After a hot shower, I climbed into bed with my wife of 20 years. Carrie immediately closed her book. This was a bad sign since it was always a battle to get her to turn out the light so I could go to sleep.
"We need to talk," she said.
This was a very bad sign. Carrie was a certified obsessive compulsive that started shortly after our first child was born. Or maybe that's when I noticed it. Counseling worked for a short time and since then I have been trying to be accommodating.
"I want a hall pass," she said.
I knew what that meant but was surprised that she did, or maybe she didn't really know.
"What the fuck is a hall pass," I said.
"This isn't going to work if you get all angry. A hall pass is when a woman or a man gets to have sex outside their marriage."
"You're asking me to let you go fuck another man? Why?"
"You just don't satisfy me like some of the men I dated before we got together."
"If there's something I'm not doing that would help satisfy you we can discuss that. I always thought that I did satisfy you."
"It's not what you do or don't do, its your equipment."
Talk about sucker punches. I was lost in thought when I realized Carrie was still talking.
"... several of the other teachers have been with Andy and said he's incredible in bed, large penis that lasts for hours."
"Wait a minute, who's Andy?"
"Are you listening to me, Andy is the new gym teacher. He's in incredible shape, shaved head, looks like Michael Jordan only darker."
"Wait a minute, you want me to say okay to you fucking some black guy at your school, because you fellow teachers say he's great in bed."
"Janice's husband told her it was okay. Why are you getting so angry? I'm getting older and I'm not sure how much longer men would find me attractive. This could be my last fling."
My mind was racing, one thing about Carrie is she knew how to present a logical argument for something she wanted, or logical in her mind.
"Absolutely fucking not," I said. "And if you need a reason, let me remind you of your vows when you promised to forsake all others. Besides, we had sex plenty of times before we were married, you seemed very satisfied with my equipment then. If you weren't, why did you marry me?"
I grabbed my pillow and headed off to one of the kids' rooms who were all away at college. But I could not fall asleep. Carrie's obsessive disorder was clearly at work here. Like I said, this has been a problem since our oldest was born. She had taken what was supposed to be a six-month leave of absence to take care of the baby. Seven years later she finally went back to work.
Life for me was miserable during that time. She would call me up in a rage because of little shit. Her sister scolded her once because Carrie had called her complaining that I left some sugar crumbs on the counter. Her sister told her "You know I just caught my husband cheating on me for the second time and you're complaining because your husband left some sugar granules on the counter. Toughen up bitch."
The other thing that kept me up was her compulsive disorder. For example, we had discussed for weeks her desire for new living room furniture. We already had some unexpected expenses that year and wanted to wait. I was livid when I came home and she said, "surprise."
But the one that sent us to counseling was her third pregnancy. Carrie had argued for a third child ever since our second child turned two. She thought with two girls, we should try again for a boy because I really wanted a son. I did not and I wasn't going to have a third child because I didn't like the sex of the first two.
Long before we got married, we had agreed on two. My whole financial plan including college tuitions for the first two and my 401 K to support my retirement plans only included two children. That argument had been going on for over a year when I was taking out the garbage and the bag split open, spilling its contents all over the patio. I found dozens of Carrie's birth control pills while cleaning up the mess.
I scooped them up, went storming into the house and threw them at her.
"You stopped taking your birth control pills and didn't tell me," I screamed.
"Well, I knew you wouldn't fuck me if you knew I stopped."
"See if I ever fuck you again."
"Too late, I'm already pregnant. I was just waiting for a good time to tell you."
I stormed out of the house that night and went to talk to a lawyer the next morning. He spoke very calmly, which actually helped me calm down. I hadn't been able to sit since I started talking. When I was finally able to sit, we discussed the other things Carrie did that drove me crazy and why I did not want a third kid. He said what Carrie did was clearly apprehensible, but this was a no-fault divorce state entitling her to half the family's assets, so divorcing her was not going to help the financial complications.
He suggested counseling and recommended someone.
That was a godsend for a few years. The counselor quickly came to understand Carrie had OCD. We had maybe three joint sessions and Carrie had at least one solo session every week for several months. She also gave Carrie a scolding about another child requiring two yeses. Her sister gave her the same talk. We also discussed how she focuses on little shit that drives her insane. The counselor recommended that Carrie write down what was bothering her and put the paper away for a couple of days. Before picking it up again, she was to write a list of all the good things in her life and then compare those items to the subject she wrote about. If she still felt strongly, she should share the paper with me.
And that's what drove me to write this down. I couldn't sleep anyway so it gave me something to do. Sometimes it helped calm me, and then 20 minutes later the thought that my wife wanted to cuckhold me would set me off again. I imagined bumping into her lover at some school event and dying of embarrassment.
Besides Janice's husband who always annoyed me anyway, I wondered how many other husbands in the school had said yes. What about the principal's husband.