About a year ago I was parked at a shopping center where I had run in to pick up invitations for our annual holiday party. I was sitting there, sifting through the invites, thinking about what a great job I'd done picking them out, with a coupon no less. Then, I saw it, like an advertisement from a really great campaign, in slow motion, with music. There was a man, not just any man, a handsome, perfectly groomed, metrosexual man getting out of a perfectly clean, detailed, gorgeous, new looking Mercedes. Every piece of his clothing was in place, no straggly hems, scuffs or tears to be seen, in his hand was a shiny iPhone. He eased out of the shiny car, without effort, and walked toward a trendy shop nearby. He was like a magazine advertisement come to life just feet from me.
My first thought, honestly, was, "If we met in one of these nearby bars and I was sitting near him I wonder if Mercedes Man would take me home." By take me home I don't mean give me a ride home because I was having a medical emergency and needed a charitable favor, I'm talking about the other sinful kind of take me home, uh huh, now you're with me. Sort of an odd thought considering I am A. happily married and B. have never been taken home by anyone in a casual sort of way in my life. I looked down at myself in my petrified chicken nugget strewn minivan that looked like an explosion of Barney's playhouse. I noticed my yoga pants and stretchy top. My yoga pants were not the sexy Lululemon top of the line type, but the Target clearance rack specials, paired with a blue tank top I had had for years. I sighed, disgusted with myself for even thinking about Mercedes Man in the first place, then I called some life lines.
The first friend I called listened to me recount my story, didn't even laugh and told me she experienced this kind of thing all the time. Although in addition to fantasizing about men with clean and tidy cars she also thought about the hotels with clean and tidy sheets they would take her to and the room service they would order. "Really, it's the clean car, room service and hotel I'm attracted to." she admitted. Then she laughed with me for being so ashamed.
With the next friend I called, I had a serious discussion about Mercedes Man, what my thoughts meant about me, my marriage and my satisfaction with my life. We talked about how hard it was to always be dirty, to have a filthy minivan full of crumbs and papers all the time. No time for makeup or hair, muffin tops spilling over our jeans, tankinis instead of bikinis, undergarments that suddenly were all beige and sensible. We talked about how our lives were so changed and unrecognizable. Mercedes Man, I knew, wasn't about an affair at all, it was about my sense of loss of myself. Who was I? Certainly a mom, but what about the person who fell in love with my husband, who himself was once a man terrified of minivans and meticulous about car care? How to reconcile the two? I knew the next step to take, but it would be the scariest.
I went home, put away the invites and waited for UberGeek to arrive. We did our evening family stuff, then put the kids to bed. Then I told him I had to tell him something; I told him everything. I told him about Mercedes Man, about my feelings of inadequacy and unattractiveness. How tired I was of trashy cars and a body I didn't always recognize as my own. Then I did some crying, Mercedes Man, you see, had nothing to do with UberGeek, and everything to do with me. I had been blessed with all that I had ever wanted, a wonderful husband, two kids, a great home, but I was struggling to reconcile that with the few comparatively small things that I had lost.
We figured it out that night, the two of us, together, and that's what makes our marriage.
