Dead Weight

In the story Town Car from the collection Wall Street Noir ( a nice collection of short stories exploring the dark side of how business gets done on Wall Street - in many ways the opposite of the CNBC edition) , David Noonan writes.

The last thing he wanted was a girlfriend with nothing to do, calling him six times a day, sitting in front of the TV all night wondering why he couldn't spend more time with her,carefully watering her boredom until it bloomed into glorious hysteria. Heather was too busy for that shit.

These are the thoughts of a man who has a trophy wife at home and all the trappings of a normal life. Heather is his mistress and he compares making love with her to working out a couple of hours at the gym. This also happens to be his alibi for when he is visiting her.

While Heather's being too busy to turn hysterical for love and attention works great for this married man, the sentiments would find resonance with a lot of others who are emotionally unavailable in their relationships. They seek the comfort of having a significant other in their lives but are unable or unwilling to invest emotionally in this person.

It really aggravates them when the aggrieved party expresses their desire for more out of their relationship, sometimes to the point where breaking up is the only recourse. The dead weight that renders emotional involvement in a relationship impossible can be a myriad different shapes and is only sometimes a spouse.