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