Passable Gravity of Marriage
By Holden Wilde
His wife’s voice sounded both irritating and numbing. Ervin wished it was more monotonous, so he could completely ignore it but she was almost shouting, telling a supposedly funny story about her mother. Ervin looked at her: after 10 years of marriage, she was still objectively good looking and a keen fashionista, but he felt no attraction. They were having Sunday breakfast in the large dining room of their gorgeous apartment, overlooking Central Park’s ice skating rink. The food was fresh, healthy, and delicious, their two children were beautiful and neat. The table was appointed with modern-looking dishware matching the minimalistic look of their furniture, but Ervin couldn’t wait to escape.
He was trying to remember why he’d fallen in love with her and couldn’t. After four months of dating, in her bed, as he was moving slowly inside of her, he had looked into her deep green eyes and his heart had started to melt. Ervin felt completely happy and said the three magical words. Since then, she had proven to be everything he had ever wanted in his life-long partner: always a killer date, a determined but wise mother to their children, a whore in a bedroom, and an accomplished executive. Her relatives and friends looked like characters in an upscale fashion magazine: grounded with strong values, good looking, and successful. Ervin’s friends had gotten used to his complaints by now but still couldn’t hide their surprise when, with enough alcohol, he would open up about his wife-caused depressions and thirst for divorce. “But you look so good together, you enjoy same things, and your kids are amazing,” they would usually say. Yes, the kids. Ervin loved coming home after work or business trips and being forced to the floor with screams of happiness, hugs, and kisses from his son and daughter. They were the reason, the only reason, why he hadn’t left yet.
Their relationship had started perfectly. Ervin vividly remembered how they would see an arguing couple and be sincerely aghast at why people would suffer together like that. They would stay at each other’s apartments, travel together, go out, and, in times apart, spend hours on the phone cherishing the sound of each other’s voice. The first surprise came about a week after he moved in with her—Ervin came home from work and found her hysterically complaining to her parents that he didn’t put dirty dishes away in the dishwasher. His argument that they could afford 2 maids who would take care of everything, including dishes, went unanswered. This first complaint was followed by more: what time he arrived home from work, how he spoke with her friends, what he didn’t do around the house; she seemed to be more and more unhappy with him. Ervin rationalized that it was just a temporary transition phase required for a long-term adjustment. The happy moments were still prevalent and he loved her so much, so he proposed and they began planning for their wedding.
“Smart women know what they want, wise women know how to get there,” Ervin’s grandfather cautioned him when he went to visit him on his deathbed. Ervin’s wife was very smart, she had reasonable requests, which were always supported with solid reasoning, but she was absolutely clueless about how to motivate him to do those things and instead made his life hell. While faced with an increase in the sheer number of requests, negative observations, sniping remarks, and mood swings, it had taken Ervin almost three years of marriage to begin hating his family life. He started scheduling more and longer business trips, would stay later for work, and invent sicknesses so he could be left alone and not have to hear her speak.
The first time Ervin cheated on his wife was in the fourth year of his marriage. He was depressed from continuous mental warfare at home and the addition of a baby had multiplied the number of requests and the growing list of his “inadequacies.” He started thinking about suicide, but then decided to ask for a divorce. Ervin ran the idea by two of his closest friends, both married, over drinks.
“There are no happy marriages, there are disappointed wives and miserable husbands, because women always want to change their men and their mothers taught them that with enough persistence, it could work.”
“What about “wise” women?” asked Ervin.
“One in a hundred,” answered one of the friends. “I know one such couple in the whole world.”
“Yep, I have only met one woman like that. Her husband is a lucky bastard.”
“So how do we survive? Divorce?”
“Of course not. They are all same, so you have to figure out a way to cope with this one.”
“How???!!! I can’t take it anymore.”
“Try banging on the side,” answered one friend and another nodded with a smirk.
For the first time in many months, Ervin was happy to see his wife and didn’t even mind the sound of her voice. He had just returned from his school reunion where his friends’ advice was thoroughly tested. It seemed to have worked. Ervin was afraid that he would feel guilty after cheating, and he did, but in a surprising way it also made him tolerant with his wife’s continuous onslaughts. Over the following years, Ervin had perfected the art of cheating with second mobile phones and friends’ as alibis. Every time he would feel overwhelmed by his wife’s nagging, he would pursue an optimal venue—a brothel, a stranger on a business trip, or somebody from his growing list of fuckbuddies in the city—and would get a mental boost to stay sane until the next transgression.
His wife finally finished her story and told him that her parents had asked them to spend vacation together with them in Los Cabos. Ervin had heard about that request before and thought it was ridiculous for them to spend their vacation time hanging out with grandparents and children in such romantic place, but he got up, kissed his wife on the neck, and said, “That would be very nice. Shall I call your dad to align on logistics?” His childhood friend was visiting him from the home country next weekend and he knew the cure from nagging was just around the corner…