| I made a terrible mistake. It was a lapse in moral judgment. | You're too controlling / sickly / busy. | Everyone knows I love my wife, who is beautiful / smart / the best. | It was so flattering. I couldn't help it. | I guess I wasn't sure I wanted to be married anymore. |
| I fucked her, but I didn't love her. | I thought I loved her, but I didn't fuck her. | You know you're the only one for me, baby. | I guess I thought I just didn't deserve you. | Well, she wanted it. I kind of felt sorry for her. |
| I guess I was jealous that you were becoming so successful. | Really, my family means everything to me. | “I don't know …” | It only happened once. | I don't know why it happened. I only know it won't happen again. |
| It isn't you, baby, it's me. | This is the first time it's ever happened. | I was drunk / stoned / sad / lonely / depressed. | I didn't feel close to you since the baby came / your mother died / you started school. | It has nothing to do with our life together. |
| I guess I was starting to feel old. It was flattering. | I tried breaking it off, but she kept calling me, like "Fatal Attraction." | I had her hang out with us so she could see how happily married I am. | You KNEW our marriage was unhappy at the time. What did you expect? | Hey, wait, it's sexist for you to point out that all the men you know have done it! |
(with credit to Hoyden About Town, who did the "anti-feminist bingo" games.)
Damn. Just....DAMN.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't know how to go about having an affair. There'd be this light flashing over my head going "Asshole Asshole" over and over for even thinking about it.
ReplyDeleteHi, Leigh.
ReplyDeleteMe too, K. I can't imagine acting on such a thing.
I did have a tiny crush once - once in the last 23 years. I went to college when I'd been married for about fifteen years. I had this professor who stood at the front of the class lecturing passionately night after night about the topic in which I was majoring: social justice. He was charismatic, really different, interesting, smart, extremely compassionate, and tirelessly dedicated to a whole range of social justice issues.
At first, I had been scheduled to work in his office as part of my financial aid package. He was the Academic Vice-President for Diversity, and an elderly holocaust survivor had donated to the school his lifetime collection of materials on Pacific Northwest hate groups (the Aryan Nations' headquarters was nearby). I was going to catalogue these big boxes of material for the Diversity V.P.'s office.
Or at least that was the plan. One day, my professor walked up behind me in the campus cafeteria and said hello. Unlike when I walked into his class each night, I wasn't expecting to see him right then, and I was just...speechless (extremely unusual, LOL). I decided right then and there that I had no business spending ANY time around him outside of the classroom. He was married. I was married. And although the work I was originally set to do for him would have been intellectually and academically very useful to me, I finally told him family obligations and time commitments would not permit me to accept the position in his office after all.
My point in telling that story is that although I understand that sometimes a little attraction may happen, it just doesn't follow that one has to act on that.
I can't imagine how I would live with myself if I knew I had broken my vows, lied to sneak around, shocked my extended family, done something I was embarrassed to have my teenager find out about.
It's wrong. It's hurtful in ways that no one who hasn't experienced it can even begin to imagine, in ways none of us who have lived through it can even come close to capturing with words. It's as bad as you think - times 100.
I have two sisters. The youngest - her husband got another woman pregnant. The middle one - her husband, 49, recently decided he was in love with a woman at work who is in her 20s. It wasn't physical, but it was emotional. He wrote her these intense love letters by email AND in those he said he wasn't sure he had ever really loved his wife like she loved him, that his wife's illness was dragging him and the family down (so much for the "in sickness and in health part," I guess). Those things will be hard for my sister to ever get over. Now, she's trying to figure out how to push herself harder physically, to join him in interests of his in which he misses having a partner, like camping, but she is not really able to do that stuff anymore. Every day that she's not well, she's remembering those emails to that woman, all about how he resents her illness. She wonders what will happen first - her husband abandoning her with four kids, or her dying.
Sad.
TOTAL change of subject, K, but if you don't mind my asking, do you teach history? Your knowledge of history - at your blog and foxessa's - is really something. Is it a profession for you or one hell of a serious hobby?
"The middle one - her husband, 49, recently decided he was in love with a woman at work who is in her 20s. It wasn't physical, but it was emotional. He wrote her these intense love letters by email AND in those he said he wasn't sure he had ever really loved his wife like she loved him, that his wife's illness was dragging him and the family down (so much for the "in sickness and in health part," I guess). Those things will be hard for my sister to ever get over. Now, she's trying to figure out how to push herself harder physically, to join him in interests of his in which he misses having a partner, like camping, but she is not really able to do that stuff anymore. Every day that she's not well, she's remembering those emails to that woman, all about how he resents her illness. She wonders what will happen first - her husband abandoning her with four kids, or her dying."
ReplyDeleteThis is sooo sad......:(
It is such a shame that the ones who love us most behave in the most callous ways.
And for this to happen to your sister at such a vulnerable time could really impede her recovery.
I will say a prayer for her.
Thanks for the compliment! I read a lot of books but don't teach history. My librarian father passed on his love of it to all of his kids.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, I connected with Foxessa when I reviewed a book about New Orleans that her husband wrote:
http://killiansaid.blogspot.com/2008/01/killian-read.html
Thanks, Smileyface. Love the name. Just today, I was walking around with my smiley face backpack! I also have 3 smiley face necklaces that I wear as a set.
ReplyDeleteK, I will definitely be reading the review. It is wonderful to have parents who pass on a love of books. My child has a learning disability and so she did not learn to read as soon as I had expected. She has caught up now though and she reads for pleasure, which gives me GREAT joy!
I almost got weepy reading about your child. It must have been so moving when she learned to read. Sometimes I think there's no greater service one can give the world than teaching children to read.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely, K.
ReplyDeleteShe has an auditory processing disorder and was borderline hyperactive when she was little. I had always believed a good parent would read to a child every day, but I happened to end up with a child who could NEVER sit still, and I felt like such a failure as a parent. As a result, I resolved to let her learn by exploring as much as possible. When she was little, I trained myself to take my time everywhere we went. As my mother said, "I really respect the way you always literally take time to let a child smell the flowers." And I said, "Well, I can't read to her and get HER to read, so obviously touching is the only way she is going to explore this world for the time being." We went to every kind of event a kid could go to - children's museums, Civil War battle reenactments, festivals of all kinds. I'm known in my family as a pro at finding free stuff the kids can do - you know, going through the alternative weeklies looking for cool stuff. Once, we even found an open house at a veterinary school, where she got to see a horse on a treadmill, doggies in swimming rehab, the insides of a cow's stomach and various other animal parts in formaldehyde (and I didn't even let on that I was close to passing out at that point!).
I also got her into a private school that emphasized learning by DOING (thank god for scholarships!). When they studied the human body, they took over the entire school gym and used tents to represent the organs, yarn as blood vessels, etc. They adopted a wildlife reserve, where they visited once a month and kept journals on all sorts of things they found and measured there. When they studied the solar system, they turned the dark interior hallway into the solar system - to scale - and gave parents guided tours. When they studied the Lewis and Clark expedition, they actually took a canoe and did a portage around the Spokane Falls. The canoe was loaded with food for the food bank (which involved lots of measuring and calculating, which was the math part of the unit), and then they dragged the canoe through downtown and delivered the food to the food bank. And each year, there was a camping trip; survival skills were emphasized. The school wasn't into a lot of formal testing, but like on the camping trip they would make each child read and figure out the directions for assembling his or her own tent. How's that for a real life test?? No child left behind indeed!!
She did so well there. Her reading was slow to come, but she was learning a lot.
Then we moved down South, and I can't find a school like that here (good old Washington State - a progressive's dream!). Furthermore, she is getting older and there is just less "hands-on" learning offered to older kids than younger ones. Now, I have had her fully evaluated, and she has an auditory processing disorder. That explains why learning to read was so difficult - sounds just kind of blend together for her, so it took her a LONG time to really HEAR and KNOW sounds and then learn to associate symbols on the page.
So, she can read now, but we still struggle mightily when it comes to studying for tests. The words just don't "stick." When she has a big test, I help her study the way the Athenians studied - by walking at the same time. We take her study guide, walk the neighborhood, and do our review while she's in motion. That helps.
Still, I wasn't sure until the last couple of years (she's 14) that she REALLY was going to read for pleasure, since it had been a challenge for so long. But she asks for certain books, teenage girl stuff...Check this out - her project this past summer - her OWN idea, mind you - was to read some of the classics! We'd had collections of Western classics on her bookshelf since she was very young. When she told me her goal for the summer just past was to "challenge myself to read a few of them," I just wanted to cry with joy!
Yes, it's a wonderful thing to see a child learn to read. It opens up the whole world to them, as do books to all of us. And these days, there are so many people, especially young people, who don't read for pleasure. My mother, a teacher, tries to get her students to do it and they just act like it's some kind of torture!
Thanks, Smileyface. Love the name. Just today, I was walking around with my smiley face backpack! I also have 3 smiley face necklaces that I wear as a set.
ReplyDelete>>> Thanks. I like them too (hence the name!). They have a positive vibe. :)
They really do have such a positive vibe.
ReplyDeletePeople seem to think I'm being all retro when they see my smiley face stuff, since that was so popular in the 60s and 70s. What they don't understand is that I kept on liking them for 30+ years until they were stylish again!
Wow! This really resonated with me as a woman with cancer. I can't even count how many people in my support group have mates who cheated once they got sick. You really start to see that it is more common for partners (of people who develop disabilities) to cheat than it is for them to remain loyal/faithful. It's still nothing acceptable, to me though.
ReplyDelete