“Traci, the big problem with the way you are looking at this is that you are thinking only that you have not changed. You aren’t thinking at all about how I have changed. I used to love you unconditionally, and I thought you loved me unconditionally. Now I know you don’t love me nearly as much as I thought you did, and this has severely damaged my love for you. I used to trust you absolutely, and now I don’t trust you at all. You claim that you will never sleep with another man, but why should I believe that? Since you broke our wedding vows so easily, why won’t you break any other promises you make now? I used to be confident you would never hurt me or humiliate me or disrespect me, Now I know you will do all of these without a moment’s hesitation. Maybe the changes in you don’t require a divorce, but the changes in me sure as hell do. Much as I still have feelings for you, I just can’t stay married to you the way I feel about you now.”
“Moreover, you have changed more than you think. You told me yourself, with starry eyes, that your experience with Jackson was heavenly, the best sex you have ever had. I suspect that if you and I were ever to make love again, you would be thinking of your experience with him and wishing he was in bed with you, instead of me. I couldn’t take that.”
Later that night I went to bed in the guest room, and she tried to climb in with me. “No way,” I said, “No fucking way can I get turned on by you. You’ll have to just daydream about your goddam night with Asshole.”
She was very upset and surprised by this. “But don’t you want to reassert your ownership of me? Jackson assured me that is what you would do.”
“Crap, once again you listened to that fucking asshole instead of remembering the many times we have agreed that infidelity is a deal breaker for both of us. He really did brain-wash you. Right now the thought of being in bed with you makes me feel more like throwing up than making love. Moreover, you didn’t even use a goddam condom with the bastard, Who knows what goddam fucking diseases [pardon the pun again] you might have.”
I had never sworn at her like this before, and she did not take it well. I turned my back on her and went to sleep, but before I drifted off I could hear her sobbing as she went to our marital bed “I really have messed things up, haven’t I. In retrospect, it wasn’t worth it, not even close. How the hell did I let Jackson talk me into that night?”
By Sunday afternoon two radio stations had mentioned the incident in local news broadcasts, and the local paper had an article about it on their web site, as a prelude to publishing it in Monday’s gossip column in the paper. All of these snippets were roughly the same. They stated that home-wrecker Jackson Aloysius Fairchild, local real estate magnate and member of the Board of the Art Gallery, at a party at his house on Saturday had seduced a female employee of the Gallery, a married woman with two children, and took her to his bed Saturday night, walking off with her right in front of her husband. To top it off, Fairchild had assaulted her husband and attempted to choke him to death when the husband complained publicly about what Fairchild had done. Fortunately, in spite of being a much smaller man, the husband had fought him off and put him in the hospital. Dr. Henry Maynard, chairman of the Board of the Gallery, stated that Fairchild had been dropped from the Board and banned from the Gallery for life, for being a sexual predator, and the woman had been fired, for violation of the Gallery’s morals clause in her employment contract.
Customers of Fairchild’s real estate business started abandoning him in droves. This, on top of his jail sentence, drove his business bankrupt within a few months.
I filed for divorce three days later, on the grounds of adultery.
Traci didn’t try to block or even delay the divorce, and she accepted my terms: 50-50 split of assets, and alimony paid to her to achieve equal after-tax incomes between us unless or until she got remarried or cohabited with a lover. However, when the Child Protective Services people viewed the video of our conversation held just before Traci went to the master bedroom with Jackson, with the threats to ruin me financially and turn the children against me, they recommended to the judge that I get full custody of our children, living in the family house, with only limited, supervised visiting rights for Traci. The judge agreed.
However, I badly wanted to keep our divorce as amicable as possible, for the sake of the children. As soon as we left the courthouse I proposed three possible custody arrangements:
(1) The four of us would live in the family house, but with the parents sleeping in separate bedrooms, with no expectation that we would have sex with each other. Each of us could have whatever outside relationships we wanted, but the children could not meet our dates or lovers. We would share the mortgage and other household expenses. With this, our financial situation would be roughly the same as when we were married, at least if Traci got a new job.
(2) We would retain the family home and also jointly rent a small apartment. The children would live in the family home. Traci and I would switch back and forth alternately between the family home and the apartment on a quarterly basis. Whichever parent is living in the apartment would have the children on Wednesdays and alternate weekends. Each of us could have whatever outside relationships we wanted, but the children could not meet our dates or lovers. We would share the expenses of the family home and the apartment. With this arrangement money would be very tight for both of us, although it would not be too bad if Traci got a new job.
(3) I would live in the family home with the children, and Traci would have whatever outside living arrangements she wanted. She would have visitation rights on two weekdays each week (perhaps Monday and Tuesday) and every other weekend. We could each have whatever relationships we wanted, and the children could meet our dates or lovers, as appropriate given the children’s ages and sensitivities. I would be responsible for household expenses for the family home, and she would be responsible for household expenses for her living arrangements.
In all cases a week day went from noon one day to noon the next, so that on a school day the children would be picked up after school one day and returned to school the next morning. A weekend went from noon Friday to noon Monday, so when school was in session the children would get picked up after school on Friday and returned to school on Monday morning. The quarters would go from noon January 15 to noon April 14, etc. That would give each parent about half of each season of the year. In each arrangement each of us would have the children an equal amount of time on a yearly basis. Also, special arrangements could be negotiated on special occasions as needed.
In all of these arrangements Traci and I would be expected to be reasonably friendly with each other. This would not be difficult, since we both have feelings for each other, even if I cannot deal with being married to her.