Danger signs your relationship is a risk of affairs. (Or just don't marry a guy who works in Silicon Valley.)

This is from Mira Kirshenbaum, a relationship expert and author of Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay and Women and Love. I'm reposting an excerpt from her blog. She is being interviewed about how to tell if your partner is cheating.

Mira: Here are the three big, real danger signs that your relationship is at risk of one of you having an affair.

1) Things aren’t good between you. The two of you are distant, disconnected, fighting, not making love as often as you used to, and not having fun when you are together.

2) You’re leading very separate lives. You’re not spending much of your free time together.

3) Even if you’re not fighting and even if you are spending time together, if you start having the feeling that your guy just doesn’t care about you that much any more, that there’s a ‘whatever’ quality to how he treats you, then there’s a real risk that he is having an affair. (Note here she uses the masculine assuming the man will be the one out trying new ice cream flavors while the long-suffering woman sits home wondering what's wrong with her. Mira's a bit sexist, no?)

Why was I reading this? Slow morning at work. Ex did not cheat on me with another woman. He's not wired that way. He's too noble, has too much integrity and he's way too shy. However, #3 still rang true for me. Ex cheated on me with his job. (And this socially sanctioned; when I mentioned how much he worked, our marriage therapist said "that's how you get all that nice shit you have" -- or something like that.) He was mute and distracted and up all night in the other room typing away on his hot, little laptop. He claims to have hated it. He hated it so much he couldn't talk about it. I still don't really know what he does. More on this topic tomorrow after my computer gets fixed. Typing without a functioning track pad is painful. It turns out I'm the one without any integrity.

I need a wife.

Somebody to buy cat food and make dinner and put out my recycling. And massage my son's head which I've just had a request for.

Apparently I'm one of those types who needs a lot of down time to stare at things. And putter. I like to putter. Without my putter time, I get pull-out-my-hair irritable and little things --  like the fact my semi-new laptop's trackpad is on the fritz -- make me want to pull out my eyebrows.

DVD review: The Killers

First of all, I do not like Katherine Heigl as an actress. (I don't know her personally but I do think that, given the roles she chooses to play I probably wouldn't like her as a person either.) I saw this movie to keep peace between me, Mario, and Big Guns -- it was the only thing we could agree on. Like most politics, it was a least common denominator choice.
Ashton Kutcher plays a hit man who keeps his career a secret from Katherine, his cautious, conservative love interest. It's the old opposites attract/sparks fly plot. So what happens is she finds out about his line of work and sparks fly. There's a little plot twist that I won't spoil for you in case you need to see it. A still-fine Tom Selleck plays Katherine's dad and, here's why I'm even writing this review, Catherine O'Hara plays her mother, who is obviously an alcoholic and plays it for laughs, dumping half a quart of vodka into a pitcher of tomato juice while breakfasting with Tom and chatting with her daughter on the phone then picking up the pitcher and drinking it. Ha ha. It's a dysfunctional family in extreme; no one seems to even notice her problem or even asks her to leave them some Vodka. It's hard to imagine this happening if she'd been walking around covered in open sores or riddled with cancer. I'm ashamed to admit that I laughed at her a few times but it was really off putting and strange.
There was The Ugly Truth, now this. That's two strikes against you, Katherine.

Marriage is like a tangled ball of thread

My ties to ex are slowly breaking. I see, or feel it, now. Our relationship was like a huge, hopeless ball of tangled thread, the kind you leave in the bottom of the sewing basket thinking that someday you'll tackle it when you have the patience and time and a good magnifying glass so you leave it there where, miraculously unassisted, it continues to grow and gather lint fluff and stray buttons and pins.

I am slowly pulling our tangled nightmare apart. The difficult thing is that I have to examine every knot before I can untangle them: that was my part, that was his part, that was my part, ok, done. Of course, the threads are never the same; they're all wrinkly and twisted and will never wind up smoothly.

After more than a year, I am starting to see us as two separate, messy piles and not one big one. Yes I can imagine living without him for the rest of my life. (Not that it isn't still weird.) But everything I do -- go to reading, visit a museum, buy a pair of shoes -- isn't accompanied with a jealous take that! you bastard. Sometimes I do things and don't even think of him at all. Progress, not perfection.

Odds and ends.

Does anybody else hate the overly sensitive tracking pad on their MacBook so that when you inadvertently brush your hand across it the windows on the screen go large or small and you think that there's something wrong with your eyes? No?

I got my first paycheck from the second agency. They use a service, a sort of temp agency, since they hire so many freelancers and the temp agency takes out all the taxes and what not and over half of my check went to the government. Ex never complained about taxes -- he lived on grants and government loans and assistance for so long -- seriously, he didn't have a real, full-time job until he was in his 30s! -- that he was happy to give back and give more. He was grateful for good roads and stuff like that. I'm trying to channel some of him right now.

One week down.

Seven to go. Everybody in this agency, save for five or so big shots, works in a big, open pen outfitted with long tables, which are like desks for three. There aren't even cubicles. It makes it very difficult to play my Scrabble turn without the whole office seeing they're paying me to beat my friend B with another "QAT" on a triple word score. So. The work. It's just not that interesting -- Sisyphean in fact. I'd open a vein if I thought this is what I'd have to do for the rest of my life but I'm sure all will be forgotten as soon as I get my first paycheck. It'll certainly help pay for the $5 grande latte I have to suck down at 3 every day to make it till quitting time. I try a different flavor everyday! Pumpkin spice lattes are back! It must be fall.

I'd like this to end now.

Maybe an exectomy would help. I did purge my house of all photos of him, us and his family. I put them in a bag for him to deal with or throw away. I don't think I should have to deal with the all the detritus of our past. What to do with this porcelain statue of a wedding couple (a wedding gift from friends of my parents)? What to do with that old wedding dress of mine -- 25 lbs. of Scaasi designed beauty? I'm thinking Ebay.
Things are slightly better now that he's back in the country and I'm not imagining him, or rather his girlfriend, buying Hermes scarves and Prada purses at Italian prices which is just crazy since she doesn't seem the type. And is that truly, shallowly what I had my panties in a wad about? I didn't get to shop in Italy because my husband and I got divorced? I think so. Mario was excited to see ex after two weeks and excited to see what ex brought him. (Apple doesn't fall far from tree, I'm afraid.) Saturday he swung by to pick up a video game and I asked him what his dad got him. "A shirt like this," he points to the shirt on his back that ex brought back for him from ex's "you went to rehab so I get to go to Italy" trip last year, "and a bracelet." "I'm sorry," I said. But inside I was doing a jig because ex screwed up, that he forgot what he bought Mario last year and, apparently, forgot that he's a boy, at least a boy who doesn't have proclivities for jewelry. That's what I'd like to be done with. Taking joy in somebody's failures, at least somebody who hasn't been elected.