Six months in a leaky boat.
I walked out of Stefanie's apartment, closing the door behind me. I had just broken up with her after six months of seeing each other. My excuse for the break-up? Well, that I still loved my wife.
My name is Jonas Albertsen, or Jon to my friends. I'm a thirty-year-old financial broker living in New York City. My wife of five years is Jennifer, a twenty-nine-year-old tax attorney. We met when we both began working for our current employers, her firm being the contracted tax attorneys for the financial services company I work for. It took us six months after meeting to become a couple, and another eighteen months before we were happily married.
My wife Jennifer is an attractive woman standing 5'7 to my 6'1, she has shoulder length auburn hair with lovely blue eyes. She remains in as great shape today as she was when we first met. Even with our busy work schedules, we both manage to use our work gym's every day religiously. Jenn has a great sense of humor, cheekily sarcastic to a fault, very playfully sexy when the mood strikes, and a very loving and trusting person all round
Not to say she like myself, do not have faults. Jennifer's is that she rarely accepts losing an argument and will sometimes go to extreme measures to not be seen at fault. I could say this was a fault of mine as well, although I like to believe slightly less than her. This means that communication between us can be strained for periods of time if we do argue, as neither of us wants to back down or take blame. Usually, it will be Jennifer that finds a way to soothe the waters, then myself in accepting that I was wrong, and we move forward.
The first three years of our marriage were good, we were both very ambitious in our careers, but still managed to find the time for ourselves. Whether it was going out drinking and dancing with friends, to dinner or movies, or weekends away to enjoy together. Our busy work schedules meant that maintaining all that required burning the candle at both ends. But being in our mid-twenties, that never seemed a problem.
The last two years however have been a different story. The increasingly long and stressful work hours have meant that many of our nights out during the week went by the wayside. Then the weekends became the time for taking a deep breath for the both of us, before starting all over again on Monday. So even our weekends became routine, with neither of us wanting to do much, maybe the occasional dinner or movie on a Saturday night.
Our love life also suffered, we went from having sex every day, to only once or maybe twice a week. And even then it felt like we were just going through the motions. It's not that we didn't still love each other, more that for both of us our careers had come first and our relationship slowly became a casualty of those extra demands our jobs placed on us.
The money we both earned was okay for living in NYC, we had no complaints about being able to afford the occasional luxury in our life. We had bought a two-bedroom apartment near our jobs and it consumed a large part of our salaries paying off the mortgage.
As our relationship started to go stale due to our career workloads, neither of us were willing to admit that something was wrong. To admit that we had any sort of problem went against our determined and stubborn personalities to be successful in everything we did.
So, what did I do to try to fix my slowly dying marriage? I had a six-month affair with Stefanie Jones, a financial consultant for one of my clients. I'm not sure why it was so difficult for myself or Jennifer to talk about what was wrong, we always tried our best to put a happy face on everything and pretend we were exactly where we were meant to be. I did say we're both stubborn.
Don't get me wrong, I still love Jennifer and very much want my marriage to work, it just took me six months of seeing Stefanie for me to realize that. And that's what led me to end our affair, I was determined to make my marriage with Jenn work. It may sound kind of hypocritical of me to say as I am stepping out of the apartment of the woman I have been cheating on my wife with, but life is not always a hallmark movie.
So, I got home at 8pm with a renewed sense of purpose for my marriage, I was determined to find a way to get us to be happy again.
"I've got some pasta ready, you want to go get showered first?"
"Yeah, sure." I responded.
I like the weeks where it's Jennifer's turn to cook, apart from being better at it than me, it was more relaxing to come home and not have to worry about it. I finished my shower, threw on some couch clothes and headed out to the dining table.
"How was your day? Get up to anything interesting?"
"No, not really. Nothing I haven't done before."
That included having sex with Stefanie, I can't believe how guilty I am feeling just being asked such a routine question. I guess the interesting bit would be that I broke up with her, but that's not something I could share with Jenn.
"How about you, anything different happen in your day?"
"No, except for one thing. But I might discuss that with you later." Jennifer responded.
'What, can I guess?"
"No, there are other things for us to discuss first."
"Well, go ahead." I replied as I ate a mouthful of my pasta.
Jennifer raised her fork to her mouth, taking a bite while looking at me. She was thinking about something, not sure what. She then took a sip of her wine then closed her eyes for a few seconds before looking back at me.
"We haven't been doing too well, have we?"
"What do you mean?"
"Us, our marriage."
"What makes you think that?"
I'm not sure if it was my guilty conscious but I went straight on the defensive even though I had promised myself on the way home that we needed to discuss our marriage issues.
"Jon, we barely talk to each other, we almost never have sex. We're thirty and it feels like we're sixty."
"It's not that bad, but yes, I agree we need some work."
"Do you still love me Jon?"
Okay, where did that come from? God I hope she doesn't know about Stefanie.
"Of course I still love you. What would make you think otherwise?"
"Just that there seems to be nothing between us anymore. There's no spark, no romance, almost zero intimacy. When we do talk it's about complete mundane shit like 'How's your day?' but we never really talk. Not like we used to. What has happened to us?"
"I don't know Jenn, we're both so busy with work, it feels like there's no time for us."
Jennifer let out a sigh and looked up towards the ceiling, then back to me.
"Is this worth saving or has our relationship run its course?"
"It's our marriage Jenn, not our relationship. And yes, it's worth saving. I can't believe you'd be ready to give up on us."
"Me? Come on Jon, you checked out of this marriage some time ago. Don't put this just on me because I'm prepared to finally say out aloud what we both already know."
"Well, I don't already know that, and I'm not prepared to give up yet, not by a long way."
Jennifer shook her head and took another sip of wine. I was starting to worry that the Stephanie bomb was about to drop, it sounds like Jennifer knows more than she's letting on.
"Where did all this come from Jenn? I agree we need to change some things but you're acting like we're already done."
"Well, that goes to the other thing I wanted to talk with you about."
Dammit, I'm sure she knows. How the fuck am I going to get out of this? What could I possibly say that doesn't end up with me packing a suitcase?
"I was asked out on a date last week by a client I sometimes deal with. He's a nice guy but I told him I'm married."
"Hold on, what?"
"You don't think I'm attractive enough to get asked out?"
"No, I mean yes. Of course you're attractive. I meant, why are you telling me this?"
"Well, today he asked me again. I said yes."
"What the fuck? Are you seriously sitting here telling me that you've accepted a date from some guy at work?"
"I know this isn't easy to hear but I think we need to take a break. I need to figure out if I want to stay in this marriage. I need to know if I still love you, not just saying the words, but if I still really love you."
"And are you going to figure that out by fucking some other guy?"
"No, don't be so crude. I'm not fucking anybody, I'm just going on a dinner date that's all."
"And if the dinner goes well, then what?"
"I don't know."
"You haven't thought this through, have you?"
That's exactly how it had started for me and Stefanie, just a dinner, then kissing, then sex.
"I just want to know if I still love you, okay? If I spend the whole time thinking about you, I'll know we're worth saving."
"And if you don't? If you don't give me a second thought because he's a smooth guy who knows how to pick up married women?"
"He's not like that, he's recently divorced and knows what I'm going through."
"You're not going through a divorce like him, not yet. I bet he thought he could take advantage of the situation and fuck up our marriage too?
"No, he's just trying to make me feel better."
"Oh come on, now who's being naïve? He wants to fuck you, most men do. You probably let it slip that our marriage wasn't going well and he's trying to get laid."
"Well, so what if he is? At least he's showing an interest in me. That's more than I can say for you lately."
I got up from the dining table and walked into the bedroom, putting on some jeans, shoes and a jacket. On the way out I grabbed my keys, phone and wallet.
"Jon, where are you going?"
"For a walk, I need some fresh air before I say something I'll regret."
"So, once again you're not going to deal with this are you?"
I looked at Jennifer with an angry stare that let her know not to push it. I walked out the door.
I walked down the block still angry and more than a little confused, when I noticed the small bar at the end of the block. Even being that close to home, I had never been inside, usually with work I just want to get home and sitting in a bar on my own was never that appealing. I went inside, ordered a beer and sat down at a table.
The waitress brought my beer over and took one look at me.
"Relationship problems?"
That made me chuckle a little.
"That obvious huh?"
"When you've been doing this as long as me, you can tell exactly what brought them here when you look at their faces. Yours looks sad, or angry. Not sure which."
