PEOPLE TRUST ME WITH THEIR MARRIAGES; THEY SHOULDN’T.
I’m not a villain, or a monster; neither am I temptrix or cuckold. And to be fair, I don’t really care whether Jennifer and Chad stay together for the children or not. Not a single cockle in my heart is warmed when Jason learns Rebecca’s love language is acts of service.
Listening to couples’ petty complaints pays the bills; sometimes it’s even entertaining. It’s remarkable what straight people will put up with. Straight women, really. Straight men have it made.
They can set antique doll collections on fire, they can imagine themselves in love with the sex workers on OnlyFans, who really only want their dollars. They can sleep with her sister, never change a diaper, play video games all night long, go on long vacations with the boys the same week their wife is due with their first child, buy a boat they can’t afford, hide the keys from her, lie to her, gaslight her for years and still play the victim.
Their wives will still say, “He’s really wonderful, I love him, our relationship is amazing, except…” and when you insert “except” it’s always something like, he makes fun of me if I don’t wear falsies and wigs during chemo. Somehow, she wants to do cancer better, so he won’t be so offended by her physicality.
Meanwhile, the husbands say, “My wife gained four pounds after having our fifth child and I don’t want to do her anymore. I can cheat, right?”
The bar for men is on the fucking ground; the bar for women is invisible from Earth. You need NASA to make that thing out.
Now, I won’t lie. Sometimes it’s Jennifer and Jennifer or Todd and Todd, and they’re assholes, too. But J&J are going to work their asses off in therapy to try to overcome thumper parents who still send conversion therapy pamphlets in the 10th wedding anniversary cards. If T&T bothered to come to therapy; they’re going to work on it. They’re the types who worked too hard to get here to throw it away.
Meanwhile, Who Wants to Marry another Desperate Narcissist gives away brides and roses with equal abandon. Queer couples work on it, or they throw a divorce party and get on with it. Straight couples are just never-ending fountains of petty complaints (his) and years of abuse in the name of having a family (hers.)
If I told you how many women sats in front of me with the bridge troll from Billy Goats Gruff at her side, who should have just ordered a vial or two of Harvard Graduate Six Feet Two Inches Quantum Physics Major from the local sperm bank… you’d believe me.
You know these women, these brilliant, successful women with exciting careers and fascinating stories, who suddenly settle down with Farnsworth P. Dickhead long enough to beget two children and initiate divorce proceedings. Ladies, it doesn’t have to be so hard.
But what I say, instead, is both of you have to give 100%.
Or, a marriage is a marathon; it feels like you were only ready for a sprint.
Or, I’m listening and hearing, but are you?
She’ll keep on working it, he’ll keep on setting cats on fire in his free time, and yet, I can’t just say, “For god’s sake, cut and run.” Because they don’t keep paying you if you tell them the truth. Nope. They need weekly downloads and exercises and prescribed date nights and intimacy journals and I feel statements instead of You did statements, and processing. Oh my god, they need processing.
And I charge three hundred dollars an hour, to sit with them, on Zoom, surreptitiously playing solitaire on half my screen. It seems to me like I wanted to help people once upon a time, but one thing I’ve learned since I was bright, and fresh and twenty: you can’t help the unwilling. You can fleece them though, one session at a time.
People trust me with their marriages; they shouldn’t.
Photo by kconnors at Morguefile. First line from Opening Line Generator.