Beyond Inappropriate

Beyond Inappropriate By Wayne and Tamara I have an ex six years older than me. Our relationship was troubled in the end. He was doing drugs and drinking excessively, and I was obsessive about fixing him. Finally I moved out without a goodbye and went back to my hometown many miles away. As terrible as our relationship was, he was my first love, and it took me a long time to get over him. I fought myself from trying to contact him. At the destructive rate his life was going I was sure he would end up dead. I thought of him often but never tried to reach out. Until recently. One night I punched his name into a computer people search and out came his work phone number. I called him, chatting like a nervous magpie. We both cried as we spoke, and he apologized and said he often thought of me. He wished things could have been different. I have been married 10 years with three children, and he is married a year with a new baby. After I hung up I thought about what I really wanted to say, so I sat down and wrote an email. It was totally inappropriate because it reminisced on intimate details, but I made it clear I wasn’t going to be able to carry on the platonic relationship we discussed on the telephone. I told him I would always love him and wish him well in the world, and ended with, “This is the last time I will ever intrude in your life again.” I then deleted his email, threw away his phone number, and went on with my life—until I received an email from his wife. She was furious. I only read the first few angry lines. Since I promised not to intrude again, I asked a close friend to send my apologies and intimate they would never hear from me again. His wife must have gone to some lengths to email a second time because I blocked her email address. She said I ruined her marriage and hoped I was happy. Then she told me to “be woman enough to respond yourself.” I know I sent a letter I should have kept to myself, but I sent it and now don’t know what to do to make it better. Barb Barb, in one episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” the Enterprise is carrying an unusual cargo: a cocoon containing a beautiful young woman. This woman, Kamala, is an empathic metamorph, designed to mold herself to one man. She is on her way to be married, a marriage which will end a feud between warring factions. By mistake, however, the cocoon is opened and the first man Kamala sees is Captain Jean-Luc Picard. Seeing Jean-Luc, Kamala announces, “I am for you.” Though her mistake is explained and she goes through with the wedding, Kamala tells Picard she is bonded to him, not her husband-to-be. Because first-time intimacy is imbued with an idyllic power and affects social standing and a woman’s psyche, most women feel a bond to the first man they are intimate with. This is true even when they were lied to and told they were loved when they were not. It is true even when the woman was merely rebelling against something and had sex with the worst possible person. Ask yourself, what could possess a happily married woman with children to contact a former lover who was an alcoholic, drug-using loser? What wrongness might be in her life now? Something must be wrong with your “happily married,” because happily married people don’t go looking for former lovers. Consider also if you have a trait of taking action regardless of its effect on others. If that trait is negatively impacting your life, then with some guidance you may be able to stop acting inappropriately and temper your impulsivity with reason. Wayne & Tamara