St Valentine's Day

This year St Valentine's in on a Sunday.
For a long time now I've been asking her to set a day aside to go out of town. All three of us. I felt it would do good to our daughter - different environment form our home and the town that were the setting of all the sad or traumatic things she's gone through.

On the day they leave before noon, to do some shopping I'm sure. Some time after midday I call her and ask when they'll be back. 'I'm ready and getting impatient', I explain. When they come back, she suggests .... doing it on another day as it's getting late. I start boiling inside, but show only half of it to her. 'No way. I've asked you for it for days or weeks now'. I'm all the more angry, because my guess is that she wants to see him in the afternoon and may not be able to fit it in comfortably if we go. But I don't give in and we do go.

The sat-nav shows that it would take us over an hour to get to the destination I chose. 'We can't make it. It's too late now'. I snap and shout at her. When I calm down I suggest another destination, much closer. Another argument follows when she refuses to set off (she drives) until the sat-nav, with which I struggle, is set, even thought I give her exact directions as I know the place.

When we finally get there, we all like it. It's good to leave the city behind even for a couple of hours. On our way back I suggest we watch a film together, which is met with a lukewarm acceptance. (I assume then she must have already seen him).

We come back pretty late. I was in church in the morning, they go now. After the mass, our daughter comes back home on her own. 'Mum had to go to take some materials to one of the memebers of her team (she's an area manager). I don't like it and call her. 'We were supposed to watch a film together?!' 'I need to buy something at the local supermarket', (the only store open so late now) she explains. 'And help one of my agents with a form he can't sort out on his own. Back in half an hour'.

Over an hour passes before she comes through the door. I've already given up on the film. She pretends to be apologetic and apparently still ready to watch the film. She takes her overcoat. Her belt unfastened and zipper in her jeans done half way up.

I hate her quietly and despondently. There is also a hint of envy of the mad, reckless desire and love they indulge themselves in. 'You haven't done your jeans up properly', I point out aloud and give up. Everything, I guess.

Watch me!

A cool period.

She goes about her own business, pleasure, kicks. I am philosophical, relaxed, a little bit thrilled about the new life that lays open in front of me. There is a place in it for her - and always will be - but she's in retrospective now, or so I think a lot of the time (I don't want to talk about other times now).

The other day I took a bath in the middle of the day. She was getting ready to leave for an appointment. Or a hot, mid-day love and sex session. She wants something from the bathroom and when she enters I have an erection.

'Touch me', I ask on the spur of the moment (and the erection).
She looks at me clinically, curiously and coldly. 'No', she replies, but keeps looking at me. I start masturbating. 'Just watch me', I beg. She looks down on me, in both senses. I can't say whether she pities me or despises me more. In the background of her eyes, there is something that I cannot discern: is it a trace of arousal?

I'm not to find out as I ejaculate, she takes her eyes off my penis, looks at me in a way that I do't know how to interpret and closes the bathroom door

'Thank you', I say before she leaves the flat.

'Win me over!'

We're still together. For our daughter's sake. I'm growing colder and more indifferent - which feels good 0- towards her by the week, by every date she secretl goes to.

Only now and then, a wave of emotions attacks me. Sometimes I give in.

Like on the day when she spent a lot of the day at home. I was there too, sending emails to do with my new venture. She looked beautiful and sweet. Good memories came back: the secondary school days, our first holidays together, her summery scent and more and more; guilty memories came back too: how could walk away from her without a word, how I left her in the rain with a cruel word, how I hit her, how I was stone-cold when she cried in front of me. I realised that whatever she does to me now pales into insignificance compared how I was killing her youthful love to me all those years ago. And I forgave her and I loved her again.

I held her in my arms, 'Whatever you do, I'm mad about you!'.

'Imagine I'm free now. Win me over!'

For a second I sense the potential excitement. Then I remember a text she sent me over Christmas. About her heart beating like mad at the thought of the old times. About her longing flying to all corners of the world... and another one I found a few days later in her mobile. To him. Saying the same.

I smile and leave the kitchen where - for fun - I ended on my knees before her.

Next day I have a feeling that she's texting him, meeting him and making love to him just as before. No proof but a feeling that on that front what changes is another of her private re-interpretations that she thinks are her private thing, and she doesn't owe it to anyone, even those involved, to share them. So he carries on thinking she loves him like crazy, and she loves him like crazy when she's with him. Only when she's away from him, her love-thoughts walk their own secret paths.

And something snaps inside me. Again. I go to her room. 'You bitch! How dare you play with me like that!'. I leave. And she hates me more than ever. I will never play her game. I wish she would never offer me to play it. All I want for us from this affair is truth. I'd rather meet her once a year in truth than have her every day in this painful fiction.

Long time, no hear

You may have been wondering what's going on.

Have they made up? Has he snapped and stabbed her and her lover? Or has he packed a suitcase and left for the Brazilian interior, where internet cafes are scarce?

No, none of the above. Something much less exciting - unpaid bills. I've been off-line for those few weeks. The good news is that the money to pay the bill was earned by my modest self. A week ago I started my new venture and - apart from a bottle or two of good wine - I was able to pay a couple of bills and look my ex-wife straight in the eye, financial-wise, that is; and just for five minutes. My income over the last few months has been close to nil, I'm afraid. Not that I have wasted all the time.

I've been working on a few ideas, out of which at least one can become a long-term venture for me.

Anyway, a lot of updates are coming your way soon:

1. She challenges me to 'win her over'
2. I go mad
2. I nearly lose everything, family-wise
3. She celebrates St Valentine's Day - for an hour with him, myself - waiting for an hour for her to do something planned all day
4. She moves out for a week
5. I call her mother
6. His birthday (she puts on a beautiful, sexy dress, I drink 4 beers and a bottle of good Bordeaux, to survive it)
7. Summary of our dozen or so 'contracts', none of which respected.

The spring is close, all is very dynamic, keep your fingeres crossed (though I don't know for what outcome).

Write to you soon.

Heaven?

Emmylou Harris sings The Rose of Cimarron. I cry.

With me are the truth, wisdom, beauty and sadness of it all. The last one seamlessly turns into sweet peacefulness.

If you’re happy to be wise enough, you don't expect anything, nor jude; you are patient and have hope. At this moment, I don't, I am and I have.

What do I know about how I hurt her? About the days she pensively and lonely looked out of our window at the same church spire I am now? About how she longed for a smile, touch, gesture I never made?

In a way, we could be in heaven now: no wife, no husband, just love; it does not matter who it's directed to - we're brothers and sisters, after all.

A long time ago, when I found about her ‘verbal’ romance with an old colleague, she told me: ‘I was writing this (it was all via Skype and emails)to you really.’ I laughed at her.

But perhaps she was. Isn’t it the same qualities, regardless of person, that we treasure and seek in others and can’t live without: understanding, sensitivity, gentleness, compassion, admiration – because deep down we know we deserve it? The principle is the same, the details and circumstances change.

And the bodies - well, they are similar too (give or take an inch or two).

She's not mine afer all - I didn't create her. I met her when she was a beautiful, independent, intelligent young woman. And she chose me based on a promise, hope and a committment - none of which I kept fully.

So why be angry at her for what she should have done ages ago? Why not wish her all the best? She's given me so much, I should be nothing but grateful.

As to what I gave her - how can I be in a position to judge that?

I couldn't give her what made her happy. And I wasn't getting what I needed. I had acted as if I wanted to call it a day and she called it a day.

All the best, darling.

'Complicated Situation'

'It's a complicated situation', she answered, when I asked if he had someone - apart from her, that is. And she didn't add anything else. That was the day after I first found out about their sex. From a text message. (How I hate mobiles!)

By the way, minutes later I was running shirtless and bare-footed across my town, but about that - another time.

I've been thinking a little about what that could mean. I thought of quite a few situations:

He hates his wife, she hates him. But she's dying a slow death from cancer and he can't bear to leave her now.

She is completely cold sexually. And he obviously isn't.

She cheated on him first and continues to do so.

The marriage is practically defunct due to massive differences in characters, but they've decided to stick together for the sake of their little wheelchair-bound son.

She makes his life hell, but he works her father. And is overpaid.


Then a few less usual ones sprang to mind:

His wife works as a cook on a nuclear submarine boat and disappeares - literally - for months on end. He did all he could to remain faithful, but eventually gave in after two weeks.

He'd love to be frank and tell his wife, so that their unhappy, childless marriage could end at last, but he's afraid she'd kill him: every time he tells her about his infidelities she gets so turned on that she torments him with sex sessions lasting days. It took him a month to recover - and he barely did - last time.

He hasn't had sex for 2 years with his wife as any attempt at it could kill her. For a reason unexplained by science yet, seeing or feeling him naked makes her laugh so badly and for such a long time that there's a real danger of her dying out of exhaustion or lack of oxgyen.

At their wedding, his bride asked him to write down on a piece of paper his most secret dream connected with their marriage and announced solemnly in the presence of all the guests : 'I take all of you as witnesses that I'll do all that is in my power to make my husband's secret wish come true'. What he had written was, 'I'd love to have an extramarital affair at some point.' Then, being an extremely honourable person, she forced him to make his dream come true, despite his desperate protestations.


His male partner - they're in a civil partnership - would never forgive him if he left despite the fact that he should after he's recently discovered his heterosexual side, which has taken completely over. The problem is they've adopted five poor children from Mozambique (Madonna, whom they contacted, agrees to take only two from them in case of divorce).


Soon after the wedding, his 'wife' turned out to be an alien spy that terrorises him into providing her with detailed information on the nature, mind and habits of humans. Due to complete impossibility of their interaction both emotionally and sexually, he's bound to seek comfort elsewhere.

Was He Nuts Or...?

Probably he wasn't. For a moment I felt ashamed at the type of person my wife chose for - or let become - her lover: he comes to MY place and demands to see me and is agressive, to boot. Surely, he must be a nutter, criminal or the worst kind of chav, I thought. And was sorry for her and embarassed by her judgement.

(Strange: on the one hand I want her to have a crap lover, firstly - so that she gets dissapointed and starts missing me, comes back on her knees ... and I say 'No', at least at the beginning. On the other - I still feel that whatever she does reflects on me: she should have a lover I could proudly walk next to! If you know what I mean. Do you?).

Then I realise that he decided to defend by attack, which adds up in view of his apparent stategy: to deny everything (''We're just friends'', said one of his texts). The problem was he didn't know how much I knew: that my wife admitted to the affair and that I 'intercepted' some texts that actually didn't leave much to admitting. So his line of defence was to pretend outrage at my 'false' accusations. In this context his visit makes sense - he was so 'upset' by what I had 'suggested' that he decided immediatelly and forcefully to clarify the matter and reprimand me for even suggesting such a possibility.

So what to me seemed a completely mad or vulgar step, was for him part of a calculated, well thought-out plan. Kind of, as he seems to have forgotten to do his homework.

Will it be the mistake that may cost him his sweet lover?

Something will happen soon.

Lover At The Door, continued

... continued.

After a few seconds later she receives a text, looks at the sender and puts the phone back in the pocket without opening the message, because I'm watching: it's from him then. I leave the room.

The message I sent him was, 'If you don't answer this question, I'll let your partner know about your affair with my wife. What is the relationship with my wife for you? A) a short-term fling, B) a long term affair, C) any other answer that will sound genuine.'

I don't mean to do anything of the sort. I don't even know if he has a wife. I'm just curious how he will handle this. It's a little test - I think - a little challenge for him. And for them.

A minute later she's putting on her coat, 'I'm leaving for two hours', she leans into the room I'm in. Before she closes the door I tell her, 'If you leave now, I'll do tomorrow what I said I would!'. I'm completely taken aback at her priorites: she's supposed to go in an hour's time to the movies with our daughter, they already have the tickets. Why can't he just write 'I love her', 'I don't know', or whatever. Is he that dumb, doesn't trust I'll respect the deal or doesn't want to commit anything to writing and can't bear to call me?

'Do what you like. You can't touch me anymore', she says and leaves.

I wasn't expecting such a turn of events, but I knew I played with fire.

'If she leaves now, your woman knows all on Monday', I text him and wait. Anxious, very anxious. She showed where her priority lay. I want to show her where it should be - with our daughter and now I'm ready to do everything I can to bring her back to her family, not let her desert us like that.

'Are you relishing this power?', she asks via a message sent from the car, I'm sure. 'Yes, I am. It compensates for a few things', is my reply. 'You've got 15 minutes'. 'I'm on my way. My last journey towards you', she writes and is back in 10.

I stay in the lounge smoking the hookah. They leave for the cinema without her and me exchanging even one look. A moment later my phone rings - it's him and I silence the phone and send him 'text!'. I don't want to talk to him, don't want to show to him that he is that important, as he isn't. He tries again, I do the same.

Some quarter of an hour later, the bell rings! It's the main door, our flat is on the 3rd floor. I answer and hear a worked-up and quite unpleasant, kind of 'primitive' voice: 'Come down, mate! Let's talk, c'mon let's talk!'. There's aggression in his voice, but it's not that which makes me say, 'I don't want to talk to you. I just asked you to answer one simple question, answer it. If you like.'

'You have no balls, sissy! Come down and talk!'. I'm tempted for a moment. But I don't want to see now the man who's ruined so much for me, because I think I'd dignify him by talking to him tonight in such circumstances. (And also it would ruin a certain plan of mine.) Apart from that, his coming here and making aggresive noises to me is outrageous. He's either mad or an aggresive and stupid simpleton.

He sends me another couple of texts, one of them quite rude. 'I'm really sorry for my former wife that such a rude simpleton is fucking her now!', is my reply.

It's very late when they come back from the cinema, I tell her, 'He was here. Sounds like a chav, I'm afraid'. I get the deadliest look I've ever gotten from her. She's full of pain, hate and sends tangible frost towards me. I'm almost sorry for her.

Before she closes the door and goes to bed, she tells me in her usual unorthodox way, 'You've torn the last cobweb'.

Lover at The Door

An eventful Sunday, last one.

Tense from word go. At the end of Saturday - which was quite successful on the whole - I made a fateful comment: 'Thank you for today. I think we've done a good job [at some point she nearly spoiled everything, but then - a miracle! - came up to me, apologised and suggested we try anew - thanks be to Heaven!]. But [see the ominous clouds on the horizon?] if you want me to stop making allusions to your affair, do not go over the top when communicating with him [a thunder splits the sky] when I'm around.' We listened to some records - classic pop and rock I want our daugher to know - that day. Her eyes take on that cold hateful veil and she announces: 'With this, you've ruined everything!'. The first of everything was the following day.

Before she went out to Mass (we're church-going, would you believe?), she already lets me know she hasn't forgotten my admonition when she unthankfully thanks me for the espresso. I asked the previous day that I'd like to take them for a long walk across the nearby small wood and when they're getting ready to leave for church, I want a confirmation we're going afterwards. 'I'm not sure we'll want to go anywhere with you today. It depends on Sara anyway', she says when closing the door. 'No, it depends on you', I don't manage to repy in time.

A few times during the day she looks at me in a strange, intensive and - this was my impression that she dismissed later on - warm way. Does she need me? We walk (see below) down the street towards the park and she starts singing and hopping with our daughter. When I laugh out hartily seeing them happy in front of me, she wiggles her bottom. 'Oh, women!', I exclaime. This is where our happiness peaks that day.

We fall out - a slight mistake on her part and a big one on mine - when walking and we return home separately. (I'm too tired to tell that story). At home there's a whole gumet of moments, but it all ends with an grand operatic finale.

At some point in the evening, the mixed bag of emotions, words, disappointments and stress takes its toll. She's cold and distant - nothing surprising, but again I foolishly expected her disguise will last the day, while mine so often doesn't - and texting from time to time. 'To him', is my thought naturally.

I sit on the sofa and declare: 'You know what? I'm going to text him and ask him to talk some sense into you, so that you become possible to get on with. If he doesn't do it - I'll tell him - I'll let his partner know about the thing you two have got going. What do you think?' 'Don't do that', she sits up. It turns me on: I am noticed! I didn't know if I really wanted to do it then, but within seconds I decide that they've grown too comfortable with the situation - their constant texting to and fro - and some tension and apprehension will do them good. We agreed some rules some time ago to make life bearable for our daughter's sake, although both of us have broken them repeatedly. I decide it's time to bring her a bit more to attention. She asks me again, and genuinelly, not to send hm the ultimatum, but I fire the text away. I change the wording though and wait for his reply.

Within seconds she receives a message. And we move up a gear.

... to be continued

One More Time And You're Out!

The guy from the Social Services was here today. A tall black chap, friendly and articulate.

I phoned him earlier and asked him a few questions to make sure he understands that I regard the state subordinate in my home. He makes it clear that it's fair enough, but he has ways of achieving his aims regardless of whether I'll cooperate or not. But he says it in a nice and diplomatic way, which I tell him I appreciate. After a few more pleasantries in which I remind him that it's me who's paying his salary and that, generally, the state should be distrusted, we finish and I think what a bigoted fool I am. One consolation is, of course, that I'm right.

When he calls round, he asks me the obvious questions and I give him exhaustive answers that impress him and probably give him much more info that he bargained for, some of it may turn out of use against me, should push come to shove. He invites my wife to join us as he wants to talk about our marital situation. She's seen him before in his office which makes me a little uncomfortable, because he knows more than I'd like him to: some of the things I did and said during my, say, three bouts of drinking were half-crimial if not just criminal.

The conversation turns to my drinking, which I believe I quit but no one else does and the evidence is leaning a bit their way. He tells me I have to stop or I'll lose my child. I get up suddenly and start pacing the room, my hands in my pockets. He's startled. I turn to him, my position giving me an little bit of an advantage, which I badly need. I feel so threatened. I can't lose my daughter, I can't. 'Is that a formal ultimatum?', I demand in a firm voice, trembling inside. I forget now, although I know roughly, what the procedures are, what the law is.

All I know is that if this guy makes up his mind that it's better for my daughter to be without me our future together will hang on a thread. The slightest provocation on my wife's part, and she's brilliant at that, one glass of wine too many on my part, I'm brilliant at that, and my future can be defined for years to come. I'm afraid of this. I will stumble, I know. I don't deserve to be left with just one final chance. After all I've done for my darling girl, after all the time I spent with her, after all the love I've given her, and even after all the suffering I've brought on her.

I sit down. He clarifies the situation: nothing can happen if there will not be further incidents or reports from my wife that she feels threatened. Were they to take place, he'll formally suggest that I be banned from living with my daugher and wife.

We discuss some more topics. I take part, but in my mind I see this big banner in the sky tailing an old aeroplane with an open cockpit: 'Three times, you're out!'.

From the cockpit, my wife smiles to me.

For Ever

''If I could do it now, I'd move out, leave the town, maybe the country and not want to see you for years'', I tell her. And it's true. But it's also true I'd miss her every single day, every single hour and every single minute.

So after weeks after it broke out - and after so much of bad and hurtful stuff happened - I realise that despite everything that's happening, I still want to be close to her.

When she's a bitch, and she often is, she's a nasty bitch. But when she's gentle, she's the gentlest; when she's sweet, she's the sweetest, when she's generous, she's the most generous; when she is beautiful, she's the most beautiful in the world (OK, this doesn't make sense - she's simply beautiful). And when she's in love, she's the most in love in the whole world. (Ah, let's not get into that now - I want to write not to moan).

And when someone is like that, it never goes away completely. Whatever they do, they've been branded with that supreme goodness, sweetness, gentleness, love-giving. If you're a stranger, you may not see it in them. But if you were there at the right place and time and heard it with your own ears, saw it with your own eyes, felt it with your own lips - they'll never stop being like that for you - it's for ever.

The more, the less

The more happens, the more - I thought - I would understand her. You reveal yourself through your actions, don't you? So it's true: I know more. But I understand less. With every day it goes on for, I understand less who she is, who she was, what she wants, what we were once.

Or is it simply that she is a new person now that needs discovering anew? (And some are more successful than myself at this).

Attack & Arrest

I begged her and begged her, ''Please, talk to me. Tell me frankly where you are, who I am now for you, what you are feeling''.

I asked similar questions, when I discovered her internet 'chat-room' flirt/romance with an old colleague from work half a year earlier. I never got the answers. Or answers that sounded genuine. All she could do was avoid the issue, use her favourite equivocal sentences. It is the same now.

First she just lies: 'It's just someone I know from work who just won't leave me alone and keeps sending me these cheeky texts'. I know it's a lie and feel insulted she tries to sell it to me like that. Then she tries to turn tables and asks me, ''Do you realise what you've been doing to me over the last few years?'', etc. I did realise. I've been hopeless, cruel and repulsive in many respects. And drunk - quite regularly.

The thing is this is what both her and myself know. And I acknowledge that I have pushed her into what she has done. But it was HER who has done it and there are things that I don't know and will never know, unless she tells me. I deeply believe she owes it to me. She owes me the truth if something finished for good, when it finished, what our relationship is now. I knew she may not have all the answers, but she - I deeply believed and expected - should at least try to be frank with me. After 18 years, a lot of bad time together, but also a lot of good time, I should have earned at least this final - perhaps - and frank conversation. But it was not to happen.

In the afternoon I go to the bathroom where she prepares for work and grab her hard by the arm and demand, my eyes half-deranged, ''Talk to me! Talk to me!''. I splash some of the water from the bath into her face. Our daughter hears the noise and comes to the door, 'Are you OK mum?', she asks in an upset voice, she's really frightened. I should stop, but am too mad now to stop and take a plastic brush and hit the shower screen. Our daughter is panicking outside, nearly crying.

I calm down, leave the bathroom and let my wife out too. I tell her, ''Call the police or I'll do something bad''. She does. I'm completely calm now. When the cops arrive they tell me that I should leave the house for 24 hours. I haven't got anywhere to sleep, but I grab a few things and leave. In the local bar I down a couple of pints which - together with an earlier 3 glasses of sherry (I know: the wrong order) - make me pretty drunk. I decide to sleep in our car. My wife doesn't answer the phone, so I call a girl I know could have popped round at that time. She did and she passes on the question. The answer is 'No'. I'm angry - why is she doing this to me? (She does obviously, because she fears I might do something stupid with the car).

I realise she will be leaving home soon for work and run towards it. I see her leave and cross the street. There's a small side alley further down the street (quite busy) and I speed up to catch up with her. When I do, I grab her from behind and drag deep into the alley. I tell her, my voice full of superiority coming with the phisical advantage I have now, 'So you won't want to talk to me?'. She begins to fight back and tries to scream. I cover her mouth.

I have no intention of harming her - I really want to talk, but it doesn't look like that to her. She begins to fight hard. I hold her tight and still try to muffle her shouts. At some point she thrusts her head hard backwards and is a tenth of a second from knocking my front teeth out. I get angry and push her head forward away from me. She hits - not very hard - a metal bin in front of her.

Suddenly a bright flood of headlamps appears round the corner. A van is turning into the alley. I realise I can't carry on and let her go asking her to calm down and not to call the police. The driver of the van notices us. I tell him I mean no harm and that I'm going now. I ask her again not to call the police.

But she does. And a few hours and a small bottle of whisky later, I get arrested and spend the night at the police station. My first one.

It Can't Be Happening To Me

Let's go back a few weeks.

When I found out she had a lover, or was about to have one, my world collapsed and I collapsed. Strangely, my only lifeline was ... her. I felt as if she was taken completely out of my life - like by death. Despite all the warning signs (and my despicable behaviour beforehand was one of them), it took me by absolute surpirse and ... by the throat, hard.

I wasn't ready to lose her. I somehow foolishly thought it wouldn't happen, it couldn't happen to me, to us. Even though I often felt how thin a line I was walking, I just got used to this ... not happenning.

But now - and I harshly and solemnly knew it - her heart and her body were lost. My only hope was her mind. I realised, or rather felt acutely, to what degree she was involved in all my relations with the outside world. I needed her to restore my link with it, to get out of this dark and cold abyss I found myself in when I read those few words in her mobile, '... and I was gently kissing your neck all night'.

The only thing that could connect me with the living world was the connection of our minds. At least for a while. But it wasn't to be. Why didn't she - or couldn't she - talk to me openly about what's happened?

SoonI had a lot of time to ponder this lying on the bunk in the cell at the local police station.

The State Steps In

Today a guy from the Social Services pays a visit. My wife has already seen him in his office. 'I can see in your eyes that there is more than what you tell me', he said to her. 'Yes', I comment when she tells me this, 'I've lost my mascara!'. She had been moaning all morning about it going missing and even suggesting at one point that ... I may have taken it. 'Sure. Mine's run out', I quip. A bit corny, but every little helps - of humor, I mean.

The evening before she complains about a lamp that needs fixing that I'm not too keen (as usual) to get round to. Then there's another techincal problem somewhere else around the house. When our daughter asks me something about the Social Services guy's visit - and she sounds relaxed about it - I say that the best thing he could do to help our family get on would be to grab a screwdriver and fix a few things here.

Our daughter appreciates the joke and smiles, the wife snorts and only I laugh out hartily.

But I am a bit concerned. Historically, he state - as you should know - has a tendency to screw things up whenever it gets involved!

Heaven. And hell

We met 20 years ago. We married 17 years ago. We were the greatest lovers in the world. I looked at the whole world through her, I was the whole world to her. But she was strong and steadfast, I was weak and moody. And too young. We were the same age, which meant that she was older and wiser. I had my complexes, my fears, my insecurities. And she was so beautiful, so pure, so confident, so shining.
And often I was not up to her love, and whenever I wasn't, I despaired, I was angry, I hurt her - and then the vicious circle started: whenever I hurt her, I raged at myself and at the world for what happened. And I hurt her more in a suicidal desire to destroy what I damaged, because couldn't live seeing what harm I had done to such a beautiful thing.

Perhaps I was just mad.

But before the vicious circle set in, there was heaven.

The Love Treatment

On my way home today - and after a caustic morning plus a few tense and unpleasant phone converesations with her - I ring a guy I know, a labourer in his mid-30s, who owes me a favour and tell him that I'm looking for someone to 'shake up' a little my wife's lover. I don't mean it, but 'playfully' kicking around with the idea seems to distract me for a while from my sadness and the chaos in my head. Contrary to what I expect, the guy tries to calm me down. 'You know, it won't help you much if this is what she wants.'

Then after a few general truths, he suggests, 'In such situations the best thing to do is to deal with it with love'. Wow, I didn't know him from this side. I am really impressed and humbled. How easy it is to underestimate people, especially if they listen to crap music, are working class and don't mind an occasional bit of violence.

Then he explains, 'you have to find yourself someone. That should make her think!'.

I smile. And deep down I'm not sure, although I should be convinced that it's my first interpretation, which advice is better really.

Discovery

It's morning. She's in the bathroom and I - I can't remember when this habit started, but there was a reason - pick up her mobile from the pillow she'd left it on. I open messages and read ''Can you feel me do it now? I've been doing this all night, kissing delicately your neck, honey''.

I have to sit down. I go to the living room and sit on the sofa. My hand that holds the mobile is trembling. I can hear she's left the bathroom and is back in our daughter's bedroom. I go there, hand her the mobile and say ''You've got a message''. And then - I can't remember if at that particular moment, but I'm pretty sure on that morning - to my daughter, who's twelve, ''You've got a new daddy''. A cruel and vengeful thing that was aimed at an innocent child. I can't think of anyone or anything else now - my whole world has collapsed and nothing counts any more.

And it collapsed. Partly at my request.