High Infidelity

My girlfriend was telling me a story over the weekend about a friend of hers who was awoken at 5:30am by her husband of 26 years. His bags were packed, he told her; he'd rented an apartment and retained an attorney. I pictured her looking at the clock on her bedside table, maybe even groping for her glasses in an effort to put this new information into perspective, as if knowing the time might soften the blow. Maybe without her glasses on she hadn't heard him correctly. She probably said, "What?" even though she'd heard him just fine. Her head might have started to swirl, she might have even thrown up. But was this really brand new information? They'd been to counseling; their desires coaxed from them aloud. Was she really surprised or just shocked? I believe there's a subtle distinction between the two and that you can be one and not the other. Perhaps in her case the distinction didn't matter.

I asked my friend, "What's her name?" as a stab at injecting humor into the story. She knew I meant The Other Woman. But my friend said nothing as she raised her eyebrows, chin down and cocked her head at a knowing angle. Neither of us had to say that I'd hit the nail on the head. It's a story so old, so cliched that it barely merits re-telling. And yet, we tell it and listen to it over and over again without tiring. Maybe because we haven't gotten it into our thick heads. Maybe it's because we're guilty. Men want to have sex. Some more than others, but they do and that's just a fact. They want to see and touch your boobies and butt, and feel your warm, naked skin against theirs. And that's one of the main reasons they married you. Not the only reason, but certainly one of the top three. So, you can cook, clean and keep house for your husband, you can make him proud and impress his friends with your career, you can raise his children to be masters of the universe and you can listen to your husband and support him 'til you're blue in the face, but if you're not putting out, he's going to go elsewhere. It's that simple, and yet.

My friend leaned forward a bit and looked right at me as she continued, "She said that he told her that she just didn't understand him anymore, and you know when a man says that, it's usually because there's someone else who does." Bingo. Scene. Fin.

Since divorcing I've become fascinated with marriage. Why do some marriages thrive while others falter? What's the secret; what's the catch? I'm starting to think it's sex. So, I've been asking around. Turns out, yep, it is.

I could stop right there because it's really that simple and yes, Virginia, that's all there is to it, but there's more. The sex has to be good. And what makes it good for the man? The woman has to enjoy it and want it almost as often as the man. There are other factors like temperament, rhythm, proclivity and fit. And there is wiggle room in the realm of timing, taste, aural accompaniment and creativity. But it has to occur and it has to occur often.

As the saying goes, adults are just children with money. And if we continue along that trajectory, children are just golden retrievers walking upright. And dogs are really just simpletons; poofs of fur who's only desire is to eat, sleep, wrestle and be scratched. The rest is ancillary fluff. Men fit in there somewhere between children and dogs. The most educated, well-read and well-traveled man will tell you he hungers for sex, and he'll prove it to you any way he can if you don't quench that desire yourself. I see women forgetting that and I see them reminded in sad and painful ways. Every time you hear or read that a man has to desire his wife, remember, she has to want him right back as voraciously. Or else, as the years pass and her agenda is fulfilled and his physique fails to dazzle, her desire for him will wane. And he'll sense it; he'll know.

So I thought about that woman as she watched her husband walk out their bedroom door. There was nothing left to say in that moment and her main focus was probably containing the heart that was hurling itself against the cage of her chest or making just enough room for air to pass by the heaving sobs that were choking her breath. Or perhaps she just sat there, numb, wishing she had found him more attractive, regretting that his intelligence, confidence or bank account didn't translate into a log-lived hungering for his body. Wishing he'd kept more of his hair, or at least that extra thirty pounds off his girth. She knew she didn't crave him and had known it for some time. You can't fake good sex forever. She knew now that it's as important for the woman to desire her husband and didn't really blame him for leaving. She knew good sex and a lingering desire was and would always be imperative for the woman as much as the man to nurture a healthy relationship-- to survive the tempest of new passion-- and wished someone had told her that twenty-six years ago.