Pencil Us In

When you get engaged, the first thing everyone asks, after they ogle the ring, is "Have you set a date?" People want to know, so they can start blocking off weekends on their mental calendars. And as we began making our wedding plans, you'd think that a date would be the logical place to start.

Not to my husband.

Sometimes I think he asked me to marry him so he could go jewelry shopping. Seriously, he was jazzed by the drama of the rituals surrounding our engagement -- buying the ring, setting up the perfect romantic situation, popping the question -- but so far from ready to take the next step that it sort of begged the question of why we got engaged in the first place.

Any talk of actually getting married became taboo. He had a host of reasons, some more logical than others, why we shouldn't set a date. The first was logistical. We decided that I would move from the big city to his little town. There were a lot of reasons why this was the more practical choice: his kids, his job, his comfort level... I was willing to make the change, even though it meant walking away from my beloved career when I was at the top of my game.

I first noticed a real difference in his attitude when I began a job search in his area. Every constructive step I took to move this ball forward, caused him to pull back a little further. It mystified him that I could be ecstatic about the prospect of moving to be with him full time, and sad about all the things I was leaving at the same time. He often worried aloud that I wouldn't be happy in his town if the only reason I was moving was him. Point well taken, but I never would have considered this move if he hadn't been waiting for me at the other end.

Instead of help and support, he would send me want ads for positions he knew I would never consider -- support staff at the local utility company or insurance sales, for example -- and then accuse me of not wanting to make the move when I wouldn't send a resume. It was his way of making it my fault that we couldn't set a date.

Eventually I found a position that I could stomach. Though it meant changing career paths, taking a pay cut, and stepping off the fast track, I reasoned that there would be other things in my new life that would more than make up for the lack of job satisfaction. As I made plans to move, he became even more uncooperative about a wedding date.

At one point, he told me that when I moved to the little town, I should plan to get my own place because he wasn't ready to live with me. That position was short-lived: I told him I would not uproot myself just to date him. If we were going to live apart, I would just as soon stay in the big city. He backed down. But he still wouldn't set a date.

Every time I brought up the subject, he accused me of being more interested in the whole process of getting married than in the life that we would build together. What a laugh -- I wanted to elope, but he was the one who insisted on a ceremony. I budgeted $3,000 for the whole thing, and made a concerted effort to avoid bridal magazines, wedding planners, and the helpful suggestions of friends who'd gone down the aisle before me. The ritual was the least of it.

So I stopped talking about it. I stopped making plans. I stopped wearing my ring. Too bad I didn't stop quitting my job and packing up that moving van. It would have saved me so much grief.

The Wife Who Knows

Prelude to Happily Ever After

We were in an elevator, going down, when my husband said to me, "There's no doubt in my mind that I want to spend the rest of my life with you." Those words were still hanging in the air when the door opened and more people joined us on the ride down. Good thing, because I was struck speechless. We were about four months into it, and everything was going like a house on fire. We'd talked in general terms about "the future," but nothing further out than family weddings and summer vacation.

And there it was -- "THE REST OF MY LIFE" -- in one throwaway sentence. There wasn't even a context, we were talking about where to eat when he dropped his little F-bomb. "F" as in forever. My heart started pounding, my stomach started fluttering, there was a ringing in my ears, time stopped for a second. Then I caught my breath, exited the elevator, and walked out on to the street. Neither of us mentioned it again.

A couple months later, I planned a surprise birthday weekend for him. I booked a room at a romantic bed & breakfast in horse country, set up a tour of some special places he'd always wanted to see, and made reservations at the most amazing restaurant in the area. We got up early that Friday morning; I told him to pack a bag for the weekend, and to make sure that he brought a coat and tie. That's all I'd tell him -- he had to trust me and guess the rest.

We set out in the car, with him calling out destinations, eliminating choices with every road I turned down. It was only when I exited the highway that he guessed the basics of what I'd planned. We checked into our B&B and set out to explore the quaint, historical town and surrounding countryside. As we drove around, he started peppering me with hypothetical questions about what I wanted out of our relationship. Some were pretty basic, like did I prefer the mountains to the water. Others were more personal, like what would I do if he got sick and needed constant care. And some were metaphysical, like my views on God, religion, and the afterlife.

Later that evening, as we were dressing for dinner, he said, "The thing I want most out of this relationship is to know that you're as committed to it as I am." We'd been over this topic a hundred times, mostly when he accused me of being a workaholic or suspected that I harbored feelings for ex-boyfriends. I rolled my eyes and told him that if he still had doubts about my commitment, then there wasn't anything else I could possibly do to satisfy him. Ha!

Even with this foreshadowing, I didn't see it coming. But at dinner, between a marvelous steak and a beautiful chocolate pastry, he repeated the same thing he told me in the elevator that morning a couple months earlier: "There's no doubt in my mind that I want to spend the rest of my life with you." The questions, it seems, were his way of going back over the elaborate checklist he'd created after his divorce. There was only one left to answer.

He pulled a little black velvet box from his jacket pocket and set it on the table between us. I stared at it like it was a mirage, afraid to touch it for fear that it would vanish if I got too close. He reached down and opened the box to show a beautiful diamond ring. "Well?" he asked, "Will you marry me?"

I stared. I swallowed a lump in my throat. I forced back tears. The only thing I could think to say was, "Don't do this to me." To this day, I honestly don't know if I meant that I wasn't ready to make this decision; or, as I told him, that I didn't want to cry in public. He told me later that his heart dropped to his stomach -- he never considered that I might say no. So he asked again. And this time, I said, "Yes, of course I'll marry you."

I sometimes wish that I would have gone with my gut and put him off for a while longer. Had I made him wait, I probably would have found out a lot of things about him that would have been devastating, but not fatal. But that ring was just so damn sparkly...


The Wife Who Knows

You Leave Me ... Breathless

Everyone knows the symptoms: distracted thoughts, sweaty palms, fluttery stomach, permagrin.... Call it infatuation or call it love, the first stages of romance are not times of rational thought. Scientists have tried to quantify the transformation that takes place when humans discover mutual attraction -- hook someone in that condition up to electrodes and see the spikes in brain waves, heart rate, perspiration volume. Maybe they hope to build a wonder drug that will simulate those giddy emotions, but it seems to me that all the scientific jargon in the world is no match for new love.

I prided myself on being ruled by my head and not my heart -- I knew how to run every time those butterflies fluttered. But for some reason that I don't understand to this day, the butterflies he inspired were accompanied by a tremendous sense of calm. Paul Simon wrote a song called "Something So Right" that sums it up pretty well:

You've got the cool water when the fever gets high...

He made the butterflies feel like the most natural thing in the world, because he was feeling the same thing. We left an amazing e-mail trail during those first few heady months, one long, breathless message after another. I look back over them now and marvel at our journey of discovery. No topic was too mundane to dissect, no event was too trivial to catalog, no emotion was too raw to put out there....

He couldn't tell me enough times in a day that he loved me, or that I was the most beautiful woman in the world, or that I hung the moon. After years of being the cynical tough girl, I'm still not used to such abject flattery. I tend not to trust words, because by themselves, they are pretty much meaningless. Give me actions any day of the week.

And oh boy, did he have actions. We spent as much time as possible together those first few months. He constantly amazed me with his thoughtfulness, his attentiveness, his sweetness... everything he did seemed designed for maximum effect on whatever vestiges of resistence I might still harbor. I pinched myself black and blue to make sure I didn't dream this man. It's hard not to look back on it all as an elaborate bait-and-switch.

The chase, it seems, is much more important to him than the catch. And until he was sure that he had me, he was going to do everything in his power to win. It's not exactly that he lost interest after I surrendered, but the dynamic changed. Suddenly, it became less important to spend time together. It was okay if he didn't fill my in-box with love letters. It didn't matter that he forgot to bring flowers when he said he would. It was no big deal if he skipped my important work functions. And so on.

I would chalk all of this up as the normal evolution of a relationship. It was inevitable that as the giddy newness faded, we would settle into comfortable patterns. Except that the whole time he was bowling me over, he was keeping his options open with a couple women from his past. Communication lines he swore he severed the day we met, remained, in fact, wide open. This discovery has colored every happy memory of our early days, to the point that I don't trust anything that happened during that time.

And that's a shame, because my journals were so damn happy...

The Wife Who Knows

Obsession

When my husband gets an idea in his head, he has a hard time letting it go until he's done what he set out to. Most times, his tenacity is endearing; at others, it's seriously annoying; occasionally, it's devestating.

For example, last summer we planned to see an outdoor concert. His kids were with us, so he decided that we needed a Frisbee to toss around before the show started. Fine idea, but after visiting our fourth store, it started sounding like a less good plan. When we finally found one in store number six, there wasn't enough time to play before the concert started.

Or the time he decided that he needed a special shirt to wear to a party we were hosting. He'd seen the perfect one in a store earlier in the week, but didn't buy it at the time. Now, with the party deadline looming, we drove to at least three different stores before we found the one he had been in. We barely made it home in time before our first guests rang the doorbell.

These are fairly benign, but incredibly typical, examples of his behavior. Shortly after we got engaged, he got it in his head that he wanted a long engagement. Fine, I said. Give me a rough timetable. But he refused to discuss it, to the point that his cold feet became a sort of sick joke between us. He became obsessed -- in the same way single-minded way he did when he was looking for a Frisbee or a shirt -- with putting me off. All of the sudden, instead of being the perfect woman with whom he wanted to spend the rest of his days, I was a shrewish harpy who was trying to tie him down and change him into a placid, domestic homebody.

Once he got this idea in his head, there was pretty much nothing I could do to disabuse him of it. When I stopped wearing my engagment ring, I told him it was the only tangible thing I could think of to convince him -- and the world -- that I was NOT the one with the obsession. But it was too late -- the idea was already there. And he ran with it, complaining bitterly about me to anyone who would listen. It turns out that there were a lot of people in his support group, some of whom gave him support that was much more than moral.

This was not an easy time for me, and I often considered leaving to let him figure out what he wanted without me in the picture. But everytime I pulled away, he came after me with a ferocity and tenacity that seemed to all the world like true love. I believed it. And I stayed when I should have run like the wind.

I'm pretty convinced now that obsession is never a good thing.


The Wife Who Knows

When Worlds Collide

My husband did not live in the big city. And while he claimed to love coming to see me there, I soon figured out that his enthusiasm for urban life extended only so far. At first, he drank it all in -- going to every art museum, literary book store, gourmet coffee palace, and sleek martini bar in sight. He delighted in ordering take out sushi in the middle of the night, of being able to find any manner of material good without going to Wal-Mart, of meeting people who wore Kangol caps and spoke in iambic pentameter...

But after a while, it started wearing on him: the people, the traffic, the noise, the bustle, the culture, the pretentiousness. He never learned how to make a bubble and retreat into it -- it was all stimulation, all the time for him. After one particularly tiresome work-related cocktail party, he confessed that he felt terribly uncomfortable around my friends. He said he felt like they were all staring at him, waiting for him to screw up so they could pounce on his faux pas.

Not true, I insisted. They all like you, and enjoy being around you because your perspective is so fresh. But they resent me for taking you away from them, he said. Again, not true, I said. They see how happy I am with you, and are in awe that any man could break past my wall of resolve. Anyone who has doubts about us, I said, changes their minds after five minutes around you.

Still, nothing I did or said could ease his discomfort if we strayed too far outside my bedroom. Eventually, the balance tipped, and I started traveling more frequently to his small town. His friends regarded me as either a curiousity or a passing fad. One of the first weekends I spent with him, he took me to a Fourth of July party at his best friend's house. My khaki skirt and black tank top singled me out as the only woman there who was not wearing red, white, and blue. Believe me, they all noticed.

In truth, I didn't much mind the small town. I was raised in a similar place and understood the people who lived there, so it was easy enough, at least on the surface, to adapt. But you have to remember that I spent 20 years putting my small town past behind me, reinventing myself as a sophisticated city girl. Because I was used to pulling my old life out a few times a year at the holidays and family reunions, it was with some dread that I realized the small town girl was in demand all the time.

I don't mean this to sound bitter. We worked very hard to find the balance between our worlds, and often succeeded. But it became increasingly clear that if we were going to be together, it was going to be in the small town. I was mostly okay with this, because I felt like a life outside work was a fair trade off for giving up the Sunday New York Times and truffle risotto. What I didn't realize, however, was that there were things about him that would make it impossible for my new life to ever compensate for the life that I was leaving.

I understand what they mean by hindsight being 20-20....


The Wife Who Knows.

Ancient History

I had a big life before I met my husband. I started dating when I was 15. I got married 25 years later. Along the way, I had several serious boyfriends, including one I said I'd marry. Luckily, I got out of that one before it turned out badly. There were times when I dated many men; there were times when I couldn't be bothered. I met my husband during one of the latter, seriously unattached times.

The last man I dated before we met was 15 years younger than me. This guy pursued me with a single-mindedness that was incredibly flattering. He looked like a Calvin Klein underwear model, fresh out of college, and working at an entry-level position in the field where I'd made a name for myself. At first, I thought he was just ambitious and blew off his advances as an inappropriate attempt to climb the career ladder on my back. When a mutual friend intervened and asked why I wasn't paying more attention to this poor guy, I decided to have dinner with him.

When he started pouring on the charm, my guard went up. I learned over the years not to trust the words of very good looking men, because they've never had to work at getting girls. But the more I got to know him, the more I found that he was a very sincere, very thoughtful, very sweet, very unformed young man. In short, I decided to take him on as a project. It was an interesting relationship -- more mentor-protege than boyfriend-girlfriend. The more I helped him with his career, the more he became my biggest fan. I got nothing from him but uncritical praise and incessant cheerleading. Between his devotion and the age difference, it didn't take long before I got a little weirded out and cooled the romance. But I kept the friendship.

Not long after I met my husband, I introduced him to my friend. I never told him any of the details of our relationship, but my husband bristled in his presence. He told me after that first meeting that he'd prefer I never saw my friend again. "Why?", I asked. "Because of the way he looks at you."

Thus began the biggest battle of our courtship. My husband had a very hard time with the fact that I had a life before we met. He wanted constant reassurance that I wanted him more than any of the men in my past. And the simple fact that I was still friends with someone I'd once dated must mean that I still harbored some desire for him. This jealously extended to my very platonic (and sometimes very gay) male friends, business associates, and random acquaintences. I hated it. It was almost as if he wanted me to hang a sign around my neck warning all men to keep a safe distance because I was someone else's property.

To prove how rational I was, I told him that I wasn't intimidated or threatened by the fact that he had a close female friend with whom he spent a lot of time. I assured him that I understood the relationship, and believed that men and women could be friends without sex being involved. This would prove to be a fatal mistake on my part. I should have insisted that what was good for the goose was absolutely necessary for the gander. But my principles were more important, and by god, I was not going to be a hypocrite.

If only I had married a man who felt the same way....

The Wife Who Knows

The Blame Game

The first time my husband tried to make love to me, he couldn’t. The second time he tried, same result. When it didn’t happen the third time, he started getting seriously paranoid. He reassured me in an increasingly more panicked voice that, “This has never happened before.” And, disappointed as I was, I was good. I told him not to worry, “we’ve got plenty of time.” And I meant it.

Though it was not funny at the time, we’ve since had our share of laughs at his (non) performance those first few times. We were in a hotel room, again, neutral territory, in a bed that had no ghosts or memories or previous associations for either of us. Fueled as we were by alcohol and desire, we were determined to go slow and make the first time special. Maybe things would have turned out better if we hadn’t been so damned insistent on being “romantic.”

He told me later that I’d just absolutely blown him away. After his divorce, he was adamant that he would stay single and footloose for a good long time. He decided to set a bar so high that no real girl could possibly hope to meet it. Well, surprise! Not only did I exceed his threshold, but I added things to the list that he hadn’t even considered. I was smart, accomplished, worldly, confident, well-read, well-traveled, sexy (he said), AND I also owned power tools and knew how to drive a tractor. In short, he said I was so perfect, I intimidated him.

Okay…. so it’s MY fault.

When I was in high school, I had a rock star boyfriend. I think the biggest reason I went with him was because his long hair drove my dad crazy. Being a rock star, he had a very strong sense of himself and his power over girls when he was on stage. Every time he played a high school dance or backyard party, the girls would swarm. Of course, he loved it. And of course, he couldn’t help himself. And when I caught him with some other girl, he told me that if I were a better girlfriend (secret guy code for if I’d have sex with him), he wouldn’t have to cheat. Now you know how I lost my virginity. Imagine my surprise when I found out that, even after I gave him the goods, he still cheated.

At the tender age of 17, I made a mistake and learned a hard lesson from it. But I figured out early on that nothing I do is ever an excuse for a guy’s bad behavior. And from that point on, I was pretty good at not putting up with crap – especially infidelity.

I was so charmed by the way my husband blamed his temporary impotence on me, it never occurred to me that this incident might foreshadow darker things to come. That there would always be some external reason why he wasn’t to blame for his shortcomings, his demons, his bad behavior…. And that because I would most often be the closest person at hand, the finger of blame would get pointed back at me.

At the time, I was so flattered to think that he considered me to be the paragon of perfection, that I never considered the possibility that he had told an elaborate lie to the woman he’d been seeing – and with whom he’d been the very night before – about his whereabouts that weekend. You bet, it was all my fault.


The Wife Who Knows

Dancing In The Dark

I remember everything about the day we met like it was yesterday. It was a beautiful spring day, a Friday going into a weekend without big plans. E-mail banter had escalated into a long telephone conversation, one without much point, except to cement the attraction that had been growing between us. We decided to throw caution to the wind and put faces to the names that had been part of our lives for so long.

We agreed to meet at a restaurant in neutral territory. No pressure, no big deal. Let's just have a drink and see where things go. But for some reason, I was a nervous wreck. I left work early -- I had to pick up my car at the garage, change into a little black dress, primp a little...

Bruce Springsteen said it best: "I check my look in the mirror, I want to change my clothes, my hair, my face..."

I called him from the car to tell him that, between a mechanic who wanted to chat and weekend traffic, I was running late. Not to worry, he said, he'd be waiting at the bar with a beer in his hand. When I got there, I had to sit in the car for few minutes to compose myself. Butterflies! The ice princess had butterflies! This was serious.

Deep breath, tousle hair, apply lipstick, go! Our eyes met the instant I walked through the door, and his face lit up into a big smile. I shook his hand, uncertain what proper protocol dictated at a moment like this. I ordered a glass of red wine and sat down next to him. Try as I might, I couldn't meet his gaze for more than a few seconds, because I felt like I would give away too much if I let him look in my eyes for too long. The TV over the bar was tuned to baseball, so I feigned a deep interest in the national pasttime to disguise his effect on me.

Conversation flowed easily, and we decided to move on to a better restaurant for dinner. We found an Italian place downtown that could seat us immediately. The food was mediocre, but I'm not sure either of us really noticed. By this time, I had regained enough composure to look at him. He kept reaching toward me and drawing away at the last moment, unsure if I'd welcome the advance. I decided to keep him off balance.

He paid the tab for dinner, and we wandered out on to the street in search of music. We found a great band at a nearby bar, but after we settled into a booth in the back, we forgot why we'd chosen this bar in the first place. More free-wheeling conversation, more laughter, more beer. He finally worked up the nerve to put his arm around me. His touch was electric.

I could tell he wanted to kiss me, but I kept averting him. Everything had been so perfect up to this point, I didn't want anything to ruin it. I kept thinking, "What if he's a bad kisser." I couldn't bear it if he was one of those guys who's wide-mouthed and sloppy, all tongue and no finess. Or worse, if he kissed like he was still in junior high, all stiff and fish-faced. Staring at myself in the hazy mirror of a dimly-lit ladies room, I decided it was the moment of truth. Here goes nothing, I told myself.

If only he'd been a bad kisser, I might have spared myself a world of agony. But no, he was phenomenal. He kissed me the way I wanted to be kissed. Still does. And the truly sad thing is, I haven't kissed anyone else since that moment. It kills me to know that he has.


The Wife Who Knows

Life Lessons

I had fun in my twenties. Between college, graduate school, moving to the big city, and joining the workforce, every day was filled with endless possibilities and new discoveries. I always knew I was smart, but going out on my own taught me that I was competent, capable, and fearless to a degree. I was a sponge -- soaking in every new experience and mimicking the social graces of people I admired. I started traveling and racking up experiences of my own. By the time that decade ended, I'd transformed myself into a girl-about-town: educated, worldly, and at ease in most any situation. When I "found" myself, I liked the woman I'd become.

My husband's twenties were very different from mine. He dropped out of college to get married, became a father three times in five years, and worked like a madman to keep his family floating above the poverty line. Not to imply that there is nothing to be learned from dirty diapers and school carnivals, but his main focus was on others and not himself. He tells me he doesn't regret a minute of those years, but, by the same token, he'd never go back. In a sense, he was a mid-life crisis waiting to happen.

I met my husband just a couple months after his divorce became final, and a little more than a year after he left his first wife. He said he'd been thinking about leaving for years, but couldn't bring himself to walk away from his comfort zone until he caught her in an affair. And even though he said that leaving should have been a huge relief, the only thing he felt was failure.

It took him a few months to come out of that walking wounded phase and embrace the possibilities of being a single, attractive, accomplished man in his forties. He got himself a hip bachelor pad that he decorated in earth tones and textures and splashes of color for effect. He kept it spotlessly clean -- the first time, he said, that he had a place that was his and his alone -- and stocked with the accoutrements of bachelor life. He met girls at work, he met girls in bars, he met girls on-line, he met girls in the elevator of his building... He was a kid in a candy store.

Who knew that years in a loveless marriage was excellent preparation for the compartmentalization that is required to see a lot of people at the same time? He found out that he was good at telling each one what she wanted to hear, giving her just enough to keep coming back for more, always dancing on the edge of danger. It was heady stuff for a man who'd spent his life doing the right thing. And every time a girl started getting needy, he'd play the rebound card: "But baby, I'm not ready for anything more serious than this great thing we have going... yet. Just be patient." And the amazing thing is, most of them would! Wow! He was selfish for the first time in his life, and it was working for him!

Then he met me. And that changed everything... so he said. But as I was to learn, his newfound power proved to be more seductive than finding true love. Wow, indeed.

The Wife Who Knows

Ten Things I Like About You

If pressed to name the top ten things I love about my husband, I'm not sure I'd trust the list I'd generate. I'm doing it because I need to embrace all the wonderful things about this man in between my bouts of hating him. It's particularly hard, because right now, I can see the not-so-silver lining behind all the traits that attract me to him. It's Sunday, and I'm feeling generous, so here goes:

1. He's a true believer. Not quite Don Quixote, but my husband has a set of core values and principles that endure, no matter what the talking heads are saying is fashionable. A pragmatist by nature, I am in awe at his ability to keep the faith, no matter what.

2. He's creative. He has this instinctive need to inject beauty in the world, however he sees it. The man writes poetry, composes music, and paints. He's got a great eye as a photographer, a strong sense of design and composition, and an eye for color. He knows how to make people take notice.

3. He's a loyal, supportive, generous friend. Once he decides he likes someone, there is not a better friend in the world than my husband. At times, people take advantage of his generosity and loyalty, but it takes a lot to get him to waver in his support.

4. He's kind. Genuinely so. He has a knack for putting people at ease because he is interested in getting to know them and hearing what they have to say. He attracts a lot of strays this way, but I've never seen him be intentionally cruel.

5. He's an amazing father. If you asked his kids to name the person whom they most admire in the world, they'd name their dad. Having been raised in a family where emotions were considered signs of weakness, I am constantly amazed at the loving, open relationship between him and his children.

6. He challenges me. I am not a complacent person by nature, but he always pushes me to do just a bit better than my best. While he knows how to lavishly praise a job well done, he always helps me take it to the next level.

7. He's never at a loss for words. He is well-read, well-spoken, a skilled devil's advocate, and genuinely curious about the world. We don't have dull conversations, ever.

8. He never says never. Once my husband decides to do something, he gives it his all. He tackles problems head on, and looks for creative solutions that other might not consider. He doesn't like to admit defeat, so often keeps going when others have given up. I always want him on my team.

9. He has a wonderful, if somewhat warped, sense of humor. Though I'm not always in complete agreement with him about what it takes, he knows how to lighten things up, especially when I start taking myself too seriously. If laughter really adds years to a person's life, I'm going to be an old lady.

10. He knows how to kiss me. There is no substitute for a good kisser. Because if I know one thing, it's that if a man can kiss, it's 99.9 percent certain that he's skilled in other areas, too.


My dilemma is reconciling all these wonderful things with the dark side that I know lurks beneath. Every time I think about leaving, I wonder how I will fill the gaping hole in my life that his absence will create. No easy answers here...

The Wife Who Knows

First Impressions

I met my husband because we share several mutual interests. For years, we drifted around the perifery of each others' lives without much impact, aware, but not really, of each other's existence. That all changed a couple of April's ago, when a series of improbable events brought us together in a way that we could not have predicted.

Like I said, I was minding my business, going to work at my big girl job in the big city, when one day I found this man at the center of my life. It was like a Mercury splashdown -- a manned space capsule descended, burning through the atmosphere, and parachuted to a spectacular landing behind the elaborately constructed walls around my heart.

Forget astronauts -- it was like a hurricane. I do not mean to make light of the circumstances of people who've lost everything to Katrina and Rita, but that's what happened the day he blew into my life. The landscape was rearranged -- altered -- in fundamental ways. Almost as if the life I'd constructed for myself never existed, except maybe as a hazy, far off dream.

And it was mutual. I wasn't the only one who was rearranging her schedule to fit in more time together. Nor the only one who dialed late at night, just to hear my lover's voice as I drifted off. Nor the only one who fretted about how to introduce this new person into a very tight circle of family and friends. As I look back at e-mails and journal entries from that time, I'm struck by how in tune we were from the beginning.

While it was as breathless as my previous encounter with "Love at First Sight," there was also something very grounded about those first months with my husband that was missing with that other man. I was calm -- eerily calm. And for the first time, I think I understood what all my coupled up friends had been telling me: when you meet the right man, everything makes sense. Even if it's nonsense. God, did I revel in falling in love.

Looking back, with all the benefit of hindsight, I can find a hundred or thousand or million things I'd do differently. But one thing I wouldn't (or rather, couldn't) change is the perfect sense of rightness between us. Even after I've peeled away all the lies and deceptions, I still find one fundamental truth: we are really good together.

Thus, my dilemma. How could anyone be THAT good an actor all the time? So I'm trying to find a balance between what I know to be true about us, and what I've learned about him that is inconsistent with all that. In the end, will I stay? At this point, it's hard to tell.

The Wife Who Knows

Love at First Sight

One of my girlfriends once told me, "When you meet THE man, you'll know." My favorite ex-boyfriend -- the one who morphed into a great and supportive friend -- told me, "You'll find the obvious one and it will all make sense."

"Ha!" I said to this nonsense. I knew love at first sight and I didn't trust it. I was in my mid-20s when I was blown away by an amazing man. He was thoughtful, he was articulate, he was kind, he was beautiful, he was a sensational lover. The connection between us was instant and intense. It took us weeks of deep conversations before either of us would acknowledge these feelings. Oh, but when we did... Our first kiss lasted for about four hours. Our first date, for a weekend. We moved pretty quickly to inseparability.

Which is where we stayed for five years. What a run we had: I learned to sail and rollerblade and play tennis because he did; he subscribed to the symphony and learned to cook with wine because I did; we ran road races and climbed mountains, took classes and went to lectures; we traveled every chance we got, but just as often, we stayed home curled up with our books in neutral corners of the living room.

We got snowed in one weekend and started talking. When I asked him where he saw our lives going, he said, "This is perfect. I don't want to change a thing." "Ever?" I asked. "Ever," he said. Thus, the beginning of the end.

It was several months before the implications of that conversation set in, but as soon as we said it out loud, there was no going back. Once we admitted that our relationship had gone as far as it was going to go, it was only a matter of time before one of us blinked. In the end, it was him. He wanted us to be friends. I couldn't do it, though I promised to be cordial if I saw him on the street. He's still not married, though he's been with his latest girlfriend for four years now.

When I watched him walk out my door that last time, something in me shut down. I vowed never again would I give anyone the ability to bring me to my knees. I built a big metaphorical wall to protect my heart, my sanity, my soul. And damned, if it didn't work. When I started to date again, I ran so fast at the first sign of anything that even remotely resembled commitment that my friends accused me of being just like the freakish men I was trying to avoid. Sometimes I think I should apologize to the men who tried to get past the wall during those years, but I know I was better for having it in place.

If only I'd kept my resolve when I met the next man who blew me away....


The Wife Who Knows

How Did I Get Here?

When I met my husband, I was minding my own business. I had the life I pretty much always wanted: I lived in a cute little house in a vibrant neighborhood in the big city, worked at a professionally fulfilling and personally satisfying big girl job, bought new shoes before they went on sale, and never thought twice about traveling solo to the places I wanted to see. I worked out at a yuppie gym, bought my produce at the organic market, took mass transit to run local errands, and sought out eclectic live music in coffee houses and taverns around town.

There was never a shortage of men to date. But after a devestating break up in my early 30s -- this was the man who was supposed to be my destiny -- I decided that I really was better off on my own. To quote a maiden aunt, "Until I find someone who can take better care of me than I do, I'd rather not be bothered." For the most part, it wasn't a problem. There was always a spare man waiting to escort me to the random black tie event, wedding, or Super Bowl party. And after my terribly unsatisfying Mr. Goodbar phase, I found a couple of buddies I could trust who would stop by from time-to-time when the urge hit.

There were only a couple of times when it got dicey:

Like when my well-meaning friends tried to fix me up with the single men in their lives. I can't count the number of times I had to ask, "What were you thinking?" after one of these arranged adventures. I had to remind some of my dearest and most cherished friends more than once that a pulse is not a personality trait...

Or when married men assumed -- since I was single and all -- that I'd be up for an affair. How many times did I hear, "My wife doesn't understand me." Well, yeah, I'd say, I wouldn't understand it either if my husband were out at a bar in the middle of the night trying to pick up a girl for a fling. And the ever popular: "I never cheat, but there's something different/ special/ amazing about you." Yeah, right, buddy. I might have believed it the first time I heard it, but by the tenth time I started wondering if there was a class that all married men took to learn their pick up routines.

My standard response was always to tell the poor man to go home and tell his wife how much he loves her. Because, I said, I deserve better than a man who has to lie to be with me. I always thought that if I were married, I'd want someone like me out there watching my back if my husband thought about straying. Just slow 'em down a bit and get 'em thinking about some consequences.

Where were those girls like me when I needed them?


The Wife Who Knows

Begin at the Beginning

As I sit here, wondering where to start, I remember the words of my freshman English professor who told us, when writing our first college essays, to "begin at the beginning."

So I'll start by saying that I am not a public person. Maybe it's because I was raised by people who think that emotional displays are signs of weakness, but I don't understand the people who respond to Jerry Springer's disfunction of the day by going, "Hey, that's me! I'm gonna call that number and get myself on TV!" I'd rather work my problems out in private, or at my most public, over a glass of good red wine in the comfort of my best friend's living room.

Nor am I an exhibitionist. I don't understand people who feel the need to share every detail of their lives. The web is full of people who are comfortable with everything -- and I mean EVERYTHING -- hanging out for all the world to see. Not me. I don't even like it that my picture shows up occasionally out there because I was in a group photo at some public event.

But here I am with my own blog, because if I don't vent my anger and hurt, I will go crazy. Two months ago, I discovered that my husband is a liar, a cheat, and a hypocrite. I always knew that he wasn't perfect, but never dreamed that his flaws are as deeply rooted as this. It's tempting to blame myself -- if only I'd done better due diligence before saying "I do." If only I'd paid more attention to the giant red flags that were flying from the beginning. If only I'd been a bit less willing to believe his stories, even when they didn't make perfect sense. If only I hadn't fallen quite so hard....

If only...

Suffice it to say, I would not have married this man had I know then even a tenth of what I know today. But that's all water under the bridge. I married him, and now I have to live with the consequences of not only my decisions, but also of his actions.

With each post, I'll fill in more details as I mull over my options. I don't want this to be overwhelming. Just cathartic.


The Wife Who Knows