I Cheated on My Husband…with My Husband
Believe me, he had it coming
Sometimes, we imagine the face we fall in love with is the one we’ll love forever.
Until that face decides to commit a breach of contract and voluntarily change so drastically, it’s like we’re looking at a stranger and faced with the hard choice of loving them despite this “betrayal” or putting some distance between ourselves and the offending trait.
When I met my husband almost 16 years ago, he looked a certain way. And I was attracted to that way: clean-shaven. I’ve never been one to love beards — not that I’m a beardist. I just gravitated towards guys who shaved their faces or, at most, had some stubble they’d eventually clean up after a few days.
There’s something about big, bushy beards I can’t get on board with. What’s lurking underneath that mass of hair? Honestly, it’s something I don’t care to discover.
So when my husband waved at me from across the room the night we met, I walked over to him. Something I probably wouldn’t have done had he been sporting a huge, bushy beard.
As we dated, he wouldn’t neglect the razor for more than a couple of days. He shaved regularly, except for one winter when he let his beard grow to what I viewed as a reasonable length. I figured he was letting it do its evolutionary job of keeping his face warm in the bitter Chicago cold. He kept it short and, when spring returned, shaved it off. And all was good.
Until years later when he decided to let it grow out.
At first, I figured he was growing it longer than usual and would eventually get annoyed with it and prune it.
But when weeks started going by with his trimmer looking awfully lonely and unused on the bathroom counter, I started to get nervous.
Where the fuck was he going with this?
I subtly dropped hints that maybe he should trim his beard a touch. As the length continued to increase and he started looking less like my husband and more like one of the Duck Dynasty guys, I got more direct.
“Hey, can you shave that off? Please.”
He informed me it was a playoff beard now for his beloved hockey team. It’d go if they won the Stanley Cup.
It was then I horrifyingly understood I was stuck with Charles Darwin for the unforeseeable future.
My husband’s facial hair makes me feel like I have different partners.
There’s the really clean-shaven, baby-faced one I first met. I haven’t seen that guy in a long time. When my husband no longer had to routinely travel for work and be on-site at a client’s office anymore, he stopped that kind of meticulous shaving.
There’s the short-bearded guy who regularly trims his beard so it doesn’t get wild. He looks handsome and young.
And then there’s the big-bearded guy with the kind of facial hair that can hide small animals. It makes him look old and haggard. This is the guy I’m not a fan of. The guy I don’t recognize. The guy I sometimes walk ahead of.
Look, I’m not a bad person for not liking this look. It’s not what I signed up for when we first met. If he’d admitted he’d be growing his beard out Rip Van Winkle style in the future during that encounter, things might’ve gone differently. I’d have possibly shaken his hand and said it was nice meeting him, but I was going to have to take a hard pass.
Of course, he hadn’t said this. I’m not even sure if a long beard had been one of his life goals at that point, but it certainly became one much later in our relationship. Like kids-and-a-house later in our union.
The problem is, it’s not something I can just ignore or look past. It’s literally on his face and all I can see. It consumes most of his upper body. It brushes my face when he comes in for a kiss, and all I can think is, “What could be lying in wait in there?” or “Am I going to get some of your last meal in my mouth accidentally?”
No matter how much I tried to get used to this whisker wilderness, I couldn’t. It didn’t help that other men would positively remark on his beard and its impressive length, encouraging him to keep on growing it.
Just when I’d resolved to being the wife of Gandalf, he did something unexpected. He declared he was sick of his face fringe and was going to shave it off.
I didn’t hide my joy — and I might have shoved some clippers into his hand before he could change his mind.
After he shaved off the monstrosity that had grown to be seven inches long after months of my trying to keep as much space between his face and mine as possible, it was like looking at a completely different man.
He noticed the change in the way I eyed him immediately. How I suddenly became flirtatious and touchy-feely. The coy smile on my face. The offer of food when I was making myself something instead of telling him to make it himself.
“It’s like you’re cheating on me,” he said.
And it kind of was.
I wanted to get cuddly with this man I hadn’t seen in what seemed like ages. I found him sexy and facially hygienic.
The complete transformation made me feel like I was with someone else. Rekindling a romance with a former fling, someone I hadn’t seen in a long time. I’d missed this man. And it suddenly felt like all these months I’d been tolerating a stranger.
And life was good.
Until he grew it out again.
I know some people might view this as shallow. But look. A beard is something that can be helped. It’s not like I was shunning him for something he couldn’t control. He’s in charge of how long his beard grows.
There might be ladies who don’t mind overly bushy beards, and I commend and admire you for that. But I do mind because my husband’s beard also comes with all sorts of annoying cons.
It takes him even longer to get ready because he now has to take care of his beard and blow-dry that sucker so it’s not sopping wet after he showers.
I constantly find long strands that fall off around the house, and they fill the vacuum cleaner in minutes.
It itches my face when he comes in for a kiss.
The list goes on.
And so, I’ll always harbor a crush on the man with the short, trimmed beard. And pray to a higher power that the Hagrid-esque man who sometimes makes an appearance and overstays his welcome in my home will someday just be a distant memory.
One that never ever resurfaces again.