Lisa Johnson, "You All Know the Story of the Other Woman: Adultery and the (Third-Wave) Feminist Desire for Alternative Heterosexualities" (page 3 of 4)

. . . I Thee Wed

And trying to pretend that one's relationship differs from the farcical stock of conventional marriage is the surest way to become the butt of the joke. Not to recognize one's place in a marriage farce is precisely to be the joke rather than to get it.
—Jane Gallop, Living with His Camera

The ring brings me into unexpectedly close proximity with his wife—her name etched in Greek against the back of my finger. I have never pretended she did not exist, never blanked her out of my image of them at home, never imagined she was any less real or complex or human than me. But wearing the ring conjures the flesh of her, feels like holding her hand. Intimate. It is as if she and I are actually the wedded couple now, queer and committed, Paul the ringless intermediary. This act of adultery on my part could be seen, along these lines, as something that goes on "between women," negotiations with the kinds of women we could be, reflections on the roles most readily available to us.[8] By wearing the ring I meant to parody her wife privilege and pervert his sacred vow, but I knew the ring also marked my body as interchangeable with hers. Just another wife figure in the world. [9]

"If we ever became a real couple I'd just end up being the one you were fucking around on."

"Not true!" Paul insisted he was not a cheater at heart, that it was just me, how great I was, how drawn to me he felt. I did not press the point, leaving this illusion intact for the moment—it felt kind of nice inside this bubble of exceptional womanhood—but I made a mental note of surprise. Did he really believe that? A note of caution to myself as well, not to underestimate the seductive power of this story.

Exactly seven days after the concert, Paul tells me he wants to build a future together. He is not leaving his wife, not leaving his son. He wants to imagine a commitment between us unhinged from marriage (the possibility of ours or the reality of theirs). I feel free and loved and filled with radical possibility. That night I take off their wedding ring and leave it by the door for him to take the next day. He puts the ring in his desk drawer at work. We have both broken, briefly, from the small gold circle of marriage cachet.

Those not currently immersed in oxytocin chemicals will laugh wryly at the next part of this story, but I believed my lover when he voluntarily promised monogamy to me, despite his married status, and the moment I discovered he had, to my inexplicable shock, still been fucking his wife after all, rivals any experience of jealousy and emotional pain I have ever had. I sat there in the Mexican restaurant booth, both palms wet with condensation from the enormous mug of Dos Equis in front of me, and I felt crazy. I imagined turning the booth over to the shock of our close dining neighbors or running out into the rainy evening and laying rubber tracks in the parking lot. It took a lot to sit still instead. I knew, though, that it was over. There is a thin line between imagining heterosexuality beyond possession (all zen and feminist) and just rationalizing in fancy ways the pain of sexual betrayal. The transformation had come full circle as I predicted. I had become the wife, and he was sleeping with another woman.