never admitted her true feelings about it to anyone before. “Hopeless and destructive and doomed to fail?” he repeated, following it with a low whistle. “I could maybe see hopeless and destructive, or destructive and doomed to fail, but all three together…” He shook his head as if to say she’d gone too far. She could see that he was trying to make her laugh—and perhaps he wanted to minimize the severity of what she’d just said in the process—but now that she had confided in him she felt like explaining what she meant.
“It’s hopeless and doomed to fail because it can’t possibly succeed, and I think it’s destructive to the people who have to learn that the hard way. The truth is that marriages don’t succeed, not in the truest sense of the word. People stay married sometimes, it’s true, but is it really what they thought it would be when they walked down the aisle together?” She said this without the slightest bitterness, which only seemed to give credence to her words.
Dan put down his fork (she had not yet picked hers up), giving Maryanne all of his attention. Both were now fully intrigued and absorbed by the topic. “But how could you possibly know this if you’ve never been married yourself ?”
“I don’t have to go through something myself if I am able to learn from watching others,” she replied. “Have you been married?” she asked suddenly.
“Yes,” he admitted.
“Well…”
“Yes, but even having failed, I still believe in the institution of marriage. And I liked being married, for the most part.”
“For the most part?” she said.
“There were moments…” He paused, at a loss for words to explain.
“Of disenchantment?” she asked with a smile. “A slow, ongoing letting go of expectations, like gradually sliding down a not-so-steep hill?”
Dan looked at her with curiosity. “So, if not marriage, what then? Living together? Dating?”
She was feeling strangely reckless. And Dan was somehow drawing her out in a way that other men were not usually able to do. Something in his demeanor put her at ease. “To be perfectly honest, I don’t think it’s possible for a man and a woman to stay together for any significant amount of time. Relationships seem to have a shelflife.”
He jerked back in surprise. “Isn’t that supposed to be the guy’s position?”
She laughed. She wondered what he was thinking about the things she was saying and was surprised to discover that she cared. In fact, she wanted to make him understand. She thought for a moment of how to illustrate her point.
“See that couple over there?” she began, exclaiming immediately afterwards, “Don’t make it so obvious!”
Dan nodded conspiratorially and tossed his napkin on the floor with an exaggerated flourish. Maryanne struggled to contain her laughter as Dan made a show of casually bending over to pick up his dropped napkin while surreptitiously stealing a glance in the direction she had indicated. The straightforward, uncomplicated person that he was made the scene all the more comical.
“The woman who looks like she’s been sucking on a sour ball?” he whispered after a long and lengthy ordeal just to get a glimpse.
Maryanne giggled. “That’s her,” she confirmed. She leaned in and lowered her voice, growing more serious. “Her husband has been staring openly at me all night.”
Dan looked momentarily confused. “Well, you’re a beautiful woman,” he said in a matter-of-fact manner, as if to add, “What do you expect?”
“Right in front of her!” she added more adamantly.
Dan drew back and paused, but there was a light coming on in his eyes. “Oh, yeah, women hate that.”
“Women hate that,” she echoed, “because it’s destructive. It causes them to deteriorate inside. Don’t look at me like I’m being overly dramatic. And I realize that it’s in a man’s nature to constantly observe women. They can’t help it, as they’re so quick to point out, but that’s exactly what I’m saying. That’s why it’s impossible for relationships to work.”
“But it seems like a rather small thing, considering…”
“Well, of course, I’m not just talking about looking here. What I’m referring to is that interest, that overabundance of attentiveness and courtesy that men show to the women they have not yet been intimate with. In and of itself, even that might be tolerable if not for the utter lack of interest they show to the women they have been intimate with!”
“Do you really think it’s as bad as that?”
“It’s often worse.”
“Well, if women know this about men, and it’s the way men are, as you say, can’t the women work around it?”
“They can and do work around it,” Maryanne replied. She was completely relaxed now and spoke conversationally, explaining her philosophies without the slightest rancor. Her eyes were wide, and she even felt a bit excited. “But that doesn’t mean they’re not deteriorating while they’re doing it.”
“Forgive me if I seem a little callous here, but aren’t you blowing this a little out of proportion? Most of the guys I know would never do any more than look.”
“Whether or not he acts on his interest in other women is irrelevant.” Maryanne was pleased that Dan wasn’t simply patronizing her, or, worse yet, trying to steer her away from what some men might consider an uncomfortable topic. He was taking her seriously enough to disagree with her, and she appreciated that. “Because the damage will already be done. See, women also have instincts that appear to favor more short-term relationships.”
“Okay, now you definitely have my attention.”
“A woman’s most fundamental need, at her core—and I’m not talking about human survival here but female survival, something she needs to keep her femaleness alive—is to be desirable.” She paused for effect, noticing that he was hanging on her every word. She let this first idea sink in before completing her thought. “Almost every single natural behavior of a man—after he’s had sex with a woman—is designed to diminish her belief that she is desirable. I think it is an unconscious effort to ultimately destroy her desirability to other men.”
Dan sucked in his breath. “Wow!” He turned discreetly to look at the woman she had singled out before, this time observing her more carefully. Maryanne casually observed the woman as well. The couple had clearly been together a long time; the wife was even beginning to resemble the husband. She had little, if any, visible signs of femininity or sexuality left. There was a sadness behind her eyes that somehow softened the bitter twist of her lips. She was staring past her husband indifferently. Dan had caught the husband ogling Maryanne when he suddenly turned, and the man looked guiltily away. Dan turned back to Maryanne, his expression tragic. She smiled.
“You see?” she asked, knowing that he did.
“You make an interesting point,” he conceded. “But I’m not ready to accept defeat just yet. Let me think about it a minute.” He picked up his fork and knife and cut off a bit of steak. Maryanne watched him as he chewed on it thoughtfully. She couldn’t help chuckling as she watched him, a bit too gleefully
