A second chance July 25, 1982

 

I’m constantly amazed at how stupid human beings can be.

Many don’t say what they mean or say too much, or talk in riddles others struggle to solve.

Last night I had a chance to have sex with my ex-wife and opted not to.

It’s hard to explain why, except that it felt wrong – not morally wrong, so much as a misstep leading to a set of future circumstances I think I would come to regret.

After all those years of pining over her, and wishing her back in my life, when it finally came to the point where it became possible, I balked.

My ex kept hinting about it all day and most of the night, and seemed puzzled at my hesitation.

Part of this has nothing to do with her or her past, or the fact she’s engaged in mankind’s oldest profession. Most of it has to do with I’m not the same person I was back then when we met or even later when we broke up, and I can no longer recreate myself in that image, since it appears she clearly wants the old me back.

This is not to say I wouldn’t want to make love with her. I do. Perhaps always will. But I’m concerned about stepping into an emotional place I won’t be able to extract myself from later – every act comes with emotional baggage and I carry enough of my own without adding more to it.

I’m not like most of the men she is accustomed to, the hard-drinking, hard loving, love them and leave them crowd who have used and abused her over the last decade, and I think she knows this, counts on it, and would like to restart something we had, when it didn’t work back then, and won’t like work in the future.

She sees me as a knight in slightly dented armor who can rescue her from her current situation, seeing no further than the bedroom as to what it might mean for the future.

As much as I want it, there is no way to go back, to start again, although having sex with her opens that door, and to her mind, may require that I step through it, and I wont.

Maybe I’m just too set in my ways, liking my relative independence, unwilling to surrender what I have for what might wind up a life sentence.

She’s not mad at me for my resistance, just puzzled. It may be possible that I am the first man in her life to tell her no. Most men she has known would leap onto this with both feet, and I could be like them and simply walk away when its done, as I have done with other women. But this isn’t just another woman. It is the woman I once considered the love of my life, and she is the mother of my child.

And today, looking back, I wonder if I will regret my decision, knowing how my ex tends to rarely give second chances, and will likely move on to find someone else now that I’ve refused her.

Yet, I suspect, I’ll only regret missing the sex, not the situation.



email to Al Sullivan

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