Emma's Diary

October 21st

October 21st

Life is irony.

That’s what Bonnie always says, and it’s certainly true in our case. Her husband has been hoping she’d quit drinking for the past ten years. She finally does and, ten days later, she leaves him for me.

Irony.

But wait—there’s more!

Bonnie spent those same ten years wishing for a sexually satisfying relationship. She certainly didn’t have that with her husband. Great s*x is something we were sure to have. It’s not like we’ve never been to bed together. She knows how amazing it can be when we hook up. That was a big motivating factor in her leaving Jim, I think. Bonnie says not, but I know s*x is important to her, and the lack of s*x in her marriage was very frustrating.

But the moment she leaves Jim for me?

Nothing.

She tells me she can’t right now.

She just can’t.

So now I’ve got my very own sexless marriage.

Never thought it would happen to me.

Never thought it would happen to us.

I don’t look like an affair person. I don’t act like one. Look at what I’m wearing right now: pink button-down shirt, sensible trousers, black socks, walking shoes. I look like a hospital administrator. No offence to hospital administrators. I’m nowhere near as sexy as the one from House. I forget the character’s name, but you know who I mean. She was hot as hell. In fact, she reminds me a bit of Bonnie.

The other day I saw a group of teenagers in the kind of clothes we used to wear during the 90s, and I thought: my god, styles take twenty years to come back into fashion. How have twenty years gone by since I was in high school? No, wait—more than twenty years! Where did that time go? I still feel like a teenager myself.

Maybe I’ll dig out my old grunge gear. The black jeans probably wouldn’t do up anymore, but jeans are easy enough to buy. I bet my old plaid shirts would still fit fine. My mom probably has them boxed up in the basement. She never throws anything away.

Bonnie’s out, at the moment. She volunteered to drive elderly people to their polling stations. She’s political like that. She’s smart. Well-read. I have no idea what she’s talking about half the time, but I love listening. I could listen to her forever.

I’ve never seen her be emotional before now. Well, when we were teenagers, sure. But it was mostly anger, back then. Ever since she left Jim, it’s been deep, deep sadness. She cries all the time. Sobs. Wails.

Usually I’m the one crying, but the more of a mess Bonnie becomes, the more I manage to hold it together. Funny how that works. We can’t both fall apart. I guess that’s my reasoning. Someone has to be strong and supportive.

Right now, that’s me. She needs it.

Did you know you can trick people into telling you secrets? I’ve just discovered this. I kind of wish I hadn’t. Honesty is huge for me. I believe a relationship requires it. That’s the only way two people will have a solid foundation together.

Bonnie and Jim were bad at communication, and look where it got them: for ten years she wanted s*x from him and he wanted sobriety from her. They didn’t tell each other these things. They just silently seethed until Bonnie said she wanted a divorce.

That’s when it all came out: he’d stopped sleeping with her because of the drinking, but she’d started drinking because he stopped sleeping with her.

So which came first, the booze or the sexless marriage?

Maybe there is no answer to questions like this. I couldn’t say. I’m not part of their relationship. I broke it up, but I’m not part of it.

So, I asked Bonnie: Is there something you’re not telling me?

That’s the trick.

Because, when you ask it, people figure you know something, and if you already know the answer they might as well fess up.

Bonnie hung her head down low and said, “Jim wants to see me on Tuesday. He wants to talk about finances, and I’m so afraid I’ll beg him to take me back!”

She started sobbing again, which isn’t unusual these days.

At first I thought: Okay, this is okay. I can hold it together. Keep it together. It’s natural to have these feelings. It’s only natural.

Except that I’ve been the best possible version of me since Bonnie left Jim. I’ve been supportive, compassionate, generous. I’ve listened, I’ve held her when she’s cried, I’ve cooked her meals, I’ve bought everything under the sun for the apartment she rented, which sits unfurnished except for a mattress on the floor.

After all this sweetness and love, she still wants to go back to Jim?

If this version of me isn’t good enough, then I’ll never be good enough. This is the best I can be. This is the best me.

We had a fight after that. Well, not a fight, exactly. I didn’t think I was fighting. I felt full of rage, sure, but that quiet sort of rage. Quiet seething. She tells me I was yelling. I’d say growling, but she says yelling, so fine. Maybe I was yelling. But not in her face. She moved to the couch. I stayed seated at the table, alternately sipping tea and firing venom in her direction.

Even if she begged him, does she really think he’d take her back? After what she did? The way she left him wasn’t exactly kind. He came home from the chiropractor to find that she’d moved all her clothes over to the new place. So Jim walks in the door and Bonnie tells him she’s not happy in their marriage, she hasn’t been happy in years, and she’s leaving, that’s that.

I wasn’t there to witness any of this, but Bonnie tells me Jim was very business-like about it. He told her to clear out her stuff. He sent her off with a box of provisions. He asked her to tell him when she’d be hiring movers to get rid of the rest of her belongings, and he’d make himself scarce.

Maybe he expected this to happen.

Maybe he wanted it to happen.

At one point, I said to Bonnie: You two never talked. Maybe he has a private life just like you do.

Her reaction was: I don’t understand.

Weird thing not to understand, especially for someone as smart as Bonnie.

So I said: You’ve been having an affair with me all this time. Maybe he...

I trailed off like that, because I thought I was being clear, but again she said: I don’t get what you mean.

So I dropped it. Ego, I guess. She can’t imagine that her husband would cheat on her, even though she’s been cheating on him, off and on, for the past decade.

There’s so much more to say, but thinking about my life right now is exhausting. I just needed to get some stuff out of my system. I’ve got a few friends who will listen, but I don’t want to bore them. They’ve got their own lives.

What I’d really like to do is tell my family about all this. I have no idea how they’ll react. They don’t like hearing about personal things, or lesbian things, and this thing is both personal and lesbian.

I think my mom will be disappointed in me for stealing a married lady away from her nice husband.

I think maybe I’m disappointed in me, too.