Sometimes I get calls from strangers, usually women, who had met me at some function or attended a talk I had given.

I remember two such calls, some years apart, both agitatedly seeking advice about an intolerable situation building up in their respective marriages. Both callers declared, ‘I’m at the end of my tether. I don’t know what to do anymore.’

Now I am no counselor; indeed, being a divorcee, I am in about the worst possible position to advise people seeking help for their marriage problems. Moreover, I worry that being an individualist, a non-conformist and a maverick to boot, I could give totally unsuitable, even harmful advice.

But the urgency of each call required that I should at least listen, try to understand, try to put myself in the position of the caller. I remember that both calls lasted several hours, for we women are often guilty of a great deal of beating about the bush, unwilling or embarrassed to reveal the truth. And once we do, we go to the other extreme, dwelling upon it endlessly and compulsively, as if sheer repetition is necessary to relieve the burdened heart.

Both women, of different ages, and different cultural, educational and marriage backgrounds, were on the verge of an affair. Each explained the justification for a momentous decision about to be taken. I could sense the little tremors of excitement mixed into the agitation in their voices.

The first said her retiree husband was so boring, completely locked in his world of small routines centred on watching the stock market, that he was driving her crazy; the second that her husband had had an affair, had ended it, but she had lost all her love and respect for him, and that if she had stayed on for as long as she did in the marriage, it was only because of her three young children. Both women, at a critical point in their outpouring, blurted out, ‘The sex part of our marriage is over.’

And both women had, just a short while before, met interesting men, their white knights in shining armour who would rescue them from their miserable marriage. The first had been introduced to her would-be rescuer at a party. He was a much younger man and ‘just so exciting, so attentive, so fun to be with, we spent the whole evening talking about so many things’; in short, he was all that her husband wasn’t.

The second caller’s new found interest was also a younger man whom she had met on the Internet. From his daily ardent messages and love poems to her (which she managed to keep secret from her husband only with great ingenuity) she could gauge his ‘kindness, thoughtfulness, and above all, his ability to understand me completely. We just seem to connect so well!’ Each of the women had been invited for a secret vacation. Each of them told me, ‘He’s my last chance of happiness!’

I supposed both had expected me, as a novelist, a feminist of sorts, a liberated and experienced woman of the world, to give them moral and emotional support and to cheer them on with, ‘Hey girls, all of us deserve to be happy!’, or something like that. But at the purely intuitive level, the alarm bells were already ringing in my head. Without being against affairs and romantic liaisons per se, I had the distinct feeling that in these two particular cases, something was not quite right. For one thing, I was convinced both women were not telling the whole truth, suppressing certain elements, highlighting others.

Why did I also get the impression that the man in each case was an adventurer-about-town looking for fun? ‘Is he a married man?’ I asked. In each case, I was told there had been no unequivocal answer. The man had simply said he was ‘a free man,’ and didn’t want the subject pursued further. The alarm bells rang even louder. I suspected they had rung too for the two women but had been ignored.

‘So do you think I should go ahead?’ each caller had asked tremulously. ‘No,’ I said, and pointed out to her that her need to call up a virtual stranger to discuss a personal crisis already reflected an internal tumult of doubts, misgivings and above all, guilt, that was certainly no state for making a sound decision.

I remember ending both calls with the most clichéd and mundane advice: ‘Don’t do anything rash’, ‘Why don’t you sleep on the problem,’ ‘Why don’t you get to know this person better before committing yourself’, etc.

I don’t know how much of my advice these two callers took. I never heard from them again.

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About Vignettes...

A continuing flow of little, readable pieces that will constitute what I feel is an important 'legacy of values' to leave behind. Read more about Vignettes...