2 posts tagged “marriage”

Some kind soul calling herself "typewriter" was nice enough to leave a comment on my planned infidelity.  I was going to just respond in another comment, but it turned into a whole post:

She writes:

Have you spent any time thinking about how you will feel when your wife finds out?

Why not tell her what you're feeling, or go to couples counseling, or just get a divorce?

I have told her (aspects of) what I'm feeling.  I tried to get her to go to couples' counseling.  Her response was (in summary) "I'm not crazy and I don't need a crazy-doctor."  (She's a little old-school in many respects.)

And "just" get a divorce?  Ignoring the real-life complexity of divorce, and ignoring its effect on our children, I don't want to divorce her.  I love her.  I just want to sleep with someone else.

I wish I could give you five minutes of what it feels like to be the wife of a cheating husband.

I hope that isn't the voice of experience, but it probably is.  All I can say, there are two sides to every story.  Maybe "Typewriter"'s husband was simply a bad person.  Maybe he had a good reason.

I surely feel I have good reasons.  I'll give you the easiest to explain: she cut me off.  Our sex life dwindled, slowly, from "very good" (before we were married) to "good" to "marginal" and is now hovering around "nonexistent".  I have tried to explain to her all the ways this hurts me, but to no apparent effect.

 If your wife is a good person, why are you so willing to cause her pain?

Well, what you would have me do?  I didn't sign up for a sexless life, I didn't do anything to deserve it, and I don't see why I should have to endure it.

Would you live without, I don't know, electricity or indoor plumbing just because your spouse, for no apparent reason, wanted it that way?  Of course not!  Now, which is worse, life without indoor plumbing or life without sex.

If my wife couldn't have sex for some medical reason, I think I would be a lot more reluctant than I am, or even if she showed some sympathy for my problem.  In fact, she is pretty callous about the whole thing: since she doesn't want to have sex, I don't get to have sex.  End of discussion.

Well, to coin a phrase, fuck that.  I didn't join the priesthood and I didn't get myself sent to prison.  I have worked hard to make a comfortable life for her.  She drives a nicer car than any of her friends, she lives in a bigger house, buys more clothes, vacations in ritzier places.  I've never hit her, rarely even yelled at her, I've treated her with unfailing love, respect, and kindness, and, in all honesty, she has returned it -- except in this one crucial area.

So, she doesn't want to sleep with me?  Fine, she doesn't have to sleep with me.  I'd rather sleep with her, but if not, I'm going to sleep with someone else.

After 16 years of marriage, I have made the decision to be unfaithful to my wife. Like pretty much anyone attempting pretty much anything in this day and age, my first step is to create a blog about it.  Maybe the blog will help me do it, maybe it will keep me from doing it, I don't know.  I'm hoping that if nothing else, it will keep me honest.

Honesty is a funny thing to promise after I have spent the day planning lies -- and lies about dishonesty at that.  I need, for obvious reasons and some others, to preserve my anonymity, and so anyone who reads this should be aware that I plan to change all of the details.  If I say, for example, "blue eyes, blonde hair", the girl was probably Chinese.  If I say it happened in Oslo, it was probably Cleveland, and vice versa.

But I will try to tell the truth about the important things.  A lot of this, perhaps most of this, is embarrassing, humiliating, but I am going to try to speak as unflinchingly honestly as I can.

Maybe you are offended by the fact of my infidelity to my (let me say this straight out) blameless and virtuous wife.  I cannot disagree with you much.  If this blog were being written by someone else and I were only reading it, I would have to hurrumph something along the lines of, "Sleezeball."  On the other hand, someone wrote "To understand is to forgive, even oneself."  That's probably way too optimistic, but I am going to give it a shot.