If you want to kill your husband, it should be easy. Because you’re tougher than he is, and you’re stronger and faster. Giving birth to two big-headed daughters without medication and all those early-morning runs and Pilates classes haven’t just been for fun, right? But most of all you’re smarter than he is, even though he thinks he’s got all the brains, he thinks he’s the smart one because he has a job and a private office and makes all the money and goes out to nice restaurants for lunch and networks while you’re at home, cooking and cleaning and wiping runny noses and changing poopy diapers. He thinks that just because he puts on slacks and a tie and has an agenda and you’re going to spend the whole day baking cookies for the school sale and you probably won’t manage to take a shower until after lunch—if at all—that he’s better. But what your husband has managed to conveniently forget is that you are the one who helped him get through college, you are the one who wrote the résumé that got him that fancy job, you are the one who took the online personality test his job required before they’d hire him, and his boss thinks he’s an empathetic leader, that he’s strategic, but those are actually your results. Not that they’d ever hire you to lead a team of men selling businesses to other men. You’re missing one vital part, and it doesn’t matter the slightest that you’d be better at the job than your husband, because if you don’t have this one particular piece you don’t have anything.
You don’t have a dick, so you don’t get dick.
But you could get over all that if your husband would behave right, but that’s something out of his realm. He thinks he’s smart, that he’s sneaky, but he doesn’t realize you’re at home, waiting, while he’s at her place, balls deep between her thighs, groaning about how things would be so much better if you weren’t around. And when he’s done with this woman—and you’ve seen her, she’s younger and better looking than you, but probably an idiot—he comes home, smelling like sex and sweat and not even trying to hide what he’s done, and he says he’s too tired to eat dinner with the family and to spend time with the girls, he has a headache and a backache and he had a long day and needs some alone time, unless, that is, you’re down to give him a blow job.
So honestly, your husband has had it coming for a good long while now, and needs to be taught a lesson. He has to die.
BUT.
Maybe divorce is a better option. Maybe it’s a little overkill to plan your husband’s death, and you might be right. But here’s the thing: if you got a divorce you’d get alimony payments, but it probably wouldn’t be enough to live on, and you could certainly get a job but you’d be making next to nothing because no one’s going to hire a woman who’s spent her entire adult life at home with kids. And you can’t even put down that you’ve been to college, you can’t even put down your real name, because you’re not technically even a person anymore because you took on the identity of the woman you caught your husband in bed with, and that woman is someone you know nothing about, a woman who might not have even graduated high school, and if you ever use your real name again, or your social security number, the government will be on you like white on rice, and you’ll go right to prison, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. And with no school and no work experience and no identity there’s only one conclusion:
You’re fucked.
BUT.
There’s a third option. You could make it work. You could put up with your crappy marriage and ignore what your husband does on the side and try to be patient, because he’ll probably kick the bucket before you. All that beer and the gut he’s been picking up over the last few years can’t be for nothing, right? So you could wait it out, hope for that heart attack to happen. Plenty of women have done it before, silently dealing with their lot in life, and you could, too, if you had to. And maybe, after a while, you’d even get used to it.
But here’s the thing: you’re not the kind of woman who can get used to anything. And you’re not a patient woman. You never have been. And while blood and violence don’t bother you, you’ve had enough of that to last you a lifetime. So you decide to make that motherfucker pay for what he’s put you through. You were a forgiving woman once, you overlooked his flaws and moved on, but you’re also not an idiot. Your mother had always warned you about men, said that once a man hurts you it’s only a matter of time before he does it again, and it’s better to be safe than sorry. You’ve always had a secret stash of cash on the side. A runaway fund, your mother called it. A safety net.
So over the years you’ve put some money back, a bit at a time, not enough for him to miss and ask about. It’s not a fortune, it won’t keep you rolling for the rest of your life, but it’s enough to make a start. So maybe, deep down, you’ve been planning this for a long time. Or laying the groundwork, at least.
And then, one day, you realize the years have leached away your patience and you’re done.
So, when it really comes down to it, you don’t have much of a choice. This man is a cheater, he’s weak, he’s a louse. You’ve had to stick around in this marriage because you haven’t had any other choice, and it’s been fine, but things have changed and there’s no damn way you’re going to stand for this. It’s not about the money, because you’ve come to realize that what people say is right—money can’t buy happiness. You’ve been putting up with his bullshit for far too long, but if you put up with it just a little longer, lay your traps and set the stage just right, you can pull it off, no problemo.
But then you realize something that could screw the whole thing up:
Your husband isn’t actually as stupid as he’s led you to believe.