The End of My First Marriage

Lisa just shrugged and said she wasn't aware of any of that.

I went over the appearance of Jeremy in her Journal, which happened a month or so after Linda left for university, and we had become empty nesters. When she wrote of Jeremy it was unabashed praise. Mentions of me in the Diary were negative. The words "annoying, trying, irritating" were common to describe my brief references in the diary. Most often there was no mention of me at all. In the months leading up to December it seemed I was being erased

She reread parts of her diary with me. She apologized for the negative things she said about me. She blamed her fawning over Jeremy at this point on depression from becoming an empty nester. She repeated what her psychologist had said that she was depressed and was looking for a shiny thing to brighten her up. Jeremy was new and shiny. I agreed that made sense but why was deserting her husband for forbidden sex the shiny thing? She didn't know. I asked again, in a stronger tone, what about me caused you to need hurt me? She told me that blaming me for a rotten marriage was a way for her not to feel guilty about destroying our marriage.

By November I told her that I knew our marriage was in serious trouble. We evolved a new normal: a quiet co-existence. Little or no conversation followed by quiet time in front of the TV. But by December, even that changed. She started coming home laster, an hour or two later. Instead of quietly watching TV together in the evening, she spent every evening grading papers and preparing lesson plans in the den, leaving me alone to watch TV. Things had changed.

I pointed out that her diary told that her Jeremy had openly brought up the idea of an affair to her weeks before Thanksgiving. She said that was impossible, she was married, but she was clearly intrigued, and her diary told of continued flirting between them.

Then the passionate kiss at a faculty party followed by the hasty trip to the Star Dust Motel."

After that, the Star Dust became an almost daily routine. "Afternoon delight" was your diary description.

Then Christmas. The kids were home and there was warmth with the kids and mom and with the kids and me, but between mom and me, more of the cold freeze. Christmas morning revealed a stark change in our family tradition. Before, Lisa and I decided on presents together, wrapped them together, and wrote "from Mom and Dad" on the little cards. Not this year. I was not consulted. With no time to shop, I put checks in two plain envelopes, wrote "from Mom and Dad" and handed them to the kids. Lisa wrote only "from Mom" on each of a dozen presents she wrapped under the tree.

"Then you opened your present from me. It was an expensive necklace and earrings set. You looked at it, said, "ah, that's nice" without even a glance at me. You then put it down without showing it to anyone. Linda picked it, opened it, squealed, and said, "Oh, Dad, these are beautiful!" The look on your face showed you were irritated by the fuss she was making. Linda looked at you and said, "Mom, what's wrong with you, these are beautiful?" To which you said, 'yes, it is nice' smiling at Linda, but not at me.

"The present from you to me was a tie."

Linda and Larry, both cornered me later and asked what was going on between us. I told them I didn't know. Mom has been so cold to me. I was worried our marriage was dying. That was a $5000 necklace. Mom loves jewelry.

"Then the week after Christmas you disappeared for hours at a time with no hint of where. I now know you were with Jeremy. When the kids left for university, the cold silence returned.

Lisa sighed and finally said something. "By then my loyalty was only to Jeremy. I wasn't going to cheat on Jeremy, physically or emotionally. I was preparing for my future with him."

"You were tearing my heart out."

"I know. To be 'brutally honest,' I no longer cared. I was too wrapped up in this wild adventure with Jeremy. My life's center had changed, and you were not part of it."

"So, by Christmas you had a plan?" I asked.

"No, by Christmas I only had passion, no plan. I had dreams or delusions, but nothing like a plan. I dreamt of Christmas in our home with Jeremy and the kids."

"And where was I?"

"You were not in the dream at all." She answered, her eyes lowered.

"I was invisible?" I asked.

"You were invisible" she answered. "I am so sorry."

We moved on. I noted the explicit description she had in her diary of anal sex with Jeremy. I noted how important it was to both that this sex act created Jeremy's ownership of you to the exclusion of me.

"Why?" I asked. "Why was your shared passion not enough, why was an element of your sex a need to purge me?"

"It Jeremy's way of making me totally his by symbolically eradicating you. He said we were exorcising your possession of me. The idea that I was to be totally Jeremy's was exciting. I joined in his disrespecting you to excite Jeremy and close the chapter of my life with you.

"Then you wrote of our kids loving Jeremy, of him becoming their friend, role model and their new dad," I said. "I was crushed reading this. Not only did you want me to disappear, but you also wanted to remove me from our children's lives. Why? Did you hate me that much that you had to completely strip me from the family?"

Lisa replied, "My fantasy was of a perfect world where there were no disturbing images. You were the image of my infidelity. My need to erase you from existence was simple, I was betraying you and because of that, you had to disappear. I had to justify my behavior."

"And why did you sexually give this man things in just a few weeks that had been denied to me in twenty-five years of marriage?" I asked.

"Maybe because your love for me was without condition. No matter what I did, you would love me, you would be there for me. With Jeremy, there were conditions attached to his love. It was a 'do this for me to prove your love.' I was trading sexual acts for his continued devotion. I did enjoy those things; it was only my initial reluctance that I traded him for his love. After doing it though, I admit that I did it the next time for me as well as for him."

"So pure, unconditional love is less intense than transactional love?" I asked.

"Yeah, I guess."

"Which brings us to the night you came home after 10 at night, four hours later than usual. And you didn't even bother to clean up after your threesome sex marathon! Why?

"It was just another stop on this stupid adventure of mine. I didn't intend to be so obvious, but in the end, I didn't care that much that I was. I am so sorry."

That brought us to the day I caught Lisa and her lover in the act. I told her I hadn't planned it, but I did take advantage of it. It was a painful thing for me to witness. I reminded her how the confrontation went down while they were both naked on our bed.

"I enjoyed watching your lover cower as I gave vent to my anger," I said.

You really frightened Jeremy. He had pegged you as a wimp and when you appeared in the doorway, he was frightened. Then when you focused on him, he was truly terrified. I was surprised and frightened too. I had never seen you like that.

Well, I never let myself get angry with you around. And the only way Jeremy could have pegged me for a wimp was based on how you described him to me.

She was silent for a moment, then said, "I guess you're right. Jeremy's name for you is what I needed to hear. Because of my betrayal of you, I needed you to be flawed."

"By the way, you scared Jeremy badly, the weekend at the cabin was not romantic because of you. He bitched at me all weekend. We had sex, but without the passion." Lisa said.

I moved on, saying "that evening, Linda called. It was an innocent call, she didn't know anything, but talking to her I lost control and started to cry. I told her you had left me for your lover. The kids rushed home to be with me that weekend."

I went on to tell Lisa how utterly devastated I was that weekend. I added how when the kids were leaving Sunday morning, Larry told me that this place no longer felt like home. He was in tears as he said it.

"That gets us to Sunday afternoon. My plan for a graceful exit pretty much went up in smoke with the arrival of Jeremy. I could tell that my presence came as a surprise to him. Still, just when I had thought I had suffered all the pain there was to suffer, you joined him in the front yard, standing by him and against me. That was an additional humiliation. And then when he left you and you collapsed in tears over him. It was also just another kick in the gut for me."

"I was still in love with Jeremy, even though I could now see the rotten in him with his lies about his wife, his uncaring opinion of her pregnancy, his inability to deal with you confronting him, and his taking it out on me because you hurt his pride. I was seeing you in a new light, a controlled strength that I had been blinded to before, your compassion when I deserved none. But I had burned my bridges with you. For better or worse, until he drove away, Jeremy was the man I had chosen. But in a kindness that I did not deserve, you came up to me, picked me up and tenderly walked me inside, out of view of the prying eyes of our neighbors."

I added, "After seeing you collapse and weep for Jeremy, after everything he said, I knew you still loved him. Had he let you in his car that afternoon, you're happily ever after would have been with him, and I would have been thrown out with the garbage. The truly horrible thing was that I still loved you. As hard as I tried, I couldn't not love you."

After a pause, I asked the question again. "So why did going after was the shiny thing have to be the end of our marriage?"

"Because the kids had left, because until Jeremy, my life was over."

"But why did the shiny thing have to be a lover?"

"I don't know. Without the kids, I thought I didn't have anything else to live for."

"I wasn't enough?"

No answer. She wouldn't say. I felt a cold shudder. This wasn't going to work. Our marriage was dead, if we breathed life into now, how much longer would it last? What I was dealing with now was a woman who had lost her true love, and who was settling on me, someone to keep her warm at night until the next Lancelot came along. Despite being given the opportunity at no time did she try to tackle the question of why it was so easy to chuck me out for this other fellow.

But she had already given me the answer. I was a wimp. Not gentle, not mild mannered, not one who respected his wife, not someone who sought to always please his wife wanted, but a wimp. That was my flaw, that was why it was easy to chuck me out.

"Look, I said the odds of us working this out are not good. I don't want to try to reconcile and then a year later find you fucking some other shiny new fellow because I am boring. You loved him even after he spurned you. I was nothing more than dirt and that you thought our children would love him as their new father. I am terrified that you are now just 'settling' on me."

She looked up. The tears were coming down. She spoke in a shaky voice, "it is true that I loved Jeremy. Even after he threw me away, I still loved him. I wanted him to be the new father of my children, I wanted you to disappear. But I am not 'settling' on you. I love you. My love for Jeremy was a delusion. My love for you is true. Please, please, forgive me." She started to cry.

"Do you know the pain I felt, when I realized that the love of my life, my soulmate, and my best friend wanted nothing more to do with me, that she wanted me erased?"

She lifted her head up, her watery eyes trying to focus, and looked at me. She saw a cold, hard expression on my face. The same look she saw the day I caught her in our bed with Jeremy. Filled with pure panic, she said, "I love you more than ever, Mark. Don't leave me. I can't go on without you."

"Yeah, I felt that too for a long while. But you will make it somehow. Besides, Jeremy will still take you back. You won't have near the money that his wife had from her parents, but you can give him the lifestyle he so craves for at least a few years."

"No...no, oh god, no!" she cried out.

I stood and got ready to walk out.

"Are you leaving me?"

I paused facing the door with my back to her. I thought, 'She deserves that. But I can't do it. Yes, a walk away is the rational thing. But then love is not about rationality, and I still love her. I sighed, turned looked at her and said, "no, not yet. We have a lot to think about. I still love you, but I did tell you that this might not work."

She stood up, looked at me and said, "Look, damn it, I have done what you asked, I told you everything. I was brutally honest. I gave you what you wanted. Listen, your love is unconditional, and I fucked up by valuing your love too lightly. But whether you like me, or want to be with me, even whether you respect me, is transactional. I know that if I want you in my life, and I do, I very much do, if I want to be your best friend again, and I do, if I want you to have any respect for me at all, then I must make sure I earn that every day. If you come back to me, I will do that, I will earn your friendship and respect every day, and maybe even someday, your trust. I will earn every moment you spend time with me by everything I do."

I walked over to her, pulled her into my arms, and hugged her hard. She hugged me back. We stood there for a few minutes. I then whispered in her ear, "I love you. I am not giving up, I can never give up on you. This is very hard for me. I worry you will hurt me again. But until then, my love for you will just be my vice, my addiction."

She looked me in the eye, her own eyes still full of tears, and with a growing smile on her face, she answered, "I will never hurt you again."

Returning the smile, I said, "Yeah, I'm tired of going slow. I love you, babe."

Just then, as I suddenly saw the woman who used to be a wife, I saw the woman I fell in love with, the women I married, the women who bore my children. I saw the women I loved with all my heart. The woman betrayed me, who caused me so much pain and anguish had faded from view. She was still there, but I didn't care.

I kissed her with more passion and intensity than I had in years. We went upstairs. I slowly, gently removed her clothes. I exposed her beautiful nakedness, then laid her on the bed. She looked up at me as I removed my clothes, until my very erect penis popped into view. She was smiling with teary eyes. I leaned over her and kissed her softly, then slowly kissed her beautiful breasts. I played with her erect nipples with my tongue for several minutes, then continued a slow descent to her sex leaving a trail of tender kisses, until I reached her womanhood. I started softly with my tongue and as she responded, I increased the speed and pressure of my tongue. It wasn't long before she had her first orgasm, and her wetness increased to a flood.

I rolled on top of her our bare skin fully touching. I moved slowly to appreciate the warmth and softness of her every curve. I guided my engorged penis to her vagina. It slid in gently. As I entered, she moaned. Gently I began the rhythmic back and forth. Her arms held me close, her hips moved to meet every thrust. She increased her own rhythm, and I matched her pulsing thrusts with my own. She began to cum, louder and harder than she had with me in years. For those glorious minutes, we were both 25 again, recapturing the pace, enthusiasm, and passion of youth. Her orgasmic moans became a scream as my cock exploded inside her.

Afterwards, I rolled off and laid beside her holding her as only a lover would. We were silent, both looking into each other eyes, both of us tearing from found love that had been lost.

Finally, I said tenderly, "I love you, Lisa Murphy. No matter what has happened in the past or what might happen in the future, I will always love you." She buried her head into my shoulder.

We made love two more times that night and fell asleep in each other's arms. I woke up the next morning and gently freed myself from my new bride's embrace. I quietly walked downstairs, fixed myself some coffee and tried to figure everything else out. It seems I had thrown rationality and bitterness away and surrendered to the stronger power of my love for this woman. Yes, I knew that she had inflicted the worst pain I had ever known. Yes, I had no guarantee that she wouldn't have the horrors of the past year revisit me. I had no rational reason to believe that she wouldn't. I was proceeding based not on a well-reasoned balance of facts. I was proceeding solely on the love in my heart. As untrustworthy as was, I didn't care. In the end, I decided that 'we' were worth the risk. This was the only woman I wanted in my life, and whether we made it to 'happily ever after' or not, I was going to follow my heart.

Epilogue

Lisa and I sought professional counseling, which helped. We sold our house. Larry had been right, it was no longer a home, it was just a house. We had a symbolic second wedding with the kids and Sarah in attendance. The next summer, I took a long leave of absence and we traveled to Europe. We saw all the museums, cathedrals, and castles that we could stand. We made love on a nude beach at sunset on the Mediterranean before an appreciative audience, and engaged in other adventures that shall remain between us both.

I tracked Jeremy. He overdosed one night on some cocaine cut with fentanyl. He was lucky, they were able to resuscitate him. The married woman he was with in the room with him was not so lucky. She could have been Lisa had I given up on her. In an interview with cops afterwards, the cops got him to tell him where he got the coke so that they could get it off the streets. He gave up a dealer. They then charged Jeremy with negligent homicide of the woman he was with. He got ten years. But one day after bragging about what he could get married women to do, a lifer whose wife had cheated on him heard him. Jeremy died after slipping in the shower and banging his head a dozen times on the hard floor.