How to Wreck a Marriage
by Brian Christopher Giddens
Start by finding the right partner.
Choosing the appropriate partner will help you to grow into the best bastard you can be and is key to a successful outcome.
Someone who is too giving, too kind, too enamored of you to draw a line in the sand when you behave badly.
Someone who loves you. Who believes you have some inner goodness, just waiting to emerge.
Move on to setting up your mise en scene. Start with disrespect. Ignore her and then question why she gets so upset having to repeat, remind, and re-plan everything she had arranged for the weekend. Include an abundance of humiliation. Discount what she says at dinner parties by pretending to listen, and then, just as she finishes, launch into your own unrelated story. Don’t show up at her family gatherings after promising you would attend, even though she attends all of yours. Flirt with the waitress in front of her friends. Have the neighbors see you come home at seven in the morning in your work suit from yesterday, and then leave an hour later in a fresh suit after grabbing a shower and an orange juice.
When she cries, turn away. When she reaches out for you, shake her off, as if she's a pest, wanting to suck you dry.
Mix in an ample portion of indiscretion. Start lightly, to sow doubt, to confuse, to make her question her own judgement when she should be questioning yours. Then whip it up to a higher speed with a blatant level of sex on the side. Vigorously shake it up by blaming her for your infidelities.
Sear just to the burning point the last of your intimacy by telling her she doesn’t excite you anymore. Increase the intensity by kneading out what's left of her ego, criticizing her clothes, her hair, her dress, those extra five pounds that, in reality, you've both put on in the past year.
Check for doneness by inserting the tester into the heart of it all until its devoid of any crumbs of hope, of reconciliation.
Let it rest. For reckoning.
Serve with a generous scoop of shame.
Brian Christopher Giddens is returning to a life-long love of creative writing after a career as a social worker, professor, and administrator in health care. Brian has studied writing with the creative writing programs at University of Washington and Stanford University. He has completed several short stories, one of which was recently published in Silver Rose Magazine and is currently working on a novel. Brian is a native of Seattle, Washington, where he lives with his husband and Jasper the dog. Brian can be contacted at BrianChristopherGiddens@outlook.com.