The Secret - part two

This is a continuation. If you haven't read the previous post(s), you really should go back and get caught up.



We left off with Charlie going back to his hotel alone and me climbing in bed with Todd, my husband of almost ten years. The voyeur coyote had saved me from going too far (at least by Bill Clinton's standards. There had been some major face-sucking and Charlie had discovered that my bra was a front closure, but then the glowing eyes had spooked us before we went any further.)


The next day was work day. We needed to make some serious progress on the project. With toddlers underfoot, it was decided that my place wouldn't be the most productive meeting place. I left Todd in charge of the kids and hiked over to Charlies hotel (it was that close). We would decide where to go from there: a cafe, a coffee shop, or... We decided on "or" -- his room was quiet and had a small table we could work at.


We tried to be good for awhile, but in such a private hide-away, we couldn't help but continue where we had left off the previous night... and with no coyotes in the hotel room, we ended up consummating our passion for each other. It was magical. I had never been with anyone but Todd. What was so purely physical and mechanical with Todd seemed to take on deeper significance, growing out of what I thought to be an intensely intellectual, emotional, and creative connection. I wanted Charlie more than I'd ever wanted anyone, and he brought me more physical pleasure than I'd ever experienced. I didn't want to leave. We kept on working and taking breaks and working and taking breaks all day and into the night.


At home, Todd was used to me working late nights, even all nighters. I called him before it was terribly late to let him know that we were "on a roll" and that he shouldn't wait up for me. Charlie and I kept rolling (one way or the other) all night long. In the morning, he drove me home and said good-bye. During the process of the project, Charlie ended up coming back to that hotel again and I went down to meet him closer to where he lived several times, too.


Like love-struck idiots, we didn't use protection. I got a yeast infection, and used that as an excuse to not have sex with Todd. It wasn't long before I suspected that I was pregnant, and with that suspicion, it became even more important to refrain from unprotected marital relations (if I was pregnant, I didn't want the paternity to be a mystery). When I told Charlie about it, he freaked out. He encouraged me to sleep with Todd so he wouldn't suspect anything. He suggested that I just pretend that it wasn't Todd--that it would be like in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, and even as I saw Todd's head, it would be Charlie's body I was entwined with. Completely messed up by now, I did what he said, and the result was that Todd said "it was better than ever." If only he had known. He would soon find out.


The rabbit died...


...in a manner of speaking.


Yes, I was indeed knocked up, with child, bakin' another bun in the oven... I hid it from Todd while trying to figure out what to do. Hormones gave way to incredibly insane fantasies of being able to have it all.


Charlie told me that if I weren't already married, he'd be shopping for rings and would marry me in a minute. He'd say things like, "Why couldn't we have met eleven years ago?" But when it all came down to it, I wasn't able to leave Todd because, if we were ordered to share custody, I didn't trust him to protect my children from their alleged child-molesting grandfather (have I mentioned that part?) And I suspect that Charlie wasn't the prince charming type anyway: even though he nobly said that he didn't want to be responsible for breaking up a home, I think he also wasn't prepared to potentially take on the responsibility for four young children and a wife all at once. I told him how I fantasized about having two houses next door to one another--one to house one of my families and one for the other. In one I would only be a mommy and in the other I would be both mother and lover. Needless to say, that wasn't going to happen. Men can be so territorial!


The day Charlie and I decided to break it off, I practically wrecked the car driving home--my eyesight was so blurred from crying and emotional fatigue turned into physical exhaustion.


Charlie wanted me to just go ahead and pretend the baby was Todd's. He said since our fling was over, Todd didn't have to know what had happened. It would be better that way. I probably should have listened to him, but I had this idea that a relationship couldn't be good without honesty. Several years later, I heard a radio therapist offer to someone in a similar situation the sage advice to keep her yapper shut. She said that the only reason for "honesty" in such a situation would be to alleviate guilt, but that in alleviating guilt, the confessor would also be inflicting unnecessary pain on the betrayed partner. If the affair was truly over, she concluded, it would ultimately be kinder and more beneficial to all involved to suck up the guilt and bear the pain alone. Well, that advice came too late, and I have wished over and over that I could go back in time and take back my confession.


It's not possible to tell if doing so would have salvaged my relationship with Todd--if I could have learned to bring out a better side of him, but now there is always that dark shadow in our midst. Todd's insecurity and personal "impotence" that turned me off in the first place have only been magnified. And now, I may have even stayed with him longer than I would have otherwise, simply because I know he has this awful ammunition to use against me if I ever were to leave him (and his parents are so cut-throat that I know they would finance him through any legal battle he wanted to pursue--I couldn't bear my children being without protection from the threat of molestation, so I stayed.)



Ah, the tangled web I spun,
Now spider's ready to begin,
Slowly she injects the venom,
I am she and my own victim.