My Ego is My Friend!

"I concluded that I was better off without you than with you. You are beautiful on the outside; inside, maybe not so much. But there's a lotta fish in the sea, you know. As Kipling once wrote, 'a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.'" Lord, I love that poem.

She cringed a little hearing Kipling's line.

"In fact, you might be surprised at some of the women who have approached me since we went our separate ways.

"It might interest you to know that your violin teacher, the fabulous Madam Kim, approached me to ask me if she could play with me and record some of her favorite pieces for violin. We may do it when I have some time."

Jane was sitting there with tears in her eyes as I related my thoughts to her, but when I mentioned playing with Madam Kim, she openly burst out crying.

I got up and sat next to her and hugged her until she calmed down.

"Please understand that I'm still fond of you, and if I need another violinist, you will be first on my list," I lied to her.

"We will always be friendly, and I will always be civil to you. But we will never be a romantic couple again."

Shortly after that, we left the coffee shop and parted our ways.

Jane shows up from time-to-time on my social media. She went to the East Coast where she was hired by one of the big city symphony orchestras, and she teaches violin, both at one of the local universities and private lessons. So far as I can tell, she has never married.

I met my future wife at an event where I was playing, along with a cellist (a man). She is not a musician, she's an accountant, but she enjoys my music and has supported my music career.

Speaking of which, although I still play a lot of gigs, I have been making most of my money of sales of my recordings on the internet and selling my published arrangements of duets for different combinations of instruments.

~~*~~

Back in the present, I vowed to speak to my brother about trusting his ego and letting Susanne know just where she stood, as opposed to where she thought she stood.

My brother, Robert, and his wife Susanne, lived in my old house, that I had acquired while I was in college and making my money by playing whenever I could. It wasn't anything to brag about when I bought it, but with Robert's help (he worked in construction and knew how to do everything from electrical to plumbing to drywall and painting!) we remodeled the kitchen, the baths, and modernized the house inside and out. I rented it to him at my cost for the mortgage, utilities, insurance and sundry. The result was that Susanne had no claim on the house.

They had no children yet. They had been considering them when she came home with her 'I'm spending a week with a guy from work.' Turned out to be her boss; what a cliché.

They had some money in the bank, but not enough to worry about.

Splitting would be easy, cheap and fast.

I explained to him why HIS ego was his friend. Then we downloaded divorce papers off the web. It could be cheap if she didn't contest it, and why should she?

When he presented the divorce papers to her (before she had taken her proposed week of vacation with her boss), she went crazy.

Robert explained how after consulting with HIS ego, he had decided that he was a better person than she was, and that it would be less painful to split now than to wait until they had kids, bought their own place, and all of the other connections that come from marriage got any deeper and more complex.

She really didn't like the 'lots of fish in the sea' or 'a good cigar is a smoke' lines either. No accounting for women, I guess.

Once she calmed down, Susanne begged him not to dump her. She claimed that nothing had really happened yet between her and her boss, and that the trip, her 'brain fart', as she called it was off. She quit her job and found something else just as good, if not better. Robert wasn't sure that things hadn't gone further than she was admitting, but he didn't push the issue.

She wasn't happy about the 'post-nup' that Robert had her sign, but she knew it was part of the price she paid for staying together with my brother. I was the one who suggested that as well. They didn't have a lot, so the post-nup mainly made a divorce easy and quick if either one of them cheated on the other.

Not long after their 'almost marriage ending' period, Robert took Susanne on a trip, a trip that was more exciting and exotic than the one her boss had offered her.

Will they make it? I don't know. I probably wouldn't have given her a second chance myself. That is up to Robert. But I can tell you, he keeps his eyes open know and demands a lot more from Susanne than he did before he checked in with his ego.

Like I said before, my ego is my friend!

~~&&~~

I didn't send this story out to readers or editors. What you see is what you get.

Randi! Forgive me my punctuation sins. LOL

The inspiration for this story was one of Cavigurl's stories that I read a couple of months ago, which didn't directly address the 'your fragile ego' issue but made me think of it. It is one of those LW tropes that the wife who wants to wander suggests that any objection by the male significant other (husband, boyfriend) is because the man has an ego problem. I'm trying to think of any stories where a comparable MAN claims that is it only the woman's delicate ego that keeps her from accepting his desire to fool around with another woman. Maybe I just missed that story. Maybe I'll have to write one! LOL

Enjoy!

P.S.