An Ongoing Affair with a Jeep

One chilly December morning seven years ago, I went for a walk with my mother. We casually discussed the morning news, Diane Sawyer’s new haircut, and my crazy uncle’s latest attempts to open his own winery. He had sent my parents a bottle of his port -- Pork's Port -- that had exploded in their kitchen, permanently staining their pickled wood cabinets. Then, after a long and thoughtful pause, Mom mentioned that she had met my husband’s new assistant. Turning sideways to face me, she grabbed my arm and said, “She’s cute, and she’s very thin.” She then proceeded to tell me I had better “watch it,” because she suspected he was having an affair.

At the conclusion of our walk, she asked me to come inside because she had a gift for me. And this is not a lie: the woman handed me a diet and exercise book titled Look Great Naked. The implication, of course, was that if my husband was having an affair, I could fix the problem by losing fifteen pounds.

I was devastated. My mom thought my husband was cheating, and she had also just called me fat.

Four months later, I found myself in a twelve by twelve room of a rehab facility and listened as my husband read aloud the following statement, written in his own hand:

“I have struggled quite a bit with alcohol the past year, but what you don’t know is my behaviors that led to my drinking. Last summer, I became involved in an affair with a coworker. This affair has been ongoing and very difficult for me to break off, even after repeated attempts. The magnitude of this addictive relationship is such that I have even had contact with this person while in rehab.”

I heard nothing in this statement after he admitted to an “ongoing affair with a co-worker."

“Ongoing affair with a co-worker.”

Ongoing affair with a co-worker.

Ongoing affair with a co-worker.

What does “ongoing” mean? Is it still going on?

I knew who the co-worker was. I’d known it when my mom handed me the book about looking great naked. Deep down, I’d known. And now, on top of everything else, I felt stupid for not “knowing” until he confessed. In that moment, I felt as if I would never, ever be able to breathe again.

I also felt incredibly fat. That day, I quit eating. I lost seventeen pounds in one month by illogically reasoning that if Mom was right, I could win him back by losing weight.

And I began playing mind games with myself, games that I had no hope of winning. For instance, the “Co-worker” drove a black Jeep. I’d never paid much attention to Jeeps, but suddenly every other car on the road was a damn black Jeep. Every time I spotted one, my heart began pounding, and I suffered a slight panic attack. Every black Jeep was her. She’s on her way to see my husband. No! She’s following me. And I’m half-crazy, so they’ll get my kids. That bitch is going to steal my kids!

That affair eventually ended, but it was followed by several more, the most ridiculous of which was with a twenty-seven-year-old shot girl he met in a strip club. The great irony is that I finally looked really, really great naked, what with all the weight loss, but he kept right on cheating.

I finally mustered the strength to stand up for myself, realizing it wasn’t anything about me – my appearance, my flaws, my imperfections, even my crazy ideas about what kind of cars his lovers drove – that caused him to cheat. After several excruciating years of thinking I could fix him by fixing myself, I realized his affairs weren’t about me. And that’s when I filed for divorce.

My insane aversion to Jeeps lasted for nearly four years, though, until the day it dawned on me that I’d always liked Jeeps; in fact, I’d liked the “Co-worker’s” Jeep before I’d discovered my husband was sleeping with her. So the Jeep wasn’t the problem. It was the meaning I attached to her Jeep – and eventually all other Jeeps – that caused my pain. Further, if I could attach new meaning to Jeeps, and then to his affair, and even to the Look Great Naked book, I could change how I felt about them and, perhaps, even grow from those experiences. Confirmation that I was on the right track came when I discovered the following poem by the Sufi poet Rumi:

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

Some momentary awareness comes

As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,

Who violently sweep your house

Empty of its furniture,

Still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out for some new delight.

Black Jeep was doing me a favor all along; I just hadn’t been able to see it. At that moment, I decided that, rather than cringing every time I saw a Jeep, I would say to myself, “It’s clearing me out for some new delight.” Over and over, Jeep after Jeep, I repeated the new mantra: “Clearing me out for some new delight.” Eventually, I even began to look for Jeeps, to search them out, like every Jeep I spotted was a clue that something good was just around the corner.

In fact, I’m secretly hoping that when my new delight shows up, he’ll be driving a Jeep.

Measuring Intelligence

One evening in early November 2005, Morgan walked into my bathroom. I was sitting on the floor of my closet packing for my annual Christmas-shopping trip with my sister to the Mall of America in Minneapolis. Morgan was wearing an Abercrombie t-shirt with the words “Dependently Wealthy” on it. She crossed her arms over her chest, leaned against the doorframe, and with her eyebrows arched as high as they could possibly get, said, “Mom, I need to know one thing. Are you and dad planning on having any more kids?”

I laughed. “Why are you asking me that?”

“Just answer the question, Mom.” She cocked her head to the side and waited for my answer.

“Sweetie, you know the answer to that. Of course we’re not planning on any more children. Now tell me why you’re asking.”

My children were fifteen, twelve, and ten at the time. All three were in school, straight-A students, and could take themselves to the potty. A baby was definitely not in the picture.

Morgan had been using her father’s computer. She said, “I hit Dad’s favorites page, and you know what popped up? A vasectomy reversal site.”

Shit.

But I didn’t say a word. I just sat there looking up at my daughter and letting the tears well up in my eyes.

Then she said, “Mom, how much more are you going to take?”

She left the room, and I sat there feeling like a limp dishrag. I couldn’t cry because that would mean I would have to explain to my husband what was upsetting me. Finally, I moved to the bathroom sink and was washing my face as my husband walked in. Now a budding developer who had applied for zoning permits to build a community of ranch-style condos in our town, he commented, “The county is giving me problems again. The Water Authority wants to put more conditions on the zoning approval I’ve already gotten.”

“You may have to sue them,” I said, and he agreed.

I continued the lather in order to hide my face from him, and after a moment, he left the room. Seconds later, he stomped back into the bathroom, threw his hands up in the air, and with his face twisted in fury, yelled, “You don’t give a rat’s ass, do you?”

“Huh?” I answered, looking up from the towel I was using to dry my face. Honestly, I thought I’d given him at least a rat’s ass worth of concern when I’d said he might have to sue the county. What, did he want me to go buy a posterboard and make a sign and picket the next Commission Zoning Meeting? The man was making it extremely difficult for me to keep my cool.

“My businesses are going bankrupt, and you don’t even care. But you’re going to care in about two months when I file for bankruptcy. And that’s when I’m going to know that you’re only married to me for the money.”

He turned and left the room. I heard the alarm beep, meaning he had left the house, and I knew that, just like every other night for the past several months, he would not return.

The next morning, I called a lawyer, and that afternoon I was seated in his office. I needed a divorce; of that I was certain. But he needed to know what I was seeking in the divorce, and I said, “Everything I deserve.” The problem was that if we were in the financial trouble my husband was claiming, I had no idea what to ask for. We left that section blank, my attorney assuring me I was entitled to half and that we would find out, in the process of discovery, just how much half was. He promised to have the petition for divorce filed and ready to serve him within one week. Fortunately, I would be at the Mall of America when he was served, and my children would be at their grandparents’ home, where they would be sheltered from seeing a sheriff at the door.

On the flight to Minneapolis, I remembered that he had always used his birthdate as his email password. When we landed, I went straight to the tiny business center in the Minneapolis Airport Hilton and logged onto his email, something I could have easily done all along. I spent the next two hours and $75 printing out emails. It may have been the best money I’ve ever spent.

There was an AdultFriendFinder alert. “You have three new flirts.” I clicked onto his profile to discover that my husband of eighteen years and the father of my children was single with no kids. Not only that, he was also a young professional in his early thirties (lie) who had never had time to commit to a relationship (a lie unless marriage doesn’t count as a relationship) because he was extremely busy in his professional life (half true). No children (lie). 195 pounds (huge lie). Additionally, he liked all things Latin – music, food, and women. In fact, he was looking for a Latin girl, and this is the God-honest truth, intelligence was only “moderately” important to him.

Another email contained pictures of what must have been the girl of his dreams. She was Latina, and, as proof that she was, indeed, “moderately intelligent,” she was gainfully employed as a shot girl in a strip club. In the picture, she was baring her boobies, and the pictures were courtesy of a professional photographer who was courting my husband’s investment dollars. Basically, the asshole paid for her Glamour Shots!

Hey, Einstein, you’re considering a vasectomy reversal so that you can have a child with a moderately intelligent woman. Did you know that vasectomy reversals are rarely successful ten years after the vasectomy? They’re going to have to stick a needle into your scrotum to suck your semen out. And they’re going to mix it in a little Petri dish with the eggs from a woman with the intelligence of blue-footed booby bird. Just for the fun of it, I took your picture and hers and put them into one of those cool computer programs that shows you what your children will look like. Your kid is going to look like your scrotum.

As crazy as it sounds, I felt a wave of relief in that moment. Knowing that the divorce was inevitable and that I’d only beaten him to the attorney’s office was absolution for a woman still trying to do everything exactly right. I felt better knowing I wasn’t the bad guy. But as I digested all what I had just found, I began to feel like the moderately intelligent one for not seeing what had been right under my nose for so very long.