My Losing Battle against my Fiance and Her MALE Massage Therapist Part 1
by Jeremy Dean Livingston
My fiance said I wouldn't find any measure of validation -- and not much more sympathy -- for feeling distressed by her 17-year relationship with her male massage therapist. She was right.
I don't know what it is exactly, but I guess when you get down to the heart of the matter, I just believe I am entitled to exclusive access to my fiance's body. This is what I feel I will be entitled to as her husband, and naturally she is entitled to the same exclusivity where my body is concerned. Her body is proprietary and confidential. In a world in which control of anything is hard to come by -- and when things are constantly changing and our position constantly being challenged -- a spouse is supposed to be that one person we can count on. Do I feel I own her? Hell no! But is it too much to ask that I be allowed to feel that she and I belong to one another and one another only? This is part of what I think makes marriage both sacred and delightful. Marrying the right woman should bring me both love and peace, and while I know there is love here, peace is a hard thing to come by when I have to pop a Xanax when I know she is being serviced by another man. It's not so much that I am distrustful and fearful that my fiance's quasi-professional relationship with her handsome male massage therapist will morph into something more intimate. He's been kneading her flesh for some 17 years now -- all as a married man until recently -- and there's never been a sexual aspect to this relationship. But I am the kind of guy who doesn't like to get into that murky business of finding the line between clinical and sensual touch -- sensual and sexual. At least half the people I have talked to want to bully me into pathologizing my own feelings, which I refuse to do. I believe my feelings on this subject is one thing that makes me a better lover and all-around significant other, and this aspect of my personality cannot be surgically resected from me without causing serious damage to "normal adjacent tissue." And my feelings are this: touch is touch. And if my female significant other is to derive any sort of pleasure (or relief) from touch and from knowledge of her body, than it should not come from another man.
When I touch her body in any way -- when I hold her hand or when I slide my palms up and down her sides as part of the 2-3 hour massages I give her every night -- I feel something electric. I maintain an erection throughout the whole thing. I am sensitive that way and she benefits from my having that kind of tactile compass. So I feel I am being cheated or robbed -- that a man is stealing the jewel of my soul -- when he touches her. I feel violated whenever she derives some kind of pleasure at someone else's hands. Touch is communication. Touch is a way of knowing the person you're touching. Something passes between two people who are in these forms of contact. Touch is an important part of foreplay. You just can't convince me that over the course of these 1-4 hour massage therapy sessions with this male massage therapist -- that the sustainment of touch and the menagerie of tactile sensations both tenderly caressing and forcefully pressing -- doesn't hit some high notes in her every now and then. By what authority incidentally was it determined what is acceptable in a professional massage? I wasn't consulted on this. I know the breasts and buttocks remain off-limits but who decided that no other part of the body can be an erogenous zone? For me, the area around the base of the neck and especially in front of the body, is very tender and sensitive, as are the hands, thighs, and feet. Many of the same people who would demonize me for feeling this way also lionize Pulp Fiction, and I just bet they plug right into that scene where a man is rumored to have been thrown through a window because he massaged the wife's feet. I can't tell you with any certainty that I would react the same way, only if my impulses got the better of me. And remember that Seinfeld episode where George inquires into his new girlfriend's relationship with her male roommate: George: "What's the massage situation?" Bonnie: "What do you mean?" George: "Is there any work being done? Is there any rubbing, touching, finger manipulation on the other person, and if so, who's making the request?" So I am not going to draw any lines unless it's just to make an inevitably bad situation a little more tolerable. I have already tried drawing some lines as a way of reaching a compromise with my fiance. Understand that I want to be okay with this and I don't like the way I look when I try to keep her from what makes her happy. I have suggested that I could be fine with things if only they would agree that he is not to touch her hands or touch her below the waist. That if it's back and neck pain that is bothering her, that he restrict his attention to her back and neck. Naturally, as I suspected, she said that given the way we are all wired, massaging the legs and thighs is necessary to heal back and neck pain.
Despite my fiance's insistence that she derives no pleasure from these massages, I suspect that if I were to see her face during her massage, the expression would all too often betray a feeling of "ahhhhhh" and that is not a feeling I believe any man this side of -- well -- ME -- should be stirring up in her. She tells me her sessions are neither pleasurable nor sensual, but the fierceness of the resistance I get when I plead with her to stop seeing this man -- and the way she is able to match my persistence over time -- speaks volumes as to what this man means to her, and I just can't have another man mean THAT much to her. It almost feels as if he is no less significant to her than me. So it's a vicious cycle. The more persistence she gets from me, the more resistance I get from her, and the more resistance I get from her, the more pushback she gets from me. My fiance's ties to her therapist could almost be described as an "addiction." In her words, she just "can't give him up." (continued on Part 2)
|
