DEAR Emily,
I first met my wife when her firm started to do business with the firm I was working with. I married her a year and a half later.
Shortly thereafter, our companies had a parting of ways, prompting me to resign from my senior position. I went on my own, struggling in the first two years. My wife would often say, half seriously, that she had brought bad luck to my otherwise promising career.
About this time, a certain executive was getting much exposure in media after his promotion to executive vice president in one of the top 10 corporations in the country.
When my wife saw his picture in the newspaper, she remarked, “He has come a long way.”
When I asked if she knew him, she said, “He courted me when he was only a new hire in that company.”
This was years before she met me, but she said he dropped out of sight just as she was beginning to like him. She said she learned from friends that, because of his humble circumstances, he felt he was not worthy of her.
Now he is no. 2 in one of the biggest corporations, and my wife would talk about him after that.
Lately, she has been telling me that because of the bad luck she has brought upon me, she would not take it against me if I looked for someone else to take her place. I dismissed it as just a tease.
But she has not stopped pushing me into an affair, so that I had to ask her, “Are you telling me so that you can have one yourself?”
I asked if her ex had gotten in touch with her and invited her out, now that his status in society has risen. I told her that she probably wants me to do it first so that when she gets caught with this guy, she can always say she was just hitting back at me.
Her face turned cherry-red and she looked unsettled after that. Did I guess right?
CECIL
Aren’t these games you’re playing just infantile, if not infuriating and galling? Is your marriage on shaky ground, the reason you two are having this prickly teasing and goading?
All those won’t matter, really, if your emotional and physical involvement with each other—with its ups, downs and rolling around—has remained intact.
Are you able to go to each other for comfort at the end of the day without second thoughts? Are cuddling and sex still part of your bedroom regimen? Can you two even touch each other without cringing?
If the touching and cuddling are still a pleasant experience, there’s nothing to worry about, as you’re just having this mindless taunting common in long relationships.
But if the answer to all is no, you do have a problem. Have you yourself become obtuse not to hear or see your wife’s seeming call for help?
The other guy may look attractive because of his new-found celebrity and money, but you’re still her husband and all his glories turn to smoke at the end of the day.
She may be egging you to fool around, but does she really believe the other guy will pursue her now? Not very likely. He has his own constellation of high-flying, deep-pocketed executives, and living the life he has worked hard for, so that she might be so much less to him now than when he was below her then.
Are you right in guessing what her motives could be with all her goading? Unless a little birdie confirms this staged scenario to be gospel truth, your wife may just be sleepwalking and dreaming to resurrect the attraction she and that guy had for each other.
Either you wake her up, or you wake yourself up and see what’s happening to your marriage. Some rot may be eating away at its core, and it may not be caused by anybody other than yourselves.
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