Acorns? Nuts!

This is the other side of the Acorns story from the husband's view. This is a BTB story, not a RAAC sequel. Thank you to all those who left such nice comments on Acorns, and I copied them all and tried to use them throughout this story as a reward for such fantastic suggestions and criticisms. Hopefully you'll see your "Acorns" comment almost word-for-word! Some commented I needed more dialogue, so hopefully this one works for you. There's more of the angry rant from the husband, and there are repercussions for the AP. I couldn't figure out where to put any sex scene, so, sorry no sex.

Listening to one of my wealth management clients spout on about his wife and their pending divorce wasn't the first time I've heard these stories. No, when you handle the financial plans for the wealthy you eventually learn to put in contingencies to the extent possible.

It depends on which State you live in, divorce laws differ. But generally things will be 50/50 no matter what. You know, I don't really care about whether or not you think it's fair. Few things in life are fair, and I've come to realize that most of the time you've got to learn to accept things then roll with it.

I'm Cooper, and I've been through enough market ups-and-downs to know that behavior is the greatest indicator of success in the market. Most people buy late and sell too soon. Yes, you have to be decisive but at the right times.

Now there are certain so-called "black swan" events that require immediate action like the mortgage meltdown in 2009. Get out quick, save what you can in order to fight for another day.

So listening to this guy complain about his wife's cheating and how long it had gone on was trying my patience, but I make almost two percent on his assets under management so I guess I have to sit and try and appear sympathetic.

But in my opinion? Well you may think I'm a little extreme here but to me a cheating spouse is a black swan event. Get out quickly, save what you can in order to fight for another day, another future.

Sometimes I'm required to sit in divorce depositions. The soon-to-be ex-wife cheater will say things like "I love my husband, I really do, I have a good life and a great home, my husband is a great father and provider and he loves me and the children, he spends all the time he can with us" in an effort to try and delay or stop the divorce.

Why? Because they got caught, and they realize they just killed the golden goose.

Do any of these cheaters ever say that they are "in love" with their husbands? No they don't, they lament only because of the consequences, not the act of betrayal. They miss the lifestyle that they had before but not the act.

There are exceptions, of course, but they are few and far between. When I have a new couple in my office to start financial planning and I present the potential negatives in the future, I'll hear a man say "not my wife, what we have is special."

I want to scream, "yes,

your wife

, you poor bastard." These are the men who will not be decisive and act promptly, instead they wallow.

As I sit and listen to my client drone on, I reach behind me into my bureau and bring out a couple of glasses and my bottle of Blanton's Original Private Reserve Single Barrel Bourbon. I might as well enjoy something while pretending to be this guy's therapist.

But as this guy drones on and I try to appear interested, my mind is drifting to thoughts about my 20-year marriage to Julia. We're ok financially, the kids are out of the house in college, we live a little more than modestly in a good neighborhood. Our social life is ok and we have a nice set of friends.

I've always felt a part of our relationship was a little unbalanced. I'm pretty disciplined, picking up my clothes, hanging them up, grocery shopping at times, maintaining the yard and cars. Plus, I worked hard to build up my client base so Julia hasn't had to work.

It's not being "stuck-up" to say that I think I'm a little better than most guys in the way they treat their wives. Plus, I keep myself in decent shape. It's not like I'm gross or ugly.

Admittedly, though, my job can be pretty stressful at times. The market gyrations on any given day can result in panic calls from my client base, screamers, worriers, those who think they know more about the market than I do, some which make demands that when I execute the trade and they lose they deny that's what they told me to do. Thank goodness for recorded phone lines.

So when I come home some days I need some stress relief, and it's embarrassing to admit this but our sex life has become boring. Yeah, I'm a guy. I need sex. Yeah, sometimes it's for the release, but a lot of times it's to feel that someone really cares about me. It's the emotional side of sex, the closeness, vulnerability in a relationship.

What's concerning to me is that the toys, long weekends, sexy underthings, none of these attempts to up our game have worked. It's as if Julia's emotionally checked out.

Without meaning to be demeaning to homemakers, if you have a responsible husband that cleans up after himself and no kids to take care of, there isn't that much to do on a daily basis in the home. Perhaps laundry once a week, vacuuming and dusting weekly. I do the yard and home maintenance, even some cooking and shopping. So after that it's basically cooking some meals when we're not going out.

Why is that so hard? Is it work? Routine? Yeppers. But I do work and routine things every god damn day at work too. And some of those things aren't very interesting or fun, sometimes even not fun.

So what is so hard about putting out for your husband now and then? Even if you don't want to, women know how to get it done quickly with us. Hell, women do that for money several times a night and don't need to be emotionally involved. Men are easy.

That last statement probably upsets a lot of women. Yeah I get it. It seems offensive to believe that a woman must provide sexual favors to her husband as if it's a duty. Some think that to be old-fashioned.

But let me ask this: At what point in the marriage contract, in the marriage vows, did it say the wife can hang out at home with little to do while the man has to really work hard to provide? What happened to being partners? Looking out for each other? Having that emotional bond?

I'm referred to as "the man of the house" but sometimes I wonder if my man-card is a little faded. And for me, Cooper, that is a very unpleasant situation. It's not my personality.

I would have thought Julia would know this after all these years. I did a great job with the kids and in the home and felt appreciated for many years. Now I think I'm being taken for granted.

So Julia has a lot of free time to spend with her friends, working out, meeting for brunch or lunch, card games, side-trips with the girls, and her usual girls nights out on Saturdays.

I'm not unreasonable. I can understand hanging out with the girls. What I didn't like was that they would pick Saturday's when I thought that should be the night for couples to enjoy. But it had become a kind of tradition, and to interfere with a bunch of married women who would fight me on this is a non-starter. How many of you guys would want to pick that fight?

My attention is suddenly brought back to my client with something he said. Leaning forward I asked him to repeat it. "I said, not having to worry about putting a roof over your head and other similar struggles of living gives someone plenty of time to consider an affair. Idle hands are the devil's playground."

"Do you think that's why she cheated?" I asked.

He responded, "I've given this a lot of thought. I gotta say, I don't get the notion of a stay-at-home wife or husband. I get taking care of children but when there aren't any, my wife has to be contributing more than upping the electric bill every month. I think when partners have skin in the game, they behave much differently than when they have everything given to them, especially if it's based mostly on looks and sex."

"How do you think that would have changed things for you?"

"Looking back on all this, I realize work poses other challenges, but at least she's earning, which leaves less of an obligation to provide should a split happen. I would have been happy with a working wife. I'd be happy with the money, happy to split the chores, happy to be an equal partner. I don't want a blow-up doll for a wife. That's what a girlfriend is for."

I sat back and dwelled on what he just said. "What if you're not getting any "blow-up" if you know what I mean?"

"Yeah that can happen, but at least she'd be earning her way financially and have a better reason for the no-blowing" he chuckled.

Sometimes regardless of how good a job I do with an investment portfolio, the thing that keeps my clients loyal is my ability to listen. People need to be heard, and even if the conversation isn't about investments, my clients appreciate me listening to their issues. This is why I have so many good clients.

If I'm such a good listener, then why is my marriage lacking an emotional connection? I can add things up, and a lot of them come from my side and should begin to add up to something. But no, it seems like things are not adding up. Why? Because it takes two people, and Julia just hasn't been contributing to the emotional connection.

Monte Carlo analysis in investments is taking a set of variables and running them repeatedly through different economic scenarios to see how they would perform. It's a form of a stress test, of probabilities.

Having nothing to do this Saturday evening while Julia and the girls are going out, I sat down and listed the variables in our marriage and decided to run them through different scenarios.

Variables: husband, wife, communication, intimacy, children, money, social life, friends, sexual needs, time together, respect, fidelity, love, understanding, trust, support, forgiveness, responsibility, patience.

Scenarios: no kids at home, future grandchildren, one income, two incomes, job loss, retirement, financial loss, divorce, aging parents, moving homes or States, open marriage, affairs, disability, death in family, major illness,

When you start to match these variables against the scenarios, the one that seems to be lacking in my marriage was communication. It seemed one way, like I was taken for granted.

Try matching up communication and being taken for granted with the scenarios that would fit, and what do you come up with? Scenarios involving sex: divorce, affairs, open marriage.

This was disconcerting. What came to mind are those client portfolios where things are going well and everyone is comfortable and there is no regular rebalancing of a portfolio. Then when downturns hit you look back and say "we should have adjusted for this or that earlier."

Was I too comfortable with the current situation in my marriage? Was I ignoring things I should be rebalancing? Have I been too compliant, soft, easy, accommodating, predictable? Have I spoiled Julia, and is she too selfish or immature to respond with love and respect?

I almost get the feeling that rather than having gratitude for what I do, she has contempt. Could it be that things are so good for her that it makes her life boring and she's become complacent?

Lightbulbs suddenly lit up in my head: Girls night out. Saturdays. Instead of being with me. And I'm so used to it I don't ask her about her night, who was there, what they talked about, where they went, how her friends are doing.

So what happens then if she feels complacent, wants some excitement? Could it be possible she'd get it from another man's cock?

These thoughts remained in my head late into the night while I waited for Julia to get home. Eventually I went to bed, sort of looking forward to my typical Sunday routines on the cars and yard.

Sunday morning I woke up and came down to a fresh pot of coffee and a humming wife. That was unusual, as I'm typically the first person up to make coffee. Julia certainly isn't a morning person.

"Thanks for making coffee babe. Any reason why you're up early?"

"Just thought I'd get a good start to the day honey" she said as she smiled nicely.

"So where'd you girls go this time?"

Without hesitation she said "we tried that new club downtown just off the warehouse district, it was ok but for a bunch of us old hags we didn't really fit in."

"Maybe we can go there sometime. Is there dancing?"

"Yeah there's dancing but I don't think you'd like the place. We'll probably go somewhere else next week."

I went out and vacuumed the cars and washed them in the driveway, gassed them up, then spent some time working on the yard.

That week I noticed Julia seemed to be daydreaming, or at least her thoughts seemed distant. I asked her about it and she snapped alert and gave me some quick answers. But she seemed happier throughout the week which was pleasant to be around.

That Saturday I asked which club GNO is scheduled for and she said the girls once again wanted to go to the same as last week. "I don't really want to go there but majority rules."

Sunday I got up, had coffee, and went out to do my usual car cleaning. I pulled out the vacuum and cleaned out the interior then pulled out the buckets and hose and was going to wash and wax Julia's car. Interestingly, I found acorns in the windshield wiper cowl.

Lots of acorns.

Automatically I glanced up and around for some reason, but neither we nor our neighbors have any trees on our property. And it wasn't just a few acorns. There were hundreds. What the hell, this was curious.

I pulled out my phone and in my Perplexity AI app I asked "why are there so many acorns?" The answer was that this was a mast year, a boom cycle where a single tree can drop as many as 10,000 acorns.

Leaning against the car I wondered where she had been the last few days. She was at that new club downtown last night. But downtown there are no mature trees, instead they're more like those wimpy trees they plant along the busy streets just for some greenery. And none of them are oak trees.

Oak trees? You know where there's a lot of oak trees? That old well-established subdivision of old style homes, some pretty large, Oak Hollow. I have several well-heeled clients who live over there.

I got another bucket and scraped the acorns into it. While washing the car my mind was working in the background. My thoughts continued to swirl around acorns, oak trees, happy wife, girls night out. Things were not adding up, or were they?

Back in the house Julia was watching some home improvement show. I undressed in the mud room/laundry room right off the garage and dropped my soiled clothes in the dirty clothes basket. Just before I was going to go upstairs for a shower I stopped, turned around, and looked at the laundry basket.

"No," I thought. "It wouldn't be, would it?" I couldn't believe I was going to look through the laundry basket for her panties. Looking back toward the family room I could hear the TV.

Closing the door to the laundry room I started looking through the dirty clothes figuring her underclothes from last night would be at the top. Interestingly, they weren't. So I dumped the basket upside down. Guess what I found at the bottom of the basket?

Guys, it's embarrassing to admit I looked for my wife's panties, much less look at them and then, well, smell them. But listen to me: I know her smell, and I know there was another smell. I grabbed a plastic bag to store them, hid it in the garage, then cleaned up the laundry room.

Walking past Julia I went upstairs, showered, and told her I was going out with the guys to watch a game at the bar. It was just me and my thoughts, a few beers and a burger.

I realized I didn't know if the acorns were there Friday night, so next week I'd check. But it still doesn't excuse what I found in the laundry. What I needed was some time to put things in place.

This was a black swan event. There was no way I was going to wimp out. I had to be decisive and move forward. Cheating was a full-stop event. None of this "she was a good wife all those years" or "she was a good mother." Nothing she did in her betrayal should call for being fair in the split.

I ordered another beer and a shot. Why? Because I realized she was making me a cuck. Yeah, an unwilling cuck, but a cuck nonetheless. Some guys are into that, right? And that's ok with me if it's ok with them. But it's not me. Not at all.

To me, you take immediate action to cut out the infected part of the marriage. I picked up my phone and called my client and asked for his attorney's name. I also called my brokerage manager and asked to meet first thing in the morning. He could tell something was wrong and suggested I come over to his home for a drink and talk.

Hard as it is to tell anyone that you've been cucked, it was important for him to help me with my commissions and renewals. From Monday on I wanted any commissions and renewals to be held by the firm and not paid out. I'd still work, but I wanted everything minimized in my bank account and payroll.

Meeting with the attorney told me everything I already knew, a 50/50 split of assets. It sucks, I know, and you readers will tell me I gave in or gave up. Think what you want, but in my State that's how it's gonna be. I organized all my account paperwork and over the next few weeks, made strategic divestments and split them into two accounts.

At home things didn't change much. Things had become routine and expected and with the lack of intimacy and communication it made it somewhat easier to keep my rage in check.

So over the next four weeks I was able to get a number of things in place for the divorce that was certain to happen, including testing of the panties. And there was a difference between Friday and Sunday, acorns showing up every Sunday morning.

With everything in place, on Sunday morning I woke up early and got breakfast ready. It would be memorable. Julie got up and came down for a cup of coffee while I was cooking up some scrambled eggs. She sat at the table sipping her hot coffee, looking pretty ragged.

"Here babe, got you some scrambled eggs!" as I pushed a plate in front of her. I opened the pan and dumped the eggs on her plate.

Julia looked at the plate, sort of squinting at it for a few moments. I leaned against the kitchen counter frowning at her.

She continued to look down at the eggs - and acorns. Surprisingly, she played it cool. "Thanks honey, I guess I haven't tried this combination before" and began eating the eggs while pushing the acorns to the side, glancing up at me. I let the silence fill the room.

Stepping away for a moment I went into the laundry room and brought a bag into the kitchen and threw it on the table in front of her. She didn't say anything but she did look up at me. My face betrayed my feelings which is why she probably wasn't saying anything.

"Dump the bag out" I commanded. She obeyed and out fell five different panty sets.

"Smell the crotch.

NOW!

" I screamed.

Julia jumped at my yelling but just sat there looking at the table. She knew that I knew.

At this point I couldn't hold back. It was time to release the rage.

"WHY? What the fuck is wrong with you! Who the fuck do you think you are? Are you a whore? Is that what I married? A whoring slut? Why would you cheat on me, on us? Have you lost your mind you stupid woman?"

I continued screaming at her: "Are you happy that you got what you wanted? No more boring husband and all the sex you can manage?! You won't be bored any more because now you'll get to go out daily and meet new and different fuckwads."

While pausing to catch my breath, unbelievably this stupid whore thought of the most inappropriate thing to say at the most inappropriate time. She squeaked out "It's over."