From This Moment On (50 page)

Essentially, renovating properties became my full-time job, and I relished the challenge. Piles of architectural and engineering plans, interior design catalogs, and magazines cluttered the kitchen table in the bungalow in Switzerland, as we were living in the basement while the house itself was under renovations, so there was no office or desk space. There were stacks of email correspondence from architects, engineers, contractors, and decorators. My time, energy, and love went into building these nests for my family.

During the several months we lived in the bungalow, Marie-Anne and I took up tennis lessons, as Eja and her daughter, Johanna, had been taking them together for a couple of years already. We figured we’d give it a try to get more exercise in, since the kids were now both six years old and well out of their strollers, and we were walking less. Between regular long walks and tennis, Marie-Anne and I were doing pretty well with our attempts to stay fit, and the long walking
allowed us to talk and share as friends without men or kids around. It was good girl bonding time.

Marie-Anne could be hot and cold at times, but after nine years of friendship, I shrugged it off as just the way she was. In the months leading up to our annual trip to New Zealand, however, our conversations became more personal than ever, like we’d suddenly broken through some barrier. I confided to her that Mutt had grown distant, to the point where I felt our marriage was in trouble. Marie-Anne always listened attentively and offered sensible, objective advice. After all, although she was my friend, she’d known my husband longer than she’d known me. For the first year that we had the château, I was still on the Come On Over tour while she was already working for Mutt in Switzerland.

Sharing my secret concerns with her made me feel better. It was highly unusual for me to talk with anyone about my personal life, especially my marriage. I was incredibly tight lipped in that regard with everyone in my life. But I was making a real exception opening up the way I did with Marie-Anne, and for some reason, she went so out of her way like she never had before to make me comfortable with that. Interestingly enough, Marie-Anne let on that she and her husband, Fred, were trying to work through marital problems of their own; maybe I took comfort in knowing that I wasn’t alone, and the fact that she was the only longtime friend I had who was close enough to talk with in person.

In the fall of 2007, however, Marie-Anne started canceling tennis and turning down walks. I was getting quite enthusiastic about tennis and wanted to play more, not less, so I started playing and taking lessons with another mother of one of the kids in Johanna and Eja’s tennis class. Sandra and I enjoyed our tennis together, and I was appreciative of her company. I was developing a new friendship locally, and it felt good, as my social life had always been so closed. Sandra and I shared similar views on life and had many stimulating conversations about much more than men and kids, having more intellectual
things to talk about, and I was motivated by this companionship. I didn’t understand Marie-Anne’s sudden distance, but we would leave Switzerland very soon for the Christmas holidays and then head on to New Zealand to finally see the building project through to the finish, so I figured we’d just pick up where we left off and things would be back to normal when we got back four months later. The Motutapu farm in New Zealand was my dream house; my wish list of every possible detail had been fulfilled in the design and architecture. This had been an enormous project spanning four years of work. I was beyond excited to see 2008 approaching and this dream finally becoming a reality.

Our plan was to spend Christmas in Canada with my family, hit Utah for ten days of skiing, then begin the New Year in our new, second home just outside of Wanaka, New Zealand. Nevertheless, I was unusually sad to leave Switzerland and our friends there, especially Marie-Anne, Fred, and Johanna. We missed them whenever we traveled, and our New Zealand trips were usually spent in three- to four-month stretches. Something else was tugging at me this particular time, though, but I couldn’t explain it then.

During this stretch in New Zealand, Mutt returned to Switzerland twice, while Eja and I stayed behind. He was going to prepare for some upcoming music projects, and I needed to oversee the finishing touches on the house. It was a lot of work to bear alone, and I was overwhelmed and not happy that he had to go.

Tension between us had started building slowly in the previous couple of years, but it was quite noticeable in the recent weeks since we left Switzerland before Christmas. Communication was just breaking down more and more, to the point where I felt he was avoiding me altogether. I’ve practiced meditation regularly for the past seventeen years as a method of reconnecting with myself in a peaceful place, a place within, where I practice the discipline of not thinking, let alone overthinking. For me, meditation is an exercise in stilling the mind, but at that time I was constantly thinking about the strain in my marriage, and it was consuming an overwhelming amount of my thoughts, sending my mind spinning during meditation instead of
quieting it. At that time I needed meditation for more than just disciplinary reasons; I needed it to escape my anguish over the deteriorating state of my relationship with the man I loved and didn’t want to lose, yet felt slipping away. Now I was depending on meditation for answers on how to keep him. I consider it fruitful meditation when I achieve thoughtless concentration, but now my meditation had become a place I went to loaded with questions and expectations.

In order to preserve it as the spiritual retreat it was meant to be, it was time to turn to a more intellectual therapy as another method of guidance for the worldly, marital problems I was having. I’d ordered a tall stack of books on how to save a marriage and how to be a better spouse, friend, and person overall. In order to tackle the discontent in my life, it was my responsibility to learn how in the hell I could get to a place where I might find some sort of peace that would allow me to accept my unhappy marriage for what it was and not be one of those people always thinking the grass is greener on the other side. I wanted to learn to appreciate what I had and make the most of it, to take a realistic and practical approach. This was my intent, and my books were going to educate me on how to do this.

Among my pile of self-help books were:

The Secret
by Rhonda Byrne

The Artist’s Way
by Julia Cameron and Mark Bryan

The Book of Secrets by Deepak Chopra

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work
by John M. Gottman

The Power of Now
by Eckhart Tolle

Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment
by Deepak Chopra

The Rules of Life
by Richard Templar

Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart
by Gordon Livingston, MD

Eat, Pray, Love
by Elizabeth Gilbert

I wanted to save my marriage and work on it, but I could sense that something was almost too seriously wrong between us now, as
our communication had dwindled to strained conversation and little to no eye contact. A panic began to well up inside me, and I became anxious and afraid. I sensed there was something he wasn’t telling me.

At least if we were in Switzerland, I could have called Marie-Anne to go for one of our lengthy walks-slash-marital-therapy-sessions. Instead, I was way up in New Zealand’s high country, while my friend was at the base of the Swiss Alps.

One night, a few days after he left for Switzerland, I was in such despair that I just
had
to talk to someone, so I called Marie-Anne at home while Eja was asleep. My husband’s silence was causing me to imagine all sorts of terrible things, I told her.

“Maybe he’s ill and doesn’t want to upset me,” I worried aloud. “If you see Mutt while he’s in Switzerland, could you just see if you notice anything …
strange
about him? Like, if you think he looks sick in any way or is acting out of character.” As she was our local assistant in Switzerland, it was logical to assume Mutt would contact her while he was there to help with any administrative tasks or run errands. She assured me that she would keep an eye out and for me not to worry, commenting on how I had enough to worry about with the workload of tying up all the loose ends with the building, alone. She was very sympathetic and comforting.

Then I blurted out my other fear.

“Do you think he’s having an affair?” I asked.

Marie-Anne’s reply didn’t surprise me because I sheepishly agreed with her response—that it was absurd to even think my husband could possibly be having an affair.

The almost scolding tone of her voice in response made me feel foolish for even having entertained such a notion. After all, how
could
he possibly carry on an affair without my noticing, since we lived such an isolated life, especially in the last few years living in Switzerland?

Caution: when someone within your circle is having an affair, it can be very hard for anyone to see, and easily masked by excuses that are easy to legitimize, especially if it’s a neighbor, mutual friend, or the notoriously obvious and predictable secretary.

I believed it was foolish of me to entertain such a paranoid assumption and that my husband’s peculiar behavior might even have been in my own imagination. Marie-Anne calmed me down and convincingly reassured me that everything was fine, that she hadn’t personally seen anything unusual in his behavior. She told me she would observe him and let me know if she noticed anything odd. I thanked her as she verbally wrapped her arm around my shoulder and comforted me. I was relieved when I got off the phone with her. I believed her completely. I believed my friend was looking out for me and that everything was going to be okay.

Marie-Anne my confidante, the same friend who’d comforted me over the phone only weeks before, expressing how absurd it was of me to have any such suspicions of my husband. The idea that she was the mistress, after all the confiding I’d done in her, had not even entered my mind.

Denial can have multiple layers, and rationalizing is common when you’re trying to absorb something you just don’t want to believe. I thought:
Okay, so maybe they made a mistake. My husband and my friend will come to their senses and realize that.
I was ready to forgive, forget, make things right, move on, and get on with our lives. Not like nothing had happened, but like something had happened that I thought was fixable. But this was not to be.

Despite everything, I still loved my husband. And I still loved my friend. I put myself in their shoes with the understanding that accidents happen, we’re all human, and we all make mistakes. It was love that allowed me to take that perspective at that moment, but considering my desperation to keep everything from falling apart, it was probably also in my naïve (and shell-shocked) state of mind that I wrote the following letter to Marie-Anne, treating her as a decent
friend who’d temporarily lost her way and behaved in a manner that wasn’t really her. I just wanted everyone to get on with healing, including her:

Regardless of what has and hasn’t been said and done up to now, and that things have been changed forever for all of us, I do hope we all go into the future never having secrets from each other ever, ever again of any kind. That we take responsibility to make sure the ones we love can know they can trust us and never do things they cannot know about.

This is all extremely personal stuff, and I’ve questioned myself often about whether or not to include it in the book, as it’s against my nature to open up like this. But since having a traitor in your midst is such a difficult thing to recognize—especially when he or she is so good at it, it makes you wonder if that person has somehow been professionally trained—it’s helpful and almost a responsibility for someone with experience to warn others. There are affairs that fall out of the sky, like the typical unhappy husband who bumps into a woman in the grocery store aisle and realizes that his life has just begun at that moment, is lovestruck, and leaves his wife and kids as a result of his undeniable urge to fulfill his wants and desires. Although these affairs are unsavory and still morally unacceptable, they happen. But a friend who is already in the life of a couple who are struggling and vulnerable, who has a bird’s-eye view with a great advantage to observe, and who is able to circle and wait until the opportunity to strike arises—this is not something that “just happens.” This is more like the behavior of a vulture, slowly scoping, patiently waiting and hovering. Beware of these sneaky creatures.

I mistakenly thought I was so aware of the people around me, and I’m sharing this because I know it is not my shame alone to hide; it’s a reality that happens to many people, no matter who you are. This is campfire talk, where you can sit around and share things with mutual friends and neighbors. Information you want to communicate
with a community spirit, an exchange of knowledge and experience shared out of generosity, not malice. Give me a handful of women to sit around a fire with on this subject, and there would be plenty to talk about, no matter what age, class, or education. This topic is a true equalizer.

Eventually, I even came to the point of accepting the end of my marriage. It’s not as though I was oblivious to the fact that our communication had frayed in recent years. At times, I thought that perhaps the universe was telling me that I’d been stuck in a rut, and it was dragging me kicking and screaming to my own freedom.

I believe that relationships are a give-and-take, an exchange of good and bad that travels in both directions. Over fourteen years together, Mutt and I both had our share of give-and-take. There was an equal exchange between us, and when the energy of that exchange died, so did the relationship. We weren’t victims of each other, only victims of the one taking advantage of our vulnerable state as a couple and as a family. No one is to blame for the end of our marriage, only responsible for the manner in which it ended.
That
was unforgivable, if there is any such thing.