EDITED BY: Miriam Belle
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
"Be forewarned, this is a story about cheating, so if that offends you at least you've been made aware. Cheers!"
***
The first of the real summer heat kicked in one late June afternoon just after my wife and I had gone through our latest round of fighting. It had been rough before, but now with the heat amplifying our problems and making us more irritable than ever before I was beginning to wonder if there would ever be peace. Our first year of marriage had been an unmitigated disaster. I could admit that now, though I spent about half that time in strong denial.
I was sitting on the back porch of my apartment, feeling completely empty of strength of resolve. Karen and I were on the verge of a divorce, that much was clear. I felt badly over the way things had gone but I knew there was nothing I could do or say that hadn't already been said that would change the situation. I had tried to make the marriage work, but after a year of fighting I was worn out. At 25 years old, I felt like I was going on 65.
The sun beat down mercilessly as I sprawled out on my lounge chair, wearing only my Bermuda shorts and trying to take the edge off my Irish skin. The complex was quiet, and it was my day off from work. I needed a little rest and relaxation. Karen's constant accusations of infidelity and her wild rants were enough to drive a man to the bughouse and back again. Our year anniversary had been lamented fully last week and I was out of reasons to try anymore.
How many ways can you tell someone you love them? How many ways can you forgive violent outbursts that happen again and again? Through our first year, I had seen her throw everything in the house and break half her belongings in a rage over simple, every day problems. I had seen her break down and go into hysterical fits of crying because she believed I would leave her for another woman someday (though my protests to the contrary had been ignored completely). She had tried to commit suicide twice and then to top it all of she had tried to give me a bedtime. That's right, a bedtime. Her thought was if she was in bed by 8:30, I needed to be in bed too.
"I'm leaving now," she opened the screen door and glared down at me, her blue eyes filled with indignant rage.
From behind my sunglasses, taking comfort in the silence that would follow her departure, I said, "Okay then."
"That's it?" she snorted and tossed her red hair back over her shoulders, "That's all you have to say?"
I sighed. "What else can I say? I'm done doing this shit with you, Karen. I've never cheated on you, I've stood by you, I've lied to cover up your mistakes and I've put up with all your bullshit over and over again. I'm finished."
"And what is that supposed to mean?"
"It means get your act together or make some decisions about what you want in life."
Karen replied, "Why don't I just go fucking kill myself? That would make you happy."
"Oh God," I rolled my eyes. When push came to shove, there was always the suicide thing... I said, "Karen, would you knock of this suicide crap? Just stop it."
"Who cares if I die or not?" she asked and stepped out in front of me, "Who gives a flying fuck?"
"Well," I frowned, "For starters, me and the kids might care if you died?"
"Yeah right," she fired back. You have to remember, this was the woman who threatened to abort my unborn son during our first separation in August of 2004 if I didn't come back. She throws around death and suicide and like some kind of ace-in-the-hole bargaining chip.
"Karen," I took off my sunglasses and looked at her, "What do you want from me? What can I do short of chaining my self to the bed posts and being your little bitch?"
"Well I've just given up on us having a sex life," she said. This was another tactic of hers. Whenever she finds herself being proven incorrect, she'll switch to another argument and start fresh. I think it was her way of trying to keep me off balance, and very often worked quite well.
"Okay look," I moaned, trying to keep my voice down, "When you ignore my compliments, when you make fun of yourself all day long and accuse me of cheating on you when I haven't, it's hard for me to want to be intimate with you. You're making this too hard. Sex should not be this fucking hard! Just relax. If you don't, well never be comfortable enough to be intimate."
"See?" she pointed at me, "Like I said. We're never going to have sex again. I knew it."
Now that was logic, was it not?
I took a deep breath. How do you argue with someone who is truly in danger of being a batshit insane lunatic? I had never cheated on her, I hadn't even thought of it. But because her ex, Dan, had cheated on her and was porn freak, I was getting the brunt of her anger. See, Dan had left her high and dry when she was pregnant with my stepdaughter Katy. In the final death throes of that relationship, Dan had turned to porn to deal with his frustrations and then finally cheated on her. I could see why he was into porn after having been married to Karen for a year. Her insecurities alone made it impossible to even want to be next to her, let alone make love (and this was a little problem she kept hidden from me until we got married and it was too late...). I could understand the porn, but cheating was cheating right?
In the end, Karen never got a chance to vent her anger out on him, so it was being vented out on me. I didn't think it was very fair then and I didn't think it was fair now. Mind you, it's not that Karen was an evil person. She just had no control over her emotions or her thoughts. She acts on impulse and tries to blame others for it when it all goes bad. I suppose you could say Karen was the kind of woman who made her own drama and then blamed the person next to her for it. It's like when the rude guy next to you farts and then blames it all on you. You didn't ask to be blessed with methane because your accuser ate too many beans the night before. Either way, the situation still smells like shit.
"I am not Dan," I said, "Get it through your head, okay?"
"I am not Dan," she mocked me, her voice high and shrill.
"Okay, what is this? Third grade?"
"I've just accepted the fact that you're going to leave me," she ignored me, raising her hands into the air and giving up.
"Are you high?" I asked as sweat beaded on my bare chest and trickled down my stomach, "Are you needing to take a vacation? If I were going to leave you Karen, I would have. You've given me every opportunity to... doesn't that say I have some faith in you to get past this shit-attitude? If I wanted to leave-"
"So why don't you?"
"Because we have a family together!"
"Yeah," she laughed, "You have the family. I'm just easily replaceable. Dan replaced me, my parents replaced me and so will you."
"This conversation is over," I put my sunglasses back on and laid back down. She was determined once again to not listen to reason at all. She wanted to fight, and I wasn't going to oblige.
"And what does that mean?"
"Get a dictionary and look the words up if you need to," I closed my eyes trying to calm myself down. "Go and have fun."
"I'm not done talking yet," she said.
"Well I'm done listening, Karen. I'm not going to do this with you all day. Fuck that."
She stood with her arms crossed, tapping her foot like some kind of ridiculous parody of an authority figure.
"When you're calm, we'll talk."
"Whatever," she rolled her eyes and stormed off. I could hear glasses from the kitchen being thrown around and shattering and then there was the thunderous slam of the front door to signal the climax. I sat there for a long time, feeling so hopeless it was depressing. I was thankful my mom and dad had taken the kids for the weekend. They didn't need to see this crap. I had tried to shield them from it as best I could, but Karen's outbursts and behavior were becoming more and more intense with each conflict.
Everyone in my family had warned me against marrying her. At the time I just thought they were being silly, but now I could see the logic of their concerns. Karen was unstable, that much was sure. Between her bad-self esteem, unhealthy methods of anger management and trust issues, coupled with what I truly believed was a severe case of bi-polar disorder, Karen was on her way to another breakdown. The last one had been ugly and almost ended in a suicide. I feared for what might happen this time.
A few fights back, she had even said if I left her she would kill herself. Now how's that for a pickle? She tells me to leave all the time, but if I do she'll kill herself.
What she didn't understand is that even though she had effectively killed our marriage, I was sticking to the vows. At first it was simply a matter of me wanting to save the relationship, but more and more it felt like a fucking chant of denial to me. I was upholding the vows even after the passion and reason behind them had had been destroyed by her own special brand of madness. I was becoming convinced that a divorce was inevitable. No matter how many days she went without going crazy (and believe me, it was literally a matter of days and more recently, mere hours...) she still reverted back to her angry and accusatory nature.
For a woman so worried about her husband her cheating, she sure didn't mind treating me like shit. Day after day I would ponder why she took it all out on me. Lately, I was pondering why I put up with it at all. I was 25 years old and in the prime of my life. I was in shape and still had enough hair on my head to not be a visual hazard in the sunlight. We hadn't had sex in two months, which as I noted before was a serious bone of contention between us. But I wasn't going to jump in the sack with her acting like this and justify her behavior. Her attitude and the shit was doing had turned me off completely.
I tried telling her this, hoping it might help her see things differently, but her response to my problem with her was in the vein of her not being good enough or me not finding her attractive anymore. She thought she was too fat or stretched out from kids or too ugly or this or that.
The complaining and self-depreciation got old really quick. Sure, she was a little stretched out from child bearing, but I didn't mind. She was no runway model in terms of her body, but I found her sexy. She was curved and voluptuous and had a set of breasts that a man could lose himself in. There was nothing wrong with her at all in my opinion. That's part of why I married her. But as time progressed, I realized she hidden the most important truths about herself from me.
