing like I expected. I asked him about Julia's discussion, but he sternly reminded me that what she had said to him was confidential, just as my remarks would be. That didn't really help me, but I understood the concept, so I let it go.

From that point on, we scarcely talked about my relationship with Julia at all; instead, he wanted to know about me as a person. He probed at my self-awareness: did I feel that I really knew myself and was I happy with what I saw. I told him I wasn't perfect and could always do better, but that I generally felt OK about myself.

Then he changed gears and began asking me about my dating habits prior to meeting Julia. I told him about my high school sweetheart, and what a mistake we both had made to get married so young. Because of that, I told him that I didn't have an extensive history with other women, only about eighteen months or so after my ex and I called it quits and the time I met Julia.

"So you never really got a chance to sow your wild oats," he commented.

By then it was time for the session to end, and I was thoroughly confused. How did what we discussed relate to my marital problems and Julia's affair? I'd hoped to discuss what I could do to restore our relationship. "How does this help?" I asked him bluntly.

He reminded me that the next step was for us to meet together with him next week. We'd discuss next steps at that time. With that I was on my way home, still reviewing our discussion in my head and still trying to imagine how it could help us. I finally gave up: "He's a professional and he gets paid to help people. He must know what he's doing, even if I don't understand it. I'll just have to wait until next week."

When I drove to our next session, Julia had already arrived and was talking with Willard when I came in. As soon as I sat down, she stopped and Willard began the session without any initial pleasantries or his normal chit chat.

"I think the most useful thing I can do at this point is to summarize where I think you two are in your relationship. Julia, you've been feeling increasingly unhappy in your marriage over the past year, and that unhappiness reached a point where it led you to have an affair with another man, is that right?"

"This isn't a very positive way to start." I thought.

"And, Mark, even after Julia has confessed her infidelity, you want to continue your marriage, correct?" Willard continued.

"Yes, I do," I emphasized, trying to put a more positive spin on the discussion. "I want to stay with Julia and our sons and keep our family intact."

Willard then turned back to Julia. "Yet despite what Mark has said, you continue to be dissatisfied with your relationship with him?" he asked her.

"He's leading the witness," I thought. "He's putting words into her mouth."

"Yes, that's right," she agreed.

"Wait a minute, wait a minute!" I thought to myself, "This is way too fast. We need to talk about what we can do to work things out."

"And it's reached the point," Willard continued, ignoring my obvious distress, "that you feel that the only recourse is to end the marriage?"

"No!" I screamed to myself, "no!"

"Yes," she said quietly but firmly, "I want a divorce."

I felt as though I was going to be physically ill. I couldn't speak -- hell, I could hardly breathe.

Julia wouldn't look at me, but Willard had a look of pity as he turned back to me. "Then I really don't think there's anything more we can do here."

He looked at me with concern. "Mark, are you going to be OK? Will you be able to drive home?"

All I could do was nod to him. It was clear to me that the session was over, just like my life. I was surprised that I didn't fall as I walked down the stairs. When I reached my car, I thought about pulling onto the beltway, accelerating into an oncoming lane and ending it all. Then I remembered that I had to pick up my sons from the nanny. "My life may be over, but I still have be a responsible father," I thought. It was all I had left.

As I drove, the session we had just concluded kept repeating in my head. I couldn't understand what I had witnessed. "I thought counseling was supposed to go on for months," I thought bitterly. "We must have set some sort of world record for shortest counseling." I'd read about couples doing exercises designed to build empathy and increase mutual understanding. "Why didn't we try anything like that?"

The more I thought about it, the more I felt as though the whole thing was scripted. "It didn't matter what I said or what I wanted. He just walked though the script so she could deliver the message," I decided.

As I sat waiting for a traffic light to change, I tried to imagine why Willard would have acted like that. The only thing I could come up with was that Julia had already made her mind up before we started counseling. She must have told him what she was planning when she met with him one-on-one. Maybe he decided the only thing he could do was help get it over as quickly as possible. That didn't make me feel any better.

Julia got home well after I had prepared dinner for the boys. As they played in the den, I sat down at the table in the dining room as she ate. Now that the fate of our marriage was sealed, I no longer felt the need to avoid confrontation.

"I just want you to know I don't want this divorce and I'm not going to file. If you want it, you'll have to do that," I told her.

"I'll take care of it," she said.

"What about Josh and Jake?" I asked in a low voice. "This is going to kill them."

She looked up from her plate and said calmly, "People get divorced every day and their kids come through it just fine."

"How very convenient," I thought, "how very self-serving."

"You've got it all thought out, don't you?" I hissed. "Well, you're the one who wants this, and you're going to have to be the one to tell them. This is going to devastate them, and I won't do that to them."

She just sat there and continued to eat.

"And another thing," I said, "it's going to be joint custody. I will not give them up, no matter what. If you fight me on this, I'll tie it up in court forever."

"I understand," she said.

"Well, I hope you're happy," I said sarcastically.

She didn't even look at me.

The next couple of weeks were surreal. Outwardly, our lives proceeded in an apparently normal fashion. Julia and I both slept in the same bed (I decided I hadn't done anything wrong, so I wasn't going to leave), we each went to work and we alternated dropping off and picking up the boys from the nanny. At the same time, Julia was moving forward with her plans for life without me. Several times when I passed her at her computer I saw her checking real estate listings, so I knew she was looking for another place to live. And I had to pick up the boys one time because she was meeting with her attorney.

As for me, I could scarcely drag myself to work. I was heart-broken and depressed; everyone I worked with knew something terrible had happened, but I didn't want to talk about it. All I wanted was to have my wife back and my family intact.

And then something unexpected happened. When I came home from work one afternoon, Julia was already there. She had taken to staying late at the office every day to avoid having to spend time with me, so I was surprised.

I was even more surprised at what she had to say. "Ginna Anderson called and asked us to go to dinner and a movie tomorrow night. Want to go?"

Ginna and Tom Anderson were friends we'd made in Alpharetta, and we used to get together with them fairly regularly to socialize, so this wasn't an unusual invitation. But the idea of us going out with them in light of what had happened seemed pretty bizarre to me.

As I thought about it, however, the idea began to appeal to me. In the first place, it was obvious that Julia hadn't said anything to Ginna about our getting a divorce, and that seemed somewhat encouraging. Secondly, I thought that the chance to spend time with Julia in the company of our friends might bring back memories of other good times for her. Maybe this could encourage her to reconsider.

"Sure," I said, a little more casually than I felt, "let's do it."

Dinner was fun; it felt just like old times. The conversation flowed around the table as though nothing had ever changed. Julia ordered the wine and kept our glasses filled. Whenever she got into a discussion with Ginna, she made a point of bringing me into the conversation. I was beginning to feel a warm glow, and it wasn't just the wine.

The movie was something else altogether. It was a drama with a "name brand" director and actors who were as talented as they were attractive. And it was intensely sexy. In no way was it pornographic, but sex permeated the plot and there were lots of nudity and provocative sex scenes. There had to be a lot of wrinkled seats in the theater from the squirming of so many aroused patrons.

As we walked back to our cars (we had gone to a restaurant very near the theater so we wouldn't have to drive), none of us could stop talking about the film. We used phrases like "smart and sexy" and "tastefully erotic," but what we really meant was the film was damned hot, and so were we. Ginna in particular kept telling Julia how glad she was that Julia had suggested it, and when they got in their car, Ginna was all over Tom.