Bob Marrow looks at the stages of his marriage and how the pieces of it all connect to a larger story.
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CHAPTER 1: THE END
Living With Someone Who Hates You
Anne and I were divorced after five years of marriage, when she admitted to having an affair. I later learned it was with her piano teacher. After our divorce, and his, she married him. While giving her lessons on my old piano, he told me that the sounding board was cracked and the instrument needed to be rebuilt. I paid him $3,000 for the job.
I didn’t suspect that there was another man until Anne’s behavior became peculiar; muffled telephone conversations, evasive answers about who was on the phone, hours away from home in the evenings and on weekends. When suspicions of infidelity overwhelmed my trust, I began asking pointed questions. Her denials were hollow and eventually led to an admission that she was in love with another man, but she didn’t tell me who it was. In fact, she said that I didn’t know him. Much later I learned that it was her piano teacher. Then I remembered the night that I came home and saw his cigarette butts crushed in a saucer on our kitchen table beside two used wine glasses. She hadn’t bothered to clean up the revealing mess.
I wonder how many men have experienced living with a wife who has lost respect for them. You don’t know why you disgust her or when esteem became revulsion. You start to question things about yourself; do you chew with your mouth open, do you snore, do you wear ugly shoes, are you too fat, is it because you lost your hair? These are not basic qualities like kindness and generosity; but when your wife is treating you with contempt, then how you eat, what you wear and how you look become critical. She makes you feel repulsive. You become less of a man. You want to change to please her, but you can’t. Maybe it’s too late; or maybe you can’t change.
I remember one humiliating lunch when our marriage was unraveling and I still thought there was something I could do to keep her. We were in a restaurant and I had no appetite so I ordered a salad. The lettuce leaves were larger than bite-sized and I wanted to eat with quiet dignity; not like a man born in the Bronx whose parents were children of Jewish immigrants, but like the men she dated in her Grosse Pointe Country Club past. I cut the salad into small pieces, carefully putting each one in my mouth individually and chewing quietly. It didn’t help.
The separation agreement was written and converted to a divorce in less than a month; even faster than our courtship had become a marriage.
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CHAPTER 2: THE BEGINNING
Meeting Someone Who Needs You As Much As You Need Her
The beginning was filled with wonderful days when we admired each other’s wit and good looks. We were anxious to be married. I had just lost my young son, Alex, to cancer and was living alone in a house that had once been our home. I called her a few days after the funeral. We were married three months later. Her reasons for marrying me after so brief a courtship were never clear. She said that she fell in love with me at the funeral—something about my dignity in that tragic moment touched her deeply. The wedding was performed by a judge who had been my law partner in his brownstone office. She said “I do” even before the question was finished, eliciting smiles from the few close friends who were our witnesses.
I met Anne through Gretchen, my former wife and Alex’s mother. Anne and Gretchen became close friends while I was married to Gretchen. Their friendship continued after Gretchen left me for a man she met in Italy while on vacation. I was too busy to go. Francesco was from an old, aristocratic Roman family and this was his first marriage. Gretchen left Alex with me when she married Francesco so that she could start a new life, unencumbered. She walked down the aisle of an old Catholic church wearing a pure white wedding dress, with her husband’s family in the pews. Then Gretchen and Francesco found that they could not have children. They quarreled about who was “at fault” for this failure to produce an heir which created an unbearable strain on their marriage.
I met Anne when she visited Gretchen at my home. Gretchen was in New York while Alex was being operated on and receiving chemotherapy. When I met Anne she was teaching high school history and living in a small apartment behind the garage in the home of another teacher.
Shortly after I married Anne, I received a call from Rome. Gretchen said that I was being used by Anne for money and a nice place to live. Gretchen never spoke to Anne again. This sudden hatred for her former friend seemed strange. Perhaps, I speculated, Gretchen had confided in Anne that she planned to leave Francesco and would try to resume a relationship with me. If so, Anne’s marrying me would have been a betrayal. Gretchen and Francesco eventually divorced and she remained in Italy.
Anne was tall, blonde and exceptionally beautiful. She had a patrician bearing that set her apart from most other people. In addition to her Grosse Pointe upbringing she had a doctorate in history from the University of Michigan and was an informed, witty conversationalist while barely opening her mouth to speak. She had been a fine tennis player and golfer in her country club days, but no longer bothered. Now she took ten mile runs several times each week.
There was a cultural gulf between Anne and me that I thought could be bridged or ignored. Here’s an example of how we differed. One weekend afternoon we were walking in Soho and came across a street peddler selling baby clothing. She stopped to buy a gift for a friend’s child. Finding something she liked, she paid the full asking price without bargaining, which was unheard of in my experience. Then she asked the street cart vendor, “Don’t you charge sales tax?” It took all of my self control not to interfere. She also objected to the table manners or lack thereof that distinguished my family from her set. That may explain my futile attempt to impress Anne by eating daintily at that humiliating lunch.
Anne’s passion was classical music, which I didn’t share. This may have contributed to her infatuation with the piano teacher. It is ironic that I have resumed playing piano more than fifty years after my childhood instructor gave up on me. I am now enthralled with pieces by Beethoven, Bach and Mozart; and I realize that a student’s bond with a piano teacher can be intense, although not always romantic.
Anne had been married twice before; first to a man also from Grosse Pointe who she met at the University of Michigan. They had a son, William, who suffered from a disease leaving him only three feet tall with undeveloped joints. He was unable to walk more than a few feet at a time. Despite this, the little guy was intelligent and cheerful – which I found almost impossible to believe. He was sixteen when we met and he hobbled up to me extending his little hand and said, “Hello, Mr. Marrow. It’s nice to meet you. I’ve heard so many wonderful things about you.” Anne tried to prepare me by describing him as hideous, but that hardly fit this charming little person with a pleasant face and a shock of straight blonde hair. He lived with his father, her first husband, his new wife and their children in Grosse Pointe and visited his mother once a month.
William and I became close friends. He loved gorillas (“George” was his imaginary friend) and our favorite thing to do together was to visit the Bronx Zoo, just the two of us and his wheelchair. He finally died after twenty years of courageous struggle to seem normal, shortly before Anne and I were divorced. When Anne told me that she loved another man, I raised a pathetic argument to keep her with me. “Don’t you feel closer to William when you’re with me than when you’re with him?” She said, “I feel closer to William when I’m not with you.” I hadn’t realized that she could be that cruel.
Anne’s second husband, the one between William’s father and me, was a wealthy Greek ship owner. He had an ancestral home near Athens and houses on the Westchester Country Club grounds and in London as well as an apartment in Gstaad, Switzerland where they skied. He also owned a yacht kept in the Mediterranean which was over one-hundred feet in length and required a large crew. I met him once when we were invited to a Christmas party at his palatial Westchester home where a ten piece orchestra entertained dozens of guests. He and Anne were still friends and I was curious as to why she received almost nothing from her divorce to this wealthy business man. Her explanation was that she had an affair with her husband’s chief executive officer while her husband was on a trip inspecting the repairs to one of his ships. The trusted employee was supposed to be taking care of her. Her Greek ex-husband made certain that Anne received almost nothing in the divorce. She was powerless because his assets were untouchable by American courts, held in the names of companies in Panama and the Cayman Islands.
From a billionaire businessman to a lawyer to a piano teacher; I was a stop along the way in Anne’s journey from opulence to spiritual fulfillment.
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CHAPTER 3: THE MIDDLE
Our Marriage
Before the love affair with her piano teacher converted our marriage from a source of pride to an embarrassment for me, Anne and I were an ordinary suburban couple. Her friends became mine and mine became hers. We walked our dogs together each morning and evening from our house to a beach on the Long Island Sound owned by our homeowners association. We took vacations in winter to the warm islands in the Caribbean and in summer to Europe. We had friends to dinner and she became a favorite with my law partners. Our intimate life was normal except that her English cocker spaniel slept with us. He was protective and had to be banished from the bedroom when I wanted to touch her without being attacked
The pride I felt in being her husband was magnified by an interesting change in my social status as soon as we were married. Our house, which had been my home for twenty years, is “the least expensive house in a most expensive neighborhood.” That’s how it was marketed when I bought it. I was nothing special to my neighbors until Anne arrived with her beauty, her elegance, her English cocker spaniel and her BMW (the only thing she kept from her prior marriage other than some jewelry). I sailed a 23’ sloop and soon became Commodore of our yacht club. Then I was elected president of the homeowners association. When we were divorced under circumstances that must have been known to many, I fell from that artificial grace.
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CHAPTER 4: ANOTHER ENDING
A Beginning
Recently I was in Greenwich at a store where pianos are rebuilt, repaired and sold. I was looking for something to replace my old Hardman Peck baby grand now that I’m playing again. While talking with the owner I mentioned the name of the man who had rebuilt my piano years before, without mentioning the personal details. The store owner knew the man and his wife, Anne. He told me, “They visit the store a lot. Too bad about his Alzheimers. She has it rough. Good people.” I nodded.
Photo: Brian Richardson / flickr / creative commons license
omg, marrying you was her mistake at the first place, dude you are so dull and lame, why would any woman stand you? why does being a chairman in a organization that noone caresablout bothers you that much? you are saying she was married to a shipowner how do you expect her to be impressed with you local hillbilly club memberships?
This website is either run by a woman, or it’s run by a man who isn’t married. The truth is women only hate their husbands every 28 days. The rest of the time they want us dead. Why? Because they’re out of their minds. Seriously. They’re incapable of logical reasoning and can’t understand humor or abstract thought. To paraphrase something Nelson Mandela once said of George W. Bush, “their minds do not function properly.” Break the pattern of destruction and misery, men: don’t get married. Use them, lose them, and move on. I wish I would have known that before… Read more »
I kind of like in a similar situation, I think my marriage ended a long tilme ago.And I am just holding on she don’t want to get healthy.She sleeps like a bear and wine every day about her emotions.I feel good, but sad about this marriage.
Your problem was you married a spoiled rich girl who thought she was better than you. Be glad you’re rid of her.
She is a troll, but also- you are boring. You should have seen the signs- married twice, with big money fools. Dude, come on. I’ve been married almost five years a and haven’t had serious sex in 4. I’m 30 years old, this is my first marriage. WTF I thought you really boo hoo story would help but now I see why’ve she left you. Boring, stale, lame. Get over it – to that note, I’m very sorry about your son and hers. No one should feel that pain.
Might want to try to get some game. Use some Pick up techniques to go from a Beta male – provider to an Alpha male – lover.
I was saddened reading this piece, as the writer ‘thinks it was him’ or the piano..or music. It was none of those. It was ‘her’. People do not morph into cheaters.. they are ‘already’ cheaters at the go. So, sorry for your experience, of which I (and many others) troddened down that same path with a doppelganger..aka a Narcissist, or Sociopath..or perhaps both, no matter (they are all basically the same). Pain is pain. Just so you know… ‘it wasn’t you’. It was however, your choice that brought her into your life. Live and Learn- and don’t fall for the… Read more »
Thanks for sharing! It may have been a difficult process and chapters in life you go through but thru it all you are still a good person living as what it should be. Life would be like mysterious and full of wonderful surprise. Live well keep your goal and be happy in each time. Godbless Mr. 🙂
How long should I be ignored before society thinks it’s okay for me to get a divorce? How many years should we be in therapy, before society will acknowledge that I’ve done everything I can to save my marriage? If I’m not getting companionship or conversation, if my husband doesn’t share our bed or even have sex with me, when is it okay to say, I’ve done all I can, I can’t be in this marriage anymore? Divorce hurts everyone. So does living in a marriage where someone says the love you, but doesn’t act like the love you. After… Read more »
Wow this really struck a cord with me! Exactly what i’ve been feeling.
It’s okay at the precise moment you give yourself permission to say what you need to say out loud or give yourself permission to head for the exit.
Your wife’s behavior is very narcissistic. I is a rampant personality disorder in this country. My story is very similar, except I was stubborn enough to perpetuate my marriage 3 times as long.
AJ I did the same thing with my narcissist. It is a rampant disorder.
Thank you for sharing. What stood out to me was the fact that both of your wives had little or nothing to do with their children (the first wife abandoning you both to live in Italy and the second wife only seeing her son once a month). As a mother, this is bizarre, bordering on unnatural and speaks to a self-contentedness that I suspect they both possessed. Little can be done to make a relationship work with someone who is self-centered and narcissistic. A good relationship, as you know, requires maturity, an ability and desire to deal with any and… Read more »
I was in one of those. My first wife had such lie self esteem that she consistently abused me in our relationship so she could feel better. After 20 years I said enough and walked. what she always said would happen to her, a left woman, occurred because she made sure she was always going to be right. No affairs that I know of for either one, but for me I was just done with this nonsense. Her spite for me was so great that as a result I haven’t seen my kids in maybe 5 years or more. She… Read more »
We have created monsters in our culture. Your children were pawns in her ego, levers of control and power. No decent woman would separate her children from their father because of a divorce. Reach out and tell your children you have always loved them
There is always two sides in a story; this one is yours and it is well written.
Note to self: do not marry someone after meeting them for just three months. But I am a woman who doesn’t want to get married again; I see no reason to have someone invade my world and take ownership of it. We can see on weekends and have nice vacations together without sharing space.
Good point, but my son had just died, my only child and constant companion after my wife, his mother, left us. I was lonely, empty and needy. When this beautiful, sophisticated, witty, intelligent woman came into my life, I grabbed on like she was a life preserver.
Bob, Someone commented on the GMP Facebook page that they would love to hear your thought process around this, lessons learned, and how you came to realize the dynamics of how this all transpired. Your comment here sounds like the makings for a good follow-up piece!
I don’t think there is a lesson to be learned. Things happen in relationships that can’t be controlled. I could have been a better husband by communicating (I was often in a silent mode thinking about issues in my anxiety producing life as a trial lawyer) and I could have expressed my admiration for Anne’s fine points; her physical beauty, her wit and intelligence, her artistic talent with needlepoint, her taste in landscape and garden design, her ability to perform woodwork and indoor house painting as well as the finest contractor — there were plenty of things to admire. But… Read more »
For aesthetic reasons and so as not to appear smug I omitted a concluding paragraph that was in my original draft to the effect that, “I’m now married to Ellen, who I’ve been with for more than 20 years. She eats the way I do and never buys retail.” I sometimes wonder what Anne would think in the unlikely event that she should read this story. Memoir is memory — not history. She probably either remembers things differently and/or can justify her words and actions.
For reasons of aesthetics and so as not to appear smug I omitted a concluding paragraph that was in my original version to this effect: “I am now married to Ellen. We’ve been together for 20 years. She eats the way I do and never buys retail.”
You sound like a beautiful loving man who married a beautiful monster. What type of mother sees her son as “hideous?”
You are complete within yourself.
Maia
That was my first reaction. I had a big and terrible wow moment there.
That was the final indicator that he had married a malignant narcissist.
“From a billionaire businessman to a lawyer to a piano teacher; I was a stop along the way in Anne’s journey from opulence to spiritual fulfillment.” She objectified you and all those other men along the way. “She said, “I feel closer to William when I’m not with you.” Yep. You get to where you can tell these people almost by smell when you first come across them. Trust me, this kind of thing is not gendered. These people pas as human and indeed they are, but of a very different kind, and you can recognize almost immediately. Fortunately for… Read more »
Thank you for sharing. In particular, the memory of eating the salad, of invisible rivalry was so powerful, agonizing and familiar.
This is quite the cautionary tale. For the sake of all the young men reading along, let’s review the basis stats once again: Two thirds of all marriages end in divorce – per marriage expert Dr John Gottmann. That includes half of first marriages, two thirds of second marriages, three quarters of third marriages. Next, women initiate 2/3 of all divorces. Among college educated women, they initiate 90% of all divorces. In cases where custody of children is contested, women receive custody over 80% of the time. Men, 8%. As Dr. Helen Smith points out in MEN ON STRIKE, the… Read more »
This gentleman is sharing his painful account of a terrible relationship (If not abusive) with and awful, deceptive, manipulative (most likely) sociopathic woman and you take this as an opportunity for a thinly veiled sexist rant against woman kind. Get a grip and grow up, the downfall of marriage can not be assigned to one gender. There are just as many reports stating men benefit from marriage and even some that state women are unhappier and worse of in marriage. Don’t rush into marriage at any age. The longer the relationship before the wedding, the longer the marriage will be,… Read more »
Sorry for the typos. Haven’t had my coffee yet!
Maybe as there is not a balanced media portrayal about divorce? That women are just as likely be the cause as men are?
From the matrimonial cases I’ve handled in my legal career and from people I know or have heard about, I’ve concluded that men will not leave a marriage unless their wife is having an affair, while women will leave a marriage because they find the man or the relationship unbearable. It take infidelity for a man to find the relationship unbearable, while a woman will come to that conclusion for many reasons other than infidelity. I know that’s a generalization and doesn’t apply to everyone, but it is something I believe is true in the vast majority of cases.
This is also what I’ve observed around me. Another reason for a man to leave a marriage is if HE has another woman lined up. I’ve rarely seen a case where a man leaves a relationship when there’s no infidelity involved.
Yes, I’ve seen the (MRA) claim a lot about women ending most marriages, the implication being that men are blameless and that women break up happy marriages. Not true! Most women file for divorce after years of problems because their husband just won’t take the intiative to file the papers. So she eventually does it.
Yes in MRA land all men are perfect and the victims of evil women, evil feminists and probably also Obama.
Thanks, Jojo. People so very often come to these comment areas with their singular issue and, without a thought for the time and effort of the author, use it to push their often divisive agendas. Its a tragic narcissistic display.
How is speaking the truth sexist?
He married a woman sfter 3 months because she was beautiful and elegant. Surprise, she turned out to be shallow and manipulative as well. Lesson: don’t marry someone you’ve only known 3 months even if she’s drop dead gorgeous.