Chapter One

I sat across the kitchen table from my wife, Brenda, and I could tell she was waiting until she had my undivided attention.

Then she looked intently into my eyes and changed my world. "I don't know how else to say this to you, so I'll say it straight," she began. "My feelings for you are dead."

Her words arrived like a fastball pitch to the solar plexus. Dead? My head spun. Where was this coming from? Our marriage had begun with such promise. How could I have messed things up so badly that my wife-the love of my life-now felt totally numb to me? My mind quickly searched for answers, but it would take me some time to piece things together.

Searching for Clues

The seeds of my marital discord were planted four years before I met Brenda. I was attending Stanford University in the San Francisco Bay area, desperately trying to make sense of my life, seeking truth in any intellectual nook and cranny I could find (I was a non-Christian, though I'd attended church many times over the years).

First, I dallied in the writings of Marx and Engels. Next I turned to Eastern religion, a fad that swept the Stanford campus in the late 1970s. I even accepted a flower and an invitation from the Moonies, who "love-bombed" me but failed to convince me to join their ranks. Meanwhile, I meandered up and down the West Coast, spending seminar weekends with enlightened gurus as they "merged" with the universe.

I hungered to find the Meaning of Life, but since I wasn't having much luck, I looked for solace and comfort in the arms of female companions. That was something I could understand. One year af