That "freaked out mother" feeling without the baby

You know how mothers go around seeing the world as a terrifying place for the first few years of their baby's life but then a few years later they're staying on the bench and just shouting "don't eat dog doo-doo, honey" rather than nervously cleaning the park before putting down baby? I think I have that - not about babies but about marriage. I read the book, "How to Affair-Proof Your Marriage" and drug poor Dave through every one of the exercises. Exasperated one day, he said, "Hon, no matter what we do now, in the end, whether or not we cheat, comes down to one choice on one day and nothing can completely prepare us for whatever happens that day." Well, I thought him wise. I married him for being wise like that, but I still feel like that nervous mom running around looking for baby hazards. I still don't like his female best friend and I don't get why they can't just agree to do things in public rather than in endless text messages and emails. It makes me crazy every time that phone buzzes and I've been tempted to do crazy things like delete his account since it's under my name. And this whole Jon & Kate thing is making me worse, since the guy has a reality TV show focused on him and his 8 kids and he still found time to cheat on his wife! (John Edwards fathered a baby after his wife nearly died and while he ran for President!) It all just puzzles me.

But through it all, I realize the wisdom of Dave's words. There's no preparing for it. Who we are happens in the momentary details of our lives. My dear college friend woke up on January 1st to hear her husband announce that his New Year's resolution was to get a divorce. He'd been a devoted family man and now he is a relative stranger to the people he once loved. I don't get how it happens, but I know, in my heart, that it's all about personal choices and no one knows for sure who they'll be in 5, 10, 15 or 50 years. You just hold your breath and walk down the long tunnel. Maybe everybody cheats. Maybe the lucky wives and husbands are the ones who just don't know about it. Or maybe our society just over-romanticizes love to the point that we've abandoned all personal responsibility to our commitments, even if it means going without that hot, new love affair when life gets old and stale.

Poor Dave had on a nature program the other day about why men cheat - it was about the biological need to reproduce and the fact that human children are relatively self-sufficient after age 4, so there's no biological reason to remain with an old mate. I pitched a fit, of course, because it just reinforced my paranoia about marriage. The poor guy - of course that phone buzzed at that precise moment. I stormed off to bed with a huffy, "Well, tell her that, biologically, once I pop out a kid, she's only got a few more years to wait and you'll be ready for a seedy motel somewhere!"

That wasn't appreciated but the mean part of me just didn't care at that moment (and I still don't like the needy best friend). But I really hope that in a few years, I will be lazily enjoying the sun and just shouting reminders to Dave about the doggy doo-doo of cutthroat female behavior while he remains devoted, safe, and loving. But only time will tell, as the celebrities love to prove, time and again.