Excerpt: "I’ve got to be honest with you guys — there are a few drawbacks to our little hobby. I’ve
jumped from second story windows while an angry. gun-waving husband charged up the stairs.
I’ve endured weeping women pounding on my door in the middle of the night, demanding to get
in and get some more. And more than one dinner party has cooled considerably when it became
apparent that I had been treating the hostess to dessert on the side!
And the plain fact is, what I want most for her is to have a wonderful time, and then to
send her back to a happier, more stable marriage.
So we need to extricate ourselves gracefully, if only so we have the time free to do her
neighbors as well!
So let’s borrow one last page from the romance novels. In these fantasies love is either
forever, or it is doomed — “a love that would not die, that could not be — star-crossed lovers
torn apart by fate ... ” Yeah, gag me! But they love it!
So when it’s time to move on. 1 use a language pattern that I call “The Locket”. And it works
every time. Because I have worked long and hard to keep my head and stay focused on what it is
that I want from all this, she has never been given to understand that I want anything permanent.
I’ve never encouraged her to talk about her husband and family. I’ve always told her that
my interest in her is as a woman, not as one of her other roles. And I have always insisted on
taking my pleasure with her as a woman.
So, basically I’ve ended up as someone who is a rare testosterone treat. And it’s not
realistic that this sort of relationship should last — the whole point of a “once-in-a-lifetime”
romantic adventure is that it happens once and then it’s over!
Who am I to mess with years of cultural conditioning?
So I tell her that you must understand something important. There ‘s something that is
drawing us apart — it’s not about you, it ‘s about me. I’ve had the enormous pleasure, the good
fortune to chance upon you and discover the amazing woman you had kept hidden inside. And I
have had the privilege to be the man who has drawn you into a life that is far richer for it.
But I need to do something now, and that means that that we can no longer be with each
other in the same ways. And I understand, now, that in all of your richness you must include that
which you have had at home as well. I am the man outside, and I am the one who must now go.
But in my memories 1 treasure all that we have shared. and all that we have been becoming
together. It‘s like if you were to lake a locket. And in this locket you can place all of our
laughter, our excitement, our pleasures, our disappointments, our memories. As the locket snaps
shut, put ii deep down inside, right next to your heart so that with every beat of your heart they
stay warm and strong. When you looked in the mirror that first lime, and you ‘re surprised to see that in spite of all
that we are doing, you still look the same? And all the profound changes are happening deep
inside?
It ‘s like that. And so for all the time to come, whenev er you feel lonely or afraid, whenever
you‘re feeling a little down ... Or just when you want to reach in and touch the essence of all that
is valuable about what we share, that locket full of our memories and dreams will be there.
It’s like that with me. And now, as one day ends and another begins, I know that you have
given me a prize beyond all measure.
I can’t begin to imagine when and where, and how, we will be able to meet again ... to laugh
and love, as men and women do.
But until and unless we do, that locket filled with thoughts, feelings, and memories will
remain the only remnant of this time — the warm coals glowing after the blaze burns low.
And so this is the truth — we ‘re a good thing, something rare and wonderful, that has had
our time together. And I lift my glass to you — you ‘re more than I expected, all I ever wanted,
and my life will be less without you!"