Summertime Blues

I knew when we moved into a house on the water that we'd be overrun with houseguests come summer.

I knew because I used to delight in being one of those guests. And now, my friends and family have collectively ganged up on me to exact their revenge for all my years of warm weather freeloading.

They started coming Memorial Day weekend and will continue, pretty much unabated, until we leave for vacation in mid-August. Last night was the first night in almost a month that we didn't have anyone at the house except ourselves. It was nice just to sit there with a glass of wine and the remnants of the Sunday paper without feeling like I was ignoring people who came from long distances to see us.

My respite will be short-lived -- tomorrow, my best friend and her husband arrive for a few days. We've been friends for so long, they seem more like family and hardly count as company. In fact, I knew my husband was a keeper when he passed muster with these people. When they met at Best Friend's annual backyard barbeque three years ago, it was love at first sight. Best Friend's Husband, a man whom I have known since I dated his brother in high school, pulled me aside in the middle of the party and gushed like a starstruck teenager, "I like this one! You've got to keep him!!"

So I did.

When the four of us get together, it's as if my husband has been part of our gang from the start. And while I really like my husband's best friends -- who are coming to visit the week after the Fourth of July -- I don't have the same easy connection with them that he has with mine. Needless to say, I'm looking forward to seeing Best Friend more than some of the others who will be coming this summer!


The Wife Who Knows

Girls Night Out

I had dinner last night with a group of girlfriends, including the woman who is dating the Guy Who Broke My Heart. Girlfriend knew him years before I did -- she was even there at the dinner party where we met -- and was always part of our circle when we were together. During those five years, she never missed a chance to tell me how lucky I was to be with such an extraordinary man. So lucky, in fact, that when I confided in her as things were falling apart, she saw it as an opportunity. Of course, she neglected to tell me, as I was pouring my heart out to her, that she was more interested in being with Guy Who Broke My Heart than in being my friend.

I didn't know any of this until a couple years later, when Guy Who Broke My Heart and I started talking again. We ran into each other by chance on the street outside my house on a Saturday night. After a few minutes there on the sidewalk, I realized -- to my great surprise -- that I wasn't angry at him or sad over the situation any more. Since neither of us had any place else to be, I invited him around to the back porch for a drink.

About halfway through a really good bottle of Chardonnay, I said, "You know, you and Girlfriend should really bury the hatchet. We've been over long enough that it's just silly for her to still be upset over our breakup."

He spat out his wine and sputtered, "That's what she told you? Ha! She's not mad because of the way I treated you -- Girlfriend is mad because I turned her down when she made a pass at me right before we broke up."

You could have knocked me over with a feather. It's been almost ten years, and I still feel a twinge when I think about that conversation. Not because four years after that night on my back porch, Guy Who Broke My Heart and Girlfriend finally got together -- I'm over him -- but because it still hurts to know that someone I trusted betrayed me. When I think about how long I've held on to that hurt, it makes me wonder if I'll ever be able to let go of the lingering anger at my husband for his affair....


The Wife Who Knows