Widowhood

I'm in trouble. Big bad and scary trouble. I'm not totally sure how I got myself into this position and I'm even less sure about getting myself out of it. I wasn't meant to get involved with something like this, with someone like them. Matthew is married and I'm meant to be staying as far away from him as possible and that is exactly what I did. I didn't break girlcode. I didn't give him or his wife any indication of what I was feeling or thinking. I went in, did my job, was a good coworker and friend and somehow I've found myself as the third in their relationship.

I don't feel like the third in their relationship. For some reason that baffles me, they have come together to make the number one in their relationship. I mean, when they first made the offer, I was shocked, but after a few years of not having any sex, I was interested. Plus, I've always been attracted to Matthew. I've never acted on it, and I was never going to dream of acting on it. Meeting his wife just cemented my opinion that not only would it be wrong to hit on him, but it would also be futile; he isn't the type to cheat as a general rule, and after twenty years together, they were still madly in love.

I remember the day I met Matthew. I wouldn't say he was a total jerk because he was simply following instructions. His boss didn't want me there but my boss outranked his boss and so he was stuck with me. The entire team ignored me, they didn't want me there. I didn't care, it was a job and I was going to do it well.

For 12 months I did my job to the best of my ability while dealing with people who didn't want to change. I refused to let the dramas at work come home. My husband and I enjoyed our life together and we made the most of any situation. As a woman in my mid-twenties I was used to not being taken seriously. It took a year of pushing for the guys at work, for Matthew to take me seriously. It happened slowly and we eventually became good friends and coworkers.

When my husband died Matthew was a good support. He understood and respected the fact that I needed to throw myself into my work. It didn't bother him and his wife is amazing. She knew there wasn't anything going on between us. Everything we talked about was work, I wasn't even attracted to him in any way shape or form until the incident. The incident when he showed himself as being so different from any man I've ever been involved with.

Things went wrong at work one and it changed everything. Matthew took charge of the situation in a way that I didn't know was possible. All my sexual energies had been repressed since my husband died at the hands of a drunk driver but everything woke up when Matthew took control. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced before. I was used to being the one in charge. I was the leader but when he was ordering me and everyone else around I saw him in a totally different light.

I didn't know it then; I just thought it was an attractive trait, but when I went to bed that night, I had the best dream I had ever had. I was only 29 when I lost my husband, and I knew I wouldn't stay celibate forever, but I didn't expect my desires to make a comeback like this. I thought I would find a single guy when the time came.

It was after that incident that we started getting closer and closer. I made sure that no lines were crossed, and I was convinced that my desire would fade. Matthew wasn't anything like my type. He was too much like me for any relationship to ever work, and he was married. Guys being married or involved had always been an instant turn-off for me in the past I never wanted to be that girl.

Still, the dreams didn't stop, they came night after night and each day I controlled myself. I did and said the right things. I supported him when he talked about his wife and grew jealous over the fact that he was that kind of partner. He knew exactly who he was and that his wife came first. He never allowed anyone to disrespect her or their family. It was incredible to see. He didn't mince his words or get sucked into office politics. He stood by his team and I was convinced that the sex would be amazing but that we would be a terrible couple. He was as focused on his work as I was, and you can't have two people like that in a relationship. I told myself that over and over again. I had to tell myself that because it was better than hoping him and Jade would break up. I didn't want to be the woman who wanted someone else's relationship to fail.

It was about a year after my husbands death when my dreams started to get out of control. I was waking up aroused every morning and I started to become aware of how much my life had paused since his death. I slowly pulled myself back together and returned to working out, seeing my friends and indulging in my other hobbies. It was good for me and I began to feel better about myself. I also began to look better; I've always been slightly above average in size, which is another reason I believed that Matthew would never look at me twice. His wife looked like a model; why would he want anything to do with me when he was going home to the most amazing woman every day?

She was a homemaker, and that was the way they liked it. He loved having everything at home taken care of and made sure she knew how appreciated she really was. Matthew is what we would call a dad bod. He wasn't fat by any means, but he wasn't packing a six-pack anymore. He had strong arms from years of doing DIY projects around the house. He was your typical thirty-something-year-old man. He had scars from accidents, hands that were calloused from manual labour and a strong, commanding presence. The only sign that there was a rebel inside of him was the eyebrow-piercing. It looked slightly out of place on a man who was so straight-laced, but once you got to know him, it was easy to see the rebel hiding beneath the surface.

Matthew wasn't a man who raised his voice unless he really needed to. He was a man who could make his point without swearing or causing a scene. He waited until others had finished speaking before putting his opinion forward. He wouldn't be ignored, but he is one of the few men I have met who truly didn't have an ego. The more time I spent with him after the accident, the more I got to know him, the more he became someone I respected and he became someone whose opinion I cared about.

It's rare for me to find people I truly respect and care about. It's not that I don't care about others. I wish everyone the best in this world, but I rarely find someone whose opinion I care about. I could probably count on one hand the number of people who had the ability to crush me just by thinking bad about me. Matthew made that list, and I was determined not to do anything to damage our friendship. I knew if he caught even the slightest hint of my feelings for him, he would shut our friendship down faster than I could blink. He wasn't going to betray Jade, and that was just something I learned to live with.

I met Jade about six months after the incident at work. By this point, my nightly dreams had me masturbating every morning when I woke up. I physically couldn't bring myself to get out of bed. Jade and I met by accident. We all lived in the same neighbour and went to the same dog park. My pup Maxwell and their pup became fast friends. Maxwell wasn't really a pup anymore, but the younger dog wasn't too active for him. While the dogs played, Jade and I got to talking; she quickly figured out who I was when I mentioned what I did for a living. I'm guessing Matthew had been talking about me. He was probably telling her about the sad widow who was loosing too much weight because she could only bring herself to eat lunch every day. It was the one meal I could stomach because I was eating with others and not by myself.

Jade and I hit it off in a way that I didn't really expect. I had some female friends, but none that were super close. I could come across as being bitchy at times because I firmly believed in being independent. I believed that everyone should have their own money, that not everything had to be done as a couple and that if your partner wasn't on board with your goals, then you either had to accept it or dumb the partner. I clashed with women willing to make themselves small for the sake of their relationship.

I'm aware that I sound like a bitch, but I've seen far too many women brought down because they wanted to keep the peace. To be fair, I've seen a lot of men brought down that way as well. I've always lived by the motto that if I'm not happy alone, I sure as hell won't be happy in a relationship. I said that to my husband on our first date. He said it was the sexiest thing he had ever heard. I knew then that I would marry him someday.

Jade was a homemaker; she didn't care that my opinions disagreed with hers; she owned all her decisions, even if they didn't play out the way she wanted them to. I admired that about her from the moment we met. We clicked over TV shows and books. She had hobbies that confused the hell out of me, but this woman also stood her ground.

Jade was also beautiful. It's tough for me to describe because I'm not used to describing women. All my life, I've described the men I've been involved with, but women have always just been women. She had long brown hair; she was taller than me and slimmer. I remember Matthew telling me that she worked out every day and cooked healthy meals. She had green eyes, and she was tanned. It wasn't a fake tan but her skin was slightly tanned from hours spent out in the sun.

Despite being a homemaker, she had insisted that Matthew's pay check get split into three; she was determined to have her own money. One-third went to her, one-third to him and a third to their joint account for all their expenses. It was equal, and she was clear that if he ever did anything to disrespect her or treat her as less than for not working outside the home, she would end the marriage.

I left the dog park after we exchanged numbers. She was like me in some sense; she enjoyed being home as much as I did, and while she had a few more female friends, she wasn't super close to them. I had a text message inviting me to dinner by the time I made it home from the dog park. The message came from Matthew, so I assume she had told me about us running into one another.

If Matthew was uncomfortable with me coming to dinner, he said nothing. We had talked about many things over time as we grew closer, but he was the type who liked to leave work stuff at work and home stuff at home. I think he was happy that Jade was making a new friend. He asked me not to talk about any of the problems we had at work. He didn't want to worry her.

It didn't take long for Jade and I to become close. In some ways, it made things easier, but it also made things harder. I got to see Matthew outside work, and it made me want him even more. Just thinking his name was enough to turn me on. It also made it easier for me to think about him being off-limits. Jade was quickly becoming my best friend, so now I had more reason to stay away from him.

It was then that Jade hit me with a proposal that I never saw coming. If someone had asked me if something like this was ever going to happen to me, I would have told them they were nuts. The odds of me winning Powerball seemed better than the odds of this ever happening to me. This was something that happened in movies or to people who were brought into all the wokeness of the world. It didn't happen to people like me, and it didn't come from people like Jade and Matthew.

Jade had invited me over to dinner, we had been friends for months and texted most days of the week. She knew if she wanted Matthew home at a decent hour she should text me and I would annoy him on her behalf. Thanks to my efforts he was going home earlier and their relationship was stronger than ever. She would invite me to dinner if she was cooking something she knew I liked, sometimes Matthew was home and other times he wasn't. I would stay for dinner and help with the washing up. Matthew and I took care of the cleaning because we knew if we tried to help with the cooking we would probably set something on fire.

Jade also knew that if she didn't invite me over for dinner, I would be living off oven food and toast. I didn't mind, but she was a health nut who thought I needed to eat more than just that. We had just sat down to eat when I noticed Jade hadn't picked up her knife and fork. I put mine down because I had been taught that it was rude to eat before the host, and despite Jade's protests, this was one habit from childhood that I had never been able to break.

"We want to start sleeping with you." said Jade in a relaxed tone. Her voice was confident, and it took a moment for her words to register in my mind. She was so direct about it that I was sure I had misheard her, and I waited for her to say something else. She said nothing; she and Matthew just continued to look at me while my mouth dropped open as her words fully registered.

I remember saying something back to her, but I can't recall the exact words I used. It must have been something along the lines of "I'm sorry. What?"

If I could remember everything she said exactly as she said it, that is what I would put down here, but I can't, so basically, I'm going to summarise everything she said. That will have to be good enough. Jade went on to say that as much as she loved Matthew she felt like something was missing. Their family was incomplete, and before getting with Matthew, she had fooled around with women in the past. She enjoyed sex with women as much as she enjoyed sex with men. When we grew close, she wanted to see what could happen with me, but she could never cheat on Matthew, and when she brought it up with him, he was open about the fact that he wanted to sleep with me as well.

She made it clear that they would continue to be my friends no matter what I said and that they were looking for more than just sex. Their relationship had gotten a little stale over the years, but they still loved one another. They believed that I could bring some balance to their relationship. I challenged Matthew in ways she didn't while she grounded both of us and made us see that there was more to life than work. She wasn't wrong about that. I had been happier since I started doing more outside of work. I had to admit I had her to thank for that.

They wanted to continue their relationship and for me to develop a romantic and sexual relationship with them individually, with the possibility of us having threesomes in the future. They thought it would be the best way for everyone to balance their physical and emotional needs. It was clear to me that they had given this a lot of thought. It turns out that they were more willing to break society's rules than I first gave them credit for.

Jade knew I would only consider something like this if everyone was on the same page about the rules, and she would have been turned off if I had considered it without Matthew being involved. I was lucky she didn't know how badly I wanted to jump her husband every chance I got.

I chanced a look at Matthew to see if he had anything to say, but he grabbed Jade's hand and nodded. He would respect any decision that I made. He was also indicating that he really did want to sleep with me. There was more to Jade's explanation, but I think I remembered all the essential bits. The only thing I could clearly say at that moment was that I had never been with a woman. I had thought about it fleeting in the past, but I had always enjoyed sex with men and never given it any serious consideration.

Jade and Matthew were sweet and supportive. They encouraged me to go home and think about it before making any decisions. They told me that if I decided to give it a shot, we could move at any pace I felt comfortable with. Jade stressed that if we tried this, she wanted us to focus on our relationship first. She thought it would be easier to see if this was really going to work. I couldn't come up with a good counterpoint. This was her idea, and the fact that I was even considering it showed she had sparked something inside me. This was the most unusual relationship offer I had ever received, but I was ready for something a little different. After losing my husband, I didn't want to go back to a normal one. I didn't crave that anymore. I knew if I agreed, it would only be fair to go along with what Jade wanted. She had given this more thought and I would respect that.

I went home and spent an entire week thinking about Jade's offer. We texted each other the normal stuff, but neither of us mentioned it. Matthew and I continued to work together as we normally would, and he never said anything, either. It was driving me crazy because it felt like he was smiling at me more, that his gaze was lingering on me and that he was being even more gentlemanly than usual. He was the type to open doors for women, but things really went up a notch after that dinner. It wasn't enough for him to say something to him directly, but I could sense that something had changed between us.

Exactly one week later, I went back to their place. Jade was cooking something new that she wanted me to try, and I knew the dogs were missing each other. Thankfully, it was a clear night, and the walk from my home to theirs was good for me. We didn't speak as we sat down to eat. We all knew the routine and who would be responsible for what. They didn't want to spook me, and I still didn't know what I was going to say.

We were halfway through the meal when the answer came to me. I could give this a shot. It was an unusual setup, but that is ok. It was time for me to try something unusual, and if it all went to hell, I was in the lucky position of being able to afford to run away. No one knew this, but I didn't need to work if I didn't want to. It was a secret I kept close to my chest. I was thirty by this point and still young enough to start over elsewhere if it came to that.

The words spilled out of my mouth before I could stop them "Let's try it. I don't know if this is a terrible idea or not, but let's try it."

Jade had the biggest grin on her face, and Matthew was smiling too. It was then that I noticed their shoulders relaxing. Despite all appearances, they had been as nervous as I had been. They wanted me to say yes even more than I wanted to. At that point in time I just wanted to say yes because I wanted to sleep with Matthew but seeing the excitement on her face made me pretty curious. I couldn't help but wonder what was instore for me.

Jade laid out her plan, she and I would continue to spend time together and we would do all the things we had been doing for some time. The only difference was that now she planned on being a lot more handsy. To be honest I was kind of excited by the thought of that. When you haven't been touched in some time you start to think that the problem is you. To hear that she wanted to touch me was enough to put a smile on my face.

Maybe I should have thought about my late husband before getting involved with them. I'm sure he would have wanted me to move on eventually but he probably assumed I would get into another common relationship. I loved our relationship but I also love this one. This relationship gives me the freedom to do what I want. I can go on the trips I want. I know they will be there for me if I get sick or need anything, but because they are already married to each other, they don't expect the same level of dependence from me.

Over several months, my relationship with Jade progressed while my relationship with Matthew stayed the same. Jade was careful not to move too quickly. I think she didn't want to startle me, and Matthew seemed to support whatever Jade wanted to do. To be perfectly honest, it was the first time in my life that I sat back and let someone else make the plans. I went along with what Jade wanted, and she had a sixth sense for picking up when I was reaching my limit. She knew I hadn't been physical with anyone in some time, and she eased us into a physical relationship. It started with little things, like hand-holding and sweet kisses on the cheek.