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A lot of married men have lovers and their real struggle is hiding them from their spouses. My problem is quite the opposite.

About a month ago my wife and I were conversing heatedly on the topic of “Female Intuition.” She was certain: a wife always has a gut feeling on whether her husband is cheating on her.

I poked fun at her:

  • Let’s check the accuracy of your theory. Do I have a lover?
  • When pigs fly – she was dead sure.

She was also dead on. I didn’t have a lover and I didn’t want one.

I have to admit that the certainty of her tone left a lump in my throat. But what was so ludicrous about me having an affair? Was I so undesirable in her eyes that she didn’t even CONSIDER the threat of another woman snatching me away from her?

I had to lie down to recover from the blow and think things through. It was bedtime anyway. An internal conversation with my Ego followed suit:

Ego: – It is so obvious; she thinks you are some kind of beta male. I bet she sees you as her charity project – she has done her charity bit by marrying you. And if it wasn’t for her, you’d still be wandering around single and heartbroken.

Me: – You are very extreme in your assumptions, Ego.

My Ego was both upfront and persistent. It kept on nudging me to step up and get revenge! Cheat away! This would teach the missus a lesson!

I took the high road. I stood my ground by pointing out considerations of the purest nature. Such as my undying love for my wife. And also that in general, I disapprove of “revenge.” Especially revenge in love.

My Ego took a workaround: I had to cheat on my wife for her own good! This was pure discrimination! All her friends worried if their husbands were cheating on them and she was probably feeling left out of their conversations! Did I want my wife to feel like a social pariah only because she didn’t have the same problems as her friends?

The sun was rising when My Ego and I finally shook hands on a compromise. It consisted of three points:

1/ I will do everything within my power to make her doubt my fidelity.
2/ No actual cheating, I was firm on this one.
3/ When she “catches” me, I would admit that this was simply an experiment aiming to increase my value in her eyes.

This should make her understand that the Female Intuition is prone to making mistakes. Especially when it meets the brilliant Male Logic.

The next day I put my plan into action. I came home early and cleaned the apartment. I even took the liberty to buy a bouquet of flowers and put them into a vase. Nice touch. You’d think a guilty husband should be an expert at cleaning up after himself, hence – he would also clean more at home.

In compliance with my plan, I painted my lips with her lipstick but don’t judge a book by its cover. Whatever you may be thinking, I promise you, it is not that. My plan is flawless — this way I can leave an imprint on a post-it note before rubbing it on my cheek. I did just that and my cheek ended up adorned with a kiss mark!

Following my small success, I spent the rest of the time until she came home in an attempt to wipe the lipstick from my lips. Now I know why they are called lipsticks: these things know how to stick to the lips!

When my wife finally came home, she was head over heels about my cleaning job. She took many photos of the clean apartment and the flowers. She DM-ed the photos to her friends:

“Look at how „My Pumpkin“ welcomed me home today.“

As sweet as this term of endearment was, the possessive pronoun “my” kind of discouraged me. She was still taking “her” Pumpkin for granted.

She finally stopped buzzing and took a seat. I was strategically sitting next to her with my left cheek facing her. To no avail. Intensive online communication between my wife and her friends was already taking place. She got so deeply engaged texting photos back and forth of the good deeds of “Her Pumpkin,” that at one point, probably even unbeknown to herself, she reached out and wiped out my lipstick smudge. All the while, her attention remained firmly focused on the chat. This was a clear loss of a battle but I would not give in. I decided to throw in the towel for the night and start fresh tomorrow. The war had only just begun.

My mistakes were obvious. The lipstick was hers and its presence on my cheek could have easily been the result of her own “hello” kiss, planted as a greeting she’d given me herself before she got distracted by all my cleaning and all these flowers.

The next day right before I left the office, I asked my boss’s secretary to kiss my neck without asking any questions. She has long been convinced that I was a weirdo anyway, so she kissed me without much ado. Her lipstick was an outrageous dark blue. My wife wouldn’t use this lipstick shade for the life of her. I was a foretasting major success.

Back home I made a salad and poured wine for two. When she came back from work, she was very appreciative of my dinner setup. Not enough to spare her thoughts on my salad though: she found it to be bland, with not enough condiments/seasoning, and warned me to not even get her started on the way the parsley was chopped…

I didn’t start her on the parsley and this was a mistake, as already her attention had shifted elsewhere. She was now busy watching TV. She was falling behind on her favorite soap opera and apparently now was the time to catch up. She was staring intently at the TV screen and I had to devise a strategy to direct it to my neck, which was already stiffening from the unnatural pose I was in. Four decades of togetherness had taught me how to get her attention. I had to ask her to explain something to me. Every time she was explaining something, she stared straight into my eyes. I feigned an interest in the twists and turns of the relationship between Esmeralda and Juan Carlos. She took me through the basics of it and her eyes returned to the TV. Even though allegedly glued to the screen, her stare didn’t miss me pouring myself another glass of wine.

During the ad break, she finally stared exactly where I wanted. I had prepared a naïve answer to the question I anticipated, which was “what is this lipstick smudge/stain doing on your neck?”. What followed caught me off guard:

  • How much booze have you had today?
  • Just a couple of glasses
  • I doubt it. I have been noticing bluish-reddish veins on your nose for a while. This is a dead giveaway that you are an alcoholic. And now – these alcoholic veins have spread to your neck. As of tomorrow, booze is banned for you! All kinds of it – even beer!

So far, so… not good. I have previously planned to resume the Lipstick Attack the next day by entering a new player in the game – our HR’s lipstick that had an orange hue. But now, given the latest developments, I had to double back on that. If my wife saw an orange lipstick smudge anywhere on my body, she’d probably write it off as a case of hypervitaminosis, due to excessive carrot overdose.

I had to resort to Plan B. I was to start looking after my looks. I’d say that it is highly suspicious for any husband to start looking after their looks, out of the blue, after many years of smooth sailing in the waters of being the average Joe. This fact, by itself, screamed “a cheater”, at least for me.

The next day I bought a new suit, a tie, shoes, and underwear. I even clipped my nails. Trimming nails might seem easy for most people, but not for me. It makes me feel uncomfortable, like someone who is at the beach and has wet sand squeezed into every nook and cranny of their bathing suit.

My wife, true to her naïve self, didn’t suspect an ulterior motive in my shopping spree. She was overwhelmed with joy that I finally decided to invest in my looks. With one little proviso, though –she made me promise that next time she will come with me to help me pick something more flattering for my figure.

After dinner, she asked me what the girls at the office said about my revamped looks. This was a question I saw coming and I had the perfect answer. I said that had undressed me with their eyes. I had felt their piercing gazes with the back of my head – the way women feel the male eyes on them.
I have finally nailed it and wanted to keep the momentum.

I started doing sports via online training apps. Every evening she would come back home from work to find me working out. Just like any self-respecting cheating husband would do (I thought). Weights, abs, core, legs – you name it, I have done it. She started eyeing me up, which lead to a rebirth of our sex life.

As the saying in Bulgarian goes “You may be hitting one wall but another may fall“(you may aim for one thing and inadvertently get another). Still, I reassured myself that “the end justifies the means.”

There was one tiny glitch about our renewed sex life. It was kind of contradicting my plan to get “caught” red-handed. I wanted to leave her with the impression that my “male power” was being wasted “outside of the matrimonial bedroom”.

But contrary to my idea – my behavior lately was one of a faithful husband, who finally started looking after himself, started cleaning at home and is even in love with his own wife! My progress was going from bad to worse.

What a predicament! I started coming back home late. Generally, she was coming home later than me, but this was a pattern I was set out to break. It was late autumn, a rainy period with blasts of freezing wind. I forced myself to wait stoically in the hall of the residential building across our apartment block and monitor our apartment from there. Once the lights at home lit up, I could finally go home. The only effect was that the residents of the building I was sheltering myself in while waiting for my wife to come home, started giving me creepy looks.

I went to bed, thinking that I should probably admit defeat soon. But as luck had it, the movie that was going on tv had a plot of utmost relevance to my problems. A wife found a g-string in the pocket of her husband’s coat. The g-string wasn’t hers. Hell broke loose.

The simple brilliance of this idea was so irresistible. I had to give it one last go!

The first thing I did the next morning was to go to a lingerie shop. I picked a pair of lacy bikinis and positioned myself in front of the mirror in the changing room. I wanted to make sure that they fit me, as that would mean they would fit her. We had the same pelvis width.

I wanted to make sure that I get a size like hers. Otherwise, she would suspect I cheat on her with either a “whale” or an “anorexic stick” and instead of being jealous, she would feel pity for me.

That night I went home reasonably late. I hung my coat at the most obvious possible spot. I left a piece of the bikini strategically sticking out of its pocket. I made my voice sound as guilty as possible:

  • Honey, I am home!
    My wife stuck her head for a moment out of the bedroom. She said she was busy, sorting her clothes. I was told to dine whatever I want.

When she finally joined me in the kitchen with a certain pair of brand new lacy bikinis in her hands, she wasn’t angry. Instead, she seemed alarmed.

  • Do you know where I found my underwear? – In the pocket of your coat! Only God knows why I tossed it there. I’m an idiot! -Could you believe it – she sniffed the bikini. They still smell of the shop – they haven’t even been used yet! This means I bought them soon and I don’t even remember. I am probably starting to get memory lapses…. Maybe this German guy is attacking me…. what was his name again?
  • Ummmm…I don’t know…. Beethoven?
  • No, no…the one with the brain disease.
  • Schumacher?
  • No, silly…I meant Alzheimer!

I realized I was silly indeed. Again, a major detail was lost on me. I didn’t take into account the fact that the bikini, allegedly belonging to my lover, shouldn’t have been a brand new, still unworn piece of underwear.

Before I went to bed, I made a bitter recap of my progress so far.

Alcohol was banned for me. People from the adjacent building thought I was a creep. I was getting pissed with the regular nail trimming. I have splurged on a suit, a tie, underwear, etc. –something I didn’t intend to carry on with. I have started working out – I didn’t intend to carry on with this either.

I simply wasn’t interested in keeping the bar of expectations that high. And last but not least – I made my wife doubt her own mental health.

One good thing about all this was our revived sex life. But this wasn’t according to my plan – it happened despite of it.

As a rule of thumb, the good things in my life happened in spite of my best efforts, whereas the bad things in my life happen because of my best efforts.

Also, I have to admit, as a result of my starting to groom myself, rumor had it that I became quite popular among my female colleagues. I was used to my image as a weirdo, which didn’t require much effort to maintain. Now, some girls at the office started seeing me as a stud. As flattering as this was, this also had its shortcomings. It brought the danger of me slipping down the infidelity road. When I married, I promised fidelity “until death do us part” and I preferred to stick to my promise, even at the cost of being taken for granted.

I also didn’t like the fact that I raised the bar of expectations. The mere thought of all this cleaning up, grooming, working out, and nail clipping was exhausting to me. I am a man who enjoys doing crossword puzzles and a can of beer.

I raised the white flag. I had overestimated myself. In the invisible battle Male Logic vs Female Intuition, the result was 1:5. So far. Could probably get much worse. I guess it was time to retreat before it got too late.

Moral of the story: The Female Intuition depends on the Male Stupidity, right?

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