This Man

All weekend I kept wondering, "Who is This Man and what has he done with my husband?"

I mean, This Man looks like my husband, but, well...

This Man cooks and cleans up the kitchen when he's done; This Man uses the words "window treatment" in a sentence; This Man cares if the bathroom towels match; This Man makes a special trip to the Williams-Sonoma outlet because he knows I can't bear to pay full price for their over-priced stuff; This Man drops me off at a cafe for some wi-fi and a latte because he's given up trying to coax me into Wal-Mart; This Man keeps up his end of a day-long conversation and then wonders why I'm "so quiet" after a 10-hour shopping marathon; This Man tells me that he can't wait to get home because "I've been noticing how good you look all day"; This Man follows through once we get home....

On second thought, who cares about my husband? I like This Man!


The Wife Who Knows

Playing Chicken With Myself

At the end of summer, my husband met me after a business trip for a few days at the shore. It had only been a couple weeks since I learned about his big affair, so I was still pretty much a mess. I left the small town early that week, determined that I was going to confront him before we got on the plane to go home. I drove through three states on that trip, using the time in the car to rehearse my lines. I tried out different styles -- sad, angry, defiant, confused -- but always hurt. I had long conversations with myself, making up his responses and practicing how I'd answer. And I started planning what I'd do when we got back, if I decided to leave.

I picked him up at the airport on Friday afternoon, anticipating we'd hit the weekend traffic that locals warned me about. Instead, the post-Katrina gas price spike kept a lot of people home, and we breezed out to our seaside B&B. Maybe it was the unexpected ease of the drive, or because I was genuinely happy to see him, but somewhere along the way, the righteous fervor that had propelled me all week evaporated. Our conversation about infidelity never got any further than People Magazine's obsession with Brad Pitt.

After declaring myself for Team Aniston, the best I could do on the subject of us was a very tepid, "When was the last time you slept with someone who wasn't me?"

Nervous laughter from the other side of the car, "A long time ago, baby." Pause. "But you know, I could sleep with someone else tomorrow and it wouldn't mean anything to me. It wouldn't mean that I don't love you or that I love you any less."

I swallowed the lump in my throat and fought back the urge to scream. Instead, I answered, "I couldn't do it. Maybe it wouldn't mean anything to me, but I know it would mean something to you. I could never do anything to hurt you that much."

End of conversation.

We had a great vacation.


The Wife Who Knows

Why I Write

My husband asked me the other night, over some pretty good Chinese food, if I was happy about moving back to the big city. "Yes," I said decisively.

Would I do anything differently? "If it were just me," I said, "I wouldn't have considered living out here, I'd be back in my old neighborhood. But it's not just me, and thanks to you, I get to watch the sun rise over the water every morning. Other than the commute, it's really good."

How about work? "It's no secret that I loved my job when I was here before. But since going back to my old office wasn't an option, I think I landed in a great place. It doesn't feel at all like a second choice."

What about at home, would I rather have a different husband? "No," I said. "If I hadn't married you, I wouldn't have gotten married. I'd be pretty much the same girl I was when I met you, just a couple years older and a couple years more cynical."

And it's true. I can't imagine my life without him in it, but by the same token, I don't want to always wonder why he betrayed me, or to obsess over whether he'll do it again. I started the blog to help organize my thinking about these things. Even in my journal, my thoughts tended to scatter all over the place and I couldn't make any sense of it. For some reason, the possibility of an audience forced me to slow down, to step back from the big picture, to dissect the component parts. I still haven't found THE TRUTH, but I think I'm closer to understanding a lot of things than when I started.

Bottom line, I write because I love my husband.


The Wife Who Knows.

Truth or Consequences

I just found out that one of my old friends -- a guy with whom I toiled in the trenches -- quit his job in the face of an indictment accusing him of some pretty nasty white collar mischief. Even though he was just a bit player, he couldn't bring himself to rat out the good old boys and save his own hide. G. Gordon Liddy would be proud, but the rest of us are scratching our heads, wondering how one of the good guys could have gotten it so wrong. Knowing my friend, however, I bet that, up until the day the first indictments were handed down, he never believed they did anything wrong because (wink, wink, nod, nod) that's the way we do business around here.

We probably all suffer from a touch of the same hubris responsible for my friend's downfall, but my husband seems to be world class at justifying anything in his own mind... as long as he doesn't get caught. The only way I've been able to make any sense of his relationship with The Other Woman is to assume that he has created a separate compartment in his brain where she sits, and his perception is that everything that happens in that compartment doesn't touch anything else his life. Except that it does.

His rationalization of The Other Woman started almost as soon as we met. From the start, it was NOT okay for me to have male friends -- especially the couple ex-boyfriends I cared to keep up with -- but it was perfectly fine for him to "hang out" with The Other Woman. He kept telling me, "It's not the same thing." And at the time, I was willing to take him at his word. I have many friends of the opposite sex with whom I've never been intimate, so it made perfect sense that -- despite his insistence that it wasn't possible -- he had one too.

He was so adamant that their relationship had never been physical -- "I mean, c'mon, look at her. She's so NOT my type" -- that I was almost as stunned to find out that they'd had sex while he was going through his divorce as I was to find out about their affair while we were together. Still, if he hadn't decided it was okay to start sleeping with her again after our engagement, his hypocrisy would have made me mad, but it wouldn't have been enough to shake my faith in the foundations of our relationship.

How awful to find that my solid rock was really just a pile of rubble, carefully pieced together but not cemented in place. It looked good from a distance, but it tumbled to pieces at the first tremor of distress. I'm trying to rebuild my faith in us, but I'm afraid if I don't sift through all that rubble, I'll never find the bedrock underneath.


The Wife Who Knows

Saturday Night's All Right

Sitting here in my living room, listening to New Grass Revival, marveling at how much I like the new house with all the boxes unpacked. My husband and I made a big push this week to get everything in order, because we flew his kids up for the weekend. They're all in the family room right now, playing a game of cut throat Texas Hold 'Em. I went out early, betting heavily on two pair. Just like on TV, my husband drew a better hand on the river. "You gotta know when to hold 'em..." Oh well... I can live without that three dollar buy-in.

For the past two days, I've been trying like hell to quantify my husband's relationship with The Other Woman without success. I've thrown away draft after draft because words are failing me -- I can't find a way to make my point because, no matter how hard I try, I cannot get my head around it. My fondest wish is that I'd have no point to make -- in a perfect world, The Other Woman would just be one of my husband's former colleagues...

I think the thing that's making it so hard is that we're having such a great time. The move went well, we're settling into our jobs, we really like the new place, the kids like the new place so much that they're making summer plans around it, and I've never felt more in the middle of THEIR family unit as I have this weekend. I'm living the life I wanted -- except for all these unresolved feelings about his infidelity, things are as close to perfect as I could imagine.

Stay tuned while I puzzle through it.

The Wife Who Knows

Apropos of Nothing

I don't know why it is, but some songs just hit me right. If my life were a sitcom, the music playing over the opening credits right now would probably be "Long December" by Counting Crows.

"There's reason to believe that maybe this year will be better than the last..."

I was reminded of my waning days as a single girl when I found Tift Merritt's excellent "Bramble Rose" CD hiding under the passenger seat of my car. I was amazed at how quickly the opening notes of "Trouble Over Me" took me back to late 2002, early 2003 when my brain had that song playing on a continuous loop. Despite living a life of single girl bliss, like Tift sings, there were times when I wouldn't have minded someone to "make a little trouble over me."

There was one guy in particular, a longstanding professional acquaintance, for whom that song seemed written. We'd occasionally run into each other at meetings, and shamelessly flirt our way into dinner plans. After a couple glasses of wine, I always got the sense that through his witty banter, he was hinting that he might want more. And though I always sent back my own hints that more might be okay, we never closed the deal. It was probably wise not to complicate a valuable professional relationship for less than a sure thing, but I enjoyed the sparks. Ah yes, "love comes at quite a price, oh but don't we get along fine" ....

I haven't seen this guy since I've been back. It would be out of character to call -- our dynamic was based on chance -- but I'm sure we'll run into each other sooner or later. As I listened to Tift sing, I couldn't help but wonder if, when we do, we'll fall back into the same old groove or if my marriage has altered any of that.

Time to change the music....



The Wife Who Knows

It's the Little Things

When I commented on someone else's blog that actions speak louder than words, I got to thinking about my husband's actions lately. I've been watching his moods closely, because he tends to swing wildly during times of stress. As right-brained and attention deficit as he is, this move could have blown him out of the water. I learned a long time ago, however, that as long as he has a discrete task -- set up the stereo, hook up the surround sound, get the wireless working, hang shelves in the closet -- and plenty of time to regroup between each task, he's good to go.

So far, he's been great. Granted, he's only been here full time for a couple days, but he just keeps making me smile. He was not nearly so engaged when we set up our house in the small town. Perhaps it's because there are fewer distractions -- he's not on call for work yet, there is no Other Woman, the people who normally ask him to come out and play live miles and miles away -- but he hung with me pretty much the entire weekend to get things unpacked and put away.

After his new employee orientation session ended early yesterday, he called me from the car and told me he was going to cook the inaugural dinner in our kitchen. He's a pretty good, though somewhat haphazard cook, so I wasn't sure what to expect when I walked through the door. What I got was the meal of my dreams: he picked up on a throw-away comment I made this weekend about craving a perfectly roasted chicken, and made one for me. Roast chicken can be tricky, but he pulled it off. I don't think any dinner, even in the finest restaurant, would have made me happier. Best of all, however, was the way he beamed with delight that he got it so right.

Needless to say, I'm pleased with how it's going. I just wish I could stop flashing back to how awful he was when I moved to the small town. I would dearly love to stop seeing everything he does -- both good and bad -- through that filter. I desperately want to stop looking for hidden motives. More than anything, I want to take what he does, and especially what he says, at face value. But I can't help myself. Those memories are still too potent: every time I think I've made progress, something happens to remind me, and I'm back where I started.

Still, dinner last night was perfect.


The Wife Who Knows

Working 9 to 5

Today is my husband's first day at his new job in the big city. As I kissed him goodbye and surveyed the shrinking pile of boxes in our house, I thought back to the last time he started a new job -- shortly after his business imploded -- and marveled at how far we'd come.

It was almost a year-and-a-half ago; we left early for a long weekend, and were out of town the Friday his partners locked him out of his office. He took several frantic calls from his assistant while we were on the road, but all I heard on my end was his reassurances: "Calm down. Help them find the records they're looking for." When I asked him what was up, he said that the partners were doing an audit and were having trouble navigating his filing system. If only...

Though I knew that there had been friction between them over business practices, he didn't tell me that things had sunk quite as low as they had. I knew that he suspected from the beginning that his partners were running unrelated expenses through his business to keep earnings -- i.e., his share of the profits -- non-existent. I didn't know that he had started keeping his own records after he realized the profit and loss statements from their accountant were wrong. I did know that he was using income from a side venture to supplement The Other Woman's salary after they cancelled her health insurance, to cover the cost of a cleaning service, and to pay his kids for their part-time work. He didn't tell me that the side venture violated provisions in his employment contract limiting related business income, even though he'd been doing it long before he started up with these guys. I knew that his partners were nickel-and-diming him on expenses, but I didn't realize that they had frozen his Office Depot and Sam's Club accounts because they thought he was spending too much on toner and toilet paper. And I knew that he had concerns about the way these guys did business, but even he didn't realize until it was too late that they were setting him up to take the fall in case anything went wrong.

I stayed over an extra night that weekend to have dinner with friends, and cashed in some miles to fly back early the next morning. By the time we talked Sunday night, he was back in the small town and discovered that they'd changed the locks on his office. He only told me that he was worried that things were falling apart in ways that he couldn't stop, but said not to worry, that we'd talk about it when I got home the next day. He met me for lunch on Monday, and as he was telling me how he'd basically lost his job, his capital investment, almost two years worth of sweat equity, his reputation, and -- because they were threatening him with criminal charges -- possibly his freedom, it was all I could do to hold it together. The closest I came to losing it was when he said, "This was all for you, baby."

"No," I reminded him, "This was all about you."

Even before he started his affair with The Other Woman, this business consumed him. More than his kids, his "life-long dream" was the reason I left the big city in the first place. The irony was not lost on me that if I'd stayed put for another six months, if I could have waited until we got married to move, if it hadn't seemed so important to be with him THAT VERY INSTANT, I wouldn't have had to leave at all. He would have come to me, albeit as a failure.

Rather than dwell on what could have been, I made him sit down and sketch out a plan to deal with what was. After doing a little research, I assured him that the police were not going to knock on our door until they investigated the company's books and records -- something he knew his partners would prevent at all costs. I drew up a very austere budget based on my income, calculated how much we could supplement it if he kept the side venture going, and then encouraged him to call a few people in his network. He did not want to pick up the phone for fear that he would be a pariah in his community. Far from it: the next day, his phone rang with a tentative job offer that one of his contacts recommended. He had the position sewed up by the end of the week, and started mid-week the next week, just a month before our wedding. His reputation, it seemed, was intact.

As I kissed him good by the morning he left for the new job, I remember breathing a huge sigh of relief. The salary was good, the hours were predictable, The Other Woman was not a factor, and we could deal with everything else in its time. It seems funny to me that, despite the vast differences in circumstances, I breathed pretty much the same sigh of relief when I watched him drive away today.


The Wife Who Knows

With Friends Like These…

I’m writing this from the train, on my first business trip with the new job. Compared to the road marathons of my last job, this one – up and back, overnight – is going to be painless. No one is at home to miss me, unless you count the piles of unopened boxes and two very independent minded cats….

While I ride the rails, my husband is making the rounds of going away parties held in his honor this week. I don’t think I mind that none of them were scheduled last week when I was still in town – his friends have never been quite sure what to make of me, and I don’t really need them to blame me for taking their best bud away.

I’ve never been particularly fond of the ringleader of my husband’s group. As a long-time single girl, I got to be pretty good at recognizing bullshit artists; I learned to play their game, but also knew how to keep a healthy distance. After 15 years in the big city, I thought I’d seen it all. But my husband’s Buddy is in a class by himself.

When I met “Buddy,” he was married to his high school sweetheart. Though he professed to be happy with her, he never met a skirt that he wouldn’t chase. Pretty, ugly, fat, skinny, blonde, brunette, all natural, surgically enhanced, single, married, married to his friends – he didn’t discriminate. The Ice Princess, however, was impervious to his charms – the reason, I suspect, he never really warmed up to me.

My husband told me that he loves being a voyeur in Buddy’s life because Buddy’s lack of impulse control makes him so, well… interesting. His biggest coup: managing to be in the delivery room for both his wife and his mistress, who gave birth to his children within weeks of each other. When his wife found out that her daughter had a brother with a different mommy, she kicked Buddy out. He moved in with the mistress for a while on the theory that he could save on child support that way. It wasn’t long, however, before she had a restraining order and he was back out on the street.

It was during this time in Buddy’s life that my husband was having his affair and the string of one-night stands. The two of them were quite the men about town: I heard the stories, but they were always of Buddy’s exploits – my husband was just the wingman along for the ride. But people talk, and when I learned what to listen for, I realized that my husband was never the innocent bystander he made himself out to be.

These days, Buddy claims to be a changed man – swears he’s met the woman of his dreams and that his rambling days are behind him. I like this woman a lot, though at times, I question her sanity. Because I still see Buddy out and about, and when she’s not with him, he just can’t help himself. Despite this being a week of blow out celebrations and last times and farewells, I’m choosing to believe that my husband can.



The Wife Who Knows

The Official End

I don't live in the small town any more.

I kept chanting that line like a mantra during my first commute, and it made the miles -- especially those where I didn't move very fast -- fly by. The movers came and went, our stuff made the journey intact, and my husband is back in the small town tying up his loose ends. I've got a few days before he joins me to work my way through the maze of boxes. There's no stopping me when I get on an organizational tear, so it's probably just as well he's not here.

As I look at the mess, I can't help but remember the last time I moved. What a difference two years (and professional movers) make... Despite my last post, things are very good between my husband and me right now. Other than some general dismay that he's still keeping The Other Woman on a string, I'm pretty happy with "us." I don't know if it's me -- if the craziness of the move or my general euphoria at being back in the big city has smoothed out his rough edges -- but I swear it's him, too. There's a lightness about him that I haven't seen since we first started dating.

When the movers called to tell us that the truck had broken down halfway, we used the delay as an excuse to spend the night at a little roadside motel that we'd been joking about since the long-distance days of our courtship. A throwback to the golden age of mid-century motor travel -- I don't think the owners realize how retro-chic their decor is, otherwise they'd charge a lot more than $45 for the experience -- this little motel put the perfect period on my time in the small town.

When the movers called the next morning to tell us that the repairs were going to take longer than anticipated, we decided to spend our free day -- before he had to drive back to the small town -- away from our empty house, exploring. We found the nearest grocery store, we figured out the quickest route to the Interstate, we stumbled across the most convenient dive bar with big screen TVs, and we discovered that the little convenience store on the corner carries the Sunday Times in all its glory. Mostly, we had a ball being in each other's company, enjoying a few hours without an agenda, something that hasn't happened in the longest time.

This new chapter is full of promise.


The Wife Who Knows

Lies, Damned Lies...

My husband lies. If he didn't, I wouldn't have anything to write about here. Come to think of it, I wouldn't even have a husband. But still, he lies.

Most of his lies are of the benign "Of course you look good in that dress" type, which is why he has so many loyal friends -- he likes to make people feel good about themselves. I'm not much good at that game, perhaps because I was raised by people who were critical to a fault. As kids, we got the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the unvarnished truth, every day, all the time. As a result, I can be sort of harsh -- one of the reasons why I did so well in the big city, but, according to my husband, why I found it hard to make friends in the small town.

A lot of my husband's lies are more like exaggerations, especially when it comes to money. He grew up dirt poor, and has an almost pathological need to prove that he's risen above his humble beginnings. Thus, he inflates the value of everything -- for example, my Christmas present this year. He bought me a beautiful pair of pearl drop earrings, and forgetting that I do the bills, told me that he paid almost double what he did for them. Even at the price he paid, they're by far the most expensive earrings in my jewelry box. Still, he wanted me to think that they were more expensive (better?) than they really are. Much worse are the times that he puts off paying bills -- which is why I took over that chore -- so he can feed his free-spending habits. Hell, it's more important that his buddies think he's flush -- gotta pick up that round of drinks, gotta buy everyone's dinner -- than it is that the power company is sending us a final notice for our overdue electric bill.

I could understand and even overlook the little white lies and exaggerations if I didn't know how easy it is for him to tell big fat whoppers. Like the time I asked him point blank if he had slept with The Other Woman (more about that later) and he gasped in horror and said "God, no! Why would you think that?" I had a giant flashback to that conversation a couple weeks ago, when he told me, casually, that he was using her as a job reference. "Why," I asked, making no secret of my disdain, "Since you were always her supervisor, would anyone care what she thinks?"

I pressed him for a better answer after he tried to explain it away by telling me that "my field is just different from yours." When his business partnership fell apart six weeks before our wedding, his partners basically threatened to have him arrested for embezzlement to cover some pretty nasty conduct of their own. Because he'd had the foresight to bring home copies of paperwork and back up computer records, he was never seriously worried about criminal charges. When the partners filed a civil suit to enforce a covenant not to compete in his contract, however, the gloves came off. After a couple months of over-heated threats, the judge dismissed the suit out of hand because his partners were not willing to submit their books and records to prove damages. This is all a matter of public record.

Still, because it ended badly, and because he's still worried that they might, out of spite, bring up the specter of criminal charges, he lied on his resume. Not a little white lie, but a big, fat whopper. He changed the name of the business, and told all prospective employers that he sold his interest in it over a disagreement on business practices -- not technically true, as they never gave him money for his shares, but close enough -- and that he didn't believe they were still in business. In the process, he promoted The Other Woman to a full partner and told his new boss that she also sold her percentage and moved out of the area -- not even close to the truth, though she does now live 100 miles away. As a full partner, he explained, she is the perfect reference.

I didn't press him to tell me how he got her to agree to back up his story. I know he didn't go see her, and it doesn't look like there were any calls between them on his cell phone. I suspect that he sent her a couple flattering e-mails -- how've you been, what's new, I sure miss you this time of year, remember all the fun we had -- to butter her up before letting her know that, oh, by the way, I'm following my wife to the big city and need someone to verify this gaping hole in my resume, and since you were there, and since those bastards also treated you badly, won't you help me? She must have said yes, because he got the job.

It's hard to resist my husband when he's telling those sweet little lies. It's his big fat whoppers, however, that have all the consequences. I found that out the hard way.

The Wife Who Knows

The End of an Era.... Almost

Despite my best intentions, I did not blog over the holidays. I thought I would have lots of time to dredge up memories of Christmas two years ago, when my husband -- then fiance, but not quite roommate -- left my parents' house early so he could get back to "the office." Code, I was later to learn, for The Other Woman. Or of last Christmas, when, as a newly-minted husband, he decided he was not up for a trip north, and let me travel home alone. The Other Woman was out of the picture by then, but it was pretty nasty to spend "our first Christmas together" apart. Never again, I told him.

So this year, despite living many miles apart during the week, we spent Christmas together. We exchanged our presents at midnight on Christmas Eve, and had Christmas dinner at his brother's house the next day. We gave over-indulgent gifts to his kids in front of the whole family so they could all see what generous and loving parents we are. We even made a quick swing to the not-so-frozen north to see my family and engage in a little New Years revelry.

And in the blink of an eye, it was over.

Almost like my time in the small town.

As I type, three burly guys are crating our belongings. Tomorrow, they come back and load all these boxes on a truck. On Friday, we follow our stuff up the road to the big city. If all goes well, I will spend this weekend unpacking. Anticipating the life of a commuter from another small town into the city I love, living the life I wanted with the man I love. Yeah, he accepted an offer and will be with me full time week-after-next.

Even as I watch the movers work, I still have a hard time believing that it's real. Any minute now, someone will pinch me and I'll wake from my dream and find myself back at my miserable job, in this miserable town, with a husband who would rather be any where but with me.

For once, I think my inner fatalist is going to be disappointed.

Happy New Year,

The Wife Who Knows