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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Salon's female readers tell tales of extramarital temptation, emotional and physical abuse, and cowboy dreams that went awry.
Jan 14, 2004 | Straying and the perfect husband
My husband is just about perfect. He cleans and cooks and supports me emotionally and financially. He's fun and sexy in a nerd chic kind of way. He's a successful young academic who, as I write, is off interviewing for an assistant professor job at Harvard. We have incredible amounts of fun together -- traveling, thrift-store shopping, just hanging out. My single friends all tell me they wish they could find someone like him.
But a few months ago, I started dreaming of someone else. It all started with a letter I received, around the time of our one-year wedding anniversary. It was an e-mail from a boy -- a man now -- whom I hadn't heard from in 10 years. He was someone I had loved, who hadn't loved me back, when I was 20 years old. The attraction between us was intense, but he always had a reason for why we couldn't be together.
Now, after 10 years of no communication, he had gotten my e-mail from a mutual friend and written to me, opening up about his mother's nervous breakdown, her suicide attempts and subsequent hospitalization, about his fears of ending up alone and middle-aged in his tiny East Village studio. He had just turned 30.
We e-mailed back and forth several times. I told my husband about the letters. I teased him about someone else wanting me. My former crush flirted with me, and he was so much more forthcoming with his feelings for me than he'd ever been back in college when I was actually available.
I started dreaming about him at night. I remembered why this was the one person I had never quite gotten over.
He was skinny and blond and disheveled-looking with paint-splattered workman pants and boots and a button-down shirt so worn it looked almost silky. If he wasn't especially handsome to the outside world, if he was too skinny and a bit pimply and red-faced and pale and not exactly a man's man -- to me he was beautiful. Even though we were never actually lovers, I was wrapped up in the details of his body for years: the worn cotton of his T-shirt melting on his spindly ivory arms, the red Marlboro baseball cap he wore and the almost greasy, dirty blond hair sticking out from underneath. His gray Wrangler corduroys hanging off his hips and the ratty tennis shoes.
It wasn't that I didn't love -- and want -- my husband. I did, and do. Yet that commitment didn't magically erase my fantasy life.
The guy from college wrote me again, this time suggesting that he swing by Los Angeles, where I live, on an upcoming visit out to California. I had the nerve to ask my husband if I could invite this man to stay with us.
My husband, thankfully, said no and told me that it really wasn't funny anymore.
I wasn't willing to risk my marriage to pursue this flirtation, but I wasn't willing to give up my crush either. So I stopped e-mailing and started writing. Around the time of these e-mails I had begun work on a second book, a novel.
And guess what? My main character is married to a sweet academic whose only fault is working a bit too hard and long. She's having the affair with the boy from college that I didn't dare. I still dream about my old unrequited love, but now when I wake up I meet him on the page.
-- Jessica Berger Gross
Baptism by fire
My live-in boyfriend had cheated on me. It was a public embarrassment -- everyone knew. During the struggle that culminated in infidelity, he hit me for the first time and said horrible things to me. He came and went as he pleased. He was cold. Hostile. Brutal. Defiant. I was pleading, resentful, enraged and exposed. My response to this emotional sinkhole? Let's get married. And we did.
My marriage was to be a baptism. A sacred ceremony to save me from my sinking shame.
For me and my husband marriage became proof to the world that we were indeed lovable and able to love. Normal. Acceptable. The actual ceremony took place -- after just two days of planning -- on Halloween. Appropriate.
Our tentative partnership was born from mutual need. Aren't most? But our individual needs were more desperate and choking than most. Union didn't ease the terror, but twisted it. We didn't fill each other up. We went about bashing the vessels.
Not too long after the wedding, we were back where we began. You cannot (I hope) imagine the verbal bludgeons that one person can use on another. Fat. Disgusting. Loser. My mother is critically ill and he hopes she dies. My brother is in jail and he hopes he gets raped. My sister committed suicide and he's glad. Physical violence ranges from kicks and punches to litter boxes dumped on my head and his ass wiped on my face. I am not joking.
This is my husband. He's supposed to protect me. I am full of screams that don't come. Sorrow and loss and rage and recrimination. I allow it. I'm still here. The shame from which this unholy union was born is the shame that keeps me here.
Here's the kicker. No one suspects it. I'm a rising star in my industry. Strong-willed and outspoken. I'm an independent feminist. I kept my name. He is amiable and considerate. The picture of the liberal 30-something man. We appear united to all, while our home is a burning bunker.
To be fair, there have been splashes of sweetness. He is childlike sometimes, and I want to protect him. His vulnerability and need seem accessible then. I feel like I glimpse his humanity. I feel like I can reach him. But they're only splashes.
Now I crave kindness. I long for loyalty. I dream of a steadfast man who will love me completely. Someone I can love without fear. That's still what marriage means to me. But marriage won't wash you clean, and it won't save you. If you're looking for salvation, look somewhere else.
-- Anonymous
