My Biggest Secret

As the end drew closer I would come to reduce the past four years into sound bites.

"I was young. He's still young."

"We grew apart."

"Irreconcilable differences."

Which one I use depends on the reaction most likely to get the other party to move along as quickly as possible.

I have to call the situation and the person just right though. The right response to the wrong person with too much time or inclination on their hands and I run the risk of them asking just the right follow-up question to learn the truth: I never loved him.

That is not the answer people expect when they express condolescences over a happily-ever-after that died too young. It is not a rallying cry for girlfriends to cheer as they mix another pink martini.

It is an ugly truth that, much like cigar smoke, isn't content with making just the smoker stink.

I really never loved him.

The morning of our wedding I overslept as I would on any other morning. It was finally the call of breakfast, not premarital nerves, that roused my from my dreamless slumber. I looked at the dress bought off the rack more for convenience than style and could only muster anxiousness over not having the right pantyhose.

I was not a blushing bride.

Neither was I a nervous bride or a hopeful bride or, even, much of a bride at all. I was just a woman facing down the reality of being the only single girlfriend left.

At 25 years old I never would have imagined that one day being the last one standing would be a fate worse than death, but as each year passed and New Year's Eve parties ended earlier with friends rushing home to new homes and babies, the message was delivered: single equaled failure.

But, see, I do not do failure. Failure is for people who had to pay to go to college. Failure is for girls who let their emotions cloud their judgment. I may be a great many things but a failure I am not. Or, that was the thinking.

So I did what I do. I assessed the situation, did field research and executed my plan.

In the center of that plan was a man-boy who was good enough. I went down the checklist. No kids? Check. No diseases? Check. An education? Check. Decent looking? Check. Willing to get married? Check. I paid no mind to racing pulses or afterglow.

The poor man never stood a chance of making me happy. In fact, I never expected him to. Actually, I expected very little of him...or of us. That is probably the first in a comedy of errors that cost only a $10 marriage license to make and over $1000 to undo.

And so it was not his dishonesty or his women or his kleptomania; it was the memory bank devoid of good times deposits that really did us in. Every book I picked up on "fixing" a broken marriage devoted chapters to remembering those early days of passion and love. Only one book addressed those of us who have no such memories. It's advice? Leave before it gets ugly.

Unfortunately, I am better at research than I am at timing so it got ugly. In the four years of our marriage money was wasted, friendships destroyed and bodies battered. By the time the inevitable dawned I had aged and in an ode to divine humor would find myself, once again, the last single friend standing. He, on the other hand, was as happy-go-lucky as always. I actually imagine that he does not know we are divorced. The petition is probably one of a million pieces of mail tossed between his car seats beneath fast food wrappers.

There it is, the difference that was indeed irreconcilable - he would never be my kind of man. He never had been. In all fairness, I was never his kind of woman. Too much spontaneity makes me nervous. Unopened mail induces hives that keep me up at night. Underwear in the middle of living room floors sends me into fits of rage that often leaves shattered glass and blood drawn.

It is quite possible though that all of this would have mattered less had his touch ever made my heart skip its next beat. Had I ever thought his smile impish, his jaw masculine or his pelvic bone divine, underwear may have mattered less. And if I had ever once looked in his eyes and felt understood even as I felt cared for and cherished I may well have learned to make a pillow of the mail.

With divorce I have mastered the art of pithy retorts and keeping secrets. Often it is the only polite thing to do because, really, when one asks about your husband there is no better way to ruin the conversation than by telling the truth which is, "I lied every time I told him I loved him and I imagine he did the same as he never knew me to love and well, to be honest, I should have had the courage to walk away the morning I awoke to a cheap wedding dress and no stockings and all I could think of was French toast and coffee but it took me four years to discover that you cannot learn to love anymore than you can learn to eat dinner while gazing at dirty underwear in the center of your living room floor."

It is, as I well know, a total bummer.