When I first started working here, 15 years ago, I had a secretary named Liz. She was the first secretary I'd ever had, and she was also the last. Downsizing stripped the secretaries from a lot of managers, so when Liz left, no one replaced her. Liz didn't leave because she didn't want to work here anymore, she left because she had to. She was the dependent wife of a soldier stationed here, so when he left, she had no choice but to go too. It didn't matter that she wanted to stay, or that her and her husband were in the middle of a divorce. They were still legally married so the military made her leave.
The reason for their divorce was something I could never understand. Liz was the most beautiful woman I had ever met, and in the 13 years since she left, I've never met met anyone who could compare to her. Yet, her husband had absolutely no interest in her sexually. He was into body building, and it seems he'd rather look at himself in the mirror than have sex with his wife. According to Liz, he hadn't been interested in her for almost 4 years, and she just couldn't take it anymore. And while she got plenty of offers, she was too traditional to even think of cheating. So the only think left for her to do was divorce him and find someone who wanted her.
If you think I didn't want her, you're wrong. But, I was also married, and even worse, I was almost 15 years older than her, and in nowhere near the shape her husband was. It didn't matter that my marriage was also on the rocks, although for different reasons. It mattered that she was, in my mind, so far out of my league that I couldn't even bring myself to fantasize about her. So, while I was there for her whenever she needed me, I put myself in the friend box, because she would have put me there too.
There were a couple of times that she did or said things that might have meant more than that. For example, her throwing me a black balloon party on my 40th birthday. She'd not only arranged the party, she'd paid for all the decorations herself, and bought me a couple of small gifts. She'd even had a picture of herself taken, laying on the my desk behind the cake, saying this was my real present. And, when she was getting close to her time to leave, she insisted that I go out partying with her just once, since I'd never gone out with her and her friends before. The partying ended up being just her and I at the local club, and she told me she'd never had more fun before. But, there wasn't any touching or even a good night kiss, so I put those incidences in the friend box too.
We stayed in touch after she left, and she kept me up to date on what was going on in her life. The biggest thing was that a mutual friend of ours went running after her. He was the same age as me, and actually in slightly worse shape. And, he was also married and had been her neighbor in the housing area. Well, when he tracked her down, he got her to go out drinking with him for old times sake. And in her lonely and drunken state, they'd ended up in bed. Those had been her words, not mine, so I'm not being insulting here. From that one night stand, she'd ended up pregnant. And being the traditional girl she was, and because he kept in contact too, she let him divorce his wife and marry her. Again, these were her own words, not mine, although I never understood why she'd explain it to me that way.
We still stayed in contact, through the birth of her daughter, and through my own divorce. And somewhere in there I confessed that I had been sort of in love with her myself, but would never have had the guts to do what her husband did. She'd tease me about that sometimes, saying that women liked to be chased, so it was my loss. And, she'd tell me she still needed to be chased, even by her husband. And the day he stopped chasing her would be the day their marriage was over.
I didn't really kick myself for what happened, because I still felt she was out of my league. Not so much for her beauty, but also because wanting to be chased all the time is sort of a high maintenance trait. I believed in the chase myself, but only until the point of first capture. After that, I believed in both parties completely surrendering to each other. Showing your love on a daily basis was one thing, but what she was talking about was proving it every day. Definitely not the same things, and infinitely wearing on any man. That's why only rich people usually have high maintenance wives. That, or men who have no problem pampering their wives and giving them constant attention. I didn't have anything against Liz being that way, and it wasn't sour grapes. It was just one of the reasons I always felt she was out of my league, because I could never see myself doing that.
I too got married again, to another girl that was out of my league, although not for the reasons Liz was. This one was 20 years younger than me, and beautiful, yet she still married me. And things were fantastic for the first year of marriage, that is until our son was born. After the birth, my wife slowly started losing interest in sex, until now I'm lucky if we make love twice a month. It began with the standard headache then other excuses were added as the refusals increased. It came to a head about two years ago, when she'd started promising sex, then starting ridiculous fights to get out of keeping her promises. The result was her admitting she just didn't have the desire for sex and she didn't have any reason why. The only reason we haven't divorced is that everything else is fine, just our sex life. So, we don't fight about it, and she doesn't lie anymore, I just wait for her to be in her twice a month moods.
Around the time of our fight, Liz must have also been having problems in her marriage. That's because she told me she couldn't write directly to me anymore. She could post things on social pages, if they were open for everyone to read. But, she couldn't send private messages on those pages, and she couldn't write me e-mail. So, since it was difficult for us to have the type of conversations we used to have, we sort of stopped talking to each other. That is until last week, when she sent me a direct e-mail asking what was going on in my life.
I didn't send her back the kind of message we used to write, because you can't just jump back into that. We used to tell each other almost everything, only stopping short when it came to the details of our love lives. We'd even talked about that, but only in a general way. You know, whether or not we enjoyed certain types of sex, but not in a vulgar way, and never in detail. But she did know that I was a romantic lover, who would do anything to please the woman I was with. And I knew she was kind of selfish in bed, allowing her husband to please her, but never return the favor. Another reason I thought she was high maintenance, because she was all take and no give sexually. But like I said, I couldn't go into that kind of talk in our first message in two years.
Instead, I sent one telling how things were going at work, and about the activities my son was involved in in school. All generic news and all totally harmless even if my wife were to read it. But, while I couldn't pick up right where we left off, she could, and then some. As a matter of fact, her reply was to say that she was getting divorced again. Only this time it wasn't because her husband didn't pay attention to her or try to make love to her. No, this time there was only one reason for her divorce, and that reason was me.
Of course I was shocked when I read that message, and I immediately wrote back asking how her divorce could be my fault. We hadn't seen in other for 13 years, and we hadn't even talked in messages for the last two. She replied that it wasn't my fault for having done anything to cause it directly. It was my fault for the mistakes she had made 13 years before, and for what I hadn't done back then. The mistake I'd made was in not coming after her, especially with how I'd later said I felt about her. And her biggest mistake had been not giving me more reasons to follow her.
I told her that, to be honest, she hadn't given me any reasons at all to follow her. Her response was that she had, but that I hadn't recognized them as such, and that was where she made her mistake. She should have given me stronger hints, or been more direct in the things she'd said to me. She'd thought that if the feelings she'd seen in my eyes were true, then the hints she'd given me should have been enough. And, when I hadn't taken those hints, she figured it meant I wasn't interested. It wasn't until she was already married again that I'd told her she was wrong, and by then it was too late. If she'd even thought to ask me before she left, everything would have been different.
I told her that I honestly didn't remember her giving me any hints at all, and she said that was the problem. She'd known they were hints, but I didn't recognize them that way. And it took her years before she'd understood why I didn't. Take my birthday party for example. How many secretaries spent their own money to throw a birthday party for the boss? They might take up a collection from other people in the office, but they wouldn't pay for everything themselves. And how many would buy three different presents for their boss? One present maybe, but never more than one present. And what about the fourth present, the picture of her that she said was my real present. Had I taken the hint, and tried to collect that present, she would have given it to me gladly.