Cathy and Caitlin

What about Cathy and her disastrous experience with her first husband, the father of her daughter Caitlin? What caused Tim to be absent, dicking someone else when she was in the hospital having their baby? Sure it comes across as being more than a little unethical, but the question gets my imagination racing. People don’t do that sort of thing merely because they’re in a bad mood. Inevitably there was something going on, something considerably less than OK. The more I think about it, the less of a surprise it would have to have been to Cathy.

Sexuality does mean that much, and that so many couples find it wrong to discuss it does not help anything. Nor did it help Cathy that her own father was for the most part a failure when she was growing up. A frustrated musician, he had descended from a perfectly adequate bread-winner into a ward of the family, and ultimately had to be shown the door. Her older brothers were positive influences, but were not enough. It would also explain why her younger sister Donna is so questioning of men and quick to moralize.

What may have caused the scandal is a values clash. I first ran across the subject back in college, when I was about 20. A girlfriend mentioned that most of the men she had been with were indifferent to feminine arousal, and with them she was unable to get her release. Surprisingly or not, since then I have found that a lot of women are just as indifferent about the subject. The explanation might include the status of control, which is certainly a matter of concern. Besides, feminine carnal release is not biologically necessary, which would account for a lot of people ignoring it. It remains one of the most controversial topics I can think of. When it does come up, people have a way of looking for baseball bats.

If Cathy is stoic about the bedroom and deliberately keeps a low profile, it would suggest she’s normal. There is no shortage of men who prefer women that way, but if her ex-husband is one of those who needs an assertive feminine presence, it might explain what happened. Its absence might have caused him to start climbing the walls, as well as her to be horrified at what he amounted to. I can’t think of anybody whose sense of right and wrong would be adjustable enough to accept such a situation. It begs the question: did Tim swallow hard and do what he had to do, in order to get out of the marriage?