Bianca's Take June 2016

To my Readers:

Nothing could have prepared me for life post divorce.  I had no idea what to expect and since there are no guidelines for how to survive it, I had to write the manual myself.  Reactions from family and friends varied, but the same handful of comments questions came from almost everyone.

“What went wrong?”  Nothing.  It was wrong from day one and deep down we both knew it.

“Did he have an affair?”  Not that I know of, and frankly I don’t care.  It’s over.

“Wow, that was fast.” (Yes I really did get this one, and often from people I barely knew.)  Thank you sir, it felt like an eternity to me.

“What are you going to do with that three carat ring?”  I’m going to sell it and pay for my new apartment.  I wish I knew an appropriate way to tell them “None of your fucking business.”

“Thank God you didn’t have any kids.”  Yep.  Thank GOD.

I got the comment about not having kids from almost every single person I talked to, even to this day.  As for the other questions and comments?  The answers really were no one else’s business but my own.  I wish I had known the right way to avoid other people’s morbid curiosity, but I felt like I owed it to them to be an open book.  I didn’t want to come across as bitchy or too sensitive, so I told friends, family and strangers all about my divorce.  I explained in great detail how I had married someone I had doubts about from our first date.  I chattered away as their faces attempted to conceal confusion and sometimes obvious judgment.  But the more I felt the need to explain to them why I ended up in a loveless marriage, the more I realized I was searching for that very answer myself.  Which brings me to the final and most asked question.

“If you knew it wasn’t right, why did you marry him anyway?”

I am still searching for the answer to that one.

I felt conflicted.  I had originally planned on juggling multiple arrangements simultaneously to make more money.  But now that I had met the doctor and I could see what was developing between us, I felt that I owed it to myself to be exclusive with him.  I wanted to see where things went.

Of course, it would derail my original plan and mean that I would only be getting an allowance of $5k a month.  Money would still be very tight, but I could make it work.

I hated the word “allowance.”  It made me feel like a child.  Couldn’t they come up with a better term for a large sum of cash being gifted monthly by a sugar daddy?  I guess not.  The world of arrangements was the strangest thing I’d ever seen.  But it certainly wasn’t boring.

The doctor had been giving me a white envelope filled with cash each time we met.  Each one had his name “Dr. Mark Reilly” in small handwritten block letters at the top right corner, and below it a stamp marking the envelope “Confidential.”  Even though it felt a little awkward and transactional, it was a huge relief each time I saw him.  I wondered if maybe as things got more serious between us, he’d be willing to negotiate on my allowance a little.  After all, if he could cough up $5k a month for his mistress out of his “slush fund” (aka, secret bank account his wife didn’t know about) maybe he could toss in a little more.

Richard and I were in completely different classes, both financially and socially.  He came from old family money and had done pretty well himself, long before we ever met and got married.  I was a struggling designer raised by a humble middle class family.  From day one, he looked at me with contempt.  Like I was after something he had worked hard for.  He was determined to keep it out of my reach.  Money was always a sensitive subject between us.

I got married under the false notion that life would be easier for me once I was his wife.  My struggles would be over and I would finally have some breathing room financially.  I had been living in Staten Island with several roommates in a dismal apartment building and desperately needed a ticket out of that life.

“You’re so lucky, Bianca,” he would tell me in an effort to remind me how much my life had changed since meeting him.  In a way it was true.  I could barely scrape by in first New York apartment, a $450 a month rodent infested duplex in Queens.  Just a few years later, life looked very different in our $6,500 apartment in Tribeca.

But even though I was surrounded by nice things in a luxurious life, I never felt like any of it belonged to me.  I was just a passive passenger on an empty journey with the wrong person.  I knew from day one that everything was all on loan, and I’d have to give it all back eventually.

For months I struggled with the decision to leave him.  I was terrified of life on my own.  What would people say about my divorce?  Could I afford to live on my own?  None of these things mattered enough to stay.

I made a promise to myself to survive no matter what.

It was more than just an arrangement with the doctor.  It had turned into a full blown affair.  We had met in the most unexpected of ways.  I began to question everything I was doing.

Maybe this was how I was meant to meet the guy of my dreams.  Our connection was mutual and undeniable.  The feelings I had for him in just one week were more intense than any other relationship in my entire life.  He was the first man since my husband who told me that he loved me.

And still, I was terrified.  This was someone else’s husband.  This couldn’t end well, could it?

Just like every night that week, I received a long love letter from the doctor when he got home.  I was becoming hooked on the high.