The Five Week Plan
David was psychologically emasculated by his ex-wife. His friend Maggie brings him back to sexual fulfillment using the Five Week Plan.
Doomed Marriage
It had been three months since he left his wife of 17 years for good. A few years before she began accusing him of having affairs with targets of her choosing. It started with her insistence that he was sleeping with one of the women in whatever office he worked in at the time.
David didn't travel on business often but when he returned from his recent trips Peggy met him with a coldness that he didn't have to deal with earlier in their marriage, demanding to know who he had sex with on the trip. And lately she was angry with him for some imagined infidelity almost constantly. Peggy's frequent accusations always led to angry arguments and shouting matches. Their sex life had all but disappeared because her criticism of his performance she destroyed any confidence he had in his sexual performance.
He knew he wasn't having affairs but his wife had created her own reality where he was a philanderer, just like her father had been. The only person he had sex with since their wedding was his wife. But as much as he insisted her accusations were false, she refused to believe him. And every time he denied it, she added a new 'lie' to her mental list of his offenses. It got so bad that he had left her twice before, but her pleading and tears brought him back.
He probably could have learned to live with her attacks, except for the fact that he was working his way out of several years of suicidal depression and did not have the emotional strength to continue accepting her very negative opinion of him. It came to a head one night when she claimed that on her drive home she saw his car speeding past her on the freeway hurrying home from an imagined tryst. He had returned home from work over an hour earlier when she stormed in the door and started yelling at him, demanding to know who he had been with. After the shouting match he found himself in his room with his grandfather's Smith & Wesson 38 caliber revolver in his hand, ready to put it to his head and end it all. He came close, but his rational mind took control and led him to the only other action that would remove him from the toxic relationship - leave the marriage for good.
The next day he returned home after his wife left for work and packed his essentials including the pistol into boxes, put them in the back of his SUV, and drove to a weekly rental hotel.
He spent the first night alone analyzing what this choice would mean to his life. He made plenty of money so living apart was something he could afford indefinitely. He wife had moved out of their bedroom months before, so lack of sex wasn't an issue - he would continue taking care of his needs himself as he had done since his wife started denying him. But he still feared that she would overcome his resistance once again and guilt him into returning home. To counter that he decided they needed to get a divorce; to make it a complete break.
The next day he asked around and found a male lawyer who specialized in handling the husband side of divorces. Within a week the lawyer had Peggy served with the legal documents. Her first response was to use the pleading and crying approach that had worked before, but he had 'been there done that' and told her that he had made his decision. Six months later the divorce decree was issued and he was free of the problem physically... but not emotionally.
He didn't realize it at the time, but the separation and divorce from his wife left some deep emotional scars. They had begun as a couple when they were both in high school and had been together ever since. A relationship like that can't be ended without pain. His friends told him to start seeing other women, but the idea of an evening out with a woman, any woman, led to bouts of crying, and the thought of going to bed with one of them wasn't a thought he allowed his mind to consider.
But his newfound independence opened a door that wasn't available before - he could work as late as he wanted to without worrying about the consequences waiting for him at home. He had always enjoyed his job as a research scientist, but his wife had a way of making him feel guilty for loving his job more than her, at least from her point of view. Now he was free to bury himself in his work for hours on end.
A New Life Begins
I didn't talk about my marital problems with my colleagues for fear it would get back to my wife and cause me even more grief. Even after the divorce only a few of my closest friends knew about it. But of course, nothing is secret from the office rumor mill. Fortunately our office had no unattached women so I didn't have to fend off any cougars. But at times I wished I had a woman friend to discuss what I was going through. Women understand emotional pain.
A few weeks after the divorce I was assigned a new project to work on. It was a super-secret government project that required the research staff to be locked in a classified laboratory whenever they were working. The staff included only me and one other scientist - Dr. Margaret Monaghan - Maggie. I didn't know her well before I started working with her because she spent most of her time in isolation. But after a few days of working together we were well acquainted.
Our conversations started with the usual impersonal questions; what university did you attend, where did you grow up, where does your spouse work (a sneaky way to ask if I was married) and picking each other's brains on dozens of technical subjects. After the first couple of months, our relationship settled into more relaxed everyday topics.
I purposely avoided telling her about my former marriage and divorce because I didn't want her to feel sorry for me, but I shouldn't have worried. Like me her feelings took a back seat to rational reasoning. But one day when we were working on a new experiment set up she casually asked, "I heard that you recently got divorced."
I answered "Yup."
When I didn't elaborate she followed it up with "Was it contentious?"
"No, not really. We both knew it was over by that time."
When I didn't add any details she asked, "How long were you two married?"
"Counting the last three years of high school we were a couple for, let's see... 22 years."
"So, you were the classic high school sweethearts who got married as soon as you graduated?"
"Not really. We weren't married immediately. We waited until I got my undergraduate degree, then we were married.... and we waited until then before we had real sex."
"Wow, that must have been hard not to give in to your passions."
"Well, we fooled around a lot - all the way to third base - frequently."
"Boy, I can remember those days with my husband and me. We didn't hold out that long though. I wish we had. The marriage only lasted three years before he was cheating on me."
"What did you do, Maggie?"
"I wouldn't stand for being treated like that, so I filed for divorce.'
"Did the divorce take a while?"
"No, because right after he was served with the papers he came over and beat the shit outta me, - her voice got soft - "and then he raped me. The judge didn't take too kindly to that. He was still in jail when the divorce was finalized."
"It sounds like your divorce was a lot more exciting than mine."
"I was hospitalized for two weeks. No excitement in that."
I didn't know how to reply to that, so I shut my mouth. The two of us worked in silence for the rest of the afternoon.
That night as I lay in bed I thought about my divorce and how terrible it must have been for Maggi. I felt tears in my eyes, but I quickly shut those feelings down. I should have paid attention because those feelings were my mind telling me that I hadn't even begun to process my buried emotions.
The friendship between Maggie and me grew closer as we chatted while we worked. One day she asked me if I did my own cooking.
"Yeah, I heat up a can of soup now and then, but mostly I eat carry out from drive-up fast-food places with an occasional visit to the local Golden Corral."
"Yuk. How do you eat that junk? That's about the unhealthiest diet I can think of."
"It's mostly about keeping things simple. I haven't had the motivation to do much since the divorce. I guess I'm a little depressed."
