The Serial Adulterer

[Electric ~soul~]

With the further revelations at the weekend of the troubles experienced by football's golden couple, I've been reflecting on my marriage.

 

I was wedded in 1982. It's strange but I only have sketchy memories of the service. The sight of my bride's exquisite form, eminently graceful in white, gliding through the throng, the old priest's shrill voice, the ceremonial silver chalice raised to lips, the sudden release of tension with the conclusion of the ceremony, the confetti that fluttered back over the happy faces, the burst of flashbulbs, the warm handshakes, the overwhelming feeling of pride.

 

My beautiful, new wife had given herself to me.

 

It was only later to become apparent that it was I that had given myself to her.

 

The prelude to the wedding had not been without its bumps and our union had not been to everyone's liking. In fact, the prevalent push from my immediate family was toward a local girl I could find no affection for. Although my family were enamoured with her, I could sense a bitterness, a dissatisfaction, that I could not see past. In hindsight, it was inevitable that our paths would continue to clash and, although she was to blossom and become very successful, I never regretted my decision. She had developed a cosmopolitan lifestyle filled with fawning admirers, but lacked the charm and class of my wife.

 

The backbiting however was incessant, augmented by certain members of my family, and, I initially concluded, the result of my peremptory rejection. However, I've come to realise that the source of resentment was, and continues to be, the woman I married. I later discovered that the acrimony between the two families dated back generations and found its origin in a shamelessly inequitable arrangement struck at the end of the first World War which left my wife's forefathers destitute.

 

Nevertheless, my wife and I were gloriously happy in the years that followed. We enjoyed a lifestyle through the eighties that, on reflection, I took for granted now, and regularly spent extraordinary sums on luxuries. However, with the economic crash, our world began to disintegrate. We had failed to keep the books and, in desperate financial trouble, the talk was of foreclosure and bankruptcy.

 

It was only then that I began to realise that my wife had maintained her wide cross-selection of suitors. I also realised that I was neither her first husband nor indeed her last.

 

She had always been very popular and, before our wedding, had courted a long line of admirers. But I never questioned her background or indeed, as it transpired, her increasingly ham-fisted attempts through the apathetic Nineties to seduce new acolytes, because, as strange as it sounds, I almost needed others to want her, to appreciate her and, through my later frustrations at her downward spiral, to share her. To share our pain at her.

 

Yet she always had class. Real class, the sort of class that others lacked. I shared her because I knew that she belonged to everyone.

 

This was to ultimately save us, as we were forced to call on an old benefactor to raise the funds to keep us afloat. I never asked what she promised him in return and he was to become a constant reminder of our struggling relationship in the nine to ten years that followed.

 

Looking back I don't know how we survived. She lost her vitality during that period. I took to drinking with her other partners in painful remembrance of the better days and in hope that the woman we once knew, the beautiful belle with the long-flowing movements, would return.

 

It near killed me to look at her during those dark days. Her increasingly erratic behaviour each weekend became the source of much mirth when I returned to work every Monday, and I guess the bittersweet truth was that my wife, the serial bigamist, stopped getting married in the Nineties because no one would take her.

 

There were moments when I felt I was losing the faith but each time things threatened to collapse completely, she always did just enough, whether a warm hug or a sweet smile, to keep me there.

 

For I, like many of the long-suffering, had eyes only for my wife. For our wife. And although there were, I can honestly admit, prettier women in the proceeding years, there were none that touched me so.

 

The 21st century began and, although there were small signs of recovery, she fell back and appeared destined to repeat the same old mistakes.

 

Until last year.

 

Last year my wife, the butt of numerous jokes, woke up with a clear head, combed her hair, straightened her clothes, fixed her make-up, and got ready to take on the world again.

 

She is returning. She is starting to marry again.

 

In May, I'll have been married for 23 years. Ten of those happily, the first nine and the last one. And I will never get divorced. I can't.

 

I was married in 1982. I was married at the age of six. I was married at the church of football. I was married to Tottenham Hotspur.

 

 

www.squarefootball.com

[SteveP]

Zeal, you've become a bigamist??

 

Explain that one to the wife!

[Tom S]

Quote:

SteveP said:
Zeal, you've become a bigamist??

Explain that one to the wife!

Don't you mean wives?

[Big J R]

..... and just how long will it be before someone comes up with the 'Bigamy' joke ??

[EFM The Firm, The Voice]

What about the affair you had with St. Albans City, if I was your wife and you'd pissed off for 6 years or so I wouldn't have you back <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

[YB941 5thD EFM ~soul~]

When you're as passionate as me, you'd find me difficult to turn down!!