Honey,
We have been married over three years now. I am filing for legal separation today. After reassessing my feelings for you, and taking a thorough inventory of our relationship, I have decided that it is time to man up, grow a set of testicles, and cut you from my life like the malignant tumor you are.
As a courtesy to you, and as fair warning for all women out there, I have posted this on Craigslist hoping you read this letter as you are always reading these rants, and every other woman out there, knows what is coming as the wages of the described course of behavior.
Let's start with sex: We were at an amazing resort in French Polynesia on the first day of our honeymoon: over-the-water bungalows, lavish buffets, still, blue lagoons, crystal-clear to the bottom...Wow, was I blown away! Then I had this great idea..."Let's have sex!" I mean, what the hell? It was our honeymoon, after all. "I'm tired." (in your whiny tone) was your response. "Yeah, but it's our honeymoon! We're in paradise, for crying out loud, let's get it on!" "I guess I have to," was your response. Boy, did that make me randy... The next couple of days were a study in sexual procrastination and avoidant behavior on your part. Trying to finagle sex from you had, overnight, become like pulling teeth. Suddenly there were politics involved...not like the entire year before, when you were good to go, 24/7/365.
At the risk of presenting as disjointed, or lacking in continuity, let me interrupt my own letter to pose a question at this juncture: What on earth, outside of regular, willing, and adventurous sex, do you think you have to offer a man? Do you think I married you for your company?...your intellect? Do you think I find following you through Target with a shopping cart more interesting than kicking back with my male friends? Do you think you have a single insight into politics, philosophy, religion, life, sports, finance, or general trivia that has ever shed a single photon of illumination upon my perspective? You do not. Let me be clear: there is nothing, besides the promise of regular, enjoyable sex, that I ever wanted from you...that would ever have made me consider committing to you for the rest of my life. Once sex became an unwilling labor for you, I stopped wanting even that. Men want willing sex. Rapists want unwilling sex. Outside of willing, eager participation in sex, you are nothing but a nuisance, a liability, an annoying distraction, interrupting my otherwise constant state of serenity, and my flow of good ideas.
Oh, back to my story: It was day four of ten of our honeymoon when you pronounced, "I'm not expected to have sex with you every day." "Of course not," I politely answered. "But this is our honeymoon. We're on the other side of the world, in the South Pacific. People would kill to be where we are right now." I should have noted the huge red flag waving when, some weeks before, you tried to make the case that it would be fun to take some friends along on our honeymoon, and maybe even your grandmother, and we could all hang out the whole time. "Wouldn't that be fun?" Let me answer all women on the planet here and now: Hell no! That would not, by any stretch of the imagination, be fun.
It was about the same day that I realized how poor a conversationalist you were. Somehow, over the prior year, when you were fucking me six ways from Sunday, I had overlooked and/or simply rationalized the gigantic reality that you were, quite simply, stupid as a post.
Anyway, there I was, ten grand into the most potentially romantic, amorous, and otherwise amazing bonding experience ever put together; and I had as my companion a tyrant who refused to have sex...or who offered nastily, "If you want me to pretend I like it, I will." It was then, immediately, that my eye began to wander.
She was the French girl who worked behind the counter at our hotel...an intern from some hotel school program in France. She was a little goofy looking: big, bulgy eyes, a bit of a swayback. Still, she was kind of sexy somehow. Upon checking in, I had thought she was an atypical Frenchie, who was uncharacteristically friendly. There, one evening, as I was exchanging some traveler's checks for the local currency while you laid on your already-becoming-lazy ass in the room, she asked me how my honeymoon was going. I was at a loss for words. I'm sure my facial expression told the whole story. Perceptive creature that she was, she flashed an unmistakable look, and touched my hand for much too long to be accidental. "Have you been to the spa?" she asked me. I had not. "Oh, you really must see it." She said something to her manager in French, and, in no time flat, she was kindly walking me down the darkened path to the spa. Good Lord. It was like those cheesy porn movies of old where the mailman shows up at the door to deliver a "package,", and the lady tenant's towel falls off. It was that easy. Can I just add one more ironic detail? Her name was actually Marie! How poetic is that?
Let me ask you something: Did you ever even wonder why I stopped hounding you about sex on our honeymoon? I'm sure you, in your way of rationalizing things, thought that you had won; and that I had accepted your embargo. It was, in fact, simply because that need was being met elsewhere. Two weeks into our sham of a marriage, I was getting serviced somewhere else. As unbelievable as it sounds, it was happening. I have to tell you, more pleasurable than the strange, new, clandestine sex itself, with an otherwise unremarkable woman, was the satisfaction of completely undermining your false and inflated sense of power. Let me assure you: that was just the beginning. I say "unremarkable?" Still, she was certainly one for the check list, and my how the check list has grown, and how those numbers keep moving closer to thirty.
Somehow you took on this persona of a wife in control. I listened, almost laughing out loud, as you gave relationship advice to your girlfriends, colleagues and cousins over the phone. You were so confident. Had I closed my eyes, I would have thought Oprah Winfrey was waxing philosophical in the background.
After the honeymoon, the drought continued. You grudgingly gave it up once a week for a while. Still, you had become rather critical. You called it "coaching me," or "teaching you what I like." Funny, you had never had a single complaint before we got married. It was all wild and free back then. In a matter of weeks, the occasional sex you were willing to give up became a chore for me, not even worth the effort, too humiliating and frustrating to bother with. Eventually, I lost all interest in you. When I did decide to give it a go, I found myself having to conjure up all sorts of visions of all sorts of illicit encounters in order to be able to perform for you. In contrast, I was having no difficulty whatsoever outside the marriage. Eventually, I was able to use the excitement of my extramarital affairs to conjure up some grudging wood for you.
Let me be clear, so that the memories can start to click back into place for you, I have tagged, slept with, and had trysts with almost every restaurant hostess with whom you have ever though I was too friendly. I have followed up on every counter girl, every book clerk, every sales assistant, masseuse and apprentice...even the parts girl at the car dealership, and, yes...one of your very own girlfriends...everyone who ever gave that knowing flash...that tacit go-ahead. I have gone back later. I have talked to them. I have closed the deal with more of them than I would ever have thought possible in my wildest dreams. The head I have received in elevators, in dressing rooms, in staircases, in their apartments (twenty minutes, in-and-out while out running errands); the soccer moms shopping at target...the women I have encountered buying oranges at Whole Foods, or walking their dogs. I swear to you that I have had the most exciting sex of my entire life over the past three years of marriage...and none of it has ever been with you.
Now you want a baby. Let me just say that if I were some outsider hearing this story; I would pronounce a complete idiot the man who would stupidly impregnate you. NO!!!, I'm getting out while the getting is good, baby and child support-free. It occurs to me that I may have to pay a year and a half of alimony. Let me say in advance that it will be worth every penny to be rid of you at last.
Women of the world, heed this advice. Heed it good; and don't you ever think that you and your magic vagina are the exception to these few very simple rules: Take care of your man. Treat him right. Shower him with love and respect, and yes, I mean take care of his physical needs...satisfy him sexually. Wear him out. If you want to guarantee fidelity in your marriage, there is a simple way to achieve that: Never let your husband leave the house with a single drop of semen remaining in his body. Trust me, if he is not dumping it at home, he is dumping it somewhere, unless he is a hopelessly unattractive, beat-down loser. When you use sex for power and control, you do damage that cannot be undone. When you withhold sex and affection from your husband you drive a wedge between you and your man. Not only that, you drive him elsewhere to get his needs met. It is that simple. For the record, let me assure you that the world is literally brimming with women who are very happy to be a friendly port in the long, nasty storm. There are people out there who take satisfaction in undermining your hollow little conquest of controlling the sex in your marriage.
Let me further assure you that there is no such thing as controlling your man sexually. The simple reality is that, if he has any game at all, and does not have a parasitic twin growing out of his forehead, the world is full of other offers. You can only control whether he is getting it at home or not. If you want to control your man, give him all the sex he wants. If you want to lose control of your man, go ahead and cut him off.
Let me add a further tidbit of wisdom at no extra charge. There is an old saying: Women get married hoping everything will change, men get married hoping everything will stay the same. Women, if, somewhere in the back of your mind, you are waiting for the day when your male partner is bound by contract, finances, and perhaps biology, so that you can cut off the sex and become a mini tyrant...don't get married. Join a convent. Work at an orphanage or a pre-school. Adopt a child on your own. Find some way to fulfill your maternal instincts that does not involve marrying under false pretenses. Your man would not have stuck around before the marriage if it were loveless and sexless. He also does not want a marriage that is sexless. There are a million things you can do to have your child or children without suckering in some poor dope, too naive to foresee your evil plan. Are you an honorable person? Then live honorably. Do not live in breach of the spirit of the marriage contract. Trust me, the sex you were willingly giving up as a sell job before the marriage is the only commodity you have to barter that makes it worthwhile for your man to tolerate the rest of what comes with you. Don't sucker a man in, and then expect him to comply with your skewed and artificial construct of fidelity.
If you breach the spirit of the marriage contract, you lose all trust and intimacy with your man. If man were to change his nature, our species would vanish in less than a hundred years. Cutting your man off is not only disrespectful, it is simply counterproductive. The quality of your relationship, his attachment to you, his dedication and sexual fidelity, will be determined by his feelings of access, of being welcomed and embraced, of desirability. We are who we are. We are hard-wired creatures of nature. It is biological. Deal with it, or don't; but don't' do it under false pretenses.
Let me further comment, for the reader' information, that, after the marriage, you, Pumpkin', stopped cooking. You stopped cleaning anything. You don't do dishes. You don't vacuum. You don't dust. You don't do laundry. You leave your dishes all over the house. You spend money like it is going out of style; and nothing ever makes you happy, except unlimited shopping. You infidelity manifests itself on a thousand fronts that are not sexual. Let me ask you something: what good are you to anyone? Good luck finding your next sucker, now that you're 31, fat, and much less attractive than before. By the way, I shall not miss your nagging, or your complaining, or your "making me a better man," as you like to call it. I shall not miss your car driving tips. I have purchased a new flat screen TV and home entertainment system that will neither nag me, not interrupt me while I'm watching the occasional game. I have also decided to splurge on a cleaning lady in my new place. Finally, I'll have a woman who gets things done...and the price will be known and agreed upon up-front.
So, Honey...Pumpkin...you stupid, narcissistic cow...how do you feel now? Do you feel powerful? Or is the helium beginning to seep from your balloon? How many of you women sitting are at your desk at this very moment are wondering if it is not your husband who wrote this letter? Do you know what's strange? I used to think infidelity was wrong. Now I think it is perfectly right and justified. If your husband is out fooling around; it's because you are not doing your job. Not only is he justified in fooling around, you have it coming. You deserve it. One breach of contract deserves another. Men of the world, a woman who changes the terms of your sexual arrangement after marriage deserves infidelity. She plays a two-edged game...violating her implied duty as a wife, yet still holding you to the letter of your contract. It is the oldest, cheapest manipulation in the book: and, very likely, the root cause of the oldest profession in the world.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines infidelity as "unfaithfulness or disloyalty to a person," among other things. Let me redefine it for you. Fidelity is living and being, on a daily basis, contract or no contract, the person you have represented yourself to be. In business contracts, we use the term "good faith" a lot to describe the expectation that both parties of a contract will behave in such a manner as will benefit both parties as much as possible. For instance, if a record company signs a contract with an artist, both parties agree to act "in good faith," meaning that the company will do everything in its power to represent the artist favorably, and sell records. The artist, in return, agrees to put their best efforts into their records, their performances, and whatever promotional activities may be expected. Without the expectation of that somewhat ambiguous "good faith," either party could choose, at any time, to not honor the spirit of the contract, thereby creating disadvantage for both parties. "Good faith," is an absolute must.
A marriage is the same. Perhaps the "faithful" part of the vows goes deeper than sexual fidelity. I believe it means you put your best foot forward, always, and in all things. I believe it means that you do not allow yourself to become a fat lazy, nagging, complaining toddler who doesn't want to have sex with your partner any more. Any deviation from whom you represented yourself to be before, and upon signing the contract is, in fact, a failure to meet the implied "good faith" of the marriage contract. Any false personality you create in order to bag your partner, and then shed as soon as you're married is a misrepresentation. We need to stop defining infidelity as sexual only. Infidelity has many faces, and many manifestations. When you stop trying as a partner, or decide to renege on what you previously offered, you are in fact being disloyal, unfaithful and false to your partner. The idea that unfaithfulness is physical, via the sex act only is a semantic game we need to no longer play. Husbands need to start calling their wives on it. I would go as far as to say that prenups need to include specifics as to sexual frequency, sexual behavior, including attitude, and division of household chores.
After all has been said and done, it may surprise you all to know that, in my humble opinion, most men don't fool around because of the sex itself, it's really about the validation, the feelings of being wanted and valued. Women, if you want your man to seek his validation elsewhere, then you know exactly what to do. Cut him off.
Men, make it part of your own personal credo to fool around if your wife cuts you off. Let all women know that they have it coming. Let them know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the minute they cut you off, protest, make a fuss, or become grudging about sex, you will walk out that front door and get it somewhere else.

-E