Victor and I had already been married for several years at this point and fully committed ourselves to each other and the health and growth of our intimacy and connectedness. Of all our friends and family, we knew–with some sadness for the others–that we had the strongest relationship and a jealousy-inducing sexual life. We were, without a doubt, a power couple saturated with trust and true love. We liked it that way!
Lydia was an acquaintance of both of us; we’d all met briefly at a small church-sponsored event in our subdivision. Victor and I are far from atheists, but harbor a justified hatred for the contrived and pride-fueling traditions of religion. One of the many reasons for our distaste for organized religion was ironically captured by the frequent, yet silent, judgmental looks Lydia gave us at the event. She was obviously extremely displeased with our presence, but neither of us could really figure out why. Something, though, had set off Lydia’s judgment engine, and it was running on overdrive.
We didn’t mention it to each other at the event, assuming that Lydia just didn’t like one of us. So, neither of us knew the other was receiving the same judgmental looks. Lydia seemed careful to make sure both received them individually, and we certainly did.