“Yes,” she replied. “You’re Sugar. Mr. Sugar’s girlfriend.”
“Right,” I said. “And this is going to seem odd, but I’m wondering about something. Have you slept with Mr. Sugar?”
“Yes,” she said immediately. He’d come to her apartment the month before, when he’d been in town, she informed me. They had an “intense sexual attraction,” she said with a breathy puff of pleasure. She was sorry if that hurt me.
“Thank you,” I replied, and I meant it.
When I hung up the phone, I remember very vividly staggering around the room as if someone had shot me in the heart with an arrow that would forever be stuck in my chest.
Mr. Sugar and I hardly owned anything then. In our living room there was nothing but two ratty, matching couches we’d been given as hand-me-downs, each one lining an opposite wall. We referred to them as the dueling couches because they sat in an eternal face-off, the only things in the room. One of our favorite things to do was recline on the dueling couches—him on one, me on the other—for hours on end. Sometimes we’d read silently to ourselves, but more often, we’d read out loud to each other, whole books whose titles still make my heart swoon, so powerfully do they remind me of the tender intensity between us in those first years of our love: Charlotte’s Web, Cathedral and Other Stories, The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke.
All of that was a pile of shit now, I realized as I collapsed onto one of the dueling couches. By going off and fucking the woman who sent him a postcard and then not telling me about it, Mr. Sugar had ruined everything. My trust. Our innocence. My magical sense of myself as the only woman he could possibly desire. The pure and unassailable nature of our perfect coupledom. I was shattered and furious, but most of all I was shocked. How could he have done this?
When he walked in the door an hour later and I told him what I knew, he crumpled onto the dueling couch opposite me and we had the duel of our lives.
I didn’t think we’d survive it. I was pretty sure to do so would be kind of sick. I wasn’t the sort of person who took bullshit from men and I wasn’t about to begin doing so now. I loved Mr. Sugar, but he could sincerely go and fuck himself. I’d been true and faithful to him, and in return, he’d broken the deal. The deal was killed. Even being in the same room with him felt humiliating to me.
But there I was, nonetheless, crying and yelling while he cried and apologized. I told him it was over. He begged me to stay. I told him he was a lying, selfish bastard. He agreed that’s exactly what he was. We talked and talked and talked and talked and after an hour or so my rage and sorrow subsided enough that I went silent and listened while he told me everything: exactly how it went down with the woman who sent him the postcard; what I meant to him and what the woman he’d slept with meant; how and why he loved me; how he’d never been faithful to any woman in all his life, but how he wanted to be faithful to me, even though he’d already failed at that; how he knew his problems with sex and deception and intimacy and trust were bigger than this one transgression and rooted in his past; how he’d do everything in his power to understand his problems so he could change and grow and become the partner he wanted to be; how knowing me had made him believe he was capable of that, of loving me better, if only I would give him another chance.
As I listened to him talk, I alternated between sympathizing with him and wanting to punch him in the mouth. He was a jackass, but I loved him dearly. And the fact was, I related to what he said. I understood his explanations, infuriating as they were. I’d been a jackass too, given to failings of my own that hadn’t manifested themselves in this relationship yet. When he said he had sex with the woman who sent him the postcard because he got a little bit drunk and wanted to have sex and it didn’t have anything to do with me, even though of course it ultimately very much did, I knew what he meant. I’d had that sort of sex too. When he looked me in the eye and told me he was sorrier than a person has ever been and he loved me so much he didn’t even know how to say it, I knew he was telling me a truer truth than he’d ever told anyone.
I’m going to guess this is roughly the sort of crossroads your own personal perfect role model couple was at a few times in their incredibly successful and loving decades-long-and-still-going-strong relationship, Happily Ever After. And I’m going to guess if you manage to live happily ever after with your honey you’re going to be there a time or two as well, whether the precise issue be infidelity or not.
This isn’t a spotless life. There is much ahead, my immaculate little peach. And there is no way to say it other than to say it: marriage is indeed this horribly complex thing for which you appear to be ill prepared and about which you seem to be utterly naïve.
That’s okay. A lot of people are. You can learn along the way.
A good place to start would be to let fall your notions about “perfect couples.” It’s really such an impossible thing to either perceive honestly in others or live up to when others believe it about us. It does nothing but box some people in and shut other people out, and it ultimately makes just about everyone feel like shit. A perfect couple is a wholly private thing. No one but the two people in the perfect relationship know for certain whether they’re in one. Its only defining quality is that it’s composed of two people who feel perfectly right about sharing their lives with each other, even during the hard times.
I think that’s what your sister was getting at when she revealed her relationship struggles in response to your question about the “secret to marriage.” She wasn’t trying to bum you out. She was actually trying to tell you the secret. In allowing you a more intimate view of her much-touted-but-flawed marriage, your sister was attempting to show you what a real perfect couple looks like: happy, humane, and occasionally all fucked up.
I can’t imagine anyone more fitting to walk you down the aisle on your wedding day than your sister and her husband, two people who’ve kept their love and friendship alive for more than twenty-five years. That you’re doubting this after learning not all of those years were easy tells me there’s something deeper at work here that has nothing to do with their marriage and everything to do with your own insecurities and fears.
You appear to be focused on infidelity as the “deal-killer” that you believe would compel you to “automatically” dissolve your own future marriage, and that’s fair enough. I understand the icky place in your gut where that impulse lives. There is probably nothing more hurtful and threatening than one partner breaking from an agreed-upon monogamous bond. A preemptive ultimatum against that allows at least the sense of control. But it’s a false sense.
Painful as it is, there’s nothing more common in long-term relationships than infidelity in its various versions (cheated, pretty much cheated, cheated a teeny bit but it probably doesn’t quite count, came extremely close to cheating, want to cheat, wondering about what it would be like to cheat, is flirting over email technically even cheating? etc.). The letters in my inbox, the stories of many of my friends, and my own life are a testament to that. I’m not suggesting everyone cheats, of course, and perhaps you and your husband will never have to confront this issue. But if you really want to live happily ever after, if you honestly want to know what the secret to sustaining a lifelong “healthy love” is, it would be a good idea to openly grapple with some of the most common challenges of doing so, rather than pretending that you have the power to shut them down by making advance threats about walking out, “no conversation required,” the moment a transgression occurs.
This will require a rethink about your own dark capacities, as well as those of your future husband, and the members of various couples you admire. Most people don’t cheat because they’re cheaters. They cheat because they are people. They are driven by hunger or for the experience of someone being hungry once more for them. They find themselves in friendships that take an unintended turn or they seek them out because they’re horny or drunk or damaged from all the stuff they didn’t get when they were kids. There is love. There is
lust. There is opportunity. There is alcohol. And youth. There is loneliness and boredom and sorrow and weakness and self-destruction and idiocy and arrogance and romance and ego and nostalgia and power and need. There is the compelling temptation of intimacies with someone other than the person with whom one is most intimate.
Which is a complicated way of saying, it’s a long damn life, Happily Ever After. And people get mucked up in it from time to time. Even the people we marry. Even us. You don’t know what it is you’ll get mucked up in yet, but if you’re lucky, and if you and your fiancé really are right for each other, and if the two of you build a marriage that lasts a lifetime, you’re probably going to get mucked up in a few things along the way.
This is scary, but you’ll be okay. Sometimes the thing you fear the most in your relationship turns out to be the thing that brings you and your partner to a deeper place of understanding and intimacy.
That’s what happened to Mr. Sugar and me a couple of years into our relationship, when I learned of his infidelity, and told him to go fuck himself, and then took him back. My decision to stay and work it out with him in the aftermath of that betrayal is way, way far up on the list of the best decisions of my life. And I’m not just grateful that I decided to stay. I’m grateful it happened. It took me years to allow that, but it’s true. That Mr. Sugar cheated on me made us a better couple. It opened a conversation about sex and desire and commitment that we’re still having. And it gave us resources to draw upon when we faced other challenges later on. The truth is, for all the sweet purity of our early love, we weren’t ready for each other in that time during which we loved each other most sweetly. The woman who sent him the postcard pushed us down a path where we made ourselves ready, not to be a perfect couple, but to be a couple who knows how to have a duel when a duel needs to be had.
I hope that’s what you get too, Happily Ever After. A bit of sully in your sweet. Not perfection, but real love. Not what you imagine, but what you’d never dream.
Yours,
Sugar
WE ARE HERE TO BUILD THE HOUSE
Dear Sugar,
I am a young woman in an American city. I’ll be out of a job in a few weeks. Gulp. I’m in the process of entering into an arrangement with a man: we will rendezvous once or twice a week and he will pay me an “allowance” of $1,000 a month. About this, I have many conflicting thoughts. There are the practical questions: Is what I am doing illegal? Is what I am receiving taxable income? If so, how do I report it? Am I being paid fairly?
But also, more importantly: Is what I am doing immoral? The man is married. He told me that he loves his wife, he is going to take care of her forever, but she doesn’t want sex like she used to; she’s not the jealous type, and he’d tell her but he doesn’t want to rub her face in it. To me this sounds cowardly. I am a person who believes in nonmonogamy; I believe in people making the choices that are the best for them. But I also believe in communication, respect, and integrity. Am I complicit in something awful?
And my last set of questions, Sugar. Is this something I can do? Is this something I should be doing? I am theoretically pro-sex, but I’ve never really enjoyed it. I have all sorts of ugly issues involved—I know we all do—and I don’t know if this will make them better or worse. I am trying to approach the whole situation in a meta way, as an exploration of my feminist ideology—but every time I think about him touching me I want to cry. And yet I am very poor and soon to be unemployed. How much can/should I take my desperation into account?
I think I am going to go through with this, so I don’t know what my question really is. I guess I just want to know how people negotiate all this shit, and how I am supposed to be okay. Thank you.
LTL
Dear LTL,
I said yes to this gig immediately. Within the hour, I realized I’d made a mistake. I was way too busy to be Sugar. The job pays nothing. I earn my living as a writer. Mr. Sugar also earns his living as an artist. There is not a steady job, trust fund, savings account, retirement plan, parent willing to pay any portion of our preschool bill, free babysitter, not-maxed-out credit card, employer-paid health insurance policy, paid sick day, or even a middle-class childhood between us. Between us there are only two beautiful children and ten mountains of debt.
I can’t work for free. I can’t work for free. Of course I can’t work for free!
That was the mantra screaming through my head after I agreed to be Sugar. So, an hour after saying yes, I composed an email saying I’d changed my mind. The unsent email sat on my computer screen while I paced my living room thinking about all the reasons that it was perfectly unreasonable for me to write an advice column for no pay. Every reason was punctuated by a silent exclamation point. I had other writing to do! Writing for which I was being paid! Writing that would need to be pushed aside on a weekly basis so I could crank out a column! And what was a column anyway? I didn’t write columns! I didn’t know anything about giving advice! Plus, there were my kids! I was stretched thin already, my every not-writing moment consumed by caring for them! The whole Sugar idea was ridiculous from the start!
And yet I could not bring myself to send that email. I wanted to be Sugar. I was intrigued. Sparked. Something powerful overrode all the silent exclamation points in my head: my gut. I decided to trust it. I gave Sugar a shot.
I thought of this when I read your letter, sweet pea. It made me think about what’s at stake when we ponder a gig. About what work means. About the fine balance of money and reason and instinct and the ideas we have about ourselves when we imagine we can be “meta” about our bodies and lives and the ways we spend our days. About what’s at work when we attempt to talk ourselves into things we don’t want to do and out of things we do. When we think a payoff comes from being paid and a price exacted from doing things for free. About what morality is. And who gets to say. What relation it has to making money. And what relation it has to desperation.
Your letter unsettles me. There is the husband predictably casting his decision to deceive his wife as a benevolent one. There is your naïveté about the logistics of prostitution—which is the correct term for the act of providing sex for money. Even if you refer to it as a rendezvous. But most of all there is you, dear fathomless bird of truth, telling me exactly what you know you must do. And then turning away from it.
You don’t need me to tell you whether you should accept this offer. You need me only to show you to yourself. I am theoretically pro-sex, but I’ve never really enjoyed it, you write. Every time I think about him touching me I want to cry, you say. Do you hear that? It’s your body talking to you. Do what it tells you to do. Be its employee. It doesn’t matter what your head is working out—the monthly grand, the uncertainty of unemployment, the meta/feminist gymnastics. Putting faith in that stuff might pay the rent, but it’s never going to build your house.
We are here to build the house.
It’s our work, our job, the most important gig of all: to make a place that belongs to us, a structure composed of our own moral code. Not the code that only echoes imposed cultural values, but the one that tells us on a visceral level what to do. You know what’s right for you and what’s wrong for you. And that knowing has nothing to do with money or feminism or monogamy or whatever other things you say to yourself when the silent exclamation points are going off in your head. Is it okay to be a participant in deceit and infidelity? Is it okay to exchange sex for cash? These are worthy questions. They matter. But the answers to them don’t tell us how to rightfully live our lives. The body does.
There might be women out there who can fuck men for money and be perfectly fine, but you are not one of them. You told me so yourself. You’re simply not cut out for the job. When it comes to sex you say that you have “all sorts of ugly issues” and that you “know we all do,” but you’re wrong. We all don’t. You do. I once did. Not everyone does. By generalizing your problems regarding sex and sexuality, you’re running from yourself. You’re covering your wounds wi
th a classic it’s-okay-if-I’m-fucked-up-because-everyone-is-fucked-up canard. It’s a lie you’ve told yourself that has flattened down whatever hurts.
But what hurts remains. Something inside of you that has to do with sex and men needs to be healed. And until you heal it you are going to have to open and patch and cover and deny that wound over and over again. This job offer is an opportunity, but not the sort you think it is. It’s an invitation to do the real work. The kind that doesn’t pay a dime, but leaves you with a sturdy shelter by the end.
So do it. Forget the man. Forget the money. It’s your own sweet self with whom you must rendezvous.
Yours,
Sugar
THE EMPTY BOWL
Dear Sugar,
I could be worse. That’s one of my father’s favorite sayings. Whenever we heard a story about a man beating his children, murdering his family, locking them away: I could be worse. It was as if the mere existence of vileness and depravity could exculpate him of any wrongdoing.
He never hit my mother or me. He didn’t rape me or threaten me. These are the first things that come to mind when we think of child abuse. But while my mother would have left him if he’d lifted a hand against me, words—painful, horrible words—were allowed. Instead of bruises and scrapes, I suffered from internal pain. My father is a narcissist: controlling, vain, volatile, and charming. If I wasn’t cheerful enough, he didn’t want to look at me and I was locked in my room for days; if I made a joke, he’d yell and curse at me for being insensitive. My room was my sanctuary, my books my closest friends. I could never be perfect enough, and yet I tried so hard to make him proud, to make him care. He was my dad, after all.
I never had anyone to talk to about it. I couldn’t fully trust my friends, and my mother was too busy pacifying my father to realize how much it hurt. My mother and I were the only ones allowed to see that side of him. Counseling was out of the question, and extended family visited seldom.