Standing on the Edge

[native]

Tonight as she picked up our D, she told me there was something she wanted to say. OH GOD...the dreaded SOMETHING that she has to say. I have learned that anything that follows is some type of bomb, on the scale of a hand grenade to a smart bomb.

She said that she had put a profile on Cupid.com. There was a long silence. I asked her why she needed to tell me this.

"Well, I didn't want anyone else telling you. Don't you think it was the right thing to do, to tell you first ?'

I responded that 'I don't know what the right thing to do is in this situation.....I had no playbook for this and had not planned to be here (in this situation). Nobody is reporting back to me on your behavior and I am not keeping tabs on it'

(Ok, between us, I have kept tabs but not obsessivly).

Another long silence. Prior to her announcment I was behaving normally, not pursuing, but talking about our daughter and her school. Pleasant, nonchalant, detached.

Her salvo stung, but only for a few moments, as I looked at her dead pan face and realized anew that this was not the woman I had fallen in love with and married. This was the alien that had slowly replaced her and so it was not hard to let this alien go back to wherever the hell it had come from.

The only thing that hurt was saying goodbye to my daugter, as she blew kisses and waved all the way to the car.

Thankfully there was no big scene and D was blissfully unaware of all that had transpired.

I truly hate that alien.

And still love my wife.