DEAR EMILY,
I first met my wife when her own firm and the company I worked with started to do business together. I married her a year and a half later.
Shortly, however, the relationship between my firm and hers turned sour, prompting me to resign, thus losing my senior position in my firm. I went on my own, struggling in the first two years.
During those hard times, my wife often said, half seriously, that she had brought bad luck upon my otherwise promising career. At about this time, a guy she knew from another company started to get a lot of media exposure due to his hefty appointment in one of the top blue-chip companies in the country. Turns out he courted her before I met her. My wife talked about him occasionally after that.
Lately, because of the bad luck I’ve had, which she kiddingly claims as her doing, she said she would not take it against me if I looked for someone else to replace her. I thought it was just a joke until one day, from out of the blue, she asked me if I would enter into an affair with my former girlfriend if she were amenable to it.
When I said she was not the type who would be unfaithful to her husband, my wife’s retort was: “She is no longer the chaste convent school-bred girl you used to date. She has experienced sex. She must often wonder what it would be like with you.” In that case, she said, my ex would also be amenable to an affair with her ex-suitor.
One night when we were about to make love, my wife suggested that we think of someone else, saying “to add spice to the engagement, as a magazine article advised.” It may just be mental, but mental adultery opens the door to real adultery.
IN LIMBO
Ugh. Seems like someone is set on playing the field? Using your imagination during sex in the privacy of your bedroom is a good thing to spice things up, including taking on role-playing. But involving other people in the mix? This somewhat gives pause—a long one.
Does your wife think that having sex with a third party will pull you completely out of the doldrums or solve your feeling of inadequacy in this new venture of yours? Does she think having an affair with your old girlfriend will make everything in your business, er, life better?
Isn’t that an artificial excuse—having to go through a questionable route that could alter both your lives forever? Take heed of the old saying, “Don’t play with fire, if you don’t want to get burned.”
If she just wants excitement, tell her to enroll you both in activities like roller-blading, sky-diving, sword-swallowing or snake-charming. That should release enough adrenalin in your system to get you out of your boredom and blow your minds.
However, if that’s not what she had in mind, could she be obliquely telling you something you don’t know about? You may want to have a very long talk with her regarding the state of your marriage. Lay it all out and tell her to call a spade a shovel. You’re a big boy now. You can take it.
Just don’t compound a problem with another problem.
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