Chapter 36: Mess is Mine

Jack’s broken agreements around the concert and his first overnight with Kat gave us plenty to talk about in therapy. I couldn’t talk about it without getting enraged. I had no idea my anger was a result of Jack triggering my vulnerability, and I couldn’t see that it was out of proportion to his actions, because I felt justified—I had been wronged, and Jack did it to me. It was his fault. He was the bad guy.

The intensity of my anger rattled Jack. Where I had learned to compensate for my vulnerability by over functioning and going on the offensive, Jack tended to pull back when he felt vulnerable. I was Hulk-mode. He was a turtle inside its shell.

Meanwhile, I was also smug. I hadn’t broken any agreements. I was good at nonmonogamy. I was in such denial about my infidelities before we opened our marriage that they weren’t even on my radar as such. So I went on acting superior and refusing to empathize with Jack. If he wouldn’t tell me he was hurt by my relationship with Viktor, then I wasn’t going to offer him that compassion. If he wouldn’t apologize convincingly and explain his actions around Kat, then I wasn’t going to forgive him.

I still wanted to know, and I demanded to know: Why? Why did he insist on following through with his plans even after he knew how much it upset me? Why use those tickets for her? Why take her to that hotel? I imagined he had designed the whole thing to be as hurtful toward me as possible. The harder I pressed him for an explanation, the harder he pushed back.

“Why does it have to mean anything?”

Because of course it fucking meant something.

I had a number of my own theories about why he acted the way he did. Maybe he was striking out at me for suggesting opening up. Maybe he was hurt and wanted to hurt me back. Or maybe he wanted to experience something like I shared with Viktor, to even the score. He wouldn’t own up to any of these.

Also, he still wouldn’t tell me how he felt about men, which I thought I had a right to know. I couldn’t accept that he might want to maintain some privacy around his sexuality, or that maybe he didn’t even know. It never occurred to me how complicated and nuanced attraction can be, that sometimes self-awareness gets buried underneath social stigmas, family judgment, or our own inability to come to terms with what is real and true. It’s very hard to accept in yourself what you don’t want to admit, and harder still when you aren’t even aware.

I was tired of asking the questions—doing the work of our relationship—by myself. But if we didn’t address the issues between us, how could we ever get past them? For weeks we were in a stalemate. Any time I probed, I got the same answers: “I don’t know.” “You’re making too much of it.” “Why does it have to mean anything?”

We existed in a state of managed conflict. We co-parented easily. We moved around in the house like we always had. We chose to spend time together in the evenings, just like normal. As long as the relationship talks remained confined to therapy, we got along well. We wanted to get along. We loved each other.

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Around three weeks after Jack’s first overnight with Kat, he had a sort of epiphany when our therapist mentioned his actions were regressive, a nice way of saying his behavior was beneath his maturity level. That evening he shared a memory of an embittered argument he had with his dad as a teenager and noted that his feelings during our argument were similar to how he felt then.

This felt, at last, like progress. I was glad to learn something new about him. Once again, I thought knowledge would lead to understanding and understanding to resolution. I hoped that it meant we were finally beginning to make strides toward new awareness of each other, and repair. We agreed we’d talk more about it in therapy the following week.

A few nights later we were tucked into bed. Jack and I had gone to bed at the same time nearly every night of our relationship. Even when we started to struggle, this remained true. Once in bed, Jack would read the news, preparing for his radio show the next morning. I would read a book, or—more often—my phone. Sometimes we’d play Words With Friends and rib each other playfully.

Rarely, I turned my light out before he did. I’d give him a quick kiss and roll over, turning my back to the light. This was one of those nights. After kissing him goodnight, I settled on my side, facing the wall.

“Goodnight honey,” I said. 

“Goodnight, baby.” He rubbed my hip for a moment.

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

I closed my eyes, ready to fall asleep. As soon as I did, I heard this sentence, unspoken but clear as day, from out of nowhere:

“Ask him if he had sex with Kat without a condom.”