The Safety of Loving Arms

I felt safe in his arms, and for a long time, I thought that meant something good, something right, something worthy. I felt safe, and that felt important. For almost two decades, no matter what I did, I came home to his arms, and he wrapped them around me, and I felt safe.

His arms took me in, and I could stay there. I could shrink myself into him, curling my back up against his chest and pulling my knees up to mine. I wanted to be a tiny ball that he could envelop. He was the most important person in my life, and I knew he always would be. I knew this because I could make myself into a tiny speck of a human being and disappear next to his body. He could tuck my body into him and he could make the world outside of him feel so far away.

I felt safe from the world outside of his arms. I wore him like armor as we lay in our bed. Home. I was home. In my house. In my bed. In my husband. He was a fortress. Everyone and everything that existed outside of him didn’t matter because he stood between them and me.

“This is what love is,” I’d decided. “This is what love feels like.”

I felt it. I felt it as my body tensed up thinking of the big and dangerous and scary world that was outside of his arms and outside of our bed and outside of our house.

He was my fortress. He was my armor. I put him on. There was him and there was me and, in that moment, that was all there could be, all that could ever matter. I thought that’s what it meant for someone to make me feel safe. That I could be with them and I could make them my barracks. I could hide in them. My husband provided that. No question. And I believed in what he provided. When life turned on me, I had him to run to.

When my sister died, I had his arms. When I miscarried, I had his arms. When friendships fell apart and when the delusions and paranoia of addiction set in and when the world was too big and too hard and too much and when I was too fragile, I had his arms.

Life kept getting harder. It always did.

I was tired. World-weary. My emotions were overwhelming. I managed a house and a career and the emotions of everyone who exists in both spheres. I was the breadwinner. I was broke. Work was physically and psychologically draining. And at home, I was raising two children and attempting to support an underpaid husband who was working full time and getting his master’s degree. A husband who was burdened with me needing to disappear, and his arms had to hold all of me and all that I had inside me.

I was his world, after all.

And he was Atlas. Carrying the weight of my existence, a gesture he did because he was eternally damned. He held me because that was his sentence. His crime wasn’t exactly clear. He couldn’t figure it out. Why would he be punished with this task until the end of eternity?

He decided he did it because he loved me.

I don’t know when he started hating me.

I thought it was closer to the end of our marriage. I thought it was after I started spending time with other men, for money. When that time and attention was taken from him. When the time that I split between him and other men didn’t even pay the bills. When my body couldn’t make enough money to fulfill his needs. When my body couldn’t make enough energy to fulfill his needs. When he felt scorned that I would come home, sore and tired and needing his arms to hold me while I cried. Sometimes before even handing him my cash for the day.

Sometimes I would come home happy, satisfied with a good appointment, with a generous tip in my envelope. Those should be his nights off from holding me, he insisted. Those should be the nights he got more.

“The deal was, if you go to an appointment, I get to fuck you after.”

He would resentfully offer me a deferral if I were legitimately not physically up to the task, but it wasn’t up for compromise when I had a good night. I might not be physically forced to perform when I returned home, but my physical payment was due alongside my monetary payment. I would incur late fees and interest if I chose to delay my remittance. The penalty for the delay was resentment. It was an anger that simmered under the skin of the arms he wrapped around me.

The anger brewed inside of him. It fermented in him. It expanded him. Before he hated me he was just six foot two and two hundred fifteen pounds. Over the years he filled with emotional venom that swelled him to three hundred fifty pounds, crushing his lungs and putting his blood under immense and lethal levels of pressure. COPD and hypertension in his late thirties. He needed me to know this was my fault. But he would hold me. And he would act like a shield, his entire body between the world and me.

He always had a temper. He bragged about being a hothead. He bragged about how he could tear into people at work, letting his rage fly, unrestrained, at his superiors and coworkers. He bragged that he was so respected, this was a privilege afforded to him. It always had been, in school and in every job he ever held. He expected it at home.

How could I not allow it? He was under so much pressure, the weight of the world, my weight, on him. What was especially angering was my expectation that anger should be tempered. He felt it was unfair that he was forced to “bottle it up” when he wanted to explode. He insisted it was unhealthy. If I asked him to stop, he said it would only get worse if he had to hold it in even more often than he already was. His feelings were due, and I was delaying him from remitting his payment on anger. And he was going to pay it back, in full, with late fees and interest. He did.

For twenty years, I tried to explain that those weren’t the only two options. I must have explained it badly. I wanted to believe this was all new. That what I was going through with him each time was new and if we addressed it, it wouldn’t get worse. What I failed to notice was that it wasn’t new. That every few months, I just thought it was new. In 2001 it was new. But so was everything about our relationship.

I figured if I were patient, he would emotionally mature, alongside me. We’d work it out. He was worth it. Because he made me feel safe from the world. And come 2002 and come every few months after that, each escalation of his temper was compartmentalized into its own issue. Each “this is new” was one pound of venom under his skin.

The skin stretched over his venom and pressed against me and I felt safe. And as each pound of it filled him, I grew accustomed to it. I was not sensitive to how lethal it might be. It felt normal. One pound is not much. Two pounds is not much. Another pound is hardly detectable. And once you’re one hundred pounds in, it’s so much I’m not sure it matters. Besides, that venom was a part of the armor. It came with the safety that he provided.

“This is what love must be,” I thought. “Love is feeling his arms around me and feeling safe from everything on the other side.”

Love was feeling like I was a million miles from anything that could hurt me. Feeling like I had shelter next to his body. He was over twice my size and, feeling him next to me, I knew I had warmth and that I had found refuge.

It’s mid-October 2018; I am lying in bed in the suburban apartment I use for work. There are mirrors strategically placed around the room that make great visuals for our clients and perfect selfie mirrors. I try to avoid gazing into them during sessions. It’s weird to watch myself and wonder if I look pretty enough in the moment. I make eye contact with my own reflection, and immediately avert my stare to the popcorn ceiling, then over my shoulder at Mark.

I’ve been meeting with Mark for a while now. I know him fairly well. He’s about ten years older than me and in ten times better shape. He’s a married attorney who spends ninety percent of his life at work and triathlon training. And five percent of his life with me. I only know he’s married because he leaves his ring on.

He’s never once mentioned his home or his home life. He talks about his daughter who lives in Seattle. He talks about her like he’s proud. But he doesn’t talk about her like he knows a thing about what she’s like as a person. She exists as a list of life experiences to check off. Finished grad school. Got married. Bought a house. Travels to various countries but never to Chicago. Has a baby, but the baby is never referred to as a grandchild. I don’t really understand their relationship, but I’m sure Mark loves them in some kind of weird Mark-ish kind of way.

Mark is staring into the mirrors, I look back into them, meeting his brown eyes with my blue ones. He has a lipstick smudge on his neck and his normally perfect hair is pointing in every direction except the way it pointed when he walked in. My hair is still effectively pulled away from my face, but my ponytail has been knocked in a direction clearly cued by Mark’s hair.

“We look good,” he says to me.

I laugh. “We look a mess, and yeah, that’s good.”

I roll over, and place my head next to his, my nose brushing against his neck. I close my eyes and he pulls my body in close to his. I’m relaxed. Comfortable. I’m a little tired. It’s the middle of the afternoon on a Tuesday and I could go for a nap. He tells me he loves spending time with me.

“This is so nice,” he says. “Don’t get me wrong. The other stuff is great. But this is what I need.”

I agree. “This is nice. It feels so good to just be here right now.”

I discover myself enjoying the feeling of his arms around me. Strong. Muscular. Wrapping all the way around me. It’s familiar. His arms are a place I’ve been many times. They’re calming and inviting. And then I realize, I feel safe in them. The realization jostles me. My whole body shakes.

Mark gasps. “What’s happening! Are you okay?”

“Oh! Sorry. Just got a chill there for a moment. That ever happen to you? Your whole body just shivers?”

Mark doesn’t respond verbally. He pulls me in again and rubs my arms to warm me up. I nuzzle my face next to his. I definitely do not love Mark. There’s nothing wrong with Mark, but he’s not someone I think about much between our appointments. He’s a decent client. I enjoy small talk with him. I like him just fine. That’s about the extent of it, really, liking him just fine.

But I am having a moment in Mark’s arms where I feel like the world beyond us can’t hurt me. I feel safe and protected. What does that mean? How can I feel safe? Clients are not safe. It’s not safe to be in a client’s arms. The outside world can’t find me in his arms, but the world doesn’t have to. His arms have already found me, and I am hyperaware of that.

Besides, feeling safe in his arms? That’s how I know I love my husband. That’s how I know that my relationship with my husband is worthy and good. Knowing I’m safe means, well, it means—it means our relationship is our home. It’s where I can go when I’m struggling and it’s something I can only have if someone loves me and if I love them. It is how I am supposed to know that this is The One.

I decide I’m overthinking it. I wrap things up with Mark. I go home. I leave my envelope on the counter for my husband. I hop in the shower. He’s waiting for me in bed when I get out.

“How was your appointment?”

He’s got his head propped up on his hand, ready to watch me change, and ready for me to be ready for him. I’m feeling self-conscious and trapped. I’d like some privacy but feel silly asking for it. But how do I ask my husband not to stare at me while I change, when I disrobe in front of other men all the time?

I turn away slightly, trying to cover myself so I don’t lead him on by flashing too much skin. I don’t want to tease him. I don’t like the way it makes him feel when I tease him in his own home. He feels abandoned and abused when I do that.

He is already forced to follow me around the house, rarely more than a couple of feet away, because he’s so attracted to me. He can’t help it, and he’s waiting for me to give him what he needs, as my husband. I don’t want to do that to him in our bedroom. Not right now. So I try to hide, in front of him, while he shifts to peer around me to see my body.

“It was fine. You know. It was usual Mark,” I say, tugging on a T-shirt and yoga pants over my still-damp skin. “I’m tired. I really need a nap.”

I try to lie in my bed in a way that isn’t suggestive, so my husband knows I’m not feeling like having anyone inside my body right now. But I also curl up against him, because I really, today more than usual, need to be reminded that I am loved and I am safe. I need to know that this is my home.

I always need that when I get home from work. I always need to feel loved and safe. I have a job that mostly involves letting men fumble around, usually quite awkwardly and unskillfully, my body an object to explore without judgement or consequence. It feels like I’m one of those CPR dolls or a crash test dummy, but for sex. When I get home, I want to feel a familiar touch that reminds me that I’m home and human and loved for being a person, and not a body or a fantasy. I need validation.

I climb into bed and shrink myself into him, curling my back up against his chest and pulling my knees up to mine. Trying to become a tiny ball that he can envelop. He does. And he presses his pelvis against me. To gauge my interest. I know what he wants. I also know what he expects.

“This is so nice,” I tell him. I press my eyelids together, trying not to cry and trying not to cringe. “It’s so nice to come home and feel safe in your arms.” His arms find me and swell with another ounce of venom around me as I fall asleep, safe from the outside world.

I know I will owe him later.

-e.b. cotenord

e.b. cotenord is the host of the eXXXistential Podcast and the Pro’s Prose YouTube Channel. She works in adult entertainment in the Chicago area. Twitter: @ebcotenord