text: Times were tough. It was no secret I was miserable. A cloud of gloom followed me everywhere, including my job. A relationship breakup like mine would put anyone to the test and frankly, I was failing it. Still, I had bills to pay and it wasn’t going to help if I gave up and stopped getting out of bed. Each day I’d drag myself to the office and go through the motions like a zombie. I know my performance and attitude suffered but I didn’t care at the time. Much of the occupational grief and aggravation of the nine-to-five grind involved being employed so a person could afford nice things and have a fulfilling relationship with a significant other. Once the relative rewards of that dynamic went out the window, so did my motivation to work. I guess it’s a testament to my ability to do my job well, that I wasn’t fired outright after I went off on a difficult client. Behavior like that was a threat to the corporate ‘bottom line’. Obviously they didn’t want that. Apparently they didn’t want to let me go either. Instead, management tried a very unorthodox tactic which I only found out about much later. They actually hired a temp to ‘romance’ me, and boost my ego. It’s called ‘the girlfriend experience’ because it is supposed to feel ‘real’. It’s far more than paying a person to be intimate with me. That stipulation wasn’t even in the contract. Legally it couldn’t be. They just paid her to pretend to be infatuated and smitten. How she managed to achieve that artificial flattery was her business. I must say, it totally caught me off guard. In all fairness, I might’ve recognized the ‘snow job’ a mile away if I wasn’t deeply sad and emotionally vulnerable. Instead I ate up the attention with a spoon. They were smart enough to not hire a supermodel. They found a lady that was probably in the top register of who I might’ve had a chance with in real life, if I tried really hard to woo her. Not that I had to, mind you. She was the definition of a ringer. I gotta say, it takes a certain skill set to seduce a person with that level of believable sincerity. I totally fell for it. They brought her in to the office and assigned her to assist me on a big account. At first, it pissed me off. I didn’t care that she was attractive and working extremely closely with me. I resented the idea of having to hold anyone’s proverbial hand in training her to be actually helpful. To my relief, she was a quick study and eager to learn. Knowing what I know now, I still marvel at the theatrics and lengths the company went through to insert this woman into my life. It is kind of flattering to know they orchestrated the whole thing. I know it was only about the money I normally brought in, but it makes me feel damn important. ‘Missy’ was coy at first. Respectful and aloof even. She maintaining a polite distance while giving off a slight smitten vibe or schoolgirl crush. Like a big knucklehead, I swallowed the performance hook, line, and sinker. The truth is, I wanted to believe. Honestly, who in their right mind would’ve suspected such an elaborate hoax for my behalf? it wasn’t long before we were sneaking off after hours to see each other socially. The whole time, I was scared to death they would send her back to the temp agency. Inter office romance is strictly forbidden by HR so we kept the relationship a secret as long as we could. Once we had moved past a certain point, I didn’t care if anyone found out. I was finally happy again. By all appearances, she was too. I eventually asked her to marry me, and she accepted. Of course I didn’t know it was originally an arranged fling, so I definitely wouldn’t have guessed it was about to lead to an arranged marriage. The thing is, at what point does the facade cease to be worth playing along with for the corporate payout? Even for a person pretending to be interested in me, at some point, you’d think she would call the whole thing off, right? Either that or invent an excuse to break things off and still maintain the original deception. Here was an actress who entered into a contract to perform as ‘my girlfriend’ and then (for whatever reason) kept up the pretense long enough to marry me. At that point I still didn’t know the truth. I would have expected my employers to come clean then but it had went too far. It’s one thing to pay for a brief little office ‘flirtation’, it’s quite another to keep silent while their gullible employee committed to a legally binding contract. I was blissfully happy and absolutely ignorant to the disturbing truth. She was everything (I thought) I ever wanted. Believe it or not, she confessed the whole organized charade on our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary! I was gobsmacked. I thought it was part of some prank or practical joke but she was dead serious. My whole world crumbled. Our three children were grown up and already out of the house. I’d made partner with the firm and yet, I found out the last 25 years of my life were based on some bizarre farcical performance script. Missy explained that while she had entered into the contract just trying to be a professional actress, she soon developed sincere feelings for me. On one hand, after admitting it started as an elaborate seduction hoax, it was hard to believe anything she said. On the other however, I’d had a quarter century of marital happiness and fantastic kids. Was she finally telling the truth, or was she still acting as a consummate professional actress dedicated to the role? I thought long and hard about it as she slept peacefully beside me. I loved her and I honestly believe she loves me. Much of life is pretending until it becomes true.