VOW
I can lay claim to this general truth, though: Of all the things there are to do on the planet, my husband and I picked one hell of a pastime. If we had it to do over again, I imagine the very same things would happen once more. Had we been able to change ourselves early enough to make a lasting difference, we probably would have done that already. Bill and I met in college when we were nineteen and were married eight years later. We were barely a year into our marriage and had just moved into our first home in Pennsylvania when I met Tommy. I was ignorant when I married Bill. I assumed the gravity and laws of marriage—not to mention the love I felt for my husband— would be enough to prevent me from desiring anyone else. I was wrong about this. By that point I had been in love twice: once with Tim, my boyfriend from high school, whose sweet relationship I carried with me into my freshman year at college; and then with Bill, who would become my husband in 1987. In love, I desired no one else. All the attraction, all the compulsion, all the hope for the future, went to one man. These seemed an effective demilitarized zone against temptation, and they are. They keep the enemies of the marriage at bay. But they weaken over the years without any siren going off to alert you to that fact. Their half-life ticks past silently. So I was thrown off balance when I first met Tommy and felt an attraction so compelling I no longer cared that I was married. Like everything else, infidelity has its own learning curve. If you want, you can become proficient. You can stake out the signs of your vulnerability and indulge or ignore them depending on your moral position. But this was early in my marriage. No one close to me had experienced anything like it yet. There was no trusted ally 8