Margo Griffin

Dive Deep

My husband messaged his girlfriend about me. His careless text said she gave better head than me. I told my therapist I didn’t give a shit. But deep down, I gave a big massive shit. And to be honest, I am slightly less upset about my spouse’s repeatedly cheating on me than I am pissed about his criticism of my fellatio skills. He knew I could work my mouth around his cock like a boss, and so, well, fuck him! “Does this make me sound shallow?” I asked my therapist.

My therapist said my marriage is like an inground swimming pool with a deep and shallow end. And I mostly waded in the shallow end of my marriage, where I kept my head above water, breathing freely. I avoided the deep end whenever possible, refraining from diving down too deep to the bottom of things because I knew if I investigated the bottom closely, I would suffocate and drown. “Am I a coward?” I asked.

  A few weeks after finding my husband’s traitorous text, I told my therapist I got drunk, met a cute musician, and blew his fucking brains out in the parking lot of a local Chinese restaurant. The musician said I had “mad skills” as he pulled up his pants and it made me smile. “It didn’t feel wrong,” I admitted.

My therapist asked why I didn’t leave my marriage, a loveless and unfulfilling union. And I said I thought a therapist is supposed to be like a lifeguard, teaching me how to swim and dive deep, keeping me from drowning. But the therapist said it was his job to ask me the questions so I can figure out for myself where and when I needed to dive. “Fuck that shit!” I exclaimed, “I can barely swim!”

My marriage pool continued to fill with stagnate water and disloyal semen, eventually, jamming its filter. Soon I stopped thinking of my therapist as my lifeguard and considered him nothing more than a pool guy who skims and vacuums the pool, stabilizing it with chemicals until the water becomes crystal clear. But my pool remained cloudy and unswimmable, so I fired the pool guy. And then a year after my husband’s betrayal, I threw myself a life preserver and filed for divorce, draining my own damn pool.