I really do wish I had been better at marriage. I have already spoken about my first one in this column. There’s not much more to say. It was a disaster, due in large part to my immaturity, refusal to comply with the rules of convention and terrified by intimacy. And I was stupid. I had to be to marry someone as stupid as she was. She did the right thing, she got out. Actually, I was the one that got out – literally. She wound up with the house, which was worth about $35,000 in the 1970s. I thought I was shrewd, making sure she got none of my retirement annuity. I won’t tell you what she got for that house in 1996.
Whatever made me think I could make it work a second time? Probably the same stupidity that caused me to marry the first time. In all fairness, though, I had matured during my 10-year run as a bachelor. And Joanne was wonderful. So, it could have worked. It did, for five months. That was all either one of us could endure; not that it was uniformly bad – it was just one incident that did it. One misunderstanding – a glitch, so to speak, in communication.
What happened? I still have a hard time comprehending the circumstances that led to the crash. That’s what it was – a mid-air collision of sorts. It didn’t need to happen. Had I had some inkling of the circumstances, had I been able to empathize with Joanne’s plight, had she been a little slower to conclude the worst about me, we might have survived the incident. But none of that happened. We were both at the same altitude, but the baggage we were carrying was vastly different.
Mistaken assumptions, faulty thinking, absurd circumstantial evidence that affected judgment, and an unfortunate conclusion – these are the ingredients that can tear a marriage to shreds in less than 20 minutes. But I’ll tell you this – I was not the bad guy in this one. There must have been something lurking beneath the surface of Joanne’s personality that enabled the incident to occur. I hate to say it, but she had to be a bit nuts.
You don’t have to believe this, (I barely do) but the catalyst was socks. More accurately, it was a lack of socks that opened the doors to marital hell. I had been stewing silently, because my supply of socks was declining rapidly. Each time Joanne did the laundry, socks disappeared, until the fill fated Thursday night when I noticed only one brown sock in my drawer. I was going to have to ask Joanne about this. Hopefully, she hadn’t gotten a chance to return today’s laundered socks to my drawer. What other explanation could there be?
I did not have all the information, however. Had I been aware that she had discovered a pair of her underwear in my sock drawer earlier in the day, I would have had a clue that might explain her behavior. As destiny would have it, however, I knew nothing about anything … other than my socks. The ensuing discussion went down like a pair of 747’s .
“Honey, I have a problem.” I had just lit the fuse.
“Well, thank God you’re admitting it. Tell me, exactly, what is wrong.”
“Admitting what? I’m talking about my socks.”
“Oh, God, it’s worse than I thought. Your socks, too. Okay, I can handle it. Tell me the whole thing. I’ll try my best to understand. We’ll get help for you. “
“What are you talking about? Listen, Joanne, I have one brown sock. All I wanted to know was whether or not you know where the rest of them are? That’s all. If you don’t, it’s not the end of the world. I can go to the store tonight and pick up new socks.”
“It’s not going to help, Marc. I know you’re lying. Is it an underwear fetish? You can get help for that. Is it something you do with socks and underwear? Marc, you’re sick – you need help.”
I was beginning to feel ill. Maybe Joanne was right. I felt extremely sick, disoriented and nauseous. Something was amiss, that was certain. Was there really something wrong with me?
“I still don’t understand, Joanne. What is this business about underwear?”
“You know, Marc, I learned a lot in those psychology courses I took. Obfuscation, that’s what you are doing. It won’t help you to pretend you don’t understand.”
I suppose that was my limit. I popped.
“Well, obfuscate this! What in God’s name are you babbling about?”
“OK, I can be blunt, if that is what it takes. I found a pair of my underwear in your sock drawer.”
“Well, dear, I can be blunt, too. I don’t have a sock drawer. Not as far as I can tell, because there are no socks in it. Perhaps we can call it the battery drawer, or, how about this – Joanne’s underwear drawer, since your underwear takes up space that once was reserved for my socks.”
“Marc, for the last time, what are you doing with my underwear?”
“Probably wearing them –“
“I knew it! I just knew. That’s why – “
“As socks, pardon the interruption. I meant wearing them as socks! It was a joke. Listen, I’m getting out of here. I can’t take this anymore.”
We separated two days later, and the divorce went though without a hitch. A friend told me recently that women react very strangely to any issue involving underwear. No one knows why this happens. I don’t care. I am perfectly happy now. I live alone, but I have plenty of socks.