Feeling a little dickstracted?

I have recently come to a conclusion: I need to stop exercising, stop wearing makeup, stop wearing clothing that could be in any way construed to accentuate my curvy ass. I need to start shaving the hair on my head and stop shaving the coarse, dark hair on my legs. For that matter, I need to hide my legs altogether. It confuses men, and I’m tired of having to pick up the pieces of the aftermath of their confusion.

A man recently engaged me in conversation at a quiet little bar while my girlfriend was in the ladies’ room. Somehow it came up in our conversation that my husband and I were talking about splitting up and had been in marriage counseling for the past 6 months. It turns out that he could relate to what I was saying, being divorced himself. I didn’t feel attracted to him, and he seemed like a really nice person, so when he said he enjoyed talking to me too and asked me for my phone number, I didn’t hesitate. After all, I’m a married woman; he knows I’m a married woman. Men and women can be friends, right?

No, they can’t. I agreed to meet him for a quick lunch that week, figuring that lunch on a weekday clearly said, “I like talking to you, but I will never touch your penis.” We had a good time, and I learned things about him that further led me to believe he was a really good guy. Several days later, he invited me to see a movie with him on a Friday night. “Friday night” made me nervous. The idea of the dark theater made me uneasy. So I said okay but made sure to mention that my husband was in the next room putting the groceries away, just in case he needed a little reminder.

So after the movie we decided to get a bite to eat. Our conversation led to the most natural thing for me to talk about (what is most heavily on my mind as of late): the fact that my husband has not budged in all of these months of therapy and still wants to leave me.

That’s when Mr. Really Good Guy gets this look. It’s like the expression just slides off of his face, falls to the floor, and shatters. I can almost hear it. He clears his throat and says, “So, you guys are in marriage counseling right now?”

I say, very matter-of-fact, “Yes.”

Then he asks whether that means I'm not ready to date anyone again.

I think he expected me to be apologetic or something – like, “yeah, I’m sorry; I thought I was ready, but as it turns out…” Well, I wasn’t apologetic. I didn’t do anything wrong.

So I’m sitting there thinking, “We covered this, remember? The very first conversation we had? The bar wasn’t even crowded or noisy? I think I was speaking English? But maybe you couldn’t hear me because you were too busy trying to picture me naked?”

At the end of the non-date, he actually shook my hand. Shook my hand!

Meanwhile, back on the homefront, it seems that what has taken my husband so long to figure out that marriage counseling is a waste of our time (he’s not changing his mind) is that – well -- he still gets all tight in the pants when I enter a room. The few times a month we see each other have often ended in the kind of sex that makes the doors and windows rattle. “It’s never been about that,” he keeps reminding me. Well, no shit, I think to myself.

So now that I’m older and wiser, why not try to look as old and wise as possible? Pray for the gray hair to come in faster. Let gravity take over. Maybe I’ll even stop showering. I’m tired of men not being able to figure out whether it’s me they’re interested in or whether it’s just my ass. So maybe I need to make it a little easier for them; maybe I need to take away all of these dickstractions.