“They’re women, Jack, it’s a different kind of company. You and the boys drink your beer and watch football, me and Crystal and Julie go to movies and hang out at the club. Same thing.”

“If they’re so much fun, maybe you should move in with them.”

“Maybe I will.” (Dianne storms into the bedroom; I panic in the living room.)

When she came home at two, as promised, I hadn’t moved from the living room, having thrown myself on the couch after she left and having spent the next six hours mulling over our relationship while channel surfing. What if she did leave me? I loved her. I didn’t want her to leave, ever, even for five minutes. I couldn’t bear it if she left me for good. I became obsessed with making sure she stayed with me. I began buying her flowers, taking her out, buying her jewelry and clothes, taking her on little vacations. I thought if I could show her how much she meant to me, she wouldn’t need to hang out with anyone else, and wouldn’t even want to.

But instead of drawing closer like I thought she would, she started edging further away. She started going out with her friends even more often than before, and even going out alone. I’d stay home and watch TV or eat or work out, but regardless of what I was doing my mind was always thinking about her or, more accurately, thinking about the men she might meet while she was out and whether or not she would go home with them. We stopped having sex, although it was not because of any lessening of desire on my part. She almost never left without us having fought about it for ten minutes or more, and when she got home I’d either give her the cold shoulder or else fawn all over her. Neither response was appropriate, I realize now, but then I was in such mental and emotional turmoil that I didn’t know what else to do. Dianne was my religion, my stuffing for the hole that gaped in my soul. Even with my career I knew I wouldn’t have anything worth having if she were gone.