Dark Fire

These seemed to her to be her options: reconcile but realize that trust was gone, or acknowledge the loss of trust and split up. The former seemed more complicated, since of almost a dozen couples that she knew had tried it, only two were still together, and wariness seemed to be the mood in those homes. The latter might break her heart more than the infidelity. As she cautioned her clients: "Ask yourself if you would be happier with your spouse, or without them."

Betty reflected that she did not know. This led to another thought, which was that she had been living without her spouse for some time. The few hours when they were not working went by quickly with the little tasks of daily life -- cleaning, laundry, paying bills, shopping, cooking, calling friends and relatives -- to the point that they might be spending an hour or less per week actually together like a married couple. It seemed to her as if they were each cheating, but with their social status, which they romanced through careers and professional contacts.

"Hello, Betty," said Ron, startling her out of her thoughts.

"Oh, hello," she said, looking up into his eyes for a trace of the warmth that she once saw. It was there, lingering behind an emotion she knew as resentment, a cold obsidian burning. This frequently came up with her clients who had trouble with alcohol, drugs, and gambling. If you fell into pitying yourself, you would start to see life as a prison sentence and rationalize it as a bad thing, which in turn limited your pleasures to only the addictive behaviors that seemed to make it better.

"I owe you an explanation," he said.

"No, you don't," said Betty quickly. "We have not had much of a marriage for some time, and part of it is my fault. I let you drift away because I was busy drifting, and spent too much time at the damn office."

"Yeah," he said gruffly. "I always felt that your little lost lambs, adrift in the seas of addiction and heartbreak, got the best of your loving." He stopped, uncertain of how much to continue.

"I understand," she said. "What is done, is done. Do you want a divorce?"

Ron pondered. He colored when he realized that if he could choose anything, he would choose what he had before Betty discovered his affair. He had a nice public life with a wife to show off, an autobiography of unbroken successes that he used to promote himself, and then for the six weekends a year when he needed it, mind-blowing sexual activity with a younger and more sensual woman.

Samantha expected nothing from him except that he pay for their lavish accommodations, bar tabs, and meals when he was in town, and he expected nothing from her other than a lack of STDs. Naturally a promiscuous woman, the willowy Samantha had taught him new skills in the arts of love, something which calm but affectionate missionary with Betty could not compare, at least on the surface. He and Samantha had even tried anal, although after one particularly gooey accident he decided that this was best left up to other people.

For a moment, Ron saw a flash of a realization before his mind clamped shut to keep it out. In that brief shimmering vision, he realized that he might be a narcissist because working with science and computers gave him a god-complex, and he had finally believed his own puffery. He deflated a bit, having seen himself, and before it clammed up, his inner voice told him that this self-worship was the real cheating, and that he had really simply cheated himself of being the gentle, strong, and good person he had always wanted to be.

Struggling against the waves of guilt, he said quickly, "No, I do not want a divorce. I want to work through this." At least this would buy time.

Betty watched the conflict swim across his face, and decided that she should apply some of her professional knowledge, quoting from her psychological dictionary entry for cognitive dissonance:

Dissonance theory holds that when a person encounters a disconnect between expectations and reality, they must reconcile the two inputs by reducing one of them. They will either change their expectations, making them subordinate to what is observed, or alter their perceptions of reality, distorting what they know to be true in order to remove the offending data.

She knew that her husband had thought he was happy and happily married until he had an opportunity to cheat, at which point he blamed the marriage instead of facing his own unhappiness. She formulate a simple strategy: trap him in his unhappiness until he saw the value of their marriage together. Unlike many wives portrayed in internet fiction, Betty was neither a slut nor an idiot, and although she got only medium scores because of test anxiety, had a high IQ and the unusually sensitive perception of an artist. She acted pragmatically but with a long-term focus.

"Well, then, I will see you back at home," she said. "We'll have to make some changes, of course, but you have nothing to fear from me. I never said it when we were dating, something I later learned was borne of my fear that I would end up like my own family of origin, but I love you, more than life itself, and I have wasted too much of my time -- really, our time -- with my stupid job, something I now regret."

Holding her head as high as could be expected, Betty walked out the door into the bright sunlight, got into the waiting cab, and went back to the airport where she spent a desultory four hours until she caught a standby flight home. She held it together until she got inside the door and had locked it, then collapsed in a maelstrom of tears, sobbing so hard that she retched and vomited. Science did not recognize it, she thought, but there might be a "heart" or a "soul," and her had just broken in three layers:

1. On the surface, the cheating itself. Part of this was social fear. It was embarrassing to be a femme cuckold, and doubly so to have failed at one of the major tasks in life that tests the mettle of the participants, marriage and family. She also feared for her children and what it would do to them to believe that coming together of the people whose DNA made them had been in fact a mistake; it would be like rejecting their very origins! In here, she kept a small room in her mind for herself, and in this room she would always been weeping until she vomited, heartbroken that in her life, love had flown.
2. Just below the surface, the mental health issue. Somehow, two intelligent and capable people had either deluded themselves into marriage or out of it. Which was the error? This formed a jagged crisis like a splinter of ice in not just her heart, but her analytical mind. Something very wrong had happened. Even in the best case scenario, the two had decided to give themselves body, mind, and soul to their careers instead of love, family, and happiness. It felt like a cold wind on her shoulders, the presence of a ghost, or perhaps a demon, were she to believe in such antiquated superstitions.
3. Deep below her conscious mind, the revelations about each of them. She felt like Ron must have when Samantha gushed semen, feces, and lubricant from her anus after a particularly rigorous exploratory session. She had seen something disgusting there which would forever be associated with him, a nasty desire for revenge and what seemed like an ugly narcissism of hubris, the excessive arrogance that caused people to pretend they were God or scientific progress itself. In herself, on the other hand, she saw a wilful denial of the labors of affection that had produced a home as devoid of affection as that of her parents.

It was easy to stop weeping. She remembered from her training in psychology that most people weep for themselves, and the weeping itself convinces them that they have been wronged by life or another person, which makes it easier for them to feel bad and therefore, to keep weeping instead of facing whatever conflict has come their way. Her problem was that she did not want to; she needed this discharge of the dark energy hiding inside her, and maybe a feeling like holding her teddy bear close under her favorite blanket when she failed a test, during a thunderstorm, or when she was ill as a child.

Two days later Ron returned home. He had gone back to the hotel room to pack, but then realized that he was going to pay the price either way, so he should just enjoy his weekend. After all, at this point to him Betty represented everything that he had to do in life, like the job that produced endless demands, even just the ten thousand little problems that cropped up every week which only he could address, since he did not trust others. Betty was stability, conformity, and the endless rules like taking off his muddy shoes and not drinking more than six beers a night. Fuck that! He turned to Samantha with a smile and a quivering erection.

Betty had spent the time thinking, reflecting on what the entrepreneur had told her. She wanted cognitive dissonance to work for her -- like prisoners of war who were treated well, being treated cordially by the deceive spouse had a tendency to force the cheater to decompensate, or realize that his internal dialogue about his evil wife and boring marriage was a crock -- but she also wanted economic psychology to swing her way. That is, she wanted to make it less painful for him to reconcile than to keep deceiving her.

"Uh, where should I put my stuff?" Ron was asking sheepishly.

She reflected that, like most "cake eaters" or those who wanted the stable marriage to go back to after their weekends of unbridled passion and acrobatic fornication, Ron was not so much seeking another relationship as he was seeking something that he could not get or was afraid to get at home. Why would he be afraid? Betty colored when she thought about how confident her psychological knowledge, career acclaim and awards, and power as the mistress of the house had made her. Perhaps she had unintentionally been the type of woman she called a "bitch." A soft response was required.

"It's good that you're home, sweetie. Everything here is the same, for you," she said. "I have divided the house to signify where we stand, for now, which is that without my recognizing it, we became 'at odds' with each other, so I have taken the east side of the house, with the guestroom and dining room and half of the kitchen, while you have the west side, with the den and master bedroom as well as your half of the kitchen. We'll have to share the fridge, of course," she added.

"And let me say," she continued. "It is wonderful to have you home. You are the man I have always loved. I want us to get past this, and to be not what we once were, but what we can be, now that we realized that there were issues -- really, problems, our own self-deception -- with what we were. We can be better than we have been, both recently and for the whole of our marriage."

Exhausted without reason, she paused. His eyes swam, unsure of where to focus. From her study of clients, this meant that they were unsure of whether to invent a fiction (looking down to the left), falsely portray honesty (meet the eyes, nod the head, vigorous gestures), speak from memory (looking up to the right), admit where their view of reality had been mistaken (looking straight down), distance themselves from the issue (looking straight up, moving back), or say something they feared to bring up (looking straight ahead, but below eye contact).

"Thanks," he said, trailing off. "For being so mature about all of this. I don't know how you do it."

"I'm thinking of the future, honey," said Betty. She wanted to get in as many affectionate diminutives as she could. The angel on her right shoulder wanted him to feel as accepted as possible, and the devil on her left wanted him to recognize what he was missing.

Ron took his stuff upstairs. The master bedroom looked stark without the clothes, perfumes, books, makeup, and toiletries that his wife customarily scattered about, since women require six dozen implements to get ready in the morning where a man needs a toothbrush, comb, and bar of soap (towel optional, in most cases). He sat on the edge of the bed with his head in his hand for quite some time.

"Henderson, what the fuck was that?" It was back in the 1990s, and Ron's coach towered over him standing on the edge of the pool while Ron floated in the water below.

"It's just a practice run," said Ron. "Coach, it's been a long week, and --"

Coach Moffit flung down his clipboard, the clatter on the pool edge both startling other swimmers and being a familiar sound.

"Henderson," he said, "You gotta have the mentality of a champion. You gotta win in your head, first. It's all mental: you have to want to make each strong perfect, to keep your rhythm, to put all of your energy into moving efficiently down the pool. You're not here today. Your head is in the clouds. Get the fuck out and come back when you're ready to win."

Ron heaved himself out of the water. The look he gave the coach had fire, but it was a dark fire. He resented the man for having caught him under-performing and for having diagnosed so expertly his crisis. Ron's head was wrapping itself around money and technology, fame and renown, not trying to be the best second-stringer on his high school swim team. He wasn't going to the Olympics, but he would use this doofus activity to get into college, and that was all he cared about.

In that moment, Ron decided that his coach was wrong, and as he showered after practice, he reflected on how much better he knew than the angry old guy whose best career prospect was screaming at recalcitrant teenagers, all of whom were snidely using this as a springboard to college, not a pursuit in itself. He did not love swimming. Nor did he love his hometown, his parents, his country, or even life. Life, he decided, was "nasty, brutish, and short" as Thomas Hobbes had said, and the only revenge on that was living well, and that in turn required money.

"Too bad, Henderson," Coach said without looking up from his clipboard as Ron packed up to leave. "You could've been someone. You could have been a hero to yourself."

That night, lying in bed, Ron decided that he could be a hero to himself, but not by pitting his mind against its own lack of discipline in the water. He wanted to be a rich, powerful man with a trophy wife who was living the 1990s dream: not just wealth, but a career that was meaningful, and social justice activities to show the world how good he and his wife were inside. Even if he did not believe it, he could act the part, at least in the business world if not the swimming pool.

And so... time went on for the divided house. Betty went to her job, but cut down on the number of evening appointments. Surprisingly, her clients were able to reschedule despite their previous protestations. With the office running eight hours a day on the nose, her staff perked up as well, and Betty found herself with more time for the things she had once neglected. The bedroom above the dining room was draped in tarps, and an easel appeared out of nowhere. One night she came downstairs and Ron, without saying anything, wiped the dot of paint from her nose, as he had done in the past. They shared a laugh.

But then, silence came and stayed. Ron, too, had cut back on his work hours. He finally accepted that he had been micromanaging, and started to delegate. This let him rethink their product line. That in turn allowed him to see how their products could expand to take on even more roles, and by adding an easy GUI, he took away the requirement of having highly-paid super-engineers make the product work. He democratized it so that your average sort of technologically literate middle manager or overnight IT support person could use his tools.

"Good night, boss," said Erin as Betty headed out the door. "Oh -- Mrs. Henderson? Can I ask a quick question?"

"Sure, Erin," said Betty, a smokiness coming over her eyes as she readied herself for a query about her marriage.

"It's for my night school," said Erin with a slight twist to her mouth in an apologestic gesture. "We have to write about differences in grieving between men and women."

Betty went to her bookshelf and pulled down a volume here and there for a few minutes, then handed the stack to Erin.

("I knew she'd do that," Erin told her roommates later. "It's so like her! But this basically gave me a bibliography to add to our assigned reading. I'm going to kick ass on this one.")

"It's not de rigueur to say this, Erin," said Betty, "But men and women are psychologically different. Intersex -- transgenders, homosexuals, weak men, and assertive women -- fall somewhere in the middle. Men are oriented toward a goal and minimums. They want to know what are the things they must do in order to have a life they like, and they guess that they will figure out the rest when the time comes. Women are oriented toward a situation, or having all the details aligned to make a... well, a picture, or a diorama, of the perfect life. They figure that they will respond to needs as this happens, and those are their goals."

"When their attempts fail, men figure that they have the wrong goal, and try for something new, different, or contrary to what they were doing. Male grief takes on the form of retaliation often. Women assume that something is out of place, since they are content as they are, and must simply say yes or no to offers from men, at least insofar as making a family goes. Sex is the primal motivator, but that's only because over time people gravitate toward family in order to have a sense of satisfaction in life. Female grief becomes a search for the betrayer, the detail that went wrong."

She continued: "This means that while a man will decide he was betrayed, a woman will decide that she was insufficient. For some reason, she was broken, therefore the details were all wrong. The man does not question himself, but finds someone to blame, usually someone who is guilty, when really he needs to reconsider his own needs. The woman rejects her needs, and concludes that she is wrong, so she tries to remake herelf, and becomes a perfect little actor, trying to portray a life that she could like."

Erin made a few notes. "Thanks, teach!" she said. They rode down in the elevator together, talking about little things, each grateful for the distraction.

The divided house carried on. Every morning, Betty would rise in her own bedroom, wash up in the hall bathroom, and make herself coffee (while microwaving a Danish) and then truck off to work. While she was in the kitchen, Ron was in the shower, and he left the empty house after making himself coffee in his Keurig on the west side of the kitchen. Then he got in his Porsche, a treat he had gotten himself a few years back when their IPO hit the news, and roared off to the office.

On weekends, they amused themselves. Neither worked Saturdays any longer. Ron had not mowed the lawn in years, paying a service instead, but now took pride in making nice even rows and trimming the edges expertly. He tried the couch potato lifestyle, watching a bunch of Hulu and Netflix, but gave up after finding the programs and movies to be too similar to each other to really care about. He read more, restarted his jogging regimen, and started learning gourmet cooking. Betty painted, took long walks, and plinked around on the old piano the kids had left in the garage.

They tried date night, but the silences killed it. They ran out of everyday topics, and the monster loomed in the negative space of what was not mentioned. After the food was gone and the wine drunk, they would pick at dessert plates, Ron wondering why he chose this path, Betty wondering what was so wrong with her that she could not keep to it. Then they would depart, pull up to the empty house, politely wish each other good night, and retire to their rooms.