My Losing Battle against my Fiance and Her MALE Massage Therapist

I put my feelings on this matter under quite a microscope. Really, I did. As someone with a research degree in Psychology, I did the requisite soul searching. As a social philosopher, I examined the Brave New World in which we live. You know -- the one beginning to resemble the vision of Aldous Huxley more by the day, where babies are grown in mechanical incubators rather than in uterus and where the government controls its population through world consensus textbooks and some pleasure drug called "Soma." There is no coupling in this world -- no marriage. This is a world where public service announcements inform the citizenry that "promiscuity is your duty." The instinctual foundations of human nature have for all intents and purposes been domesticated -- if not anilhilated -- by this antiseptic civilization that could almost pass for a sequel to any one of the four major Invasion of the Body Snatchers flicks.

I feel at this moment much like I am living in such a world.

Enough with the pseudo-literary foreshadowing ...

My fiance said I wouldn't find any measure of validation -- and not much more sympathy -- for feeling distressed by her 17-year relationship with her male massage therapist. She was right.

I don't know what it is exactly, but I guess when you get down to the heart of the matter, I just believe I am entitled to exclusive access to my fiance's body. This is what I feel I will be entitled to as her husband, and naturally she is entitled to the same exclusivity where my body is concerned. Her body is proprietary and confidential. In a world in which control of anything is hard to come by -- and when things are constantly changing and our position constantly being challenged -- a spouse is supposed to be that one person we can count on. Do I feel I own her? Hell no! But is it too much to ask that I be allowed to feel that she and I belong to one another and one another only? This is part of what I think makes marriage both sacred and delightful. Marrying the right woman should bring me both love and peace, and while I know there is love here, peace is a hard thing to come by when I have to pop a Xanax when I know she is being serviced by another man.

It's not so much that I am distrustful and fearful that my fiance's quasi-professional relationship with her handsome male massage therapist will morph into something more intimate. He's been kneading her flesh for some 17 years now -- all as a married man until recently -- and there's never been a sexual aspect to this relationship. But I am the kind of guy who doesn't like to get into that murky business of finding the line between clinical and sensual touch -- sensual and sexual. At least half the people I have talked to want to bully me into pathologizing my own feelings, which I refuse to do. I believe my feelings on this subject is one thing that makes me a better lover and all-around significant other, and this aspect of my personality cannot be surgically resected from me without causing serious damage to "normal adjacent tissue." And my feelings are this: touch is touch. And if my female significant other is to derive any sort of pleasure (or relief) from touch and from knowledge of her body, than it should not come from another man.

When I touch her body in any way -- when I hold her hand or when I slide my palms up and down her sides as part of the 2-3 hour massages I give her every night -- I feel something electric. I maintain an erection throughout the whole thing. I am sensitive that way and she benefits from my having that kind of tactile compass. So I feel I am being cheated or robbed -- that a man is stealing the jewel of my soul -- when he touches her. I feel violated whenever she derives some kind of pleasure at someone else's hands. Touch is communication. Touch is a way of knowing the person you're touching. Something passes between two people who are in these forms of contact. Touch is an important part of foreplay. You just can't convince me that over the course of these 1-4 hour massage therapy sessions with this male massage therapist -- that the sustainment of touch and the menagerie of tactile sensations both tenderly caressing and forcefully pressing -- doesn't hit some high notes in her every now and then. By what authority incidentally was it determined what is acceptable in a professional massage? I wasn't consulted on this. I know the breasts and buttocks remain off-limits but who decided that no other part of the body can be an erogenous zone? For me, the area around the base of the neck and especially in front of the body, is very tender and sensitive, as are the hands, thighs, and feet. Many of the same people who would demonize me for feeling this way also lionize Pulp Fiction, and I just bet they plug right into that scene where a man is rumored to have been thrown through a window because he massaged the wife's feet. I can't tell you with any certainty that I would react the same way, only if my impulses got the better of me. And remember that Seinfeld episode where George inquires into his new girlfriend's relationship with her male roommate:

George: "What's the massage situation?"
Bonnie: "What do you mean?"
George: "Is there any work being done? Is there any rubbing, touching, finger manipulation on the other person, and if so, who's making the request?"

So I am not going to draw any lines unless it's just to make an inevitably bad situation a little more tolerable. I have already tried drawing some lines as a way of reaching a compromise with my fiance. Understand that I want to be okay with this and I don't like the way I look when I try to keep her from what makes her happy. I have suggested that I could be fine with things if only they would agree that he is not to touch her hands or touch her below the waist. That if it's back and neck pain that is bothering her, that he restrict his attention to her back and neck. Naturally, as I suspected, she said that given the way we are all wired, massaging the legs and thighs is necessary to heal back and neck pain.

Despite my fiance's insistence that she derives no pleasure from these massages, I suspect that if I were to see her face during her massage, the expression would all too often betray a feeling of "ahhhhhh" and that is not a feeling I believe any man this side of -- well -- ME -- should be stirring up in her. She tells me her sessions are neither pleasurable nor sensual, but the fierceness of the resistance I get when I plead with her to stop seeing this man -- and the way she is able to match my persistence over time -- speaks volumes as to what this man means to her, and I just can't have another man mean THAT much to her. It almost feels as if he is no less significant to her than me. So it's a vicious cycle. The more persistence she gets from me, the more resistance I get from her, and the more resistance I get from her, the more pushback she gets from me. My fiance's ties to her therapist could almost be described as an "addiction." In her words, she just "can't give him up."

I watched a few massage videos on YouTube and it made my hair stand on end to imagine my fiance in some of those positions. One of the more alarming images consisted of this woman with her ankles raised upon the masseur's shoulders, her bare feet inches from his face, as he leaned into her and ran his forearm up and down her thigh. Nice image! For a moment do I honestly believe he would put one of his male clients in that same position? Hmm.

But my fiance's relationship with this man is also more complex than that with the average male masseur.

1. This is a 17-year relationship. She (and other women) thought it would be comforting to tell me that he is a professional and that this is a doctor-patient relationship. Besides the obvious fact that this comparison demeans doctors -- much like comparisons to male escorts would demean male massage therapists (male escorts to lay claim under that definition to the same mantra of professionalism) -- what other doctor engages in this kind of sustained touch? I wouldn't mind if my fiance had a male gynecologist. Nothing really sexual comes from inserting a gloved hand very briefly in that organ without foreplay. But massages build relationships.

When she has had to (as when her therapist is out of town), she has tried a few other therapists, and "no one knows her body as well as [NAME REDACTED]." That's right. No one. Including me:

"You can never be as good as he is. This is his profession."

I am not fond of hearing that 1 hour into a 2-hour massage I am giving her myself. I am successful in breaking down her fascia and taking the pain away, and I massage her preventively almost every night. And she enjoys my massages immensely. I get the verbal "ahs" and she initiates the requests for the massages. And I am learning more everyday. I am educating myself and then applying what I learn in the "lab portion of the course." Eventually, I do believe I will come to know her better than [NAME REDACTED].

So I can live with this man's intimate knowledge of her as long as its relegated to the dustbin of history and I can begin MY education on the nuances of her musculature. But I hate being told that there is someone else out there who will always know HER body more than me. That is only the case if he continues to see her. I can remedy that because I can log in hours of massage with her at home and because I have a medical mind and can teach myself generic human anatomy. I have even offered to take massage therapy courses, but she greets all these suggestions as threats to her relationship with [NAME REDACTED].

When I think sexy thoughts of my fiance, I don't conjure up an image of her vagina. The sight of her vagina does not create that delicious escalating yearning for sex. I naturally think of the WHOLE her, as I would be willing to bet you do when you grow desirous for your man / woman. This is the image that is the starting point for all sexual arousal. Her contours and sinews. Her complexion. The topography of her body from tip of her head to -- and including -- her toes. So you can imagine how distressed I might become to IMAGINE someone else's hands all over this body.

2. [NAME REDACTED] massages her in his own home. One night my fiance regaled me with the tale of one session with [NAME REDACTED]. He had a new massage plan for her and she was not appropriately attired for it, so he lent her his T-shirt and she was massaged in this T-shirt and her panties. Eeeeee! Come to think of it, I better ask her whether there were towels involved to cover her, because I can imagine the two of them agreeing to forgo the towel at this stage in their relationship. You know, the towel that covers her buttocks. There's just something about wearing another man's T-shirt, isn't there? Don't get me started on the reference to the panties. She should have a thick towel draped over this latitude of her body at all times.

3. Other massage therapists have acknowledged -- even offered up unsolicited -- that friendships are built over these kind of professional-client relationships. She talks to him during a 1-4 hour massage -- and she has done this over the past 17 years. As an employee of an art museum, she is also helping him out with his art career ambitions and she dispatches her boss to his residence to photograph his work. This poses another risk by providing them with another opportunity over which to bond. This is not Accounting by the way, but Art.

And, to make matters worse, in exchange for what she does for his art "career", he massages her FOR FREE . Nothing builds an unbreakable bond more than a free 4-hour massage session. There should at least be a fee to serve as a natural check and balance so that the feelings she develops for this man after years of classical conditioning are tweaked by the negative feeling associated with having to part with money. I am willing to wager that as good as this guy is, she wouldn't feel quite as strongly as she does if she has had to pay him. She should see him in the professional space he rents from a chiropractor and she should pay him, and not some discounted rate befitting a special relationship, but his full fee. 4 hours! Sheesh! What KIND of friendship is this -- that this male massage therapist would go at it for 4 hours?

Hey, I know I am neurotic on this one point, but it makes me ME and makes me human. And we all have our own idiosyncratic neuroses. Our complexes. I put up with yours. Well, this is mine.

When my fiance was divorcing her first husband, the bond between my fiance and her massage therapist deepened. Her masseur attributed her myofascial pain in her back and neck to alternating between wearing heels and wearing flip-flops after work. But during her divorce, stress was also added to the equation, and her idea of massages as a way of being "pampered" deepened. In her own words, she "loves being pampered." This phrase betrays her denials that her massages are "sensual." And I don't like the idea of my fiance being "pampered" by another man. I am fine with a couple buff eunuchs titillating her from a distance with giant feather fans, but I am not fond of her insistence on her male pedicurist, with whom she also has a 10-plus year relationship is a problem (I have to pick my battles, so I conceded that one). She also insists on attractive male physicians around her age, which prompts me to wonder whether there isn't a deep-seated psychosexual component to all this -- something Freud or Jung would run with. She received massages much more frequently over the course of her divorce when she learned that the massages are the salve for stress and that FREQUENT massages are far more therapeutic than LESS FREQUENT massages. And while it never came to fruition, the massage therapist did invite her out for drinks. To paraphrase her, he was and is "there for her" and even IF she ever gave him up as a masseur (which she will never do), she would never want to "stop talking to him."

4. My fiance is ridiculously attractive, but that's not the half of it. She has what has been referred to in one Seinfeld episode as "the kavorka" (raw animal magnetism). She is petite, small-boned, svelte, and has an Old World english-french beauty. She also is a very warm woman. To look at most women, you can see the "don't even talk to me" walls they put in front of them. But my fiance is very inviting. You can see it in her face. She is also very sensitive. You can see that she would be easily moved by words and gestures. In the parlance of a clinical psychologist with a psychodynamic orientation, all these characteristics combine to form a hook for the psychological projections of men. In other words, she brings out the maternal instinct in men. Men are drawn to her. Men feel that they can orgasm just from hugging her, and they yearn to, in the words of one of her 3 workplace stalkers, "take care of her."

5. The male massage therapist's wife is now divorcing him. Now it's the massage therapist's turn to go through a divorce. My fiance had used his marital status to reassure me in the past. Since divorces are emotional, and often accompany physical as well as emotional privation, I have to worry how that might change the dynamic of this "relationship." Just what will touching [FIANCE NAME REDACTED] mean to him now?

I wish she could understand me more and respect my feelings on this subject. I appreciate the magnitude of the sacrifice I am asking her to make. But I will be her husband. And in addition to the hours of massages I am willing to give her on a daily basis, I am willing to do all the research necessary to find her a same-sex therapist. She used a disparaging term to characterize the lack of strength in the two female massage therapists she once consulted. She insists on big strong man hands. But when I thought I had the green light from her to research same-sex therapists, my interviews (including the President of the AMTA) produced a promising lead in the form of the strong German deep tissue massage therapist who goes by the name "Olga." Olga doesn't sound as friendly or as sensual as [NAME REDACTED], but I have tried everything. At this point I just need the emotional space in which to design a way to cope with the inevitable -- or should I say the immutable. The fifth immutable law of physics: my fiance will forever be palmed and fingered and caressed by [NAME REDACTED]. She has scorned me for suggesting that in that deep and dark place in my heart lurks the raw unmitigated hope that [NAME REDACTED] would meet with an unfortunate accident.

The last resort: a Clinton-esque "don't ask don't tell" policy. She schedules appointments during the week and I will never know. After all, there isn't even a money trail, now is there? It will just be her and [NAME REDACTED]s little secret. That would spare me. But I already know how she will react to this request. She will deny the request because she thinks it sets a bad precedent for us to begin keeping secrets from one another. So not only will I have to live with her continuing to see this man. I will have to live with it being thrown in my face. Part of the Brave New Cruelty.