I knew my husband of 18 years was having an affair when he started calling me “Sweetie” Where was that coming from? For years he’d called me “Darling”- yes I know it's a little stiff and proper, but we were British after all. It was “Darling” this and “Darling” that, and for 18 wonderful years I tingled at the sound, bathed myself in that comfort food of endearment. Just the word “Darling” expressed the intimacy of our love, the romance of our relationship. “I love you Darling”, he would say. “My Darling” he would declare, a tinge of ownership in his breathless declaration. I felt secure, loved – I was someone’s “Darling” for goodness sake!
So after our marriage began an inevitable meltdown, and not courageous enough to come right out and admit he wanted to leave me, he confessed his need to have some “space” ~read having sex with a another woman, preferably between the ages of 18 and 25 ~and no one on earth called this new “Space-Mate” "something old and boring like Darling" . And so a more appropriate term of endearment which tumbled into our lives. Sweetie. Sweeeeetie – like a candy that satisfies an oral fixation that more appropriately focuses on another part of the male anatomy. She must have been so sweet, so intelligent, so understanding, beautiful, sexy, and of course young.
So now I knew in my heart that there was a “Space-Mate” in my husband’s life and that her name was Sweetie. Well that wasn’t really her name of course, and if my ex (yes we did end up getting divorced) which is a whole other story involving much more subtle and complex words like values and trust and denial and love and rejection and I could go on – but I digress.
So the point of this mini expose is to say that the next time your man says he needs some “space” (read sex with someone else) and time alone to “think” (read do anything that does not involve his brain at all) and asks for your understanding (read permission) and patience (read ignorance), I’m telling you ~ grab that thesaurus and start translating. It’s a lot easier if you are speaking the same language – n’est pas?
