Money or no money I checked into the Super 8 Motel. Heather still was on the "I'm sorry" kick. It didn't cut it with me this time around.
After three days, with my office door basically shut most of the day, my boss Rick walked in and shut the door behind him.
"You okay?" he wondered, leaning with his back against the inside of the door.
"Not really, but I'm here." I wasn't in any mood for small talk and it looked like he wasn't either.
"No. You're not. You may be here physically, but mentally you're somewhere else. You want to talk about it?"
"Not really, Rick. I'm going through a rough patch on the home front and moved out of the house Saturday night. I'm holding it together, barely." I didn't want to give him or anyone else the details. I was too embarrassed.
"Well, our health insurance covers counseling and I highly suggest you take advantage of it. Steve, what you do or don't do around here affects this whole firm and right now, everyone is walking on eggshells around you. I, on the other hand, don't have that luxury." He handed me a slip of paper. "Set up an appointment through H.R. and get your head and ass wired back together. I need the old Steve back, understand?" With that last statement he was gone and the door shut again. So much for thinking I was hiding my problems.
Why did it have to be a damn woman? I should have asked for a guy. Knowing our cheap insurance plan though, I probably wouldn't have been given a choice.
Dr. Reynolds looked to be in her late forties and although she smiled when greeting me, I knew neither one of us would be smiling after the session started.
Our first two sessions mostly brought her up to speed on what happened and where I currently stood on the matter. She didn't agree or disagree, she just let me talk and vent.
"Being a woman I don't think you can fully understand how her words affected me. My damn ego and self respect were trashed, and besides her lying to me all these years, I feel like I've been played from day one."
"I heard you say Heather told you she was just trash talking with the other wives and she didn't mean what she said. Are you not believing her?"
"Yeah, I've heard that explanation a couple of hundred times over. I just don't know what to believe any more. I thought I knew her, now after finding Brian and the other items, it just gives more credence to what I heard her saying. I don't know how I can get past this."
"Do you still love your wife?"
"Dr Reynolds, that's a tough one. I still feel something for her, but she shattered my image of what I thought my marriage to her was. I think I hate her right now more than anything else." I was being truthful.
"Well, Steve, what do you want? Do you want to try and patch things up, start over again, or is your marriage beyond repair in your eyes?" I guess she'd hit the nail on the head, something up until this moment I didn't even want my brain to consider. Did I really want a divorce?
"However, before you make any decisions I highly suggest couples counseling before you take that final step, that is unless you don't even want to try anymore. I propose bringing her in here with you and listening to what she has to say. What do you have to lose at this point?" She was right, we needed to talk, but I wasn't sure if her office was the right place. I sent Heather an e-mail the next morning when I got to work.
"Heather, we need to talk and it can't be at the house with the kids there. I propose meeting at Tony's after work on Wednesday. Midweek it won't be busy and we can get a booth in the back away from everyone else. I want to caution you though, leave the bullshit home or it's going to be an early evening." It was time for some frank discussions.
I was early and was sitting at the bar having already finished my first beer by the time Heather walked in. She looked great, she always did, but she didn't have the same affect on me she'd had months ago. I waved to her and we were seated in the last booth in the back. After ordering and getting our drinks we told the waiter we need a few minutes.
"Heather, you look nice this evening," I said, knowing I needed to set the mood or tone of the conversation. She had probably spent a couple of hours getting dressed and putting on her makeup, everything was flawless.
"Thank you, honey. You look pretty good to me, too." She now had a huge smile plastered across her face, too bad it wouldn't last.
"I've been seeing a counselor the last couple of weeks to somehow try to get a handle on what's happened between us. I've had a chance to look at it in a different light, get her perspective on it, and to think about what I want going forward." Her smile was now gone, replaced with a look of seriousness.
"Heather, I'm having a hard time believing you anymore." When she tried to say something, I held up my hand and told her she could speak when I was finished. "I've heard all the excuses, reasons why, and I probably would have believed you if it weren't for what I found in your night table. Frankly, that in itself negated everything you told me." She tried again to speak. I held up my hand telling her again I wasn't done.
"I think I still love you and would love to get back to where we once were, except I'd always have lingering doubts in the back of my mind that I wasn't really doing it for you. I'd like to say love is enough for me—it's not. Never in my wildest dreams could I imagine we'd be at this point, and for the life of me I can't see a way to erase these doubts from my brain. Last Saturday morning I gave you all I had and the best you could come up with was to say you liked it? Liked it! Jesus Christ, you should have loved it! Maybe if you had said that we wouldn't be here talking about what's next for us. I guess from day one I never measured up to Brian. Tell me, was it fair to me to be judged without being told? You could have said something, you never did, and stupid Steve just went on year after year thinking you were happy when you weren't, not really." Her eyes started to well up.
"Steve, I love you."
"No, you don't, Heather. You love the idea of the Steve you created in your mind, not the Steve who found out your dirty little secrets."
"Steve, a lot of women use vibrators."
"But they don't fucking name them after their old boyfriends."
"Steve, no matter what you say, you do satisfy me and always have. I don't have a clue how to get you to believe that."
"Heather, neither do I, and I can't stay married to a woman who can't get off without fantasizing about one of her old boyfriends or someone with a huge cock." Now I was thinking about the huge black dildo I'd found."
"So you're saying you want a divorce? Steve, I haven't cheated on you, I never have," Heather insisted loudly.
"But, you weren't honest with me either."
"I'll never agree to a divorce. You want to break up our happy home because you heard something said in jest and it bruised your ego? What would I tell the children? Daddy heard Mommy joking around and now he doesn't love her anymore. Steve, get a grip." She just didn't get it.
"Heather, how would you feel if I told all my friends that you were a lousy lay and that the only way I could get an erection was to think about one of my old girlfriends? Wouldn't you get a little self conscious?"
"Steve, women's egos aren't connected to our vaginas like guys are to their dicks. Besides, I know you. I can get you all worked up in less than two minutes."
"And you probably still could, except it would be all physical, not mental like it once was. I considered what we did before making love, which is a far cry from what we did the last couple of times. You fuck a whore, you make love to your wife." I'd said it all. I was done.
"So this is it? You're just going to throw away the ten years we've spent together? Christ, I can't believe this is happening. How about if we go to counseling together?" Heather was pleading now.
"What's that going to do?"
"It will at least give me a chance to show you that you're dead wrong about me, about us." She was grasping for any lifeline right now. I thought about it as her eyes reached out to me.
"I may be a damn fool, but okay. Two sessions with the same counselor I've been seeing, although I think it's a waste of time."
When the waiter came back all we ordered were drink refills. I think we'd lost our appetites, well, I know I had.
It was Wednesday at ten till four. I was in the waiting room when Heather came rushing in.
"Sorry I'm late. I got stuck in traffic."
Introductions were made and after a brief statement by Dr. Reynolds, she told Heather to tell her side of what happened. By the time she was finally done we only had fifteen minutes left.
"Steve, it looks like you heard exactly what your wife said. Now the only problem, as I see it, is the fact that you still don't believe her explanation of why she said it." I was at least hoping Dr. Reynolds would say it sounded like a crock of shit to her also, but she didn't. I guess I was still on my own.
"I want you to spend the next week talking to each other. Not just the surface issues but also the deep down problems in your marriage as you both see it. Please, have enough respect for the other to not say exactly what you think the other wants to hear because they'll end up seeing through it. That will only push us further back. I'll hopefully see you both a week from today."
I moved back home, and it was one hell of a long week. I talked and Heather argued telling me I was wrong. She had purchased the toys at various adult girl parties over the last couple of years, reminding me that we'd used the flavored gels on more than one occasion. Naming the silver one Brian was supposed to be a joke. However, I saw no humor in it after dealing with that prick way back when.
We talked sex and I asked her straight out what I was doing that she did or didn't like. She still kept to the same story that she liked everything that I did. I did tell her that her performance at times was lacking in enthusiasm, and it was like I was screwing someone who chose not to be there. Was this when she was thinking about Brian to push her over the edge? We solved nothing. I kind of knew we wouldn't.
I tried—damn, I tried—but the one time we attempted to make love was a total disaster. Both of us were simply afraid to try and do anything out of the norm. What we did do ended up being pitiful at best. I don't think Heather even got off.
She was waiting with Dr. Reynolds when I walked in late the following Wednesday. I'd already made up my mind and figured this meeting was nothing more than a formality. They were talking and Heather was even smiling.
"I understand the two of you made some progress this last week," Dr. Reynolds said, making a few notes on her pad.
"What progress? We couldn't even get it together and make it work the one time we did try. If that's progress, I'd hate to see what failure looks like."
