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Racing
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How my fiancé ruined our marriage before it even began By Gayle Cole Fall 2002 | About three days before my wedding, Larry (not his real name), my groom, arrived back East, where I had spent a month making preparations with my family. From the moment I picked him up at the airport, something felt wrong. At first I didn't know what, and then I didn't want to know, and then finally I asked, as calmly as possible: "How was your bachelor party?" Larry and I had discussed the event beforehand. He said he'd like a poker game. The best man, a married lawyer with three children and political aspirations, called to assure me that the evening would be "classy" and I needn't worry. I never worried about Larry. Why would I? I had carefully chosen a sensitive, loving, and utterly devoted man. Not one of those guys ¬ the bad guys ¬ who sometimes took their parties to extremes. "Mind your own business," was his answer. What could be more my business? As we sat in my mother°s house after everyone else had gone to bed, I couldn°t get my fiancÿe to even look me in the eye. How could so much have changed in a month? "Larry," I said. "You need to tell me what you°ve done." He began defensively. "We got a hotel room, okay? And some strippers. And we played some games, and don°t look at me like that, because that is what all guys do. What did you expect?" I expected something tamer than the details that slowly emerged. Suddenly, this man who had nearly wept upon hearing of my parents° infidelity, who had blushed at the mere suggestion of renting pornography for a poker night, this one-in-a-million G-rated man who always insisted he could never touch another woman, had inexplicably become one of the bad ones. Larry°s confession alternated between macho, self-righteous indignation and weepy pleas for forgiveness. One of the biggest lies of all: he insisted he had no idea his party would bother me. He really didn't think I'd mind, he said, that he paid three women to have sex together on a towel on the floor of a hotel room. All men, he swore, lick whipped cream off the nipples and bare butts of strangers before they got married and played a game called Feed the Kitty. Didn't I know that? Feed the Kitty, if you don°t know, is when the groom, on his back on the ground, puts the stick end of a lollipop in his mouth. The stripper then lowers herself onto the candy end. When she's done simulating sex over the groom's face, he pulls the lollipop out of her vagina and eats it. Larry played the game twice. Flash to my bachelorette party, my friends and I gathered at a paint-your-own pottery store decorating dishes and gushing about how lucky I was to find a guy who planted impatiens in my window boxes and built me spice racks. Larry once told me he wanted to be the man to show me I could feel happiness without paying a price. In the 48 hours remaining before our wedding, Larry desperately lobbied to maintain his good-guy status. "It wasn't cheating!" he told me, channeling Bill Clinton. He did not have intercourse, therefore it wasn°t sex. He even thought that I might be reassured by the fact that the strippers brought bouncers along to make sure "nothing got out of hand" and that he didn't even get an erection during the whole three-hour show. He genuinely believed the party-line he force-fed me: "My bachelor party was normal and acceptable, it°s your reaction to it that is screwed up." All his compatriots eagerly provided the back-up he needed. They patted him on the back and said that what he'd done, within the sacred confines of a bachelor party, didn't mean a thing. To me, the bachelor party felt like a betrayal perpetrated not just by Larry, but by my male friends in attendance. Their party games intended not just to entertain the groom, but to humiliate me. The message was that the poor bastard marrying me was going to be stuck with this one, insufficient girl the rest of his life, so he needed to get a long last taste of the goodies he'd be missing. In my misery, I sought out stories of couples who had gone through the same thing and got over it. I sought out proof of Larry's assertions that every groom in mainstream America did what he did, and that every bride acquiesced. Those few people I mustered up the courage to confide in, however, could only shake their heads in disbelief, hold my hand and listen. Meanwhile, Larry kept telling me that I was crazy to be so upset, but that we'd get me some counseling and work it out. Exhausted, scared, confused and vulnerable, I wanted to believe him. Maybe I was crazy. On my wedding day, although I had not slept for two days or swallowed much more than tears, everyone told me I made a beautiful bride. My uncle said I belonged on the cover of a magazine, and my grandma said she was so proud of me she could bust. They had no inkling of my pain. My mother, who did know, offered to support any decision I made, including leaving Larry at the altar. But I just couldn't imagine telling 100 smiling, gift-toting guests who'd flown in from around the country for a joyous occasion that I felt that they'd come instead to a funeral -- the death of a happy five-year relationship. Hours before the ceremony, I told Larry that if he could promise he had confessed every single awful detail and he would agree to go to couples counseling, I would go through with our plans. Tearfully, holding my hand, he promised. I sobbed my way up the aisle, through the vows, and back down the aisle. The only thing I remember is a sermon about truth, and trying not to look at the best man. On our honeymoon, on the private island off the coast of New England, I jolted awake one night realizing I had failed to ask Larry about the threat of sexually transmitted diseases. Hesitantly, he admitted that he needed a few follow-up HIV tests performed as a result of having bled from a bite he sustained on his penis while the wrist-bound strippers used their mouths to collect dollar bills from his lap. He'd had a baseline test already. "The doctor advised me not to tell you," he said. "He told me that you have a better chance of dying in a plane crash than contracting AIDS from a human bite." That was not the only new detail to emerge. I also learned that Larry wasn't ambushed into the kind of party he didn't want, as I'd been led to believe. Peer pressure didn't make him do it; he booked the hotel room on his own credit card, and called around for strippers. When we returned home, we went straight into therapy. For many months, he teetered between expressions of hostility and declaring his undying love, while I vacillated between wanting to re-marry him under better circumstances and never wanting to lay eyes on him again. At no point did he fully accept responsibility for what he'd done. Every "I°m sorry" preceded a "but" that then dealt blame to his buddies, tradition, or me. I refused to accept his blame, and told him I thought he used peer pressure and "tradition" as an excuse to justify something he really wanted to do, but knew was wrong. After countless episodes of crying, writing, praying and fighting, each of us still blamed the other for tearing our relationship apart, and I knew that all the therapy in the world couldn't put it back together again. Unlike a divorce, an annulment means that a marriage, for all legal purposes, never existed. I felt strongly that I wanted the symbolism of an annulment; how could vows based on secrets and lies have any meaning? When I filed papers, Larry said I didn't take marriage as seriously as he did. Finally, we've each gone on with our lives. Last I heard Larry was living with someone. As for me, this June, nearly five years after my first wedding, I finally found out what it means to be happily married. This time, I didn't look for someone who felt "safe," because safety is just an illusion anyway. I just followed my heart. Jeremy might not plant me flowers or build me spice racks, and he's more of a guy's guy than Larry. But, since he opted out of a bachelor party entirely, I°d say he°s also much more of a man. ----------- Gayle Cole is a writer who lives in Southern California. ----------- Are you worried about your fiance's bachelor party getting out of hand? Share your fears in Kvetch |
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