He shifted uncomfortably. ‘Every now and then. All men do it,’ he added defensively.
‘Would you think it’s a problem for you?’ Julia probed.
‘Look, I swear I only look at it a couple of times a week. I could go without it no problem. It’s not a big deal for me.’
‘He’d rather watch porn than have sex with his wife,’ I interjected.
He shook his head and turned pleadingly to Julia with a look that said,See? Do you see what I have to deal with?But she wasn’t falling for it.
‘Would you agree this is true, Hugo?’ Julia asked.
‘Well, when she’s going on like this, yeah, then it is true,’ he rebutted.
‘Maya, do you feel your needs are being met in your relationship?’ Julia asked.
I looked away.
‘Maya, do you feel your needs are being met?’ she pressed again.
I shook my head. ‘It’s clear he doesn’t find me very attractive any more,’ I replied, trying but failing to keep the hurt out of my voice.
‘Sex is the barometer for a relationship; it’s passionate and exciting at the start and naturally, as a relationship grows and deepens, it will taper off but still should be a regular thing. When a couple isn’t intimate then it can indicate an issue. And it isn’t just about sex; intimacy is all the little things too: it’s a kiss before you go out the door, it’s a cuddle before you turn over and go to sleep, it’s sitting beside each other watching TV. Perhaps if we can go back to the point when you first noticed this loss of intimacy, it might provide us with a clue as to what is going on between you both. Can either of you think of something that might have happened to cause this?’ Julia asked.
I looked down at my nails and began pushing back the cuticles.
‘I know Maya thinks that the issues between us are as a result of me watching porn but I promise you it’s nothing to do with that,’ Hugo said calmly.
‘So, would you like to tell her why then?’ Julia challenged. ‘One of the big issues I see between the two of you is a lack of communication. Maya wants to know why you don’t want to have sex with her, Hugo. It’s very difficult to fix a problem if the person doesn’t even know what the problem is.’
He turned around in his seat to face me. For the first time in months, his eyes met mine. I studied their grey-green shade with amber flecks, eyes that I once knew better than I knew my own. I looked into their depths, feeling a hopeful seed start to unfurl inside me that Hugo was finally seeing me again after all this time. Our eyes locked together but instead of the glimmer of love that used to glint from their depths, now I only could see hatred burn within.
‘Maya knows why,’ he replied without taking his gaze off me.
44
LIV
Later that evening, I came into the ensuite as Jay stood in his boxer shorts, brushing his teeth. He didn’t even look at me as I picked up my toothbrush, squeezed out the paste and did the same. He spat out the toothpaste and rinsed his mouth, before pulling back the duvet and climbing into bed. When I had finished, I sat down onto the edge of the bed and he turned on his side with his back facing me. I put my legs into my fleecy Winnie the Pooh pyjama bottoms and a faded Arcade Fire t-shirt that Jay had got at the Oxegen festival back in 2010. This was the first time we had ever gone to bed on an argument.
I couldn’t sleep that night and I knew from the restless tossing and turning and occasional heavy sigh Jay emitted in bed beside me that he was the same.What was happening to us?We never fought. And the worst part was that I couldn’t see a solution to fix our problem because we both wanted vastly different things. It felt like counselling had opened up a can of worms which now threatened to rot our marriage. It was supposed to help us, not tear us apart. Outside the window, I could hear the stop-start hiss and screech of a bin lorry as it worked its way along our street.
The following morning, I was awake before my alarm sounded. My head was fuggy from the lack of sleep. Jay and I moved around each other wordlessly in the kitchen. When he was leaving for work, he bent down and high-fived Finn. ‘Have a great day, son.’
I waited for the kiss on the cheek that he always gave me before he left for work but it never came. Then he headed out the door.
I made Finn some breakfast but he said he wasn’t hungry and barely touched it which wasn’t like him. I hoped he wasn’t coming down with something; I didn’t need that on top of everything else going on.
My head was full of horrible thoughts as I walked Finn to school. As he kicked his way through piles of rust and ochre coloured leaves which had gathered at the bottom of the oak trees, I was a million miles away. I was so worried about my marriage and I couldn’t see how Jay and I were ever going to resolve this issue between us. It felt as though we were moving further and further away from one another. One of us was going to have to compromise if we had any hope of working this out but we each felt so strongly about the issue that I couldn’t see how that would happen. The cruel irony was that I understood his position and he understood mine so fully.
As we neared the school, I was pulled out of my thoughts by Finn saying, ‘Mammy, are you listening to me?’
‘Sorry, sweetheart, what did you say?’
‘I said I don’t want to go to school,’ he repeated in a small voice.
‘Why not? All your friends are there; you’ll have fun,’ I encouraged.
‘I don’t like school any more.’
