Ed had been making excuses for Marijo for two decades, minimizing her drinking, covering up for her, pretending that nothing was wrong. Today that's known as "enabling behavior," and its a no-no. Now husbands whose wives drink too much are told to stage interventions, join support groups, and march the whole family to a therapist's office. But my grandmother drank at a time when the people you loved showed their love by covering for you. They lied, they threw out the cans of Schlitz you hid in the piano, they dumped your vodka down the sink and filled the bottle back up with water, they pulled your head out of the oven and put you to bed, and the next day pretended that nothing had happened."

All of this came rushing into my head when our friends - the wife who wanted to have a three-way with her husband - announced a few months later that they were divorcing. The wife wants to have her sexual adventures, the ones she missed out on by marrying young. Since there's no room in their marriage for a little constructive, stabilizing nonmonogamy, - and since they can't have their sexual adventures together - their marriage has to end. It's a shame, isn't it? A little nonmonogamy could have saved their marriage, I'm convinced, but they can't conceive of being married without being sexually exclusive. It's too bad for their three traumatized little girls that their parents aren't gay men, isn't it?