She Cheated On Me

When Delia came home from running errands I asked her how things went (at the storage unit, at the grocery store, etc.).

“Fine …” she said.

But she stood there looking like she was holding something back. Looking sideways. Sounding hesitant. Looking kind of guilty.

So I prodded her with a couple of (but) “what?”s until she said,

“I feel like I cheated on you.”

I’ll admit I was a little nervous hearing that. Worried it was something big. Not worried it was anything sexual or romantic, but … concerned.

And then she told me:

“I went to the car wash without you.”

Is it cheating to go through the carwash without your spouse?

 Yes, it sounds funny. And yes, I laughed. But with a lot of sympathy and loving appreciation and wanting to reassure her it was okay.

Because … that *is* exactly the kind of thing we feel like is WAY more of a betrayal than fooling around with other people.

Delia knows how much I love going through the car wash. It is one of my all-time favorite things.

Like, if I won the lottery okay YES I’d be excited to buy a new car, but I’d be even more excited and determined to just, like, have a car wash to ourselves for a couple of hours and just repeatedly drive through it or just sit in there … maybe even design and build our very own super-long-playing laser-light show destination car wash neurodivergent brain-n-car/vehicle/transporter spa experience. WITH DANCING BIKINI CAR WASH GIRL STRIPPERS on special days and nights of the week.

Seriously: these are the kinds of things I fantasize about.

So anyway. She felt bad about getting the car washed without me.

But I was not mad. She deserves to be able to enjoy the car wash alone. Without it being a big ordeal where I want to video the whole thing. Because I always want to record and capture all of the things. How else do you think we wound up naked on the internet? This compulsion of mine can be very annoying, invasive and/or distracting to other people.

Delia has a civilian job now where she drives to work and she doesn’t want to be embarrassed showing up in a dirty car. I fully respect, support, and appreciate that. What would really be cheating is for me to resent it. Especially while I am “working” on a side hustle (one of my many crazy side projects) enabling me to get paid to go through car washes and record every precious soapy moment of it, all while she works her ass off at a civilian nine-to-five.