The Truth. Neil Strauss

three years ago.”

      “That’s great.” He doesn’t look like the kind of guy who ever needed my advice.

      “I met my wife because of you. I owe you everything.”

      “That’s great,” I say again. I think about the prospect of marrying someone, of spending the rest of my life with her, of not being allowed to fuck anyone else, of her aging and losing interest in sex and me still not being able to fuck anyone else. And the next words just slip out of my mouth: “Are you happy?”

      “Oh yeah, totally,” he says. “Seriously. I read The Game while I was in the Army in Iraq, and it really helped me.”

      “Do you plan on having kids?” I’m not sure what I’m doing. I think I’m trying to scare him. I want him to show a little fear or hesitancy or doubt, just to prove to myself that I’m not crazy.

      “My wife’s actually about to give birth to our son,” he says. “I’m flying home to see her.”

      His answer hits me right where it hurts: in my self-esteem. Here I am, incapable of having a relationship and starting a family, and this guy read some book I wrote on picking up women and three years later he’s got his entire life figured out.

      I make my excuses and leave him standing there, no doubt thinking, He’s much shorter than I imagined.

      On the other side of security, I see a man with a gray ring of hair around his head and a badge with a D on it. He must see all kinds of people rolling off the plane, either half dead or wasted or trying hard to pretend they’re a normal adult, which is, I think, what I’m doing.

      I feel like an impostor. There are people who need to go to this Level 1 psychiatric hospital because without it they are going to die. They’re going to drink or snort or inject themselves to death.

      All I did was cheat on my girlfriend.

      Los Angeles, Six Months Earlier

      They say that when you meet someone and feel like it’s love at first sight, run in the other direction. All that’s happened is that your dysfunction has meshed with their dysfunction. Your wounded inner child has recognized their wounded inner child, both hoping to be healed by the same fire that burned them.

      In fairy tales, love strikes like lightning. In real life, lightning burns. It can even kill you.

      My girlfriend is sitting on the floor of the guesthouse where we live, packing to go with me to Chicago today. It’s her birthday. She’s going to meet my family.

      I look at her and appreciate every inch of her, inside and out. “I’m excited, babe,” Ingrid says. She is pure joy, pulling me out of my dark, solipsistic world every morning. She was born in Mexico, but to a German father, and somehow ended up living in America and looking like a petite Russian blonde. And so she embodies all the elements: the intensity of fire, the strength of earth, the playfulness of water, the delicacy of air.

      “I know. Me too.”

      I try to push the night before out of my head. There is no evidence of it anywhere; I made sure of that. I showered. I checked the interior of the car. I inspected every item of my clothing for stray hairs. The only thing I can’t clean is my conscience.

      “Should I bring these shoes?”

      “It’s only five days. How many pairs do you need?”

      Sometimes I get annoyed by how long it takes her to get ready, the amount of clothing she needs to pack for even the shortest trips, the way her high heels prevent us from walking more than a few blocks when we go out. But deep down, I love her femininity. I am a slob and she gives me grace. When I told her last night that I had to go see Marilyn Manson, a musician I’d written a book with, about a new project, I looked into the hazel-green of her eyes and I saw love, happiness, innocence, peace.

      Yet still I went through with it.

      “So how was last night?” she asks as she struggles with the zipper of her suitcase.

      “It was kind of frustrating. We didn’t get much work done.” That’s for sure.

      As she places a small, confident hand on top of the overstuffed bag and pushes the two rows of zipper teeth into contact, I can’t help but think of two separate lives being forced together—and how, if just one element pops out of place, everything starts to fall off the tracks.

      “Aw, babe, you can sleep on my lap on the plane, if you want.”

      She is reliving her mother’s relationship with her cheating father. I am reliving my father’s secret sex life. We are repeating a pattern handed down by generations of lying, cheating assholes and the poor fools who trust them.

      “Thank you,” I tell her. “I love you.” At least I think I love her. But can you really love someone if you just fucked one of her friends in the parking lot of a church, and now six hours later you’re lying to her about it? My mind is so clouded with guilt, I don’t know anymore. Somehow, I doubt it.

      There comes a time in a man’s life when he looks around and realizes he’s made a mess of everything. He’s dug a hole for himself so deep that not only can’t he get out, but he doesn’t even know which way is up anymore.

      And that hole for me is, and has always been, relationships. Not just because I cheated on Ingrid, but because yet another fairy tale is teetering on the brink of an unhappy ending.

      The last fairy tale concluded with my ex locking herself in her apartment with a gun, and yelling that she was going to splatter her brains all over the wall and I shouldn’t go to her funeral.

      But this one is different. Ingrid isn’t crazy, she isn’t jealous, she isn’t controlling, she’s never cheated on me, and she’s talented and independent, working in a real estate office by day and designing swimsuits by night. I’m ruining this one all by myself.

      And that’s because I am the king of ambivalence.

      When I’m single, I want to be in a relationship. When I’m in a relationship, I miss being single. And worst of all, when the relationship ends and my captor-lover finally moves on, I regret everything and don’t know what I want anymore.

      I’ve gone through this cycle enough times to realize that, at this rate, I’m going to grow old alone: no wife, no kids, no family. I’ll die and it will be weeks before the smell gets strong enough that someone finds me. And all the shit I spent my lifetime accumulating will be thrown in the trash so someone else can occupy the space I wasted. I’ll have left nothing behind, not even debt.

      But what’s the alternative?

      Most married people I know don’t seem to be any happier. One day Orlando Bloom, an actor I’d written a Rolling Stone profile about, came over to visit. At the time, he was married to one of the world’s most successful and beautiful women, Victoria’s Secret supermodel Miranda Kerr, making him one of the most envied men on the planet. And the first thing out of his mouth? “I don’t know if marriage is worth it. I don’t know why anyone does it. I mean, I want romance and I want to be with someone, but I just don’t think it works.”

      My other married friends haven’t fared much better. Some even seem content, but after a little probing they admit to feeling frustrated. Several cope by being unfaithful, others white-knuckle it, many surrender passively to their fate, and a few simply live in denial. Even the rare friends who’ve remained happy in their marriages admit, when pressed, to being unfaithful at least once.

We expect love to last forever. Yet as many as 50 percent of marriages and even more remarriages end in divorce. Among those who are married, only 38 percent actually describe themselves as happy in that state. And 90 percent of couples report a decrease in marital satisfaction after having their first child. Speaking of which, more than 3 percent of babies are not actually