My Losing Battle against my Fiance and Her MALE Massage Therapist Part 2

by Jeremy Dean Livingston
(Alexandria, VA)

(cont)

I watched a few massage videos on YouTube and it made my hair stand on end to imagine my fiance in some of those positions. One of the more alarming images consisted of this woman with her ankles raised upon the masseur's shoulders, her bare feet inches from his face, as he leaned into her and ran his forearm up and down her thigh. Nice image! For a moment do I honestly believe he would put one of his male clients in that same position? Hmm.

But my fiance's relationship with this man is also more complex than that with the average male masseur.

1. This is a 17-year relationship. She (and other women) thought it would be comforting to tell me that he is a professional and that this is a doctor-patient relationship. Besides the obvious fact that this comparison demeans doctors -- much like comparisons to male escorts would demean male massage therapists (male escorts to lay claim under that definition to the same mantra of professionalism) -- what other doctor engages in this kind of sustained touch? I wouldn't mind if my fiance had a male gynecologist. Nothing really sexual comes from inserting a gloved hand very briefly in that organ without foreplay. But massages build relationships.

When she has had to (as when her therapist is out of town), she has tried a few other therapists, and "no one knows her body as well as NAME REDACTED." That's right. No one. Including me:

"You can never be as good as he is. This is his profession."

I am not fond of hearing that 1 hour into a 2-hour massage I am giving her myself. I am successful in breaking down her fascia and taking the pain away, and I massage her preventively almost every night. And she enjoys my massages immensely. I get the verbal "ahs" and she initiates the requests for the massages. And I am learning more everyday. I am educating myself and then applying what I learn in the "lab portion of the course." Eventually, I do believe I will come to know her better than NAME REDACTED.

So I can live with this man's intimate knowledge of her as long as its relegated to the dustbin of history and I can begin MY education on the nuances of her musculature. But I hate being told that there is someone else out there who will always know HER body more than me. That is only the case if he continues to see her. I can remedy that because I can log in hours of massage with her at home and because I have a medical mind and can teach myself generic human anatomy. I have even offered to take massage therapy courses, but she greets all these suggestions as threats to her relationship with NAME REDACTED.

When I think sexy thoughts of my fiance, I don't conjure up an image of her vagina. The sight of her vagina does not create that delicious escalating yearning for sex. I naturally think of the WHOLE her, as I would be willing to bet you do when you grow desirous for your man / woman. This is the image that is the starting point for all sexual arousal. Her contours and sinews. Her complexion. The topography of her body from tip of her head to -- and including -- her toes. So you can imagine how distressed I might become to IMAGINE someone else's hands all over this body.

2. NAME REDACTED massages her in his own home. One night my fiance regaled me with the tale of one session with NAME REDACTED. He had a new massage plan for her and she was not appropriately attired for it, so he lent her his T-shirt and she was massaged in this T-shirt and her panties. Eeeeee! Come to think of it, I better ask her whether there were towels involved to cover her, because I can imagine the two of them agreeing to forgo the towel at this stage in their relationship. You know, the towel that covers her buttocks. There's just something about wearing another man's T-shirt, isn't there? Don't get me started on the reference to the panties. She should have a thick towel draped over this latitude of her body at all times.

3. Other massage therapists have acknowledged -- even offered up unsolicited -- that friendships are built over these kind of professional-client relationships. She talks to him during a 1-4 hour massage -- and she has done this over the past 17 years. As an employee of an art museum, she is also helping him out with his art career ambitions and she dispatches her boss to his residence to photograph his work. This poses another risk by providing them with another opportunity over which to bond. This is not Accounting by the way, but Art.

And, to make matters worse, in exchange for what she does for his art "career", he massages her FOR FREE . Nothing builds an unbreakable bond more than a free 4-hour massage session. There should at least be a fee to serve as a natural check and balance so that the feelings she develops for this man after years of classical conditioning are tweaked by the negative feeling associated with having to part with money. I am willing to wager that as good as this guy is, she wouldn't feel quite as strongly as she does if she has had to pay him. She should see him in the professional space he rents from a chiropractor and she should pay him, and not some discounted rate befitting a special relationship, but his full fee. 4 hours! Sheesh! What KIND of friendship is this -- that this male massage therapist would go at it for 4 hours?

Hey, I know I am neurotic on this one point, but it makes me ME and makes me human. And we all have our own idiosyncratic neuroses. Our complexes. I put up with yours. Well, this is mine.

When my fiance was divorcing her first husband, the bond between my fiance and her massage therapist deepened. Her masseur attributed her myofascial pain in her back and neck to alternating between wearing heels and wearing flip-flops after work. But during her divorce, stress was also added to the equation, and her idea of massages as a way of being "pampered" deepened. In her own words, she "loves being pampered." This phrase betrays her denials that her massages are "sensual." And I don't like the idea of my fiance being "pampered" by another man. I am fine with a couple buff eunuchs titillating her from a distance with giant feather fans, but I am not fond of her insistence on her male pedicurist, with whom she also has a 10-plus year relationship is a problem (I have to pick my battles, so I conceded that one). She also insists on attractive male physicians around her age, which prompts me to wonder whether there isn't a deep-seated psychosexual component to all this -- something Freud or Jung would run with. She received massages much more frequently over the course of her divorce when she learned that the massages are the salve for stress and that FREQUENT massages are far more therapeutic than LESS FREQUENT massages. And while it never came to fruition, the massage therapist did invite her out for drinks. To paraphrase her, he was and is "there for her" and even IF she ever gave him up as a masseur (which she will never do), she would never want to "stop talking to him."

4. My fiance is ridiculously attractive, but that's not the half of it. She has what has been referred to in one Seinfeld episode as "the kavorka" (raw animal magnetism). She is petite, small-boned, svelte, and has an Old World english-french beauty. She also is a very warm woman. To look at most women, you can see the "don't even talk to me" walls they put in front of them. But my fiance is very inviting. You can see it in her face. She is also very sensitive. You can see that she would be easily moved by words and gestures. In the parlance of a clinical psychologist with a psychodynamic orientation, all these characteristics combine to form a hook for the psychological projections of men. In other words, she brings out the maternal instinct in men. Men are drawn to her. Men feel that they can orgasm just from hugging her, and they yearn to, in the words of one of her 3 workplace stalkers, "take care of her."

5. The male massage therapist's wife is now divorcing him. Now it's the massage therapist's turn to go through a divorce. My fiance had used his marital status to reassure me in the past. Since divorces are emotional, and often accompany physical as well as emotional privation, I have to worry how that might change the dynamic of this "relationship." Just what will touching FIANCE NAME REDACTED mean to him now?

I wish she could understand me more and respect my feelings on this subject. I appreciate the magnitude of the sacrifice I am asking her to make. But I will be her husband. And in addition to the hours of massages I am willing to give her on a daily basis, I am willing to do all the research necessary to find her a same-sex therapist. She used a disparaging term to characterize the lack of strength in the two female massage therapists she once consulted. She insists on big strong man hands. But when I thought I had the green light from her to research same-sex therapists, my interviews (including the President of the AMTA) produced a promising lead in the form of the strong German deep tissue massage therapist who goes by the name "Olga." Olga doesn't sound as friendly or as sensual as NAME REDACTED, but I have tried everything.

At this point I just need the emotional space in which to design a way to cope with the inevitable -- or should I say the immutable. The fifth immutable law of physics: my fiance will forever be palmed and fingered and caressed by NAME REDACTED. She has scorned me for suggesting that in that deep and dark place in my heart lurks the raw unmitigated hope that NAME REDACTED would meet with an unfortunate accident.