10/2/05

Gary mentioned something about regretting buying his ski boots, the very ones that he bought while on that trade show to Utah, that time when he was gone a LOT, and furthermore he’d not told me that he was staying over an extra day, just to ski, and then had bought those boots for $400—the very boots advertised in Sierra Trading Post for just under $300. Pretty foolish for him to bring THAT up, and all the associations for me. I told him as much. He remembers it as a “misunderstanding”. I remember it as an active deception.

So I gave him final warning. I told him that incidents like that, and the one yesterday merely increase my potential for an affair. I told him that I consider an affair on the table now, where it had been absolutely off the table before. I said if his feelings toward me had eroded to a point where he could easily speak to me the way he did yesterday and other times, then I could say that my feelings toward him had eroded to a point where an affair seems not just possible, but likely. Know what he did? He was reading the paper as I spoke to him. He’s still reading it now.

I certainly wouldn’t want to have an affair with x, now, though. Too much proximity to my realizing just what a false front this marriage is—it wouldn’t be worth dragging his marriage into it.

9/27/05

The house is supposed to record today, the deed, that is, and then it is officially no longer ours (I keep thinking of it as mine). We should be called to be told; and unless we hear anything to the contrary it should be done by 5:00.

I was over there yesterday to meet the carpet guys. Then X came out to meet me from his house. They were going to go on a job, but he lingered some, talking with me. To my delight he responded with gladness to my suggestion that he come up to the house. He even said something about this week. So, for good or bad, there was some nice validation that maybe he enjoys my company like I do his.

I kept reminding myself that my thoughts and fantasies, pure, or not, are my business, and it’s also my business to keep them separate from my behavior. The uneasy part is wondering if sometimes, unconsciously to me, my behavior may be being shaped by them.

Because I suppose that the really ethical thing to do would be to stay far away from him, knowing that I am attracted to him, and it’s possible it’s a little mutual. I guess a consideration is if I can be content with the glow that comes from that attraction, mutual or not, without expecting anything further.

9/28/05

Alone in the house, which is kind of nice, except I’m not supposed to be alone in the house. Rick {our builder} was to have gotten here at 7—that’s what he said his plan is. And now it’s after 10. Various scenarios in my head interrupted my writing at this point.

I stopped by to drop off a book. I didn’t feel very whole within myself—just kind of scattered. But then today is the first day I haven’t needed to go over to the other house to either clean, or carry something back. So it makes sense that I’d be kind of jittery just with the pace of the last several months, and the effort this move has taken. I’m really not planning on moving again.

Maybe that’s part of the source of this heightened sexual feeling. Besides the medication…I think it has an effect too. Perhaps the way it stimulates I interpret as sexual.

He didn’t ask me to stay or offer me coffee and that’s fine…I was dropping by and I’m sure he had things to do. But he did say that he would return it directly to me, at my house. Now the book drop of the library is within a few blocks of his home. Maybe he just didn’t think of that. I suppose that if he were to call and say, “D-u-uh, I forgot all about the book drop. I’ll just use that!” then I’d know that most of this sigh, ‘fuss’ has all been silliness on my part, totally one-sided.

But the point is, I suppose what’s hanging me in there, is to warm myself by this glow that I feel, and to fantasize about that glow. But I don’t think I’d be a good “Other Woman” because even in my fantasies I don’t stop thinking about his wife. Then I remind myself that these are “just” fantasies, so in a fantasy, as long as it’s fantasy, I can imagine that his wife has given him permission.

This is fantasy, and probably one-sided, but I’m seeking that glow, and then I think I’m motivated by a desire to see how close to the line we come, of admitting mutual attraction, or revealing it somehow.

And that’s where I think maybe I’m doing wrong, and that it’s the best thing to just keep away. And the right thing. I was looking in my mind’s eye to see if I could find any literature where having sex with a married man, while married to someone else, turns out well, and I have to wryly smile that there’s not. That I can remember anyway. “Madame Bovary” comes to mind. I wonder if she was peri-menopausal.

I think some of this is an example of how my thoughts and fantasies DO influence my BEHAVIOR, in that they provoke a certain anxiety that causes me to behave a certain way. I feel fears that his wife is noticing that she’s hearing my name more than usual and may get a clue. Notice that I’ve been cropping up. I realize that any protective feelings I may sense from her are purely projection, and also in the realm of the fantasies.

I think this is just crazy one-sidedness gone a little nutty. I think he treats me the way he treats Val, and Ann, and Rob and Gary, for that matter. It’s kind of embarrassing, and I think I needed the insight into just how big the fantasies really are in my life and that they’re affecting my behavior.

I’m still with wanting an affair, I guess, but really he isn’t the right one. He would be if he weren’t married with kids. Like I said, it can’t be just anyone. It has to be someone who sparks that kind of warmth that I feel surrounding his presence, someone I genuinely like and laugh with. I have a feeling, that as in most marriages, an affair would devastate his, and it wouldn’t devastate mine. At best, the warmth of having such a side relationship would help me to tolerate a lot of the feelings that I have a lot with Gary’s and my interaction. At worst, I could get caught but I don’t think he would divorce me. It could function as his wake-up call. In a way it’s the only leverage I have in a relationship with someone who ignores things that are unpleasant. And harbors grudges and acts passively aggressive. They’re things that make my marriage to him unpleasant in a moment-by-moment way, but they’re not really divorcible offenses. When for the hundredth time he’s not followed through on something we’d agreed on, I may WISH I could divorce him, but it would be laughable to divorce him on the grounds that he hadn’t taken the trash out. It’s the little things, in total and a mass, that make me dislike my marriage to him. And divorce on account of those things is not really an option, and besides it would be yet another huge change in the lives of our boys. I can tell him that each time something like this happens that it kills something in our relationship, but he’s already ignored that leverage enough. He just absorbs the colder atmosphere between us and goes on. An affair says, “HEY!!! You’ve not been paying attention! This is for real how distant I feel from you. This is the reality that all those little unresolved exchanges over the years have led us to. That an affair feels like a viable alternative!” I don’t think I would care if he had an affair either. I think it would be fine with me, just so he doesn’t bring home any diseases, and vice versa.

It’s just my luck that the person I’ve been drawn to have an affair with is the absolute wrongest person.

But I’m silly in any sense to think that this is mutual.

So what are the possibilities in this situation?

1) It is totally one sided and the product of a silly medicated perimenopausal woman—completely unrequited except as neighbor/friends.

2) There is a mutual attraction that will go completely unspoken.
a) Now that we’re no longer neighbors it will go its own way and die
b) We’ll continue to get together and continue to act like friends and not get any closer to that line, but still all unspoken, so it’s not clear if he IS mutually attracted to me, or not

3) There’s a mutual attraction we acknowledge
a) we discuss it and acknowledge it’s not a good thing and resolve to manage our feelings and our behavior
B) We discuss it and throw caution to the winds and act on it. Not likely, since I believe he really loves his wife.

So I haven’t been able to have fantasies of him without seeing myself as a homewrecker.

I suppose this is a wake-up call for ME, that I think so little of the marriage to Gary that I’m going to act as if his behavior has nullified and voided our contract to be monogamous.

If he behaved toward me the way he did when he still liked me, I can see his behavior deteriorating now, when he doesn’t act like he likes me either. That whole thing with expecting me to guess that he wanted pictures of the house with the family in it and indicating that he thought it should have been a no-brainer that I knew that—that’s what people do when they dislike someone.

So I want an affair. Unfortunately with the wrong person, but nevertheless I know I want one by my feelings of want in this situation.

It’s curious to me that I keep flashing on the “nothing good can come of this” theme. Thinking of Madame Bovary, the famous adulteress. Remembering Erica Jong’s 70’s book, “Fear of Flying: and that main character’s search for “The Zipless Fuck” I don’t remember anything else about that book, but it seems there was some sort of come-uppance for the main character.

I do feel like I too am looking for a “Zipless Fuck” I’m not interested in romance, or courtship, or re-marriage and someone else parenting my boys. I’m looking for good sex with someone I like, whose presence brings a spark, and who I can laugh with. So I wonder if there is such a thing. Maybe even for years? A marriage with another relationship on the side. Again, it doesn’t seem to have any precedent in literature of working out well. Who am I to think I’ll be different?

Rick came a while ago with a partner and they’re working, and it’s beginning to get noisy so it’s probably better that I go take a walk.

A little later. The cable guy came to put a wire in downstairs so the eventual television will have a cable hook-up. He had an interesting manner, quite a presence that I noticed the second I opened the door. We talked a bit when he finished so I could sign the papers—he did a really nice thing in that he billed this as a trouble call that won’t cost us the service charge. We talked for a bit before he left, and he said, “You have really blue eyes.” He said it in an admiring sort of way. It sort of shocked me, but in a refreshing way. It was actually very nice.

It makes me wonder if something’s sticking out of me. Some pheromone or something.