Are you doing this to me?

My heart sank as my wife, the person with whom I agreed to share my life with, and the woman who vowed to be with me through better and worse, has betrayed my hopes and wishes once again. She had not learned from our past issues. Here she was, repeating the same sick behaviors.

Another man. Again.

"How could you do this to me, again? " I asked. The disappointment in my voice was about as subtle as a pair of symbols. I wanted her to know I was hurt, to my core. And that it could all be avoided if it weren't for this new man, this man who now sat in my kitchen.

"You're making way to big of a deal about this," she answered. The nonchalant tone was as offensive as the words that came with it."

"Just tell me Why? Why can't I ever be enough for you" I pleaded, hoping to hear that I am enough, that I am all she needs for happiness and joy, and that I wasn't overreacting. He even seemed like me, from what she said. She made him sound so great that it made me sick. He's really into sports. I am really into sports. He loves to read about the civil rights movement. I love to read about the civil rights movement.

Was she trying to validate this behavior by making me see how much he is like me. Or was she just rubbing my face in it. That the guy can be just like me, she just wants another guy around.

"Maybe I need others in my life from time to time, did you ever consider that? Do you ever consider my needs?" How could she be so selfish, so aggressive to my clearly fragile state.

I became more against this every time I saw his hand caressing her red dress, right on the hip, casually buy still suggestively. How can someone be so upfront and overt in another man's home? I'm supposed to socialize with this type?

" How can you say that? How can you feel that way, after all the times I've told you how much I am against this, how it makes me feel?"

"You know," she answered, rubbing her eyes and throwing her head back, as if this topic was somehow boring her, and beneath her. "Everyone does this you know." All that was missing from that to was the 'duh' as an emphatic ending. Here she is forcing her sick lifestyle, this other man, onto me, and making him feel stupid for it.

"That's not true," I argued, trying to inject some reality into her fantasy land. "Ronnie's wife doesn't do this stuff to him."

"Ronnie's wife is a bitch, nobody would do it with her."

How crass could she be.

"Don't my feelings mean anything?" I asked, all the while seeing more and more clearly with every passing second that they didn't. The man was still there, sitting in my kitchen, all dressed up for a big night on the town. Good for him.

"Don't my feelings mean anything? Don't they" She responded. "I need some fun in my life, some variety to mix things up. And if you can't be okay with it then," she thought for a second, then shrugged her shoulders with a conceited look on her face, "then that's your own problem, its not mine."

There was a long pause. I looked at her. She stared back. I looked over at him. Watching this unwelcome guest get cozy and start rubbing his date for the evening's bare shoulders made my stomach turn.

I finally broke the awkward silence. "So, this isn't going to end, is it?"

"You know, this could even make our marriage better," she smiled, trying to warm me up to this idea. How could she say something so wrong, so incredulous, so sacrimonious.

"I was thinking," she continued, moving closer to me. " You could have fun with this too, if you just open your mind a bit." She rubbed my chest and then tickled the back of my neck.

Nope. Never. No words needed to be said. I looked her right in her eye, shook my head no, and made sure she saw the determination in my eyes.

This. Stops. Here.

"Maybe after," she said, "you and him can go out together and get a beer."

"Now you want me to be friends with him? After all we've been through. You want me to share a drink with him too?"

"You know, you act like you're too evolved for this, that it's beneath you. I guarantee your parents did this stuff too."

"How dare you say such a thing. My dad would never have allowed this to happen in his home, under his roof. This guy who I don't even know being all handsy in my house with someone who. come to think of it, I don't know very well either."

"My parents did it all the time. They'd go out, sometimes they'd even do it here, and my friends would be allowed to come over for it as well."

No wonder she has come up with these crazy thoughts. It was a real hot bed for careless partying in her upbringing.

"Listen," she began again, her eyes steely and serious. "If you can't allow new things and adventures into my world- our world, if you accept it- this won't work."

I love her. She is my everything. When I look at her, her brown eyes sparkling with the same innocent beauty I fell in love with, and her blue dress, the same one she wore to our third date, where I gave her our first kiss. All of those things brought back to me in an avalanche of emotions everything that I've felt for her. This is her one flaw. Why can't I look past it, like someone who looks past messiness or being bad with money? Why can't I accept- no, embrace- this part of her. I love her, but I hate this. I want her. But not like this. I paused for a long time.

"Fine," I uttered, the word, this singular word, was harder to get out of me than I even expected. "But I mean it. This is all done after tonight.

"I'll go. But this is it. After this, No More Double Dates."