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I May Be Dumb . . .

By: FrancisMacomber



Mark's Story

I may be dumb, but I'm not stupid. So when a member of the Swedish Women's Ski Team sat down next to me the first day of classes, I immediately engaged her in conversation.

She wasn't really a member of the Swedish Ski Team, she just looked like it: tall, blonde, long legs and a great figure. And, as I was to learn, she really was Swedish, or at least her great-great grandparents were.

But although Julia Swenson had the look of a model/athlete, she was no dumb blonde; in fact, she was smart as a whip. She told me that she had been the valedictorian of her class at the University of North Carolina. Now she, like I, was pursuing an MBA at Emory University's Goizueta School of Business in Atlanta.

If I had thought much about it, I would have been thoroughly intimidated by her. Here was a highly intelligent woman who could just as easily have been posing for a swimsuit catalog as sitting in a classroom. She was clearly out of my league.

But I was just out of a failed marriage to my high school sweetheart and eager to return to the world of dating, so I pushed my insecurities to the background and struck up a conversation. To my delight, she was willing to talk to me.

During more after-class conversations and several stops for coffee, I learned that Julia too was coming off a failed marriage. She was still in that period when she wanted to talk about her divorce, and I was able to share my own experiences and insights with her. Soon we were studying together, then dining, and then dating.

I was ecstatic: I was going out with the hottest woman in the grad school, maybe in the entire university. Moreover, our personalities seemed to mesh well. During long walks around Lake Lanier, we talked about our likes and dislikes, taste in movies and literature, goals and aspirations. We seemed well matched in many ways. And the sex was incredible. The first time she agreed to go to sleep with me, we made love three times. Actually getting to bed a woman that beautiful was like the fulfillment of a schoolboy's wet dream.

By the second year of grad school we were living together in an apartment near the university, and we got engaged at the start of the second semester. It was a storybook romance -- until the plot took an unexpected twist.

One night after dinner, Julia sat down across from me at the table in the kitchen and spoke those four words every man dreads to hear: "We need to talk." I immediately tried to think of any possible scenario that could have provoked the need for a serious discussion, but I would never have guessed the next words she spoke.

"I need to go back to Robert!"

Robert, I already knew, was her ex-husband. He and Julia were both from Raleigh and had gone to college together at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. They, like I, had married right after graduation, but their marriage hadn't lasted two years. After their break-up, he had stayed in the Research Triangle area, working for a major pharmaceutical company, while she went off to Emory.

Julia had never volunteered any details about their short marriage, and I never particularly wanted to know. As far as I was concerned, all that was in the past. All that mattered to me was their marriage was over, no children were involved, and she was now with me -- or so I thought.

The proper response for me to make to her pronouncement, of course, was "What the fuck?" But I was so stunned by this unforeseen development that I couldn't make any response at all. I simply stared at her as though she had begun speaking in tongues.

"I'm sorry," she said, "but I have to go back to Robert and see if I did the right thing in leaving him."

"But we're engaged! How can you go back to Robert? Don't you love me anymore?"

"Of course I love you," she said sadly, "but I just feel like I have unfinished business with Robert. I can't marry you unless I get that resolved."

"But what If you find you still have feelings for him?" I asked. "Does that mean you'll go back to him to stay?"

"I don't know," she said sadly.

We talked for another hour, but I didn't learn anything more about what had precipitated this decision, and I could say nothing to change her mind. It was clear to me that she now felt a lot of guilt about having left Robert, and until she saw him again, there was no way she could resolve those feelings.

I could see that she was miserable; I got no sense of any sort of excitement on her part about seeing Robert again. Instead, she acted like some tragic character in an ancient Greek play, destined to meet her fate. But there was no changing her mind -- she was flying back to Raleigh and Robert that weekend.

I was devastated. The dream I was living that seemed so tangible only a few hours ago had gone up in smoke. Instead of a happy family life with a beautiful and talented woman whom I truly loved, my life now seemed headed toward to a bleak, loveless future alone. 

I felt a childish impulse to refuse to take her to the airport, but honestly, what good would that have done me? The last thing I wanted to do was to build another wall between us. So Friday afternoon I loaded her bags into my old Volvo and headed for the airport.

We made the long drive to Hartsfield Airport in almost total silence. She was deep in her own thoughts; I had exhausted every argument I could think of.

When we got to the departure level, I helped her with her bags and then stood there helplessly on the curb. I didn't know whether to kiss her goodbye or drive off in a rage. Finally, I grabbed her hand and voiced my one unspoken fear: "Please don't sleep with him."

She looked at me inscrutably and said, "I understand." Then she turned and wheeled her bag into the terminal as I drove away, wondering what that meant.

Not surprisingly, that weekend was one of the worst of my life. I felt like a doctor had found a tumor in my chest and I was waiting to hear if it was malignant.

When I got home, the fear that had been building in me ever since our fateful conversation was now rampant. I knew I had lost Julia; in reaction, I began trying to steel myself for the misery to come. I got myself something to eat but I had no appetite. I opened a bottle of wine in an attempt to anesthetize myself, but multiple glasses mixed with the acid that had already built up in my stomach caused the whole mess to come up in several gut-wrenching explosions.

On Saturday I went into the office and tried to lose myself in work, but I found myself constantly checking my email and cellphone, hoping in vain to hear from Julia. That evening I went out with some buddies to a local sports bar, but I had no interest in whatever game was up on the flat screen. The beer I tried to drink further irritated my already raw stomach. When one of my friends politely asked me if anything was wrong, I bent his ear for an hour pouring out the whole sordid story. When he told me he couldn't believe it, I wondered what he meant. Did he mean he couldn't believe what Julia had done to me, or that I was such a pathetic wimp?

When Sunday morning finally came, I woke up exhausted, feeling like a condemned man on execution day. I fluctuated between praying for the clock to speed up so it would all finally be over and hoping for time to slow down so my sentence would be delayed. Finally, when it was almost time for Julia's flight to arrive, I resigned myself to my fate and drove to the airport. 

No sooner had I pulled up to the arrival gate than Julia was striding through the sliding glass doors toward the car. When I got out of the car to help her with her bag, she threw her arms around me, kissed me fiercely and said, "Now we can get married." 

I couldn't believe it: a miracle had occurred! When I got her into the car, she didn't speak, but simply slid across the seat as close as she could get to me and clung to me as though I were a life preserver. I put my arm around her and stroked her back the entire trip home.

She told me some of what happened after we got home. "I had dinner with him on Friday," she related. "On Saturday, he and I drove around to see some of the old sights. Then that evening, Robert took me out with some people he knows."

"He must have wanted to show her off to his friends," I guessed to myself. I probably would have done the same if I'd been in his shoes.

That really wasn't what I wanted to hear. My fears had not completely died away, and I found myself blurting out, "But what happened between the two of you? What made you decide not to go back to him?"

"When I arrived in Raleigh and saw him again, I remembered all the reasons why I married him in the first place," she said. She paused, and I held my breath waiting for her to go on. "But the more time I spent with Robert, the more I kept seeing reminders of all the reasons I left him in the first place. By Sunday, I knew I had made the right decision to end it."

I never asked her if she had slept with him -- I was afraid to. If she had, that would eat away at me, so I decided I just didn't want to know. Besides, she had chosen me; that was the only thing that mattered anyway. Now we could go forward like we planned, and I wanted no doubts nagging at me. My weekend had been terrible, but now I felt it was a small price to pay to get the woman I loved.

We were married in a small church shortly after we graduated, and everything else in our lives seemed to come together at the same time. Before I went to grad school, I had been working for a major electronics manufacturer and had taken educational leave in hopes of improving my prospects. My company had paid my tuition, and they definitely wanted me back once I had graduated. So I had a good job waiting for me from day one. With no tuition loans to repay, a better position and a nice bump in my pay, I was sitting pretty.

Likewise, Julia had landed a position with the Georgia Public Service Commission analyzing telecommunications rates and policy. With her background in mathematics and economics, she was able to slip seamlessly into her new role.

Between the savings I'd been able to preserve and two good salaries, we had no trouble securing a mortgage sufficient to buy a nice home in Alpharetta, a suburb north of Atlanta. Because my office was located on the I-285 beltway, my commute wasn't bad at all, but Julia's was longer because the GPSC offices were located downtown.

Over the next eighteen months, our lives were good. We explored the parks and trails around us as well as the nightlife in "Hotlanta." We decorated our home and landscaped our yard, got together with our friends from school and made new friends in the neighborhood. Most of all, we explored each other; I think we made love in every room of our house.

The only irritant in this otherwise idyllic scene was Julia's job. The problem was the red tape, office politics and glacially slow pace that seem to characterize most government agencies. Julia had no difficulty with the analyses she was asked to do, but once her work left her hands, nothing ever seemed to happen. The commute she had to endure just added insult to injury. Anyone who has ever experienced rush hour traffic in Atlanta knows how long and exhausting that process can be. 

So I wasn't particularly surprised when Julia told me one night that she wanted to leave her job. But she didn't want to quit outright because she felt that would look bad on her resume. And she wasn't interested in starting a job search. Instead, she had another solution that caught me by surprise: she wanted to get pregnant!

I might not have been expecting it, but this was wonderful news as far as I was concerned. I wanted to have children but had thought we would have to wait while Julia launched her career. The fact that she was ready to start now was fine with me.

As I sat there thinking about this new direction our lives were about to take, I realized that Julia was watching me closely, waiting for my reaction. Putting a solemn expression on my face, I said, "In a situation like this, I think there's only one logical course of action." I paused. "Let's go upstairs and get started right now!"

As realization came, Julia squealed and threw her arms around me. I picked her up and carried her up the stairs to our bedroom to start a frenzied session of love-making. We knew it wasn't likely to have the desired result since she hadn't even gone off the pill yet, but that was irrelevant. We were ready to become parents, and I couldn't have loved her any more than I did at that moment.

I guess what we were doing worked because Julia became pregnant shortly after she went off the pill. Over the next nine months, we turned into stereotypical first-time parents. We repainted the bedroom that was to be the nursery, bought a crib and changing table, began attending Lamaze classes and started reading baby books. We were as ready as we could be.

When Julia felt contractions begin in earnest one Sunday evening, I grabbed the bag she had already packed and we drove carefully to the hospital. She was in labor almost eight hours, and I stayed with her the whole way, bringing her ice for her dry mouth, rubbing her back and coaching her with her breathing as the contractions became more frequent. When it finally was time, I went with her to the delivery room and held her hand in anxious helplessness as our new son came crying into the world.

I had wanted to be a father and I wanted this baby. Even so, when I first got to hold this tiny bundle of life that was my son Joshua, a wave of emotions rolled over me so powerfully that I had to sit down. I felt an overwhelming sense of awe, fear and love. I vowed that I would dedicate my life to taking care of this miracle I held.

The weeks and months that followed brought all the trials typical to new parents: sleep deprivation, endless walks around the room trying to comfort a crying baby, and a severely restricted lifestyle. But I never resented the disruption; that sense of dedication I felt when I first held Joshua never dissipated. I loved him absolutely, I loved his mother, and I loved the fact that we had become a family in full.

I recall a party we had a year after Josh was born. We had a houseful of friends and family over to celebrate his first birthday, and we asked them to stay for an open house afterward because we were eager for the stimulation of some adult company. Yet even as people ate and drank and circulated, I found myself sneaking into Josh's room to make sure he was OK. When I found him awake and crying, I closed the door to his room, picked him up and began to walk and sing to him to lull him back to sleep. I didn't care that I was missing the party; nothing mattered more to me than my new son.

Josh was healthy and growing. He had begun sleeping through the night after only two months, and after six months Julia had weaned him so that breast-feeding him was no longer a drain on her energy. We had survived the stress of caring for a newborn; by comparison, caring for a toddler was a lot less exhausting. 

So I was more than a little surprised a couple of months later when Julia sat me down to tell me she was ready to have another baby. When I voiced some hesitation, she became insistent, almost desperate. "Our lives are only just now returning to some degree of normalcy," I thought. "Why does she want to go through all of that all over again so soon?" But it was clear that her mind was made up, and I wrote off her almost desperate desire to hormones or the maternal instinct. Besides, we had always talked about having two children. If she was ready now, why wait?

So it was almost exactly two years after Josh's birth that Julia delivered our second child, another son whom we named Jacob. I had loved Josh so much when he was born that I wondered how I would feel about another child. I needn't have worried. When I held little Jake for the first time, I felt my heart expand with love until it doubled in size. I could not believe how happy I was.

Once again we resumed the role of parents of a newborn. At least this time we knew what to expect and weren't quite so stressed out. The result was that time seemed to pass more quickly, and before we knew it we found ourselves celebrating Jake's first birthday.

After we'd put Josh and Jake to bed, and sat down to rest, Julia once again intoned those dreaded words, "We need to talk." 

"What now?" I wondered. 

The answer was soon forthcoming: Julia was ready to go back to work.

I had mixed emotions, to say the least. On the one hand, I could readily understand how someone as intelligent and capable as Julia would find the routine of housewife and stay-at-home mom unfulfilling. On the other hand I had read numerous articles that enumerated the benefits to the child of having full-time mothering. 

But when I suggested the possibility of delaying her return until the boys were a little older, Julia's voice took on the same desperate, insistent tone I'd heard when she wanted to have another baby. "Lots of couples we know have their kids in some kind of daycare arrangement and it hasn't hurt them," she pointed out.

I knew that daycare was a reasonable choice, and many parents took it because both husband and wife needed to work. But we did have the option; we had already proved we could get by on my salary alone. Julia, however, was not to be deterred.

I raised other concerns. "Where would we find someone we could trust to care of Josh and Jake all day?" I objected.

"I've been talking with some of my friends," she told me, "and I've already found a woman who would keep them in her home. She has a daughter about their age, and they could play with each other."

"Well, there's no need to rush into anything," I countered. "It's going to take quite a while to find a good job in today's market."

"That's the beauty of it," she crowed, "I've already found a great job! Do you remember Dr. Spencer back in grad school? Well, he's left Emory to start a consulting business, and he wants me to come work for him."

Faced with a fait accompli, I felt I had no choice but to agree. I didn't want to be like some reactionary, old-school husband who wants to keep his wife barefoot and pregnant. If our roles had been reversed, I knew I would be eager to get back into the workforce. How could I be such a hypocrite? 

I wasn't altogether happy, but I didn't really believe Jake and Josh would suffer, and I knew that Julia would be a lot happier. Isn't there an old saying that a happy wife makes for a happy family? 

So I began taking Josh and Jake to the nanny's house every morning, and Julia began her new job. Although they cried the first few times I left them, the nanny had a little girl a year older than Josh, and there were lots of toys to play with, and soon our sons began to look forward to their new situation.

As for Julia, returning to work transformed her. She was overjoyed to be able to apply her education and experience to real-world problems. She loved hearing the conversation of adults rather than puppets and cartoon characters. Most of all, she was thrilled to be able to get out of the house.

It soon became clear that this job opportunity was a perfect fit for Julia. Her educational background in economics and mathematics gave her the tools she needed to evaluate econometric models. Her experience with the Public Service Commission proved invaluable in dealing with the Federal Communications Commission. She took to it like a duck to water.

At the same time, she fit in well with her new colleagues at work. In fact, she already knew several of her them because they too had graduated from Emory's business school. Most were near her in age and several also had young families.

Overseeing this young tiger team was the charismatic figure of Dr. Allen Spencer. Dr. Spencer had been marked as destined for success when he became one of the youngest full professors at a major business school anywhere in the country. At a time when voice and data networks were merging and morphing into new and unforeseen configurations and applications, he produced paper after paper identifying the underlying forces at work on the market, accurately forecasting the direction the industry would take and outlining the policies that would be needed to direct and protect this new national and global resource.


I May Be Dumb . . .



Dr. Spencer had already been featured in numerous business and industry publications when he startled the university by announcing that he was leaving to start his own firm. Not content to work from within the halls of academia, Dr. Spencer now intended to consult full time with the giant corporations who made up the networking and telecommunications industry as well as the federal agencies which set policy in this fast-changing arena. And, he readily admitted, he intended to make a boatload of money doing so.

I hadn't studied with him when I was in grad school, but, like everyone, I knew his reputation. And I recalled how impressed Julia had been by him when she'd taken one of his courses. 

Julia took to her new job like a wild animal returned to its natural habitat. I was delighted at the excitement and enthusiasm she brought home with her in the evenings, even though her descriptions of her day frequently included topics about which I knew nothing. I was tolerant as her work days grew longer and she began to travel. It was no great problem taking care of the boys and the house when she had to be away. Besides, I enjoyed my work, and I was equally glad she was enjoying hers.

But gradually over the next year there were other issues that were not so pleasant for me to deal with. First there was the question of her salary. Since I had been paying all the household bills when she wasn't working, I had expected we would be able to save most of her paycheck. That would enable us to build up our retirement savings and also start a college fund for Josh and Jake. But when I raised the idea several months after she started work, Julia quickly shot it down. She told me she needed to build up a wardrobe suitable for work, she needed a more reliable car, and she was now having to buy her lunches and sometimes dinners. I was surprised at her attitude, and the issue came up several times, but she always had some reason why she couldn't contribute to our savings account. It became apparent that she felt the money was hers to spend as she saw fit. 

Another change was even harder to take. As I took on more of the childcare and household duties, I thought Julia would appreciate my efforts. At the least, I hoped she would see that I was trying to repay the time and effort she had put into being a stay-at-home mother. Instead, Julia grew increasingly dissatisfied with my efforts. She began to criticize the way I did things. If I ran a load of the kids' laundry, she criticized the way it was folded. When I mowed the lawn, she wanted to know why I hadn't used the trimmer afterwards. When she got home late from work, all she could see was the children's toys scattered about. It felt like nothing I did met her standards.

I didn't appreciate Julia's obvious displeasure, but I didn't want a major confrontation to upset our boys. I remembered having childhood friends whose parents were always fighting, and it deeply disturbed me. As a result, I desperately wanted to find a way to keep peace in our family, so I stifled my discomfort and began to tiptoe through our marriage, trying not to set off the next explosion.

"All marriages go through difficult periods," I rationalized. "We'll get through this."

I also began trying to find some way to win her back. I brought her flowers and small gifts; I undertook chores that would lighten her responsibilities at home; I gave her long foot- and back-rubs when she came home tired from her business trips. I was grasping at straws; nothing seemed to work.

Not surprisingly, these changes also showed up in the bedroom. As it usually does, parenthood had taken its toll on the frequency of our love-making. Anyone who says parenthood didn't hurt their sex lives is a liar. But now, Julia's frequent late hours and overnight travel brought this slow train to a virtual standstill. She was always too tired from working late, or had a big day ahead of her, or needed to catch an early flight the next morning. Our sex life wasn't dead, but it was definitely on life support.

Our lack of intimacy and her obvious unhappiness with me began to provoke paranoia. I began to wonder if she was being unfaithful. When she would go out of town, I began to inspect her lingerie drawer to see if she was taking sexy underwear and nightgowns along. When she had to work late, I began calling about innocuous matters just to make sure she really was at the office. None of these feeble efforts uncovered any evidence, but my sense of uneasiness continued to grow.

I found myself in that limbo where many husbands are trapped: suspicious of their spouses but with nothing concrete to act on, unhappy with their circumstances but unwilling to confront for fear of provoking the break-up they so want to avoid.

And, to be completely honest, I was still deeply in love with her, and the thought that our marriage might be in jeopardy was too dreadful to bear. I didn't want to lose Julia; equally importantly, I didn't want our sons to come from a broken home. The kids I had known whose parents were divorced wore the scars for a long time.

I don't know how long I could have continued in that state of paralyzed pain before it became unbearable, but I didn't get the chance to find out. One night after we had put Josh and Jake to bed, she took me into the den, saying, "We need to talk."

She sat down on a chair opposite from me and, without any preface to soften the blow, said, "I've been having an affair."

My heart fell. My mind flashed to the title of an old Tom Clancy novel: "The Sum of All Fears." That was me: he worst thing I could imagine was happening.

My mouth went dry and my throat contracted. "Who is it?" I managed to ask.

"You don't know him," she said calmly. "He works at the FCC in Washington."

I couldn't for the life of me think of what to ask her next. All that went through my mind was "So this is what it feels like to be a cuckold." Absently, I wondered if I would be one of those husbands who got vicarious pleasure from having his wife fuck another man. No, I realized, this felt more like I had just had open-heart surgery.

Julia sat there watching me expectantly. She seemed to want something out of me, but I had no idea what that could be. I couldn't talk, I couldn't think -- all I could feel was pain and misery.

Suddenly, in desperation, I decided, "No! It doesn't have to be that way. Our family doesn't have to break up because of this."

Turning to her, I blurted out, "We can get past this. We can go to counseling."

It was clear to me at that moment that this wasn't what she had expected to hear. I thought I saw a touch of annoyance flash across her face. But after a long pause, all she said to me was, "All right, we can go to counseling." With that, she walked out of the room -- our little talk was over.

Not surprisingly, sleep was slow in coming that night. As we lay on opposite sides of our bed, my mind felt like an engine constantly shifting gears. I felt deep sadness at the blow to our love, followed by dread that our family might break up and our boys become children of divorce. Then I shifted to elation: she had agreed to counseling; maybe the situation could be saved. And, deep within me, I was bitter over her infidelity. I knew that even if we could save our marriage, what she had done would leave scars of resentment no matter how deeply I tried to bury them.

The marriage counselor we contacted was a trim little man with a beard and a mustache named Harris Willard. We already knew him because his wife had gone to grad school with us. He seemed like a nice fellow, so he became our counselor almost by default. He had a drab little office on the upper floor of a strip mall not too far from where we lived, so it was convenient for us to make an appointment late in the afternoon.

For our first session, he wanted to see us together. After some initial pleasantries had been exchanged, he asked us how he could help us.

There was an awkward silence; neither Julia nor I knew how to begin. Since I was the one hoping for a miracle, I decided I had to start. "Julia and I have been having problems in our marriage, and we're hoping you can help us work through them."

That didn't satisfy Julia. She burst in: "I had an affair, and Mark wanted us to come see you." 

Her view of our situation was deeply discouraging to me, but Willard steered us away from those shoals by asking each of us to describe our lives together.

He turned first to me, and I told him how much my family and my marriage meant to me. I expressed my fears about how we had pulled apart, and reiterated my commitment to trying to work out our differences. Willard pressed me on this last point: "You want to stay together even though Julia had an affair?" That question hit a nerve, but, ignoring my reservations, I reaffirmed that I wanted to stay married.

Harris then turned to Julia and asked her to give her perspective on our marriage. She admitted that everything seemed perfect initially, but as problems began to arise, she said she had become increasingly unhappy. 

As I listened, I became incensed to hear her complaints. "Life isn't like some beer commercial where everyone is always happy all the time," I fumed. 

But Willard jumped in before Julia could respond. "It's Julia's turn to describe her feelings, Mark. You need to hold your comments until it's your turn to talk again."

With Willard's prompting, Julia went on to describe how her growing unhappiness at home had made her vulnerable to the approach of the FCC staffer with whom she had had her affair. As she recounted our fateful conversation, she added that she wasn't in love with her paramour. That renewed my hope; perhaps there was a chance for us after all.

We'd been talking for almost an hour, so Willard brought the session to a close. For the next two sessions, he told us, he wanted to meet with each of us individually, starting with Julia. "After that," he said, "we'll all get together to see what the next steps are."

The next few days and nights were tense and uncomfortable. We weren't not speaking to each other, but what little we said was limited to our schedules and, of course, our boys' needs. I was glad that Josh and Jake were too young to pick up on the tension in the air, and I had no intention of starting an argument that might upset them.

When Julia went to her individual session with Willard, I was dying to know what they had discussed. But Julia made no mention of the session, and I felt that to ask would be a violation of some wnwritten law of confidentiality. Honestly, I doubt she would have told me anyway.

When it was finally my turn to see Willard alone, the session went nothing like I expected. I asked him about Julia's discussion, but he sternly reminded me that what she had said to him was confidential, just as my remarks would be. That didn't really help me, but I understood the concept, so I let it go.

From that point on, we scarcely talked about my relationship with Julia at all; instead, he wanted to know about me as a person. He probed at my self-awareness: did I feel that I really knew myself and was I happy with what I saw. I told him I wasn't perfect and could always do better, but that I generally felt OK about myself. 

Then he changed gears and began asking me about my dating habits prior to meeting Julia. I told him about my high school sweetheart, and what a mistake we both had made to get married so young. Because of that, I told him that I didn't have an extensive history with other women, only about eighteen months or so after my ex and I called it quits and the time I met Julia.

"So you never really got a chance to sow your wild oats," he commented.

By then it was time for the session to end, and I was thoroughly confused. How did what we discussed relate to my marital problems and Julia's affair? I'd hoped to discuss what I could do to restore our relationship. "How does this help?" I asked him bluntly.

He reminded me that the next step was for us to meet together with him next week. We'd discuss next steps at that time. With that I was on my way home, still reviewing our discussion in my head and still trying to imagine how it could help us. I finally gave up: "He's a professional and he gets paid to help people. He must know what he's doing, even if I don't understand it. I'll just have to wait until next week."

When I drove to our next session, Julia had already arrived and was talking with Willard when I came in. As soon as I sat down, she stopped and Willard began the session without any initial pleasantries or his normal chit chat.

"I think the most useful thing I can do at this point is to summarize where I think you two are in your relationship. Julia, you've been feeling increasingly unhappy in your marriage over the past year, and that unhappiness reached a point where it led you to have an affair with another man, is that right?"

"This isn't a very positive way to start." I thought. 

"And, Mark, even after Julia has confessed her infidelity, you want to continue your marriage, correct?" Willard continued.

"Yes, I do," I emphasized, trying to put a more positive spin on the discussion. "I want to stay with Julia and our sons and keep our family intact."

Willard then turned back to Julia. "Yet despite what Mark has said, you continue to be dissatisfied with your relationship with him?" he asked her.

"He's leading the witness," I thought. "He's putting words into her mouth."

"Yes, that's right," she agreed.

"Wait a minute, wait a minute!" I thought to myself, "This is way too fast. We need to talk about what we can do to work things out."

"And it's reached the point," Willard continued, ignoring my obvious distress, "that you feel that the only recourse is to end the marriage?"

"No!" I screamed to myself, "no!"

"Yes," she said quietly but firmly, "I want a divorce."

I felt as though I was going to be physically ill. I couldn't speak -- hell, I could hardly breathe. 

Julia wouldn't look at me, but Willard had a look of pity as he turned back to me. "Then I really don't think there's anything more we can do here."

He looked at me with concern. "Mark, are you going to be OK? Will you be able to drive home?"

All I could do was nod to him. It was clear to me that the session was over, just like my life. I was surprised that I didn't fall as I walked down the stairs. When I reached my car, I thought about pulling onto the beltway, accelerating into an oncoming lane and ending it all. Then I remembered that I had to pick up my sons from the nanny. "My life may be over, but I still have be a responsible father," I thought. It was all I had left.

As I drove, the session we had just concluded kept repeating in my head. I couldn't understand what I had witnessed. "I thought counseling was supposed to go on for months," I thought bitterly. "We must have set some sort of world record for shortest counseling." I'd read about couples doing exercises designed to build empathy and increase mutual understanding. "Why didn't we try anything like that?"

The more I thought about it, the more I felt as though the whole thing was scripted. "It didn't matter what I said or what I wanted. He just walked though the script so she could deliver the message," I decided. 

As I sat waiting for a traffic light to change, I tried to imagine why Willard would have acted like that. The only thing I could come up with was that Julia had already made her mind up before we started counseling. She must have told him what she was planning when she met with him one-on-one. Maybe he decided the only thing he could do was help get it over as quickly as possible. That didn't make me feel any better.

Julia got home well after I had prepared dinner for the boys. As they played in the den, I sat down at the table in the dining room as she ate. Now that the fate of our marriage was sealed, I no longer felt the need to avoid confrontation.

"I just want you to know I don't want this divorce and I'm not going to file. If you want it, you'll have to do that," I told her.

"I'll take care of it," she said.

"What about Josh and Jake?" I asked in a low voice. "This is going to kill them."

She looked up from her plate and said calmly, "People get divorced every day and their kids come through it just fine."

"How very convenient," I thought, "how very self-serving."

"You've got it all thought out, don't you?" I hissed. "Well, you're the one who wants this, and you're going to have to be the one to tell them. This is going to devastate them, and I won't do that to them."

She just sat there and continued to eat. 

"And another thing," I said, "it's going to be joint custody. I will not give them up, no matter what. If you fight me on this, I'll tie it up in court forever."

"I understand," she said.

"Well, I hope you're happy," I said sarcastically.

She didn't even look at me.

The next couple of weeks were surreal. Outwardly, our lives proceeded in an apparently normal fashion. Julia and I both slept in the same bed (I decided I hadn't done anything wrong, so I wasn't going to leave), we each went to work and we alternated dropping off and picking up the boys from the nanny. At the same time, Julia was moving forward with her plans for life without me. Several times when I passed her at her computer I saw her checking real estate listings, so I knew she was looking for another place to live. And I had to pick up the boys one time because she was meeting with her attorney.

As for me, I could scarcely drag myself to work. I was heart-broken and depressed; everyone I worked with knew something terrible had happened, but I didn't want to talk about it. All I wanted was to have my wife back and my family intact. 

And then something unexpected happened. When I came home from work one afternoon, Julia was already there. She had taken to staying late at the office every day to avoid having to spend time with me, so I was surprised. 

I was even more surprised at what she had to say. "Ginna Anderson called and asked us to go to dinner and a movie tomorrow night. Want to go?"

Ginna and Tom Anderson were friends we'd made in Alpharetta, and we used to get together with them fairly regularly to socialize, so this wasn't an unusual invitation. But the idea of us going out with them in light of what had happened seemed pretty bizarre to me.

As I thought about it, however, the idea began to appeal to me. In the first place, it was obvious that Julia hadn't said anything to Ginna about our getting a divorce, and that seemed somewhat encouraging. Secondly, I thought that the chance to spend time with Julia in the company of our friends might bring back memories of other good times for her. Maybe this could encourage her to reconsider.

"Sure," I said, a little more casually than I felt, "let's do it."

Dinner was fun; it felt just like old times. The conversation flowed around the table as though nothing had ever changed. Julia ordered the wine and kept our glasses filled. Whenever she got into a discussion with Ginna, she made a point of bringing me into the conversation. I was beginning to feel a warm glow, and it wasn't just the wine.

The movie was something else altogether. It was a drama with a "name brand" director and actors who were as talented as they were attractive. And it was intensely sexy. In no way was it pornographic, but sex permeated the plot and there were lots of nudity and provocative sex scenes. There had to be a lot of wrinkled seats in the theater from the squirming of so many aroused patrons.

As we walked back to our cars (we had gone to a restaurant very near the theater so we wouldn't have to drive), none of us could stop talking about the film. We used phrases like "smart and sexy" and "tastefully erotic," but what we really meant was the film was damned hot, and so were we. Ginna in particular kept telling Julia how glad she was that Julia had suggested it, and when they got in their car, Ginna was all over Tom.




I May Be Dumb . . .



It was late when we got home, so after I had paid the babysitter, we headed right for bed. As I brushed my teeth I was half erect as I kept remembering scene after scene from the film. Of course, the fact that I hadn't been laid in several months only added to my arousal.

We climbed into our separate sides of the bed and I turned out the light, still lost in an erotic fog. Then, to my astonishment, I felt Julia's hand on my back. It snaked over my side and down into my boxers, gripping my now fully erect penis.

Suddenly, I was panting so hard I couldn't catch my breath. In a frenzy I rolled over and grabbed Julia. As I kissed her open mouth, I realized that she was panting too. We clung to each other awkwardly, desperate to connect, desperate to sate the lust that had overcome us. Then I was on her and in her and plunging into her because I could do nothing else. Her legs were wrapped tightly around my hips her arms were around my back, urging me onward, faster, deeper until neither one of us could stand it any longer and we exploded in orgasm. 

As I collapsed onto my back in exhaustion and sleep descended on me, the only thought I could muster was, "Make-up sex really is the best."

I woke next morning to the sound of Julia doing her make-up at the bathroom vanity. I lay there for a minute, savoring memories of last night, filled with a resurgent optimism. "It's going to be all right, it's going to be all right," I kept repeating in my head.

By the time I had taken my shower and had shaved, Julia was dressed and ready for work. As I sat on the bed pulling on my shoes, she turned to me and said, "I've found a place to live, and they'll let me move in next week."

I felt as if I'd just taken a heavy-weight punch to the gut. 

"But what about us? What about last night?"

"That didn't mean anything. I'm still getting a divorce," she said blandly.

At that moment I felt like a child denied a special treat. I wanted to scream out, "But you promised, you promised!" To have my hopes built up and then dashed again filled me with anger, and I yelled at her, "Well if you want a divorce so bad, why don't I just go ahead and divorce you on grounds of adultery?"

She turned to me and calmly said, "In the state of Georgia, once a spouse makes love to his partner after having knowledge of her infidelity, he is presumed to have forgiven her."

I may be dumb, but I'm not stupid. Julia had no training in the law; she must have gotten that information from her attorney and memorized her little speech! 

At that instant I began to realize just how treacherous and deceitful she was. "She planned the whole thing!" I thought. "We didn't make love last night because she wanted to reconcile. She fucked me in order to take adultery off the legal table."

Then I realized it went further than that. "She didn't suggest we go out with the Andersons because she wanted to socialize with me. She used them to set me up, to get me drunk and then take me to the hottest movie she could find. She planned this out days ago, and she manipulated me like a child!"

For the first time I realized what she really thought of me: not love, only contempt. And I, in my blind optimism, had fallen for it. This new betrayal hurt so bad I'm ashamed to admit I collapsed on the bed, weeping anguished and angry tears. 

She had no need for more scheming now. On Monday I was served with a petition for divorce on the grounds of irreconcilable differences. On Tuesday I came home to find that she had moved out during the day. All her clothes and cosmetics, of course, were missing, along with some linens, several pieces of furniture and half of the kitchen pots, pans and utensils. 

And there was something else missing: Josh and Jake. On the kitchen counter I found a note from Julia saying, "I've told the boys what's happening. I've taken them with me; you can have them next week." For the second time in a matter of days, I broke down and cried in my empty home.

I don't like to think about the next few weeks: they were filled with nothing but pain and humiliation. I had the "pleasure" of telling my friends at work and having to listen to their condolences. I found I didn't have to tell our mutual friends; Julia seemed to have spread that word herself. The following week when I picked up Josh and Jake from the nanny, I had to act as though everything was fine and normal. ("How do you like Mommy's new house?' I asked them in the car in the same tone of voice I would have used to ask about a trip to the park.) The rest of the time I just wandered about in a pain-filled fog, asking myself repeatedly why this had happened and what I could have done differently.

It didn't help that Julia had picked December as the month for her departure. Hearing the commercial holiday cheer pouring out of the shopping malls and television was like having iodine poured on my fresh wounds. I couldn't believe it when Josh and Jake came home after one of their weeks with Julia bearing a nicely wrapped Christmas present for me from her. I angrily returned it to her unopened.

Julia and I had made arrangements for the boys to spend the day before Christmas with me, and Christmas Day with her. Julia's parents came into town for Christmas, and I invited them to dinner Christmas Eve. I had always liked them, and they seemed very fond of me. I was glad to see them, but dinner was strained and uncomfortable; none of us knew what to say to each other. I wasn't going to curse their only daughter, and they weren't going to be disloyal to her, although they were clearly saddened and mystified by what she had done. 

"This will probably be the last time I ever see them again," I thought sadly to myself.

By the time dinner was over, we were all quiet and depressed. The awkwardness was compounded by the fact that they were to take the boys with them back to Julia's new home so Josh and Jake could wake up at her place Christmas morning. We wished each other a Merry Christmas, there were quick hugs all around, and then they were gone.

The old song calls it "the most wonderful time of the year." I woke up on Christmas morning alone and miserable. Absolutely everything that makes Christmas special was missing that morning. There was nothing for me to do, nothing to get my mind off my pain. Finally, in desperation, I pulled on some warm clothes, got into my car and drove out to a wildlife refuge with hiking trails. It was completely deserted, of course, so I walked in solitude for hours and miles, hoping to exhaust myself into numbness. It was the worst Christmas of my life.

I can't say that things improved once the holiday season was over, but at least life settled into a routine. It wasn't comfortable, but I had gotten used to it, like a scab over a gash. 

By now, Jake and Josh had graduated to a daycare center. I would pick them up on Monday afternoons. They'd be with me through the week; then, on the following Monday I'd drop them off, knowing that Julia would get them that afternoon. This arrangement proved to be good for the boys because they didn't get confused about where they'd be staying from one day to the next. For that, at least, I was grateful.

I knew the boys were hurting. I asked one of the workers at the daycare center how they were doing. She told me, "They're better now, but for the first few months I didn't think they were going to make it." I cursed to myself when I heard that. My only consolation was that it wasn't me who had done this to them.

Once our divorce was under way, I made myself a promise that I would never use Jake and Josh to get revenge on Julia. I'd heard horror stories of children whose lives were ruined because their angry parents made them weapons in their post-marital battles. So I vowed I would never try to turn them into little spies to peep into Julia's new world and report to me. Children shouldn't be forced to choose sides between their parents.

At the same time, I wanted to know what was happening in their lives while they were away from me. It's not easy to do a good job of parenting when you know nothing about half your kids' lives. So I'd always ask them how their week away had been, if they had done anything fun or interesting, or if there was something coming up in "my" week that I needed to know about. 

Over time, I noted a new name beginning to pop up in their recounting. "We played in the park with Mr. Spencer's kids," they'd tell me, or "Mr. Spencer took us out to dinner." That could only be Allen Spencer, I thought, Julia's boss. What was he doing on the scene?

As the comic book hero used to say, "My spider senses were tingling," and I began to bring up his name when I'd see mutual friends. They readily confirmed that Julia and her boss seemed to be spending a lot of time together. Then it got worse: a woman we both knew casually let slip that the two of them had attended a charitable event a number of months ago -- while we were still married! I recalled the event; I had wanted to take Julia but she told me she had to work that night. That told me there'd been something going on long before she'd confronted me.

Now everything began to become clear. There was no mystery lover in Washington, D. C. -- Julia was having an affair with her boss. No wonder she wanted me to think otherwise: if I had known and filed for divorce naming Allen Spencer as co-respondent, it might have caused problems for his firm, not to mention his own marriage. 

"But why didn't she simply file for divorce?" I wondered. "Why the elaborate charade about an affair with some guy in Washington?" 

Slowly it came to me. "She was trying to get me to file so she wouldn't have to pay for the divorce," I thought. 

That led me to another realization: "No wonder she was so annoyed when I proposed we go to counseling!" But she hadn't let this set-back disrupt her; she simply incorporated Willard into her plan. 

"When she met with Willard alone, I'll bet she told him exactly what she intended to do. When it was clear to him that reconciliation wasn't in the cards, he probably felt all he could do was get me to face the inevitable."

What a complete fool I'd been! She'd been deceiving and manipulating me for months, and I'd never seen it happening.

All my anger and sense of injury returned in full force as I finally came to realize the extent of her treachery. Yet I could do nothing about it. I'd already stretched the patience of our friends by droning on and on about the divorce and our relationship. If I launched a new round of complaints, they'd begin avoiding me like a leper. 

For that matter, although everyone who knew us must be aware of how I'd been played, I had no desire to provide them with even more proof of what a dupe I'd been. More importantly, I didn't want to do anything that might hurt my sons. If I began bad-mouthing their mother all over town, they might pick up on that in some way, even at their young age. I was determined not to let that happen, so I stewed in silence.

Doing so wasn't always easy. There always seemed to be some new incident to pull the scabs off my wounds.

For example, early on, Julia told me she planned to retain my last name after the divorce. I was dismayed: the last thing I wanted was people to think that we were still married. When I questioned it, she told me, "I want to do it for the boys. I don't want them to be confused or have to answer awkward questions." When I heard that, I stopped complaining. The boys' welfare trumped everything else as far as I was concerned.

All of which was fine until the divorce became final and she casually told me that she'd taken back her maiden name. I was stunned. When I asked her why the change of heart, she told me, "I need to have my own identity. Besides, I've already told the boys and they don't care."

After I hung up, I had to leave my office and walk around the block several times to cool off. "What a selfish bitch!" I thought, not for the first time.

The next cause célèbre occurred that summer. Julia took the boys on vacation with her to the coast. But apparently she had planned to spend the last weekend alone with Allen, so she sent the boys home by themselves on the airplane. They were five and three at the time.

I couldn't believe she would do something so irresponsible. "What if the flight had been delayed and they missed their connection?" I stormed at her over the phone when I learned what had happened. "Think how frightened they'd have been."

"But it wasn't and they made it home just fine," she replied blithely. "Besides, kids fly alone all the time. The airlines are used to it."

Maybe so, I thought to myself, but if it happens again, I'll be going to court to get full custody. I know they need both parents, but not when one of them is ready to risk their safety to carry on her dirty little affair.

Fortunately, nothing like that happened again, or if it did, I never heard about it. 

The news I got in the fall was also shocking, but in a different way. I picked up Josh and Jake after preschool one Monday, and, as usual, asked them how their last week had gone. They told me everything was fine, nothing out of the ordinary, so I asked how their Mom was doing. (OK, I guess I was snooping a little. It's just that I hadn't heard from her in quite a while and our old friends never mentioned her. I was curious.) "Oh," Josh said, "Mom has a new job."

"Oh really," I responded, trying to keep the surprise out of my voice. "What's she doing now?"

"She's selling real estate," he replied, as though that were the most natural thing in the world.

I knew there was little chance of getting any more information from my sons, especially not about the questions I really wanted to ask, so I changed the subject. But my head was spinning from this unexpected development. Why would she suddenly leave such a good job headed by the man with whom she had fallen in love? Why in hell would she go into real estate, which can be challenging in the best of times and downright impossible in a down market like Atlanta was experiencing at the time. And what did this mean for her future with Dr. Allen Spencer?

Over the next few days, casual conversations with friends confirmed my suspicions: she and Allen were no longer an item. I never did learn what precipitated the break-up, but it seemed clear to me that he had dumped her and she was trying to get as far away from him as possible, at least career-wise.

I remembered seeing a word in a literature class when I was an undergrad: "schadenfreude." I had no idea what it meant and had to look it up. The definition was something like "delight in the suffering of others." That's exactly how I felt when I heard the news about Julia. 

"Now she's getting a taste of her own medicine," I thought to myself with glee. "Everybody knows that office romances never work out." The news did nothing to help my situation, of course, but I felt I had a small measure of revenge. 

My glee was short-lived. Not long after I heard the news about her change in careers, Julia called me to discuss our sons. "I don't think I'm going to be able to afford my share of their school costs," she calmly informed me. Of course, I knew what I had to do: I sucked it up and paid the whole tab. I was determined to do whatever was necessary to take care of my sons, but I bitterly resented the fact that her bad choices were again putting me in a bind. "Even now we're divorced, she keeps coming back to haunt me," I complained. 

I haven't said anything about my social life so far. There's a reason for that: it was lousy. The typical way for a single guy to meet women, I suppose, is to go to a bar or a club. That may work for some men, but not for me. First, I'm a lousy dancer. I'd be embarrassed to be seen attempting to dance. Second, I'm not much of a drinker. I have a low tolerance for alcohol, and I'm also not one of those people who can sit down next to a stranger and strike up a conversation. So meeting women to date was never easy for me.

It didn't help that I was handicapped by living a schizophrenic existence. For seven consecutive days I was a carefree, unencumbered bachelor, able to go wherever or do whatever I chose. In truth, my choice as often as not was to work late at the office, pick up some take-out food for dinner, and watch TV until I fell asleep. But if I somehow did manage to find an opportunity for socializing with the opposite sex, I was free to take it for those seven days.

But the following seven days I was a single father, solely responsible for the wellbeing of my two young sons. On my "dad weeks," I was a monastic figure. There was no going out on week nights under any circumstances; my sons were getting older, and they began to have homework to complete and after-school activities to attend. I certainly didn't begrudge these activities -- I knew they were a normal part of parenthood. But the net result was that every other week I pretty much dropped off the dating radar scope. 

Despite these handicaps, I did manage to find some women who were interesting and attractive, and I was successful at getting them to go out with me. Here are a few examples:

Cecily

Cecily was a single mother with a son in the same daycare as my two boys. I finally got up the nerve to approach her at an open house at the daycare, and we soon were dating. She was a redhead, sexy and hot as a firecracker. She liked to have me bite her nipples -- hard. I really liked her, but she dumped me because she thought her son didn't get along well with mine.

Donna

I met Donna at the office of a friend. We got to chatting and I asked her out. The night I picked her up was the night her divorce became final; she cried the whole evening. End of story.

Betty

On my kid-free weeks I joined a mixed-doubles tennis group in hopes of meeting someone who shared my interests. When I saw Betty in her short skirt, I thought I'd made a pretty smart move. In bed she moaned like I was torturing her, and she begged me not to stop until she came. However, she wanted to become exclusive right away, and when I wasn't ready, she hit me in the nuts with a tennis ball. Game over.

Rosemary

I worked with Rosemary, and had always admired her from afar. She was a warm, sweet woman, but she had an ex-husband who wanted to get back together, and she couldn't make up her mind what she wanted to do about him. Three's a crowd, I decided.

Millie

I met Millie while volunteering at the United Fund. She was smart and caring, pretty and outgoing. We dated for a long time, and I began to wonder if I might build a life with her. There was only one problem: her laugh sounded like a horse's whinny. I felt terrible about being so shallow, but in the end I just couldn't imagine listening to that for the rest of my life. No laughing matter.

So my life went on, and I learned some valuable things about myself. Despite the advice from the marriage counselor, I found I really didn't enjoy sowing my wild oats. I learned that I liked married life, liked being part of a traditional family. I wasn't looking for a fling, I was looking for a wife. Not having one no longer made me miserable, but I wasn't happy about the situation. I could survive without being part of a couple if I had to, but I learned that wasn't the kind of life I wanted for the long term.

The truth about being divorced with children is you're never totally divorced from your ex. There's always some situation that requires coordination, some unexpected expense that has to be covered, something that requires the two of you to talk. You can either use those times to renew open warfare, or you can be civil for your kids' sakes. I chose the latter.

So when Julia called me one day to say "We need to talk about the boys," I wasn't surprised. If we needed to work something out for them, I was willing to go over to her house to discuss it.




I May Be Dumb . . .



When she met me at the door, I noticed that she was wearing a sun dress that showed off her legs nicely. Her bare shoulders and neck were equally enticing. "Damn," I thought, "she's still a beautiful woman." She took me into her den and offered me a glass of wine. After a couple of sips, I asked her, "So what's going on with Josh and Jake?"

She sat her glass down and clasped her hands in her lap. "I think they're doing OK, but our divorce has been pretty rough on them."

"I know it has," I said, "but it was your decision, not mine, to do that to them."

"Anyway," she went on, "I've been thinking about what would be the best thing for them in the long run, what would make their lives better."

"We're doing everything I can think of to provide for their welfare," I thought. "Where is she going with this?"

"And to be honest," she continued, "I haven't been very happy with my own life. I've missed a lot about the way things used to be."

My thoughts were a jumbled mess: "What is this all about? What can she want?"

She looked up at me with her blue eyes and said, "I've been wondering lately if I made a mistake, maybe the biggest mistake of my life. I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm wondering if you think we could ever get back together?"

And just like that, there it was. In one magic moment, I thought, all the heartbreak and pain of the last couple of years could be undone. I could stop making a fool of myself trying to meet new women. All my loneliness could end and I could have my family back together. And I could get the most beautiful woman I had ever met for my wife again.

As she waited to hear what I had to say, I also thought back to all her deceit and betrayal. I remembered that morning when I wept to learn how coldly and calculatingly she had manipulated me.

I put the glass down and rose to my feet. "I may be dumb, Julia, but I'm not stupid." 

I walked out the door.

Julia's Story

I heard a line from a song on the radio not long ago that went "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful." If I were singing that song, I'd change the line to "I hate it that I'm beautiful." I hate it because guys are always hitting on me, trying to chat me up, trying to get me into bed. Sure, there are some cute guys out there, but most of them are dumber than a post and have no greater ambition in life than to get laid. Attracting men like that is not gratifying, it's a pain in the ass.

If I sound like it's the wrong time of the month, there's a reason for it. I had just gotten out of a marriage with a guy who turned out to be just like the guys I was just talking about. OK, that's not entirely fair: Robert was not dumb as a post, he was just a good old Carolina boy who turned out to be neither as intelligent as I am nor as ambitious. He romanced me while I was in college, and I was naïve enough to think I was in love with him. Once we settled down together, it didn't take long before I was climbing the walls. While I was eager to advance, he was content with his 8-to-5 job. When I wanted to attend cultural activities, he wanted to go to football games. We were about as compatible as oil and water.

Finally, I told him it was over. The poor oaf, he never even saw it coming. I felt sorry for him, but I just couldn't settle for a second-rate spouse. I divorced him, quit my job and left for graduate school. It was time for me take a step up in every aspect of my life.

I'd expected to feel relieved to be out of a bad marriage, but I was surprised to find how badly I felt after the divorce. I felt like I had failed, and I couldn't help wondering if there was something else I could have done to make our marriage succeed. My parents always pushed me to be the best, and I guess I've turned into something of a perfectionist. I get upset when everything isn't just the way I think it should be, and I'm hardest of all on myself when I'm not perfect. So failing at something as major as a marriage was a terrible disappointment for me.

Maybe that's why I wasn't put off when Mark began to talk with me the first day of graduate school. I knew he had to be smart or he wouldn't have been accepted to the Goizueta School. And I quickly learned that he already had a good job in marketing with a major corporation, so he clearly was ambitious enough to take the next step up in his career by strengthening his academic credentials. On top of all that, he had also just gotten out of a bad marriage. In short, we had a lot in common.

As school went on, our relationship seemed to blossom spontaneously. One minute we were talking after a class, the next we were taking long walks across campus. Afternoon study sessions seemed to transition effortlessly into dinner. Everything seemed easy, so asking him into my apartment after one of our non-date dates seemed perfectly natural. 

He didn't come on strong, but he made his desire for me clear. Then he left it up to me. That was such a change from the way men usually hit on me, that I was turned on, not off. I led him to the bedroom.

We both had been without sex for too long. We were so horny that we wound up making love three times, going from quick-and-frantic to hungry-for-seconds to loving contentment. Even in the height of passion, he made sure that I came first. 

From that point on, our relationship moved to a higher level, and I think it was clear to both of us we were headed toward marriage. I took Mark with me to meet my parents over Christmas, and I knew they were favorably impressed. As we were leaving to return to school, my Mom pulled me aside and whispered, "Hang on to this one, Julia, he's a keeper."

By our second year in grad school, we were engaged and the future seemed to open up in front of us like a script from a movie. And that's when my doubts started. I woke up in the middle of the night from a dream about Robert, my ex. In my dream, he had been taunting me, "You gave up, you failed, you couldn't make it work." I tried to run from him, but it felt as though I was running in slow motion. And Robert was always right behind me, yelling and rebuking me.

I tried to tell myself it was just pre-wedding jitters, but once it started I couldn't shake the thought that the divorce was my fault. The idea kept eating away at me. "Was it me, not Robert? Did I fail my marriage?" I wondered. The closer we got to my wedding with Mark, the guiltier I felt.

Finally, my guilt reached the point where I couldn't stand it any longer. I knew what I had to do: I had to go back to Robert and see if I could make it work. 

Mark, of course, was devastated when I told him. He begged me not to go, but I told myself to hold firm. "If I don't do this," I realized, "I'll never have any peace of mind. Besides, I couldn't be a good wife to Mark with this doubt in my mind."

I called Robert and arranged to fly over to Durham and spend the weekend with him. He was ecstatic; it was clear that he hadn't gotten over me. "Well," I thought, "that's a good sign."

The day Mark drove me to the airport, I could tell he was despondent. There were tears in his eyes, and Mark isn't a big crier. But I just put that out of my mind -- this was something I had to do for myself.

When we got to the gate, Mark helped me with my bags and then hugged me tightly. "Just please don't sleep with him," he whispered to me. Of course I knew that was a major fear for Mark, but I already knew that I would have sex with Robert. That was one of the big questions I needed to answer about our relationship. Rather than lie to Mark, I just said, "I understand," and headed for the counter.

When the plane got to the gate at RDU, Robert was waiting for me. Before I could say a word, he picked me up off the floor and kissed me passionately. "Wow!" I thought, "This is going to be quite a weekend!"

It took a while for my baggage to show up on the carousel, and even longer to drive to Robert's place in Durham. When we finally arrived, it was time for dinner. Robert was never very good in the kitchen, but he'd had the foresight to order take-out from a very good restaurant in the Triangle. So we sat around his dining room table, enjoying the meal and a couple of bottles of wine. After dinner, we moved onto the couch in his den, and he brought out a bottle of liqueur for dessert. 

The two of us sat there drinking and laughing about old friends for a couple of hours until Robert suddenly put down his glass, kissed me passionately, picked me up and carried me into his bedroom. He was like a wild man, frantically pulling my clothes off, kissing me everywhere he could reach. I was drunk and horny, and I had no plans to stop him. 

Before he could mount me, I pushed him onto his back and began to lick and suck on his cock. Normally, I don't care for blowjobs. They make me feel subservient and degraded; the thought of swallowing some man's cum usually makes me gag.

But tonight I was determined to give everything I had to making this weekend successful. I had made up my mind before I left Atlanta that I was going to give Robert the best blow job he'd ever had in his life. So I held his straining cock in my hands and licked and kissed it until he was almost there. Then I puckered my lips around him and began to bob my head faster and faster until he exploded. As he lay there stupefied, I smiled at him, opened my mouth to show him I still had all his cum there, and then made a big show of swallowing everything.

When we were married, Robert was a once-a-night guy, and I really didn't expect anything else to happen that night. So I was pleasantly surprised when, after only a few minutes, he rolled me onto my back and began to fuck me. At first his cock wasn't very hard, but it soon stiffened as he began pounding into me. It usually takes a lot of foreplay to get me excited enough to enjoy sex, but his urgency seemed to stimulate me, and soon I was pumping my hips off the sheets until we both came in a major orgasm.

When we awoke the next morning, Robert leaned over to kiss me, but I could smell his morning breath before he even got close, so I hopped out of bed and darted into the shower. Over breakfast, he told me about his plans for the weekend. He wanted to spend the day driving me around to show me some of the places we used to frequent when we were married, as well as some of the new developments built after I left. That evening we were going to meet up with a bunch of his friends at a sports bar and watch UNC play in the regionals of the NCAA tournament.

As we drove around, it was fun to see some of our old haunts again. I had some good memories of them, but Robert acted as though we were on a holy pilgrimage. And you can only see so many strip malls and new housing developments before they all begin to look alike.

The sports bar was already lively when we arrived, even though it was over an hour before tip-off. I knew a couple of the guys and gals we sat with, but most of them were strangers. I did notice several questioning glances in my direction from the women, but fortunately there were no awkward questions about the past, present or future.

In fact, the guys ordered several buckets of beer for us and proceeded to discuss the upcoming game in endless detail. I know basketball is a big thing in North Carolina, but frankly, it's not my thing. Some of the girls joined in the discussion, and I wondered if they really cared or if they were just trying to score points with the guys. The rest of the women gravitated together and began to chatter about local gossip, people about whom I neither knew nor cared.

When the game finally ended and the celebrating wound down, Robert had had too many beers to be allowed to drive. I wheedled the car keys from him, said good night to the rest of the crew, poured him into the passenger's seat and headed for his place.

By the time we arrived, Robert had sobered up a bit, but he was still far from steady. As he kept rehashing the high points of UNC's victory, I steered him toward his bedroom and began to undress him. I'd gotten him down to his boxers when he surprised me by grabbing my arm, pulling me down on top of him and starting to undress me.

I could see that his drunken excitement had changed to drunken lust, and I decided not to fight it. No one could say I wasn't giving this weekend my all. 

It was over pretty quickly. I may not have been aroused, but Robert certainly was. He slobbered over me and rutted in me, shooting his load in a few minutes. As he fell asleep beside me, all I could think was, "Thank God that's over."

Robert didn't awaken until close to noon, which was fine with me. I spent the time showering, being careful to douche, and packing my bags. We went out for a late brunch at a restaurant in a shopping strip, and by then it was time to head for the airport.

On the way to RDU, Robert continued to reminisce about good times we'd had when we were married. As he droned on, I too was lost in memories, but I was thinking of all the things I had hated about our marriage. I had forgotten all the little things Robert used to do that drove me nuts; in one weekend all of them had come back to me with a vengeance. Now I knew for certain that I was not to blame for our divorce. 

When he dropped me at the curb to catch my flight, he looked hopefully at me and asked, "So when are you coming back?" 

"Never," I said, and walked away.

I may have broken one heart that weekend, but I repaired another when I returned to Atlanta, so I guess that evened things out. Now that I had vanquished all my doubts and guilt about Robert, there was nothing to stop Mark and me from getting married.

I'm going to jump ahead now, because although the next few years were great, there was really nothing remarkable about them. Our wedding was small but beautiful; my parents couldn't have been happier. Buying our first home in Alpharetta was exciting, and I set about decorating it just the way I had always envisioned it. Then, along came Joshua, and that changed everything.

I had always envisioned myself as a mother, and I loved nursing and caring for this little bundle of life that had been an actual part of me. Mark proved to be a good daddy, getting up in the night to bring Josh to me when he needed to nurse, taking his turn changing diapers and generally doing his full share of our new responsibility. So motherhood was good for me.

But after Josh's first anniversary, I began to feel a sense of discontent. I guess I had begun to make that transformation from mother--the child-bearer and life-giver-- to mom, the maid who's always on call and never gets a day off. I loved Josh, of course, but I missed that sense of wonder I felt when he was first born.

After thinking about it for a while, I realized that the best way to recapture that wonderful feeling I had had with Josh was to have another child. I think Mark was a little hesitant, but when I made it clear that this was what I needed, he had no objection. And so about nine months later, Jacob was born.

The routine began again, but this time we had the benefit of knowing what to expect, so we weren't as panic-stricken by every cry and hiccup as we'd been with Josh. On the other hand, we had a two-year old who had lost his position as the most important person in the house, and that required a new set of skills.

Once again, after a year of nonstop mommy duty, I began to feel that familiar uneasiness, that sense that I wasn't fulfilling my potential. By now I knew that another baby was not the answer, so I decided that it was time for me to go back to work. Mark wasn't too happy about that; he wanted the boys to have a full-time mother for a while longer. But I convinced him that our children would be better off if their mother was happier, and he gave in as I knew he would.

Finding a job after three years out of the workforce is no easy task, but I was lucky. Dr. Allen Spencer, one of my old professors at the Goizueta School, had started a company and wanted me to work for him. I had taken one of Dr. Spencer's courses in grad school and been very impressed. The man was definitely a genius, and I had worked hard to do well in his class. Now he had left Emory to form his own consulting company in the red-hot field of networks and telecommunications policy. 

I felt that my background with the Georgia Public Service Commission would be excellent experience for the position, and I hoped that Dr. Spencer would remember me favorably from when I took his class.

Both those assumptions proved correct; he offered me the job after my initial interview with him. I would learn that that was a characteristic of Allen Spencer: he made decisions quickly and acted on them immediately. What a welcome contrast that was to the people I used to work with at GPSC. They dithered over decisions for weeks; no one seemed brave enough to take a position and stick with it.

I was pleased to see how quickly I could return to career mode after so long a layoff. Within the first week I was dealing with issues that were every bit as challenging as my toughest courses in grad school. I loved the work and I loved the working environment.

Of course all this meant that I couldn't spend as much time at home as before. But Josh and Jake seemed to thrive in the daycare arrangement we found for them, and Mark was there to pick up the slack any time I had to work late. 

I was also gratified by my new salary. Unfortunately, it wasn't as much as Mark was making -- I always felt a little competitive about the relative size of our paychecks -- but it was a great starting point. Of course, returning to work meant I had a lot of expenses. The business wardrobe I'd had at GPSC was completely out of date, so I had to replace that as quickly as possible. Not only was I expected to look professional at work, but Allen soon began taking me on some of his frequent trips to Washington, D.C., to consult with the Federal Communications Commission. That meant a travel wardrobe, plus new luggage and other expenses. And, of course, my old car wasn't suitable for my new role. I had to spend quite a bit to get back in the workforce, but it was worth it.

Indeed it was all heady stuff, and I found myself exulting in my good fortune. Perhaps the thing I liked best about my new job was my colleagues. I'd known a couple of them from grad school, but the others I met were equally sharp and dynamic. We all had a lot in common, and I was very glad to be part of such an exciting team.

But my biggest inspiration was Allen Spencer himself. He was one of the few people I would willingly admit was smarter than I. He was able to see the implications of technological changes well before others, and to realize market dependencies when others saw no relationship. And then he could turn those insights into programs and algorithms that were golden.

In addition to his intellectual prowess, he had an aura of leadership about him that was equally remarkable. In truth, he wasn't that handsome a guy, but when he walked into a room, he just seemed to command the attention of everyone around. 

For someone so brilliant and compelling, I thought his wife was surprisingly ordinary. I had met her at a university function when I was in grad school. She was a mousy little thing; I couldn't imagine what had attracted Allen to her. He did have a couple of cute kids, though.

One time, one of the newer staff members asked Allen what the key to success was. I thought it was a rather stupid question, but Allen's answer really made me think. "I can't speak for everyone," he said, "but the reason I'm successful is because I'm amoral." That brought a little gasp from around the table, but Allen continued, "Many people know the solution to their problems, but they're afraid to act. They worry about the morality of what they want to do or they're afraid of what other people will think. Either way, they fail when they could have succeeded."




I May Be Dumb . . .



He went on, "When I know what I need to do, I go and do it. I don't give a damn what someone else may think or another may fear. I get it done, and I succeed where others fail."

I couldn't help but relate what he'd said to my experience with Robert. I'd made that awful trip back to Durham because I'd been afraid that others would think I was a failure. I'd known Robert was wrong for me, yet I'd felt compelled to give it another try. I decided I wouldn't make that same mistake in the future.

The more I worked with Allen, the more my admiration and respect for him grew. Over time, I found myself comparing him to Mark, and the comparisons weren't very favorable to my husband. When Allen spoke, everything he said sounded ready to print in a textbook or be inscribed in federal policy. All Mark talked about were mundane matters; he was scarcely familiar with some of the concepts we worked with in the office. When Allen solved a technical problem for us, his work was flawless. When I asked Mark to take on some small chore around the house, I had to check up on him to be sure he had done it the way I wanted. Sure, those weren't big issues, but they kept reminding me of the differences between the two of them.

Working with someone as brilliant as Allen was a constant challenge to me: I wanted to do my very best, to prove to him that he had done the right thing in hiring me. As I settled into the job, I found I wanted to do better than any of my colleagues so Allen would respect me.

One characteristic of Allen I didn't like was that he never praised anyone. If you screwed up, he let you know about it no uncertain terms, but when you did well, he seldom said a word. As a result, I found myself trying harder than ever to please him -- I wanted to wring a "good job" out of his mouth. I wanted him to take special note of me.

Of course he took note of me in other ways. His eyes often followed me as I walked by his office or came in the doorway for a meeting. One day I wore a skirt with a slit a little higher than usual, and I saw him shift in his chair to get a better view. Women learn from an early age when they're being observed by a man. 

But he never gave any other indication of his interest, and that began to nag at me. "What's wrong with me," I wondered. "Other men respond; why can't I get his attention?" It became almost a competition. I began to do everything I could think of to make him notice me. When I was to meet with him, I'd stop in the ladies' room and roll my skirt up a little higher. I wore blouses that would gape open, and I would bend over his desk to point out figures so that he'd get a good look. Whenever possible, I'd find the opportunity to brush up against him. He had to notice, but he didn't react in any way. 

It was driving me crazy. I'd always been able to impress men, either with my looks or my brains, usually both. So why didn't it work with Allen?

I was surprised to find myself becoming depressed at his lack of attention. I felt as though I failed to measure up; I just wasn't good enough for this towering figure whom I so greatly respected. As he continued to ignore me, my doubt turned to determination. I wanted this man to pay attention, and I wasn't going to fail.

We had another trip scheduled for Washington, and I decided to make my move then. After a day of meetings with FCC officials, we had dinner at the hotel, one of the nicest in the city. I had changed into a new dress that I bought especially for the occasion. It was black silk and sleeveless. The silk fit as though it had been tailored to my body, the neckline plunged deep enough to show I wasn't wearing a bra, and there was a slit that came up my thigh, enabling me to take long strides while revealing an alluring length of my leg.

I arrived at the dining room after Allen, so I was able to make my grand entrance. I walked up to the table and paused, turning slightly so as to show off my dress most favorably. Allen merely glanced up at me briefly, then returned to studying the wine list. I was crushed. 

Damn it, I knew I looked good. As I'd ridden down the elevator, the wife of the man standing next to me had had to jerk his arm to get him to stop staring. When I walked through the lobby, I heard a noticeable drop in the volume of conversation, and saw numerous male heads turn to follow me. So why wasn't Allen interested?

We spent the dinner reviewing the agenda for tomorrow's session. Except for a discussion of issues we might expect, he hardly acknowledged my existence. I felt so defeated: I had brought out the big guns and had still lost the battle. 

We finished the dinner, rode up the elevator together in silence and returned to our separate rooms. I turned on the light and then went to the mirror to look at myself. I couldn't see anything wrong, and there's no one more critical of me than I am about myself. Tears of frustration came to my eyes.

Suddenly, I knew what I had to do. I walked over to the hotel phone and rang Allen's room. "Can I come over for a minute? There's something I need to show you." When he agreed, I hung up, went to the mirror to check myself one more time, took a deep breath and walked down the hall to his room. 

He'd left the door ajar, so I was able to walk straight in. I stood there with my arms crossed and my hands on my shoulders, staring at him. He looked up from his papers and said, "Yes?" I took another deep breath, then lifted my hands off my shoulders. In the hallway outside his door, I'd carefully unzipped my dress down the back before entering. Now, as I lifted my hands, I released the straps of my dress, and the black silk slid down my body like a kiss, pooling at my feet. The only thing I was left wearing was a black thong and black thigh-high stockings.

In a flash he was standing in front of me, his hands holding my shoulders and his eyes staring intently into mine. "Tell me what you want," he demanded. "Say the words."

I'm not sure I even knew the answer to his question, but what came out of my mouth was, "Fuck me."

Without a word, he lifted me off the floor and carried me over to his king-size bed. 

I don't know whether it was the months of frustration or the magic of the evening or my delight that this incredibly powerful man wanted me, but I had the best sex of my life. I came over and over again, completely out of control. Allen didn't make love to me, he fucked me repeatedly in a frenzy of lust, and I loved every second of it.

He was already awake the next morning. When I rolled over to face him, he said, "I wondered how long you could hold out." I realized at that moment that he'd been playing me, stringing me along until I threw myself at him. Rather than being resentful at his manipulation, however, I felt positively triumphal. "He wanted me all along. All this time he's been lusting after me, and I didn't even know it."

At that instant, I thought I knew how an Olympic champion must feel the morning after she's won the gold medal. Then my next thought was, "I've got to have him again."

And so began our affair. We agreed above all that we had to keep it secret. Allen warned me that if his wife were to find out she could make his life a living hell. He didn't want her to take his children away from him. I could understand that, and I didn't want Mark to find out either.

So we agreed to be extremely careful not to display any unusual familiarity or affection in the office or anywhere out in public. Likewise, there were to be no conversations that could be overheard, no emails or texts that could be recovered, no suspicious phone calls to each other's home or cellphones.

All this secrecy did was amplify our passion ten-fold whenever we could get together. He became an absolute aphrodisiac to me: whenever I was near him, my panties began to dampen. When we got behind closed doors, I was half-way to an orgasm before he'd even touched me.

Over time, it's common for passion to subside, grow a bit routine and predictable. That didn't happen with us. I never knew what to expect from Allen. We tried positions I didn't even know existed. He taught me to love blowjobs so much that I could cum just from having his cock in my mouth. The first time he took me anally, I was sure he would tear me apart. The next time we did it, I couldn't wait to do it again, and I cursed myself for not trying it years ago.

Not surprisingly, as my feelings toward Allen grew, so did my discontent with my marriage. I began to entertain dreams of leaving Mark and marrying Allen. I was terribly afraid to admit this to Allen, but when I finally did, he said he felt the same way. I was ecstatic -- I couldn't wait. But with his logical mind, Allen was quick to point out that Mark was the issue. Once Mark was out of the picture, then he'd feel free to confront his wife and we could be together without having to hide.

I'd never been happier, and I began to think about how to accomplish my goal. Georgia is a no-fault state, so I could sue for divorce on the grounds of irreconcilable differences. But, I realized, if Mark found out about my relationship with Allen, he might countersue for adultery, and that could create big problems for Allen. What I needed was a way to convince Mark to leave, preferably while diverting his attention away from Allen.

It was Allen, of course, who figured it out. "Confess adultery to Mark," he said, "but tell him it was with someone you met in Washington. He'll be so pissed that he'll be want to divorce you, but he'll be looking for your lover in the wrong town." 

I wasn't very happy at having to admit adultery; it might cause problems with some of my friends, and my parents were going to be badly disappointed in me. But then I thought, "They'd be even more upset if they found out about Allen. And the reason for the divorce makes no difference in the settlement." Remembering Allen's speech on amorality, I decided to go for it. "Who cares what others think?"

I wasn't looking forward to my little discussion with Mark, but my desire to be with Allen overcame my hesitation. So one evening I sat down with him and told him, "We need to talk."

When I confessed my fictional infidelity with the FCC staffer, I could tell that Mark was stunned. But then he surprised me. Rather than demanding a divorce, he wanted to go to counseling! I hadn't anticipated that, and when I couldn't think of a good alternative, I reluctantly agreed. "Maybe this will be a good thing," I thought. "At least it will show people I tried to work things out."

Our first session with Harris Willard, the counselor, was a real waste of time. Willard had each of us talk about our situation and relate what we hoped to get out of our sessions with him; I made up something vague, since I couldn't say what I really wanted. 

But the second session was one-on-one with me, and I decided to go for broke.

"Harris," I said, as he'd insisted on first names, "I've heard that counselors are bound by the same rules as doctors and attorneys when it comes to confidentiality. Is that true?"

He hastened to assure me that it was: anything I said to him would be held in confidence, even from Mark.

"Very well," I said, "then let me talk and you just listen." I proceeded to tell Harris that I had absolutely no interest in reconciliation. I went on to explain that I had found another, better choice for a partner and that I planned to marry him just as soon as my divorce from Mark was final.

"So you see, I don't need your help. But if you want to help Mark, I suggest you spend your time with him preparing him for the inevitable. The more you talk about reconciliation and working on our marriage, the harder it's going to be on him. Do you understand?"

He looked at me carefully. "Yes, Julia, I think I understand completely now. I'm sorry you feel that way, but under the circumstances, I have little choice but to follow your suggestion."

"Well since we're in agreement, there's no need for me to take up any more of your time," I concluded, and left his office.

I have no idea what Harris talked about with Mark during their one-on-one session. I hope he was preparing Mark for the end, but who cares? What I do know is that by the fourth session I was ready for this little charade to be over. And, to his credit, Harris moved us clearly and directly to the point I'd been headed all along: divorce. I felt a little badly to see how hard it hit Mark, but I reminded myself that it had to be done to get what I wanted. He'd get over it.

The next week or two were very tense. Mark was totally depressed, and I just tried to avoid him. At the same time, neither he nor I wanted to alarm Josh and Jake about our situation. I knew I would have to be the one to tell them; Mark had already made clear that he would not do so. I thought that was just his childish attempt to make me the bad guy, but there was nothing I could do to force him to have that discussion with them. 

Instead, I began house-hunting. Since Allen's timetable wasn't clear, it didn't make sense to buy a place, but I still wanted somewhere nice to live. After a couple of days, I found the ideal compromise: the opportunity to rent a charming old place in a good neighborhood with an option to buy later if I wished. It was perfect; everything was coming together according to plan.

But one thing still bothered me: the possibility that Mark would grow angry and try to divorce me on the grounds of adultery. It shouldn't have bothered me, but it did. I wanted a no-fault divorce with no stigma attached.

I had already contacted an attorney to handle my side of the divorce. I was meeting with her one afternoon when she casually mentioned what turned out to be the solution to my problem. It would be easy; all I had to do was pull a few things together.

Our old friends the Andersons didn't know the terminal status of our marriage. I called Ginna up and suggested we all go out for dinner and a movie. I wanted to remain friends with them, and I felt that this would provide the perfect setting for my little scheme. 

The next piece of the puzzle was the premier of a new movie at the local cinema. It wasn't X-rated, but it was a hard R with lots of steamy sex, according to the reviews. I hoped that it would provide the proper stimulus.

When I told Mark that the Andersons had invited us to dinner and a movie, he was caught off guard. He probably interpreted my desire to go as a sign of a change of heart on my part. I was glad to have him think so. Once he had agreed, I suggested to Ginna that we meet at a favorite restaurant for dinner before the show. That was easy: she had read the reviews and was eager to see the movie everyone was talking about.

The night of our outing, I purposely wore one of my more becoming outfits, and I kept the conversation flowing as we all drove to the restaurant. Once at dinner, I undertook to order wine for everyone, and I kept it coming until everyone was happy. The restaurant I'd suggested was very close to the cinema, so the four of us walked over when it was time for the show. Driving at that point would not have been wise for any of us. 

The movie lived up to its billing and then some. Even though this was all part of my design, I could still feel my panties getting damp at the sex scenes on the big screen. By the time the show had ended, the effects of the wine we had drunk had worn off enough to drive home safely, but the effects of the movie had not. When Tom and Ginna got into their car, she was all over her husband.

Mark and I drove home in silence, thinking, I hoped, about the film we had just watched. I made sure to put on a nightie I knew Mark really liked when we headed for bed. And once the lights were out, all I had to do was reach my hand over to rub his cock to get him to attack me. I knew that unless he had masturbated, he had gone without sex ever since I'd confessed my infidelity. Between the wine, the movie and my friendlier attitude, he was as horny as he'd ever been in his life. Sex was inevitable and unstoppable.

Of course I faked my orgasm; every woman knows how to do that, and any woman who tells you she never has is either lying or a nymphomaniac. But there was no way Mark could know that, as horny and desperate as he must have been that night. Fortunately, he finished pretty quickly, and I could get some sleep. Before I dozed, I congratulated myself on pulling off my little stratagem.

The next morning he arose from bed, sexually satisfied and newly optimistic about our marriage. I knew it was time to set him straight. "I think I've found a place to rent, Mark. I'm going to sign the lease today." I was watching him carefully in my makeup mirror. He deflated like a child's balloon. 

"But after last night, I thought . . ." The words tailed off as he looked uncomprehendingly at me. 

"Oh, that didn't change anything," I said lightly.

I could see anger rise in his face. 

"Well if you still want a divorce, why don't I just file on the grounds of adultery?" he said bitterly. 

I guess I'd been hoping this would happen. I'd prepared, and the words flowed out of my mouth like a trap springing closed on a helpless animal: "You can't do that. In the State of Georgia, if one spouse has sex with the other after knowing about adultery, he or she is presumed to have forgiven the infidelity by a court of law."

He'd taken the bait and was now trapped: there'd be no charges of adultery from him. I had done what I had to do, and now I was safe. "Allen would be proud of me," I thought.

I glanced again at Mark in the mirror. At that moment, he looked as though I had taken a baseball bat to him. He slumped on the bed and began to weep like a child. I was a little surprised that I felt a bit guilty for being so cruel -- amoralists aren't supposed to feel guilt. 

But I knew I didn't have to worry about Mark; he'd get it together. After all, it was his turn to take the kids to daycare, and I knew he wouldn't fail to take care of them. I finished getting dressed and left for work. 

After that, everything went pretty much according to plan. I signed the lease and moved in to my new place a few days later. I told the boys what was going on and took them with me the first week. They were a little shook up, but that's to be expected. Kids are resilient; I knew they'd adapt. 

I filed suit for divorce on the grounds of irreconcilable differences, and Mark didn't contest it. He also didn't counter-file, the thing I had really wanted to avoid.

We had our first Christmas in my new place. The boys were still a bit uncertain in their new surroundings, but when it came time for them to open presents on Christmas morning, their excitement lifted them out of their funk.

My Mom and Dad came down to spend Christmas with me. I was glad to see them, but they were hurt and confused about my break-up with Mark, so that cast a bit of a pall over the season. Thankfully, they didn't ask too many questions, so I was able to stick to the "irreconcilable differences" script and they didn't make a big issue of it. I'm not really sure why they were so taken with Mark; they hadn't felt that way about Robert. Maybe it was just because he was the father of their grandchildren.

The end of the holiday season meant more opportunities for Allen and me to get together. Now he could spend time at my place without fear of detection. Usually he would come over on the weeks that Josh and Jake were with their dad, and several times he was able to spend the night. Things got pretty wild in the bedroom when that happened. But I also managed to bring him around when Josh and Jake were with me because I wanted them to become familiar with him. The sooner they got used to him, the easier it would be when we got married.

Despite the new freedom that living on my own gave me, there were still frustrations. My divorce had been granted, and I was now in the waiting period. Allen and I agreed that he would not talk with his wife until after my divorce was final, so he and I still had to be discrete. We wanted to make sure nothing could interrupt us before we were ready.