Insecurities Cost Her Everything

My name is Dave Barker and I am sad to say that today is the day my marriage to Clair Hughs ends. It started out with so much promise, our story.

14 years ago

I work for a company that distributed pumps and motors, we were the biggest company in the tri-state area. We don't build the pumps and motors though, we distribute them for the big manufacturers. The company does really well and part of the reason for their success is me and my team. You see the CEO, Gary Powers, believed that if they had a mechanical engineer on staff, with a machinist or two it would really make the company better. I'm the engineer. He was right. Our job was to test the new style pumps and motors that the manufacturer's were trying to sell us. We also had the job of diagnosing the problems with the existing lines.

Our fist success was almost the end of us. This company out of Germany was touting a new supper pump for industrial waste applications. The company had a great reputation and was selling these new pumps as fast as they could build them. We already did business with them and asked for a couple of samples. The Germans were glad to supply them but wanted an exclusive deal for North America, we had a week to make a decision or they were looking elsewhere. Me and my team had been around for about 6 months at this point and had had some successes. For example: there was a valve problem with one of our popular pumps that occurred only in certain circumstances and we had solved that with a valve modification, that was both cheap and easy to do. Gary was very happy to date and then he dropped this new pump bomb on us.

Logically the pump really should have been a no brainer. The company was German! They certainly know how to engineer things and had a proven track record. We should just go through the motions studying the pump and then sign the deal, get the exclusive and double our annual sales of pumps. Yet Gary Powers was no dummy. He had worked his way up from nothing and would know if we didn't try, and not trying hard enough was the cardinal sin at our company. Mistakes from hard work were acceptable, but not slacking off. Mistakes from not being thorough enough were cause for termination.

We had three samples to test. One spent 7 days running through sludge, thick and full of debris. We through all kinds of climate conditions at it, desert heat and dust, cold and snow, as well as rain and wet. The other one we tried everything, dust, dirt, chemicals you name it. The pump seemed to not like sand, and sand couple with sludge messed with one of the components. I won't bore you with the engineering details but it didn't give me and the team a warm and fuzzy so we told Gary not to buy it. However, we had tested 2 other new pumps at the same time and the one from an Italian company showed more promise. We recommended that one.

For the next 6 months the sales department hated us. Sales of the Italian pumps were uninspiring but the German pumps we had rejected were selling like hotcakes. Then the reports started to come in, first from the southwest, about pump failures. Long story short the company that signed the deal with Germans almost ended up bankrupt with the recalls, repairs and bad publicity. Our Italian pump sales took off and the Sales department took my team out to supper.

The worst part of my job was working with our advertiser. Gary believed that I should go listen when our ad company was pitching some new ad idea. He didn't want us to be embarrassed by an ad that promised too much or was technically unrealistic. This made sense but it still was hard to take so much bullshit at one time. The only saving grace was the man I usually worked with, Jeff Barons. He was a pleasure to work with, a real professional. Still I just didn't like the ad business, but you have to do what you have to do. This was the case until the time Jeff brought someone else with him who was taking over our account. He was getting promoted and a Claire Hughs would be our new ad rep.

When she walked into our conference room I was stunned. She literally took my breath away. She wasn't gorgeous or had huge tits, long legs or anything like that. Claire was on the right side of average in looks, not hard to look at certainly, but she just seemed to me to be what I needed in my life.

Somehow I made it through the meeting without making a fool of myself, although I don't remember anything that was said. I spent most of the time just looking at her and trying to come up with a way to ask her out. I think Jeff recognized my problem and made sure he handed me her business card and told me to contact her with any more feed back on the ad presentation.

I waited until the next day and called her at work. She seemed surprised to hear from me but agreed to a date. We dated for 6 months before she was convinced I really liked her. She couldn't understand why a guy like me wanted to be with her. This was my introduction to her insecurities. I was just the male equivalent of her, above average but nothing special. Yet she thought she was out of my league and was afraid of getting hurt.

Before we slept together she wanted assurance that I was not going to ditch her right after. Claire wanted an exclusive relationship and somehow I had to back up my words with proof to ally her fears. The fact that I was already exclusive with her were just words. There was only one thing I could think of so I surprised he with an engagement ring and she said yes. This must have been the proof she was looking for. We had plenty of great sex in the next year before our wedding.

Life was good, we both worked hard and soon enough we were talking about having children. That's when her insecurities started getting the best of her again. It all exploded at our work Christmas party that year. My team tended to stick together at these events so when our new administrative assistant arrived Claire freaked out. I will be the first to admit Roxanne is a total babe, but she also has a very good looking husband. Most importantly to me she was good at her job and that helped our team immensely. We got to work and she did the paperwork. However, Claire only saw an affair waiting to happen and the tension was palpable.

When we left the party she launched on me before the car door I had opened for her closed. I took my time walking around to my door, but she didn't stop until we were home and in our bedroom. She stopped her rant at that point and I calmly asked her, "what I needed to do to make her trust me?"

She said she didn't know but there would be no kids until she figured it out. I then suggested that didn't mean we couldn't practice, I could show her how much i loved her. She was just too worked up so she deferred until the morning. it is really weird to me that a woman who thinks you might cheat on her refuses to have sex with you for that reason. Oh well, I just took advantage in the morning and we stayed in bed until noon.

Exactly 2 weeks and 2 days later I found out she she had her answer when she presented me with the post nuptial agreement. Yes insecurity will do that. It covered every possible aspect of custody, child support, alimony and our house. Not that we had a house. It is pretty hard to spell out exact dollar amounts but there were plenty of formulas based on percentages of future incomes and the like. The lawyer who reviewed it for me said it was fine enough. As a matter of fact if Claire cheated I would be in an excellent position with sole custody and child support. Further to the post-nup there would be a locator app on each of our phones and passwords to our phones and laptops were to be shared. "Random testing" was to be allowed at any time. Obviously I signed the post-nup and agreed to the phone and laptop ideas, I had no intentions of cheating on her or deserting her. I loved the woman and after 3 years we had Leslie and the twins Max and Mark.

Claire went back to work each time as fast as she could so she could continue her climb up the corporate ladder. it should be no surprise that she was very insecure about her position and advancement but she did have the kids and I am very glad. I better be because I was expected to be the primary care giver. We never discussed it but she loved her job and wanted to advance. I had already made my peace with being number two to her job.

I did however check her phone and laptop for any unusual activity. As well I always looked at our locator app to see where she was when she worked late. I must admit I was a little suspicious she might try to advance at work by screwing her way to the top.

This was certainly not the case. Her boss Jeff, told me at one social function that my wife had the nick name "Madam serious." It was better than "Ice Queen" or "Bitch" but meant pretty much the same. She was work, work, work. She had no friends at work, she did not flirt and she was laser focused on being the best. People respected her work ethic but were turned off by her cold demeanor. Guys especially picked up on her vibe and unless they worked for or with her they avoided her. There were plenty of more willing women at the company.

Then came the second explosion of insecurity in our marriage. Claire right from the start wanted separate finances. One joint account that we contributed 50/50 to for the household bills and the rest was none of the other persons business. If I wanted to take her out I paid, vacations were 50/50 but as time went on she never wanted to go on vacations. She might not be number one on the list for the next promotion if she wasn't always there. While the kids were really young this wasn't much of a problem, but as they got older it would become an issue. However first the second explosion and then we can talk about vacations.

I wanted to start my own pump and motor company. I had a few ideas I had been working on in my shop at home and I wanted to run with it. First I tried to get Gary interested in starting manufacturing. Gary, whom I loved working for, I found out was going to retire and his son was going to take over.

Andrew Power did not like our team at all. He had been wined and dined enough by our suppliers to want to get rid of us. We asked too many questions and rejected too many new models, so we had to go. His father Gary and I had a heart to heart when I came to him about starting to make our own product. I figured he would jump at the idea but instead, by the end of our conversation he told me I should take my team and start out on my own. He would give us a guaranteed 3 year exclusive contract to keep doing what were doing to help us get established. He was going to retire in 3 years and he knew his son wanted to axe us. We would be on our own one way or the other. Maybe we could even sell them pumps and motors but that would be up to Andrew.

What an amazing opportunity and I couldn't wait to go home and tell Claire! That did not go well. This is an understatement. "How could I do this to her?" "How could we pay for our house?" (we had a mortgage now). She was emphatic that she would not support me or bail me out. What she was really telling me that I was she was very insecure my idea would fail and leave us destitute. I had to make my monthly payment or else! "Or what else," you might be wondering? It didn't take long for me to find out, post-nup number two or the addendum to the first one showed up exactly 1 week later.

Our marriage agreement on money was now to be set in stone. Her money in any form was to be untouchable to me. In turn my money and my new business was untouchable to her. The joint bank account payment was to be paid each month no excuses, medical or otherwise. Basically she was sure my business would fail and I would go back to secure employment. If I couldn't meet my obligations I could go bankrupt as far as she was concerned and I would be out until I could meet my obligations. Claire had refused to listen to anything about my guaranteed contract or the patents I was taking out for my ideas. She wanted financial security period.

I obviously was not very happy with the lack of support from Claire and the post-nup part 2 but as you can imagine my lawyer could not believe she would sign it! He and the other lawyers at his firm knew my business plan and figured I would be a millionaire by 35. If anything went wrong and we divorced for any reason she wouldn't get a thing. (except of course what the post-nup part 1 laid out). So I signed it despite her lack of faith in me, but I loved her and I wasn't worried about money or infidelity. You could say I was feeling pretty secure.

My business took off and soon enough we were building pumps and motors and had 50 employees. Roxanne was still with me and was my CAO. I couldn't have juggled the start up and my children's requirements without her. Don't get me wrong I loved their sports and school events but she helped me pull it off. Claire of course had been promoted again and spent more and more time at work. There was a problem though we never took family vacations.

Claire didn't take days off at all. She figured if she missed a day she might miss something and get in trouble or worse, get a poor performance view.. Yes I thought maybe there was more to it and kept an eye on her and even hired a PI for a week but all she did was work. The PI even gave me a discount because Claire did nothing but work and come home.

Vacations up until then consisted of me and the kids. We went camping, to the lake, the beach, the mountains and to my parents who lived one state over. Claire stayed at work, I mean at home. It came to a head however when Leslie, Mark and Max asked to go to Disneyland. They asked me and I said sure it was a good idea, they were getting that age when they could really have fun there. Leslie was 9 and the twins were 7. They wanted to know when we could go and if mom would come with us. I said we could go on their school's spring break but they would have to ask their mom. I immediately sent Claire a text warning her what was coming when she came home.

Claire was a workaholic but she almost always made it home for supper. She would try her best to engage everyone and then would clean up the dishes with the kids as I usually made supper. I went to work early and left at 4 so I could be home with the kids and make supper. Then usually she took her laptop and went back to work on our sofa, or at the kitchen table depending on where I was. After the kids went to bed we were not too long to follow. We have sex quite often maybe 2 or 3 times a week with Sunday usually being the best one.

That night Claire came home from work and the kids were all over her about Disneyland. She was not very happy, she put them off with all kinds of excuses, but it was all a smoke screen for she didn't want to leave work for a week. That night I told her that I would really like her to come, I would pay for it all, and if not we would go without her. She was a little put out about me paying for it all, so I quickly agreed to pay 1/2 if she came. After 2 days of the kids pestering her about it, I arbitrarily gave her a week to make up her mind, supposedly because of a seat sale for the flight. She reluctantly agreed. Leslie, Mark, Max and I were really happy.

We were happy at least until we arrived on the Monday of Spring Break and decided to take it easy and go to the beach. Claire said she was "just going to check something" and catch up to us. We never saw her until we went back to our hotel for supper. Then on Tuesday it was off to Universal Studios and Claire begged off that too. After everyone was asleep that night I booked Claire a ticket home.

When she woke up the next morning the 4 of us were getting ready to go to Disneyland. The kids were very excited and Claire was not. She explained to us that she just needed the morning and would join us after lunch. That is when I gave her the ticket and told her she should just go home, back to work. She was pretty upset and I said we are supposed to be on a holiday and she could make up her mind, work or us. We were leaving in 5 minutes with or without her. She went with us, and she had fun but never again would she take a holiday with us.

Life went on and my company grew to 150 employees. I never spoke about it to Claire though. She thought she made more money than I did and this made her feel good about herself. Claire called my company, my "pump and motor shop," giving the impression it was tiny store front repair shop or something. If I started talking about my company and our millions of dollars in sales I figured this would make her insecure. Claire seemed to be quite secure right now with me and her home life and that was good enough for me.

She was not however secure at work. There was four people ahead of her at work and she wanted there to be only one. The owner/CEO Albert Morris was a position unobtainable to her, but there were three VP positions she could aspire to, one in particular she coveted. There was the VP of Administration, the VP of Operations and the VP of Creative. Claire wanted to be VP Creative so bad she could taste it. However the current holder of that position, Jeff Barrons, was still pretty young and had been her mentor and patron in her rise in the company. She would settle for one of the other positions and doubled down, working hard to understand everything they were doing.

The VP of Operations was an old hand at the company who respected Claire and figured she would get Jeff's position when he retired. The VP of Administration was new, his name was Charles "Chuck" Adams. He was relatively new to the company and figured he could crack the code of "Madame Serious." She was a babe as far as he was concerned and since he loved a challenge he was going to take a serious run at bedding her. He knew she wanted the promotion and this fact would be the fulcrum for which his seduction would be based. Claire should know that Albert Morris would be making the decision with little input from the other VPs, however he also knew she was insecure and he could work this angle for all it was worth.

It was late in November when Albert told the other VPs that Jeff would be retiring but not to say anything yet as he wanted to announce it at the Christmas Party in December. Chuck immediately started to work on Claire. He made sure when he saw her next he casually mentioned her great work and how she should be a VP. For the rest of the time before the Christmas Party he made sure he hinted or made subtle innuendos that the other VPs had input into promotions. He also made a point of telling Claire that fresh blood was needed at the company so the next VP would probably come from outside of the firm, like himself.

Chuck's plan was certainly working, Claire was in a state. She knew deep down that Albert would make the call if and when there was an opening in the VP positions. She also knew that if Jeff retired he would recommend her, he had told her so and after 5 other promotions she trusted Jeff. Yet she couldn't shake the growing doubt in her mind that her hard work would not be enough. It made sense that the next VP could come from outside like Chuck. Claire of course did not know what was coming at the Christmas Party but was certainly more vulnerable to Chuck's plan by that time. Those insecurities kept popping up in her mind.

Dave was not looking forward to Claire's Christmas Party at all. Every year it was the same thing. Claire was the organizer, MC, and general supervisor of the Party. This role and her usual business first approach meant that Dave would be on his own for the evening. She would seat him at dinner next to boring men, while she sat with the most important clients who were always invited. She would then spend the rest of the evening working in one way or the other and he would stand at the bar and have a drink with Jeff. When some new hire woman, or a long serving one whom didn't like "Madame Serious" asked him to dance he would politely refuse. Once he had made the mistake of dancing with another woman and that had not gone well. Then they would go home late and she would be really tired.