My Husband’s Wife - Chapter 3

Six months later, I could not help but acknowledge defeat! Sure, my husband was supremely talented but his talent was the kind perfectly suited to making women cry. And smile and laugh and obsess. Yuwen had that gift of knowing exactly what you wanted. He could make anyone feel good about themselves. What are you insecure about? Your looks? Skills? Personality? Background? Financial status? Health? Age? He could make you feel that everyone else should aspire to be you. That you were unique, special, revered; and our young master Yuwen, he did not tell lies.

He didn’t say to plain women, they were beautiful, he told them of his body’s shivers, of wanting to touch skin, of desire. He didn’t insist you were smart if you were not, he spoke of comfort, of simplicity, of a maddening wish to relax, to escape to your side.

Of course, these skills came with a double edge, since he knew exactly what was best to say and how best to say it, then he certainly knew what the worst things were. He could target insecurities with just the right words to shatter and crush you. His attacks were cruel, vicious and hurtful. And as the wife forced on him, I trained my imperviousness under the lash of his tongue.

Half a year of marriage trained my character more than all of my previous 26 years including that last year in which I had suffered both heartbreak and the taint of scandal. I had thought I was strong, I became strong. I had thought I was smart, I became smarter. I thought I was eloquent, I spoke better. I believed I was a good judge of character, I judged faster.

Marriage to Xue was an education. Of course, one cannot blame or praise Yuwen for all of it, with our marriage my circumstances and responsibilities had changed drastically. Such a change was also half to blame and be praised. To no one’s surprise, Yuwen’s lifestyle did not suffer much change despite his marriage. He was still the legendary playboy. Only he no longer let his affairs provide inspiration or income for the journalism industry.

After our first night, I was often visited in my bedchambers by our young master. His visits were not to take advantage of me, at least not physically; but to allow his verbal prowess an energetic workout. At first, I suffered his attentions quietly. I was still in a sort of suspended state. The speed and the shock value of events had inured me to a degree to reality. I was not out of it, or anything like that. In fact, I was continually thinking, weighing one action against the other. I was fighting my hardest to best fit, to become a part of the family I married into.

I could not say I succeeded after all my efforts were most positively received by Mother and the staff who were completely loyal to her. Since she had chosen me in the first place, it would be a fallacy to claim I was quickly adapting to the situation due to my own efforts. I knew that in truth, they were her efforts. I was only doing my very best to follow the path she laid for me while slowly solidifying and expanding it.

So, I invested my every mental faculty in adjusting to my new circumstances including the entertainment my husband’s paramours. Yet, when facing my husband, there was always a sense of unreality and suspension. Thus, I let him tear into me with his words those first few weeks after our wedding. My silence seemed to aggravate him. His taunts got more pointed. He flaunted his affairs with even more arrogance. Our marriage bed was long abandoned.

I often wondered what point he was trying to make when he took me on our wedding night? The most logical conclusion was punishment. Yuwen was punishing me using the best weapon he knew; his affection. The first part was easy to figure out. The second part took a bit longer. Even after we had resumed sexual congress in the third month of our marriage, when he would indulge himself with me one moment and treat me like a leper in the next, l still couldn’t see the whole picture. In fact, it took me a year to realize how cruelly he used this weapon to play with me.

He was insidious. There were the bedroom visits where he would attack my character and question my motivation. The social engagements in which he either showed how much he hated me or forced intimacy in public settings in which I was most uncomfortable. His girlfriends, of course, hate my guts and always do their best to embarrass and shame me. He belittled me at the company. Often, I was left giving orders while fighting the need to run and hide from the mocking whispers and gazes.

But just when I began to seriously consider letting go, whenever I wanted to give up. He would be kind. He would be supportive. He would exert himself to help with whatever problem I was facing at the time, whether it had to do with my family, the company, an irate ex of his, or the regretful ex of mine. And yes, he would always succeed in making me feel better, in attaching me to him.

Of course, such attachment always made me hurt even more once he returned to his mean self. The worst thing, one would think that all my affection would be exhausted and absent after this so that each turn of the cycle would mean he would have to start building all over again, but it wasn’t like that. Like a psychic, he always managed to flip phases just before the last traces of feelings were extinguished. Humans are strange creatures, those traces never failed to draw the old feelings out so that my feelings for him always kept growing. Was this grace or not, I do not know, but the negative feelings, never fully gone, also survived and grew along with the good.

I loved my husband more with the passing of each cycle and I hated him more with every turn of his wheel. Do not get misguided, I was not in love with him. But he was my husband, my family, I believed I should love him, I wanted to love him. Only he made that both very difficult and very easy for me. Worse, I do not think he consciously planned it.

No, the nastiest part is that he made me believe that he did not plan it, that the cycle is not a conscious choice of his. As long as I believe this I cannot completely hate. My husband really is the worst kind of villain- one that will definitely eventually kill you but that you cannot attack. He is the Prince from the Little Mermaid. Still, I know that even to save myself I can never stab him. But I am not as altruistic as she, so I resent and I hate.