Soon-to-be-wife insists on her massages from male therapist. How should

[jeffrey]

I handle this? Some people think jealousy and possessiveness are at the root of my visceral reaction to my girlfriend / fiance / wife being massaged by a male massage therapist (masseur). I disagree. I think part of the sanctity of marriage is that the body is proprietary and confidential between a husband and wife. In this crazy world, shouldn't we fight for at least that much?

I put my feelings on this matter under quite a microscope. Really, I did. As someone with a research degree in Psychology, I did the requisite soul searching. As a social philosopher, I examined the Brave New World in which we live. You know -- the one beginning to resemble the vision of Aldous Huxley more by the day, where babies are grown in mechanical incubators rather than in uterus and where the government controls its population through world consensus textbooks and some pleasure drug called "Soma." There is no coupling in this world -- no marriage. This is a world where public service announcements inform the citizenry that "promiscuity is your duty." The instinctual foundations of human nature have for all intents and purposes been domesticated -- if not anilhilated -- by this antiseptic civilization that could almost pass for a sequel to any one of the four major Invasion of the Body Snatchers flicks.

I feel at this moment much like I am living in such a world.

Enough with the pseudo-literary foreshadowing ...

My fiance said I wouldn't find any measure of validation -- and not much more sympathy -- for feeling distressed by her 17-year relationship with her male massage therapist. She was right.

I don't know what it is exactly, but I guess when you get down to the heart of the matter, I just believe I am entitled to exclusive access to my fiance's body. This is what I feel I will be entitled to as her husband, and naturally she is entitled to the same exclusivity where my body is concerned. Her body is proprietary and confidential. In a world in which control of anything is hard to come by -- and when things are constantly changing and our position constantly being challenged -- a spouse is supposed to be that one person we can count on. Do I feel I own her? Hell no! But is it too much to ask that I be allowed to feel that she and I belong to one another and one another only? This is part of what I think makes marriage both sacred and delightful. Marrying the right woman should bring me both love and peace, and while I know there is love here, peace is a hard thing to come by when I have to pop a Xanax when I know she is being serviced by another man.

It's not so much that I am distrustful and fearful that my fiance's quasi-professional relationship with her handsome male massage therapist will morph into something more intimate. He's been kneading her flesh for some 17 years now -- all as a married man until recently -- and there's never been a sexual aspect to this relationship. But I am the kind of guy who doesn't like to get into that murky business of finding the line between clinical and sensual touch -- sensual and sexual. At least half the people I have talked to want to bully me into pathologizing my own feelings, which I refuse to do. I believe my feelings on this subject is one thing that makes me a better lover and all-around significant other, and this aspect of my personality cannot be surgically resected from me without causing serious damage to "normal adjacent tissue." And my feelings are this: touch is touch. And if my female significant other is to derive any sort of pleasure (or relief) from touch and from knowledge of her body, than it should not come from another man.

When I touch her body in any way -- when I hold her hand or when I slide my palms up and down her sides as part of the 2-3 hour massages I give her every night -- I feel something electric. I maintain an erection throughout the whole thing. I am sensitive that way and she benefits from my having that kind of tactile compass. So I feel I am being cheated or robbed -- that a man is stealing the jewel of my soul -- when he touches her. I feel violated whenever she derives some kind of pleasure at someone else's hands. Touch is communication. Touch is a way of knowing the person you're touching. Something passes between two people who are in these forms of contact. Touch is an important part of foreplay. You just can't convince me that over the course of these 1-4 hour massage therapy sessions with this male massage therapist -- that the sustainment of touch and the menagerie of tactile sensations both tenderly caressing and forcefully pressing -- doesn't hit some high notes in her every now and then. By what authority incidentally was it determined what is acceptable in a professional massage? I wasn't consulted on this. I know the breasts and buttocks remain off-limits but who decided that no other part of the body can be an erogenous zone? For me, the area around the base of the neck and especially in front of the body, is very