One Approach To Marriage

I had dinner last night with a close friend who I've mentioned a few times on the blog -- it was his auction where I met Leopold -- we'll call him "Glam" (which is how he signs all his emails lol), and he was telling me all about his friends from Vanderbuilt, and one of them sounds like SUCH a hoot.

I think Dr. Juicey and a certain Nocal Desi I know will like this story, especially...

A friend of Glam's from Vanderbuilt married the Director of Deutschebank in Japan (he is German), and their children grew up speaking English, German, French, and Japanese. Not the point, but still impressive.

Anyway, he (like some other pookies I know?) sometimes just needed to get away from everyone (especially her lol) and escape, and she understood and permitted that...but every time he disappeared for a weekend (about every two months he'd go for a few days into hiding) she demanded payment. She accepted cash payment or jewels, and he knew the routine: he'd disappear, return, and with no drama and not a word of condemnation from his wife, a bill from some auction house would come to him for some necklace or bracelent, and he'd pay up. It was quite the system. After many years of marriage, his disappearing routine landed her a villa in Hawaii and mansion in coastal texas with its own guesthouse and infinity pool.

One day, he came home, and told her: "I don't love you any more." His (teenage) children were there with them in the house. She said: "That's fine. Go tell your children that." He did. She then told him: "If you want a divorce then I understand that, but I hope you understand that I am going to take everything." He told her that he was miserable within the confines of marriage and was sorry. She told him that he didn't need to apologize, and that she didn't have a problem if he needed a divorce to save his own hapiness -- it was totally up to him...but she was gonna take everything. And she did.

Well wouldn't you know it, a year or two later, he came back to her and told her that while he was miserable in marriage, he wanted to work on things, because he was equally incomplete outside marriage. Glam told me that it would be obscene to even REPEAT the kind of contract she made him sign to get back together...I'm guessing she now owns a group of small islands off Okinawa.

I just thought it was hilarious.

There's no real moral to the story. I like a husband who knows when he should pay, and I like a wife who knows when to stand her ground. That said, I think that there must have been a better system for his wallet and BOTH their sanity that the disappear-payoff-disappear-payoff cycle. I think that people should pay for occassional transgressions (as an act of apology and as a display of one's intention to not repeat), but when something becomes habitual, it's time to take it to a counselor (that he should pay for lol).

VC