I'm not really sure where I should start this tale. If someone had told me, even just a year or two ago, that my wife and I would have this experience, I wouldn't have believed them. Now here I am trying to figure out the best way to tell the story.
I guess I should start with some background about us. Dana and I (Frank) have been married for a little more than twenty years. We married in our late twenties and are now both about fifty. It's the second marriage for both of us and both of us had children from our first marriages. Together we had another child, and our house was full for a couple decades. For that same time frame, we always struggled financially because my profession didn't pay a great deal and neither did hers. We both liked our jobs though and we managed to pay the bills, so we stayed doing what we enjoyed.
Like most couples (I guess), while we were busy being parents first, our love life (by that I mean sex life) paid the price. When we were newlyweds, we had plenty of appetite but not a lot of time. Having a house full of kids tends to minimize opportunities. We actually had to schedule time to play, and we weren't always in the mood when the time rolled around. As the kids got older, we had more opportunities but seemed to be distracted by all of the things life can throw at you: finances, work, chores... everything. Additionally, like a lot of "comfortable" married couples, we didn't keep ourselves in the greatest of shape. Neither of us got fat, but we weren't hard bodies either.
Then, last year, two things changed and the impact on our life was quite significant. The first big change was my career. I retired after 27 years in a single profession and, with that retirement check coming in, untaxed thanks to our state of residence, I was able to pursue my dream of writing. While I wanted to be a great fiction writer, I found myself most often writing what amounted to political opinion. It started out as a series of essays and analysis documents and ended up growing into about a 300-page book on evolving political strategies. I self-published it (after a friend suggested I do so) and saw a few months of small royalties.
In that same time frame, our youngest child entered her last year of high school and started searching for colleges. My wife and I realized that within the next fifteen to eighteen months we were going to be "empty nesters." We sat and had a couple conversations about how things would change and what we would like to see change the most. One thing we both agreed on was that we wanted to rekindle our love life; our sex life. We wanted to find the passion we had when we'd first met and started dating. The one imperative that we both agreed on was that we'd work together to bring passion back into our intimacy. Neither of us felt that we were so old we shouldn't be active sexually and we agreed that keeping our sex life alive and interesting was of utmost importance. Without it we were simply not a couple, just roommates. We were open in our discussions and also talked about our fantasies as well as what we thought we could do to help rekindle that fire.
To my surprise my wife admitted that she fantasized about sex with other men. Prior to our marriage she'd only been with two other guys: the guy who got her virginity in her last year of high school and her first husband. She admitted that she had curiosities about what sex with other men would be like and she occasionally fantasized about enjoying two men at once. THAT particular admission grew out of her admitting to a curiosity about anal sex as it was something she'd always said she wasn't interested in -- apparently because she thought I would judge her as some kind of wanton slut if she did admit it.
That admission on her part took a great deal of courage. We're all afraid of judgment; of being labeled; of someone thinking less of us -- especially when that someone is a spouse whose opinion we care about; whose love we don't want to risk losing; whose respect we absolutely don't want to endanger. I recognized the courage she showed in her admission and gave her equal honesty. It wasn't easy for either of us but we both did it out of our commitment to our imperative: salvaging and rebuilding our sex life.
I can't say I was super excited about the idea of her enjoying other men, but I WAS turned on by how open she was being and how her admissions revealed her to be a much more sexual being than I had known in our over two decades of marriage. We talked about risks and emotions, security and promises. We talked about our marriage, the security of it, not risking it and our long future ahead. Above all we agreed that our love for each other would be our anchor and honesty would be the strong chain that bound us to it.
The other thing we agreed on was that if we were going to enjoy sex like we used to, and for us to each feel more attractive, we needed to get back in better shape. We immediately began eating a bit cleaner and exercising regularly. Within weeks we saw (and enjoyed) higher energy levels and better endurance. In the midst of that, an election cycle started and, much to my great surprise, sales of my book skyrocketed. I never did figure out what caused the sales spike, but I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. In three months the book sold over two million copies, and since I was getting about two dollars per copy in royalties, that equated to just over four million dollars.
First and foremost, I contacted an accountant to make sure the taxes were going to be squared away. Next, I contacted a friend of mine to act as my "manager" because I started getting phone calls to do speaking engagements and to be a guest political analyst for a couple television stations. Those engagements paid handsomely as well and within a six-month period our net worth went from a couple hundred thousand to well over five million.
We also suddenly found ourselves in a different social bracket. We started getting invitations to posh events and high dollar per plate dinner functions. Most of them we politely declined, although we did attend a few at the advice of my manager. We had to be viewed as "players" to keep the requests coming is what she told me. My wife and I enjoyed the few that we went to, more for the setting and the atmosphere than the people. We found most of the people to be pretty fake, but the settings were always elegant, we enjoyed getting dressed up and being catered to felt nice.
Being financially more comfortable than we'd ever been, we hired a personal trainer and dedicated ourselves further to our health and fitness. The results were obvious both to the eye and in our performance. I noticed that Dana started wearing sexier clothing and bought a selection of lingerie that really caught my attention. Being fitter helped us look even better when we dressed up for the formal events and I saw, for the first time ever, my wife wear an evening gown with a low cut back and (apparently) built in chest support. There was no way she could wear a bra with a backless dress that opened low enough to see the tattoo she had in the small of her back. The dress also had a slit up her left leg and, even though she wore hose (thigh highs and they were SO sexy, especially when the top of the left one showed through the dress slit) the tattoos she has on her left leg all peeked out through the evening as well.
The evening she wore that dress was what really got us started on our new path, as I look back at it. I had excused myself to go to the bathroom and when I got back, I found her dancing with a handsome young gentleman. There had been a line in the men's room and as a result, I had left her alone for a good ten minutes. Apparently, as she told me later, Jonathan -- the young man -- had approached her a few minutes after I'd left her side. He'd offered to buy her a drink which she'd politely declined and then he followed up with, "Then perhaps a dance?" She said he was cute and very polite, handsome in a boyish yet rugged kind of way. Through our conversations she didn't think I'd mind so she'd accepted.
When I found them, they were dancing to a slow song but not belly to belly. He held her at arm's length, one hand on her hip, the other holding her hand. She had a hand on his shoulder. The music wasn't loud, so they chatted while they danced. When I came back, I watched them for a few minutes and was struck by two things: first, my wife was gorgeous. She has always been a beautiful woman, but the fitness regimen had really accentuated her fit curves and that dress did an awful lot to show them off. Second, I was only the slightest bit jealous. She looked like she was having a fun time and my happiness about her enjoying herself outweighed the little bit of jealousy I felt. After all, I knew who she was going home with and the thoughts I had about what I was going to do with her after getting her out of that dress distracted me from any further feelings of jealousy.
Dana saw me coming back and smiled at my approach. When I got within reach she dropped her arms, took a half step back and said, "Frank, this is Jonathan. He was nice enough to offer me a dance." Turning to Jonathan she said, "This is my husband, Frank."