When my mother, or a few of my friends who are aware that Lauren and I are no longer together, probe into my resolve to divorce her, I insist that I am repelled by her rather than attracted by anyone else. This usually comes up in the context of Lauren’s discovery of my infidelity, my long-standing love for a number of women. Indeed, it is not my love for Anita or Nada or Helen or Lesley that is pulling me away from my wife. It is surely true that I am thoroughly fed up by my life with Lauren and that this is the main reason why I wish to end this marriage. Still, in the rare and brief moments when I consider the possibility of accepting Lauren’s passionate entreaties to come back to her, I do feel that I would thereby lose something important or even dear to me. In the rare and brief moments when I experience a touch of love for Lauren, and when my resolve temporarily weakens, I do feel that something is pulling me away from her. It is not any particular woman, anyone I am already close to or anyone I may wish to become closer to, but women in general. Although my marriage obviously does not preclude occasional illicit excursions, including long-term and loving relationships, it makes real debauchery difficult, if not impossible. I want to make love to as many women as I can lay my hands on. I want to fuck and fuck and fuck. I want to fuck to exhaustion, if not to death. To put it squarely, if a bit harshly, it is the raw, juicy, steaming cunt that I crave. The vague promise of pure indulgence is what is at stake when I consider, no matter how fleetingly, some kind of reconciliation with Lauren. Again, the “opportunity cost” of marriage is not something I contemplate at any length, or in any detail, but it is lurking somewhere in the recesses of my mind. Dragged out into the limelight like this, my lust is but a wriggling caricature of itself, but I am still happy to have spotted it and brought it out in the open. Exaggerated or not, that lust now strikes me as something unbecoming, even hideous.