My Imaginary Wife

A short-short story

PeakPx, Free to Reuse

I have had bad luck with women. Well, maybe it wasn’t all luck. I was awkward, never made enough money to take them out nice, and yeah, I have a bit of a temper. I slapped one girl and almost swung my axe at another. Of course, they didn’t take that and they broke up with me.

So I decided to stay off girls for a while and just have an imaginary wife.

The fantasy started great. We had sex all night and then enjoyed the afterglow, yeah in bed, but also at breakfast and as we then took a walk, holding hands.

My imaginary wife and I would phone each other at work during the day to say sweet nothings or even just to hear each other’s voice.

We gave each other little presents, like a wildflower I picked for her and— she was more creative — a model airplane for me.

After a while, having sex with my imaginary wife just once a night or less was enough. But she would give me that look, so I gave in. But it was feeling like a chore.

So was our conversation: My imaginary wife kept trotting out the same old opinions: go green, do more for the poor, Trump sucks.

Then my imaginary wife asked to move in with me. I imagined her saying, “I don’t make enough giving flute lessons.” I gave in again.

Then my imaginary wife started criticizing me for not being fun enough. I imagined her saying, “Not only don’t you want to have sex much, you don’t want to go dancing, partying, traveling.” I didn’t.

Then, my imaginary wife got cancer and asked me to help her through the months of recovery from surgery and chemo. I didn’t want to.

I was feeling trapped. How should I escape? I axed my imaginary wife to death.

Back to real life. I just placed an ad on match.com. Don’t worry, I threw away my axe.

I read this aloud on YouTube.

Dr. Marty Nemko is a career and personal coach. He’s also the author of 18 books, including, Soloists: Short-short stories of introverts and outsiders facing a dilemma. You can reach Marty at mnemko@comcast.net