How They Dealt

 Note: All names have been changed.

Pete and Julia Curtis were my neighbors growing up.  I would venture to say they were in their late 50s/early 60s.  Pete always had pure white hair from the time I knew him.  He was what people would call "distinguished"-a nice looking older man, well-dressed, you still took notice of his looks.  If he looked good, Julia looked even better.  In my entire life, I do not remember anyone as put together as Julia.  She always had her hair fixed meticulously and mostly wore skirts with flowing chiffon and pretty blouses.  I could count on one hand the times that I saw her in slacks, and even those were dressy.  Pete and Julia were always kind to me and the other children in the neighborhood, especially Julia.  They sat on their porch unless it was too cold, and that was a liberal definition.  Sometimes my parents would talk to them and I would join them, and Julia always treated me with kindness and respect.  When I got older, Julia and I even volunteered together for a local charity.  Pete was absolutely the matriarch of the neighborhood.  He was well-liked, well-respected, and had a magnetism that drew people to him.  The Curtis children went to school with my parents and had children around our age.  They were a well-enough known family in my section of the city, and they were well-respected for a reason. Pete and Julia were also very active in their local church.  Julia often took me to her vacation Bible school, and I always enjoyed going with her.  They seemed like pillars of the community.

When I was a teenager, I remember taking a walk with my mother and crossing paths with a very attractive woman in her 50s.  My mother seemed to at least vaguely know her, and she exchanged pleasantries with her.  When we got back to the house, my mother proactively said to me, "That woman that we saw-she is Pete's mistress."  I was taken back.  When I was extremely young, the assistant pastor of our church was said to have had an affair, but I didn't know what that really meant.  Affairs to me were things that you saw on a TV show like Dallas, not real life.  Pete was the first example of me finding out that someone I liked and respected had a major personal flaw.  I remember asking something to the effect of how long it had gone on, and my mother really didn't know.  All she knew is that they were having an affair for a long time, and it did not show any signs of slowing down.

Mae was a relative.  Mae was a lovely, nurturing woman who kept an immaculate home.  I actually thought she might have had OCD because she cleaned her home 40 hours a week.  Aside from being a homemaker, Mae kept an active life.  She was a fan of archery and was actually very talented at it.  Mae also participated in her church and was very close with her family, both immediate and extended.  Mae and my mother were very close, and I often visited her home.  She was always kind to me, I loved sitting in her kitchen and she would serve us food and drinks.  Mae's husband was named Dennis.  Truth be told, I wasn't wild about him from child on up.  I had been around him at family functions when he was drinking too much and he could be rather obnoxious.  He would sometimes give slobbery kisses, and I didn't feel close enough to him to have him kiss me.  Maybe that was part of it.  Dennis was not a real looker by any stretch of the imagination.  But, I figured as long as Mae loved him, and they did have a full life together, that was all that mattered.

At the time that Dennis and Mae were still alive and in relatively good health, I was helping to plan a party for a relative at a local club.  It was an old-time club of yesteryear, the social kind that played music on a weekend and average working stiffs would go and enjoy a night of socializing.  I was working with an older woman named Bea to arrange the party.  Bea was not particularly a handsome woman by any stretch of the imagination.  She seemed a bit rough around the edges, and she was not a very articulate person.  Bea was nice to me, however, and I couldn't say anything bad about our interaction.  When my mother asked who I dealt with there, I told her.  She chuckled and said, "That's Dennis' girlfriend."  I said, "What?" in complete astonishment.  I asked how long that was going on, and she said for years.  I was an adult by that time, and the concept of affairs was not foreign to me.  So, it wasn't as surprising as it was when I found out about Pete.

Over my adult years, I learned that extramarital affairs are a very complex subject with different causes and outcomes.  There are indiscretions on business trips and there are long-term affairs like the ones that Pete and Dennis participated in.  And it takes two people to be in those kinds of affairs.  I realize that many long-term affairs are born out of one partner not getting what they are needing out of their marriage.  But knowing Julia and Mae, they were both such lovely women and I cannot believe that any man would want to have someone else in their lives.  Pete and Dennis were both very different kind of men, and Dennis' girlfriend was also a different type of woman than his wife.  But yet their behavior and actions are repeated by millions of individuals throughout time, character, and area.  Ancient religious texts addressed affairs, considering them sin or immoral behavior.

Mae passed away in 2005 or 2006, and Julia passed away only around 5 years ago.  They were part of the "Greatest Generation" born in the early decades of the 20th century.  There were much different rules for women at that time in our country.  I always wondered, did they know?  If I knew and my parents knew, Mae and Julia had to have known.  Most descriptions that I have heard about affairs is that the partner being cheated on could feel their partner becoming distant, pulling away, exhibiting unfamiliar behavior, etc.  But after years and years, they had to have settled into a "knowing" about their situations.  The bigger problem is that at the time, women were encouraged to tolerate their cheating spouses.  "A lady turns her head" and pretends it is not going on.  Jackie Kennedy was largely considered the classiest First Lady our country has ever had.  She was required to "turn her head" and let her husband have numerous extramarital affairs.  It had to have been humiliating for her.  We didn't have the technology of today that would have helped to bring something like that to the general public, yet it was well documented about the affair with Marilyn Monroe.  Jackie always conducted herself as a debutante should, and part of that was always putting on a face to the public.  But whether you were Jackie Kennedy or a housewife, you were required to be a "good wife" and put your shame and feelings aside.  And if the First Lady had to do it, then it was fine for everybody else.  That was so wrong.  Think of the Tammy Wynette song, "Stand By Your Man."  I have yet to hear a song called, "Divorce His Philandering Ass."  It was somehow considered virtuous that a woman stand behind a cheating husband.  When I think about this, who made these rules?  There has never been a shortage of patriarchy in American society. It was probably very convenient for men to be able to have these arrangements without it going against the grain of society.  Sadly, in those days, women did not have educations like subsequent generations of women and the options of work and self-support.  You might have been "stuck," especially if you had children.  This was a vicious cycle.

I do not know if Mae or Julia ever knew about their husbands' longtime affairs.  And for some people, no matter what gender they identify with, it may be acceptable to them.  We don't know.  Some individuals may know about their spouse's other partner and as long as they come home to them at the end of the night and give them some sort of at least physical security and care, they may not mind.  But, we are not talking about those kinds of marriages here.  We are talking about the overwhelming rule that women had to turn their heads and allow their husbands to have affairs. And that needed to be acceptable.  It should NEVER have been acceptable.  Most people who marry for love and in good faith are devastated by their partner's affair.  It is shameful that women were made to deny their grief, "hold their head high" and just pretend it was not happening.  I am grateful that we live in a different time now.  Divorce has become normalized in our society, and even though it is not ideal, it is sometimes necessary.  People are delaying marriage and seem to realize that you do not have to settle on a partner, that it is okay to wait for the right person rather than marrying at an assigned age or time as previous generations did.  Nobody, regardless of gender, needs to tolerate someone who does not take their marriage vows seriously.  I do believe that sometimes genuine accidents do happen, and I will be the first to acknowledge that making a vow to remain faithful when that meant maybe 60 or more years of your life may have been difficult.  But I also do believe that commitment and love are to be reciprocal.  If your spouse is giving their best, you need to give it return.

As for Mae and Julia, I will remember them fondly for the wonderful, kind, and classy women that they were.