by Joe Stanley
1
LET THIS BE MY CONFESSION. My life has, for so long now, been a bundle of secrets and lies, that it will cleanse my soul to write the truth. At least, I hope it will.
I was married at an early age, too young to know what I was doing. My wife, Marion, was sweet enough to me, but, more,she was rich. I married her for that wealth, the sweet tenderness she showed me was merely a benefit.
We were happy together, for the beginning, anyway. But the novelty wore thin with the passing of a few years. Who we were in public was very different from who we were behind closed doors. We bickered constantly, and our intimacies grew fewer and fainter, despite my efforts to the contrary. I dared to question whether we should have been wed in the first place.
At this, she laughed, a wicked and hateful sound which I have come to despise in the depths of my heart. It was mocking and cruel, an inhuman noise, one which delights in the misery of others. To my surprise, she had been expecting this, as though it was natural.
There was a long tradition of loveless marriage in her family. Add to this a line of dominant matrons, shrewish nags who henpecked the men around them into submission. They knew the law well and how it favors the female. With but an accusation, I could be jailed and left penniless, and the implication was that worse could be easily arranged.
It was made absolutely clear to me who was in charge, and that she had ‘married down’ to put me in this position.
“All I expect from you,” she told me with a voice as cold as winter sleet, “is that you keep up appearances. You will never mention divorce again, to me or anyone, or I will make the rest of your life far worse than it already is.”
Like a fool, like a damned and helpless fool, I appealed to her heart. Why should she want it this way? Why not let me go and find a man who made her happy? It did not occur to me that she knew nothing else, that she did not know how to be happy.
“Men have their uses.” she explained, condescending as though she spoke to a child, “But they are not capable of making a woman truly happy. Equality is an illusion. Either they are in charge, muddling things up, or we are. Of the two, I choose the latter. I prefer that men be a plaything to be used and discarded. In fact, I have several that serve such a purpose.”
It was not enough to have beaten me, she was not satisfied until I was humiliated as well. But now all was clear, and though my heart was sickened, I knew the game at any rate. I suppose I had it coming, but I wished things could have been different.
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