OK, so you're asking: Why am I still here?

I think I've got a new answer this week: Monkey Branching. You know, brachiation, swinging from limb to limb. Something gibbons do in the jungle.

It's positively evil, emotionally unhealthy, this notion of keeping one hand on the solid branch of home, family and two cars in the driveway, while reaching the other hand out for some branch that may be out there somewhere.

But that's how I plan to go about searching the suburban jungle — finding something, some new guy, new while clinging to the old.

It's not like no one's ever done this before.

In high school we called it keeping another guy on the "back burner," in case some other relationship turned out not to be on the boil.

Alas, in high school, it was just you and the candidates for prom date. Now anyone on the back burner, or, to mix metaphors, any new branch, is going to have to hold not just my heart but my two children as well.

What sort of man would provide such a strong branch? Who would want to? One thing I do know: I won't be swinging on any new branches without my kids.

I know, I know.

My girlfriends, the talk show psycho-bablers, the self-help books, the marriage counselors, all say, "You have to be on your own before you can find somebody else."

Yeah, but I've been on my own before.

I'm no princess, waiting in her turret for Prince Rescue to come along. I've paid my own rent. Worked in Corporate America (high-profile and six-figures, thank you). Dated bigtime in the Big Bad Apple.

It's just that I've never done it with two beautiful pre-school kids in tow.

Monkey branching? Me? The library-helper-mom? The bake sale mom?

Isn't that sleazy?

Perhaps I should ask that of some of those sweet "I'm 30 years old, I'm single, I don't care if he's married with kids, I'm going after him anyway" women, the kind of women who seem to end up in my husband's arms. And his bed.

And hence, in my life, too. Yes, I'll ask them if it's sleazy.

Those women, in their desires, are allowed to "overlap" with me and my family. They've overlapped right into my life.

Nobody is scolding them, and telling them not to have a crack at my husband. Nobody is scolding my husband either.

So hey: Is it OK for me to begin looking? To stay in this marriage and cautiously, clandestinely, begin looking for my next mate?

Of course, I won't be looking in my own backyard. I'm not about to embarrass my children by becoming the Stepford Station Slut Mom.

But maybe monkey business — discreetly, in a different jungle, of course, with an unclaimed male, and because I want to move on, not have revenge — maybe that's the summer adventure I'm ready for.

Monkey branching.




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