How To Tell, Chapter V: A Breakup
A story about opening up a relationship. Reality meeting fiction.
Chapter V — A Breakup
There are days of your life that you can’t forget. Days of joy but also days of pain. Most of all days where you know your life changed and you wonder what would have happened if you had reacted differently. Lily remembered that day well. It had been a sunny day and her husband had organized for someone to look after the kids because he wanted to talk to her. She did not remember how the conversation started. But did remember him talking to her about love and desire and how humans are not made to live monogamously all their lives.
She first had thought that her husband was just in for an intellectual exchange on men and women, and was at first happy to see that he was talking about their relationship. However soon it became clear that he was trying to bring a point across, that he felt suffocated by their marriage. She got really scared hearing his words. She had been with this man for most of her adult life. They had 2 kids and had moved house to another city halfway across the country following a job offer that he had gotten. Their youngest girl was going to turn two in a few weeks. She had always imagined her little family staying together until the proverbial “death do us part”. She suddenly feared her husband leaving her for another woman.
She became emotional. She started reminding him of their vows, on all the things that she did for him, and also of all the things she had learned to overlook. The bomb dropped when she asked him if he was not satisfied with their sexual life.
He was not.
They had married young and their sexuality had evolved over the years. She listened to him telling her how he was feeling relegated by her focus on the kids. The exchange became acrimonious with her telling him that she was in a constant state of real tiredness. That she could use some more help with the kids. That it was a big effort for her to get together with him. And this led to him saying the words: “I want to see other people.” The discussion ended in tears, with him trying to calm her down and nobody sleeping that night.
The next days she went in deep despair trying to find a solution that would not involve somebody else. The next morning she told him how she would be willing to try new things and change her ways to spice up their lives. The next evening they had a fantastic lovemaking session. Somehow the fear of losing each other brought up feelings and sensations that had been hidden for a while.
What she did not know on that day was that her husband had already met somebody and was trying to ask her to allow him to be with her. He did not want to leave his family, but after all these years had gotten bored of their life as a couple. He did not want to hide his affair from Lily, but he had not prepared well. The outcome turned out to be messy. Lily first tried to reconcile with him. But when she learned that he had gone ahead and met that woman the day after their initial conversation she went ballistic on him.
Somehow all her love turned into anger. She became blindsided by jealousy and threw him out of their house. Life sometimes has points of no return, and their relationship did reach one such point then. Time provides insight, and right now she knew that she had thrown the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. Way too many nice things of their life as a couple got lost that were way more important than sexual exclusivity.
In hindsight, the fear of not being good enough for him had been too much for her. She started taking things personally. And could not see possible solutions but just all the perceived problems in their lives. She turned into a recriminating wife, always complaining about the way he treated her. And how all the things that she did went unrecognized by him. After several weeks of struggle, of not talking to each other for days, of yelling at each other for small details, he decided to move out.
Sometimes you wonder what would be if you could turn back the clock. If Lily could send a letter back in time to that younger Lily and tell her to consider again what she was doing. That rage was a bad consigliere, that it was better if she would look at the big picture and understand that it was not a deal-breaker. That she would be putting herself and her kids through lots of suffering and hardship, and that it was just not worth it. But she could not do that.
Her grandma used to say: When you marry someone you marry 3 different persons:
- The person whom you think you married
- The person he really is
- The person he will turn into because of marrying you.
She realized that after spending so many years with her husband she did not really know who he was. She had stopped seeing her partner. Took him for granted. He was always there. And then she also changed. No wonder their sexual life turned boring in the long run, no matter if it was good to start with.
The human mind has this fantastic ability of hiding the background noise. When we go into a noisy room we get used after a while to the noise and can keep a conversation with our partner above that noise. When we go into a darker room after a few seconds our eyes get used to it and we can see the shadows and people around. She believed that something similar had happened in her marriage. Great lovemaking would also turn into just noise that was not perceived anymore. If you drink champagne every day it will soon taste like water…
She knew that her partner had found something different to what he already had. No matter how good it was what he had, like with the champagne it did not have any taste anymore. This new thing he had found had the aura of mystery that all new experiences had. He was going through a discovery phase and thrilled by it. He had to focus his time and energies on this new relationship. Nothing could be taken for granted, and anything he would want would take effort from his side. it was no ordinary thing.
Her husband had gotten used to her as just the person he was living with and had started longing for the thrill again. She always thought men have a greater need for that thrill. And that women tend to value the stability and security family life provides. In the affair that his husband was having it was more the situation that was special and not the new person.
Lily went through several months of hell. Not only was she burdened by the house chores and the kids, but also with all the psychological war that was going on with her husband. Despite him trying to convince her to get back together, she would not accept him staying with that other woman nor forgive that he had betrayed her. They decided to separate. And the legal battles that ensued burned any remaining bridges between them. She lived through months of anger and emotional instability. She would get upset often just by thinking about him. The divorce turned messy because she and her ex were trying to make life impossible for each other, trying to get even.
The hardest part for her was not the financial settings, she had a good-paying job of her own. It was them having to agree how the kids should spend holidays. According to the law, he had the same rights to the holidays of the kids than she did. And she felt that was unfair because to her it was him the one who had started it all.
Time went by and she settled in a routine. She decided to focus on the kids and on her work. She was lucky to have found a position where she could work part-time. She had at least financial stability, and the kids kept her busy with their growing up. With the benefit of hindsight, she started to question the link that we make between fidelity and staying in a relationship. The primary goal of a marriage is to bring the kids up and watch over each other when we are old. She started reading about this and realized how it was a recurring topic in the society and through history. She realized that this was a limitation of our times that would probably be gone in a few years. She could see that in the future it would be acceptable to be someone who is interested in other kinds of relationships than monogamy. Same as several years ago it was not accepted for someone to admit to being gay and now it was.
The younger Lily would not have accepted this kind of arrangement even if her husband had been open about his intentions. Her concern was the practical issue of having to manage time across many relationships. Even if the emotional tension that was associated with that was disregarded. She thought that work and life is so busy it is simply impossible to split yourself between two women or two families. Some days it felt as if you do not even have time for one.
The older Lily now knew that there is no such thing as two relationships at the same level. Relationships do differ for the amount of time you put into them. The relationship with someone you have married and have kids and a home would take most of your time and resources. It would be where you would get moral support and would go on holidays together. It would be the main relationship facing society since not everyone is receptive to the concept of multiple relationships. Other relationships would be more of “long-distance” relationships. Somebody with whom you exchange daily per email but probably see every month or so. These relationships were not destined to be for life, only until the “fire” was gone or the circumstances had changed.
Lily knew that if she could choose now this is how she would set her life up. Have a husband and kids with whom she would have her main relationship and her main obligation. If she or her husband could then find someone with whom to have a secondary relationship it would be on an occasional basis. And this would be an arrangement she would prefer to being alone after a hard day of work and struggling with the kids in the evening. Having someone to talk to, to cuddle with, and to grow old with.
Coming soon, Chapter VI, Dumped
