Dear Mrs. Bluth,
I have been sitting here for the past two hours, wondering about what I am about to do and how to put it into words. I know that you are trustworthy, as a few of my friends have written in with problems they were too ashamed or frightened to divulge to a therapist or rav for fear it would be the end of their marriage or respectability in the community or hurt their children in shidduchim if people were able to identify them directly. You were able to give them sound and helpful instruction without divulging any incriminating information that would lead people to know who they were. So, please do your magic here too, and help me out of a very tormenting situation. Just so you know, I am a sixty-nine-year-old man, up until recently, happily married, or so I thought, father of seven and grandfather of nine.
My wife is a wonderful woman and I still love her dearly, but something happened about four months ago that has turned my life upside down. Shortly before Pesach we attended a wedding in Long Island. My wife and I were having a great time connecting with friends we hadn’t seen in a long time, when suddenly one of her distant cousins came into the hall with his new wife. I almost had a heart attack on the spot. His new wife (#3) was the girl I had almost married before I met my wife. I was deeply in love with her as a bochur. She was petite, beautiful and everything I thought I wanted, but my parents did not think she was the right one for me. No matter how I threatened them I wouldn’t get married to anyone else, they stood their ground, not being specific for their reasoning and only saying the feedback they received was not the best. Nothing I could say or do in defense of her virtue could sway them and so after months of weeping, fasting and idle threats, I realized she was lost to me when she got engaged to someone from Antwerp and I never saw or heard about her thereafter.
It took me two years before I met my wife and married. Life moves quickly in that we had our first child just before our first anniversary. Eventually all the memories about ‘Edna’ all but stopped. I was successful in my business endeavors and was staunchly supportive of my shul and the yeshivos that my children attended, so much so that I was often called upon as guest of honor for their various functions. My children grew up on the derech, baruch Hashem, and we had beautiful weddings for them and then brisim and kiddushim for the grandchildren that followed. Life was good and uncomplicated, until that night four months ago, when Edna reappeared and all those old feelings came barreling out and I was suddenly 21 again!
Edna didn’t age a day. She was as stunningly beautiful and petite as she had been, even more so if that was possible, not a wrinkle, not an ounce of fat and not a sign of age anywhere. I had to excuse myself saying I was going to get a drink. In truth, I could barely tear myself away from her, but had to, before my wife would notice how I had broken out in a sweat and gone as pale as a sheet of paper. While I sat with my drink, Edna made her way to the bar and sat down next to me and smiled that same beguiling smile that had so smitten me in my youth. She started the conversation by saying that I was still as handsome as ever and she was pleased to see me. In the course of our short conversation she revealed that my wife’s cousin was her fourth husband and that she could never find anyone she cared about as much as she cared about me. At this juncture, I realized I was sinking quickly into that quicksand and if I didn’t pick myself up and walk away, something really awful would happen. I didn’t walk away, I bolted, spilling my drink on myself in the process.
For the last four months, Edna invaded my every waking moment, haunting me, taunting me and making my life both Heaven and Hell. My wife cannot understand what I’m going through and wants me to go for a complete physical. I look at my wife, whom I do love, but suddenly see the fuller, older model next to Edna’s perfect and slender being that time hasn’t touched. Our intimacy has suffered as well thus leading her to believe that there is a physical reason for my disinterest, and for this I am thankful. I don’t ever want anything to upset my marriage or affect my family in an adverse way. That is the reason for this letter and hopefully, you will be able to provide a solution that will keep it so, as well as to erase Edna from my memory banks.
Dear Friend,
I feel for you, truly I do. Very few people ever come face to face with their past as vividly and physically as you have and come away untouched. It is said that first loves are the hardest to forget, you have to lay them to rest, give them a mental funeral, say a keil malei over them and hope they never come back to haunt you, but you weren’t that lucky. Edna reappeared in the flesh, so to speak, and tried to make a go at making you husband #5.
Just look at her and see her for what she is, not who she was, someone who wanders from husband to husband never really loving anyone but herself. Then look at what you have, a beautiful family, children you can take pride in, delicious grandchildren, a good life that affords you the ability to be a respected pillar of your community and a wonderful wife who supported you in all your endeavors and helped you achieve it all, so she’s entitled to a few wrinkles and to add some extra weight (which I’m sure gorgeous Edna magically rids herself of with constant cosmetic nips, tucks and lifts and other procedures and a little Botox here, there and everywhere to make her skin as smooth as an icicle). Why even measure you wife’s genuineness next to Edna’s plastic persona? You have the real deal! Don’t take a chance and gamble it away on thoughts of ‘yesterday’ and ‘what might have been’. Live in the moment, in the here and now, this is real and it’s good and consider yourself lucky you weren’t husband #1 on Edna’s never ending quest for the best! I think you should make a kiddush hoda’ah and say “Baruch shepitrani” that you escaped the claws of danger and never again allow thoughts of that woman to cross your mind. If it should happen that your memory betrays you, take out your wallet and look at the photos of everything you’ve been blessed with because you listened to your parents those many years ago. For that act of kibbud av v’aim HaKodosh Boruch Hu smiled upon you and blessed you with wealth beyond measure and happiness beyond words!
