truce

The last time I made love with my ex was twelve years ago this month – maybe even this very day – but it was hardly making love. Or was it?

Now I remember that I was in the living room while he slept off another night of Budweisers. Robby was almost two, napping, and I was reading, working on the fourth step of Al-anon and AA: “Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.”

Or was it the little Blue Book of daily readings? I don’t remember but I do recall the feeling that resulted. I was suddenly filled with warmth and love for the husband I had actively hated for months.

Maybe love really is the answer, I thought, and my body awakened with forgotten lust.

I thought, Why not? So I walked into the bedroom, crawled under the covers and spooned behind him, arm around his waist. He responded the way he always did, cuddling back as though nothing was wrong. I slid my hand down to his penis.

“Hey,” he said, turning around, surprised and smiling. We made love slowly, with a warmth and joy I hadn’t experienced since we conceived our son.

And when it was over, I knew that it wasn’t the solution to our problems; it was goodbye.

–

But wait – I completely forgot [or blocked out] the fact that I slept with him again, many times, eight years later. How could I forget that we got back together for six months in 1998? I can’t actually remember the last time we made love, they were all so much alike – his beer breath, the frustration and discomfort of having sex on a dirty, thin mattress on the floor of our tiny living room while Robby slept in another room just feet away. The memory makes my skin crawl.

No – it just makes me depressed to think of how lonely, unhappy and scared I was then. Not depressed, really, but sad and sympathetic with the me back then. And a bit proud to see how far I’ve come since that miserable time.

I’m breaking the habit of hating my ex, trying to love him a little, or at least learning to forgive him – and myself for the awful mistakes I made. When he called to talk to Robby last week, I even thanked him for teaching me to say I love you, and told him what a difference it has made in my life and Robby’s.

I could tell he was surprised. The cold, guarded tone of his voice disappeared and he started in on his old, cliched spiel about how he will always love me because I’m the mother of his child – which I dislike hearing for the insincerity and implication that there is no other reason to love me. As usual, I cut him off but this time I apologized.

“I’m sorry for all the mean things I’ve said about you,” I told him.

“That’s okay,” he said. “I’ve said plenty of nasty things about you.”

And so, a truce.