Quest of a Closet Poker Player

Some people believe there is only one person on Earth who they can share a life with. Some people feel marriage is an antiquated relationship model, that the bond and value between two individuals has a shelf life as adults change.
This is the fourth part of a series where I am examining all parts of my life and how poker has impacted it. The criteria I will use in looking at this question include all parts of my life:

• Spiritual
• Financial
• Career
• Physical Fitness
• Marital Relationship
• Parent
• Intellectual
• Friendship
• Psychological

This may be the most delicate part of the series, and I need to put a few disclaimers out. First, I’m no expert in marriage. Since I try not to actually speak with other human beings most of the time, I know hardly anything about anyone else’s marriage or relationship. Nothing I say may be relevant to anyone but me.

Having said that, I’ve been married for 15 1/2 years. Sweetie and I met while she was interning at the manufacturing facility I worked at. It was the summer between her third and fourth year in college. She was in a dual degree program of Furman’s in G-Vegas, where she went three years there then two years at Georgia Tech. Her first year at Tech completed her degree requirements for Furman, and her second year at Tech completed her degree requirements at Georgia Tech. She received a BS in Chemistry from Furman and a in Chemical Engineering from Georgia Tech.

I was living with an absolute hottie at the time, a purely platonic apartment sharing. How L never killed me is beyond me. It was her apartment to start with, and a fairly small two-BR one at that. I was an average to slightly above average guy as far as keeping things neat, which means I was one step above a pig. I had gotten two cats for some unknown reason, and L let the cats out of the apartment so that they could get fleas. We ended up flea infested and bombing the apartment, still disgusting to think about for me now.

I’d met Sweetie a couple of times but didn’t think a whole lot about it. I worked like a dog, although I’d moved from shift supervisor to process engineer to department manager, so I didn’t work nights like I did at one time. Basically, I had no social life other than eating at Monterrey’s Mexican Restaurant in a converted Sizzlin’ Steakhouse. My goal was to eat there so often that they simply brought me food when I arrived, and I am happy to say I accomplished this when I converted from the three-day meal plan to the four-day meal plan.

I set up L on a blind date with a hip divorced twentysomething guy, and for some reason unknown to me I asked Sweetie if she wanted to double date. It was mainly out of protection for L that I did this, as the guy had a bit of a reputation among the guys. She said yes and gave me directions. I knew her at work by one name, but since she was a baby she was known by Sweetie (or something very similar to that). I went to pick her up at the wrong house, then finally found her house, met her parents and very young brother (10 or 9 maybe). We met L and the guy at a local bar/restaurant, ended the night at a dance club, then I took her back to her house. L and the guy had just a horrible time, and Sweetie and I connected.

We dated the last few weeks of the summer, and I told her I was eager to see her at Georgia Tech. “Atlanta is kind of far away,” she said, in retrospect trying to tell me that two hours was plenty distant for her to get from me as she opened a new chapter in her life. But I was smitten.

Courtship, connecting with her family, learning about this quiet lady, one very difficult bump in the road, engagement, and then a wedding two years to the day after our first date. One evening, we had a double date with another work friend of mine and one of Sweetie’s girlfriends where we went to the same restaurant, ended at the same dance club, kissed on the same stairs in her house that we’d done on our first date. Then a ring, a question, and she said yes and woke up her parents. I’d asked her father for her hand, bottle of bourbon in hand.

After we got married, we went on our honeymoon at the Half Moon Club in Jamaica. We moved to Philadelphia into a corporate apartment as I followed her in her first job in research for a large chemical company. We ended up living in a garage apartment in Princeton, maybe my favorite place we’ve ever lived. We bought a house outside of Cherry Hill eventually, then moved to Phoenix (Gilbert), Detroit (Brighton), Morristown NJ, then to the ATL here in Alpharetta. Three boys along the way, trips together to Hawaii, England, Paris, Venice/Lake Cuomo, Tuscany.

I may have a bit of a unique philosophy on my marriage with Sweetie. My belief is that next to my faith, that my relationship with Sweetie is the most important thing in my life. This isn’t something I say lightly; it is something I say decisively. For me, it is more important to love her and invest in our relationship than it is our three boys. That may be startling to some. My thought is that as an adult now, I love my Mom and my Dad, I love my sister and my brother, of course I love each of my boys and would do anything for them. But I want to be with Sweetie tomorrow, I want her to be fulfilled and happy. So this guides me on a daily basis.

These last eighteen months have been in some ways the toughest months of our marriage, and it’s all about these changes that I’m going through. Many men define themselves by their career, and I’ve been no exception to that. Stereotypically, if you meet someone in the US, the first thing they ask is what they do for a living. In the South, the first thing they ask in many places is where you’re from. Who I am has been shaped much by what job I have, how that relates to others my age, how much I was compensated. In fact, it has always been more of a measuring stick for me than looking at someone’s car or house, as those purchases often meant fiscal stupidity to show the neighbor how good you were.

As my business has backtracked and my career stagnated, I have gone through long stretches of distance, of sleeping on the couch, of insomnia. Sweetie has been with me through this as well as has bonded more closely to her best friend in Hilton Head. Some may have felt threatened by this relationship. For me, it has been a comfort that Sweetie has had someone close to be with and confide in as I morphed into someone else.

A characteristic of our marriage which I’m sure most people would find bizarre is that we never fight nor have a disagreement. This is similar to me saying that I never drink; I don’t mean I never pass out, I mean I never drink. I don’t mean I’ve never hit Sweetie; I mean we never raise our voice to one another. It is tied almost completely to the gentle spirit of Sweetie, to her caring nature, to her unselfishness, and to our strange process-based way of going about figuring things out. We tend to look at things analytically rather than emotionally, we tend to talk alot about bigger things. We’ve been very fortunate to not have finances be a topic of disagreement and stress, and I’ve often told her how blessed we are to have that whole topic eliminated as a cause of concern and strife.

I had a post once a long time ago where I proposed the following question: Who is the least weird person you know? As I tried to answer the question, my opinion was that I really couldn’t name anyone who wasn’t pretty weird. Sweetie was the least weird person I knew, but let’s be real here. She has a shrine to Tom Cruise in the cabinet of our laundry room which includes several magazine pages torn out as well as an MI:2 popcorn bag. I mean, that’s pretty weird and unsettling.

I have the best wife in the world, blah, blah, blah and all that, but let me be clear. Sweetie is very, very bright. She is very, very caring. She is very unselfish. She is not materialistic at all. We are very fortunate that she hasn’t worked since we moved to Phoenix, and she’s been able to invest in our boys completely. When she’s gone to the neighborhood Book Club or Botox party (she didn’t sign up), she’s come back to say, “I was the only person who wasn’t a cheerleader in high school.”

I think I’ve learned more about being loved and marriage in the last eighteen months than I’d ever known before. It would have been easier in many ways if we’d had an event to rally around, if my leg would have been cut off while wielding a chainsaw or I’d had a heart attack or been fired or arrested or something. This gradual malaise, this molasses-like spiral that I’ve been in has been like boiling a frog for me and for Sweetie. I’ve always thought that my marriage to Sweetie is the most important thing in my life, and I’ve experienced what that means tactically. Basically, it means unconditional love, complete unselfishness, relentless caring without suffocation.

And poker?

Sweetie has gradually supported me being involved in poker and playing as she’s seen different positives come out of it. But let’s be clear.

Poker is a selfish pursuit. It is one of the first things other than sitting in my chair at night watching TV that is purely about me. Furthermore, it is extremely time consuming. I think Sweetie at one time worried that I would announce I was heading with every dollar we had to Vegas to play poker for a living, and I’m confident she doesn’t worry about that anymore (nor do I).

Is poker fair to her? I’ve done a series on Relationships and Poker (see Part I, and you can go to the other parts from there). Having been now several months removed from that exploration as well as spoken to others, I do think that for me poker is a positive and a negative in our relationship. It has given me a platform to have friends, to challenge myself, to become more outgoing and fun again sometimes. It also takes me away from Sweetie, both physically and mentally at times. So I think my marriage is both better and worse because of poker. My guess is that it is overall a negative for our relationship, but that my broader challenges I’ve spoken about are both a greater threat to our marriage yet has in fact strengthened our marriage.

Of course I’m a great guy: every woman’s dream, every man’s nightmare and all that. But thanks just the same, I’ll rub Sweetie’s feet any time she wants. It’s the least I can do.

Final note, join us for a back to back CC’s Bash this Thursday.  First, at 9:30 PM EST is CC’s Thursday Bash on PokerStars ($10+1, NLHE).  At 11:00PM EST is CC’s HU Challenge ($5+0.50, NLHE HU).

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 7th, 2007 at 10:22 am and is filed under Uncategorized.