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Even though Ted had said that he wanted to leave, I was frantically working on being perfect, loving, and the woman no one would want to leave, so frantically that I really hadn’t even considered the actual reality until the night I was lying flat on my back on my bed and Ted was STANDING, legs veed on either side of my waist, shrieking down at me that he hated me. It was scary, I’ll admit, and that was when I decided that my “wait until after the holiday” plan was unacceptable, and he should GET THE FUCK OUT AS FAST AS POSSIBLE . Pieces of mental health crept out periodically from my behaviors long before I had the slightest understanding of what I or life was about. I think I was somewhere in the middle of that path that night, much further along than when, twenty-six years before, I’d decided not to have children to infuse excitement into a one-year-old marriage that had already been boring before the wedding day. This was a very different time and story. Ted and I had been married more than ten years. We had two great kids. Since it was a second marriage for me (if you consider that year of playing house when I was nineteen a marriage), and I’d spent almost fifteen years living a very “socially active” life, this commitment was nothing I took lightly. I didn’t feel our relationship was made in heaven, but I certainly was in it for the long haul, and I did love Ted and would have worked indefatigably at keeping us together. I never thought I was an easy person, but working out my kinks, especially in relation to those I care about, was (and continues to be) my main agenda. I may be a difficult pain in My Own Dance MARGIE KAPLAN My Own Dance 1 3 9 the ass at times, but a valuable, life-affirming force nonetheless. I think those who really are close and know me, know that. Having Ted not thinking I was “worth it” probably has been the hardest part of this whole experience. He had my best (as well as my worst), my love and fun and energy and support. He didn’t feel it, though. Anyway, if I’m going to reenact it, you’ll need some background. I think we had quite a love affair. We met in a bar/restaurant on the Upper West Side in New York City. After conversation and a lot of “energy exchange,” he walked me back to my office/weeknight apartment, and so it began. We were very different people. I was just short of thirty-five and Ted was twenty-five. I was a therapist in private practice wanting to connect with a life-mate after years of serial monogamous relationships, none of which I wanted to continue. I was always the leaver. He was a wannabe musical theater lyricist earning his income through actuarial work. We were driven people, though in different directions. Writing was the energy source for Ted; people were for me. One oddity was that I was the third relationship in his life and his third older woman. Before Ted, the men I dated were never much more than a couple of years in either direction of my age. We clicked, good repartee, chemical energy, and we were off. I should have known four months into our relationship that we were a mismatch. My dog, my thirteen-year life companion, died, and Ted accompanied me and a dear friend to my country place upstate to bury him. We did that deed and celebrated his life in a mini service. I was bereft driving back into the city but Ted said, “I don’t get it, being so emotional about a dog.” Why I didn’t realize that this person was from another planet than mine I don’t know, but there is a lot to be said for chemistry. Ted is from an Italian/Irish Catholic Connecticut family and I am a New York City “cultural Jew” (to use words he put into a song). My family is inappropriately intrusive and loud, hostile, warm, and competitive, and always together for the standard occasions, birthdays, holidays, et cetera. His is repressed, church attending, and not close or loving toward each other. His mom was a wonderful exception to this description, but unfortunately for us all, she died much...

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