Another Love - Alternative Ending

Like many others, I think Richard Gerald is an excellent story teller, but "Another Love" leaves me with a deep sense of injustice (by the way, Richard has given me permission to publish this and I thank him for it, and I want it acknowledged that no other story on Literotica has ever prompted me to write an alternative ending so he must be good -- he definitely got my blood pressure up!).

I really enjoyed Parts 1 and 2 because I thought they were completely plausible, and he portrays Karen as a normal, loving wife (with a rather large flaw, I think) who feels justified in what she's done. Rob is portrayed as a quiet, strong, and dependable husband who is perhaps a little lacking when it comes to opening up about his emotions.

However, I can identify with Rob and like a lot of men I feel strong emotion even though I may not always display it or vocalize it. For this reason I found Parts 3 & 4 to be completely out of character for Rob, especially after his words at the end of Part 1 when he called Karen a "beautiful whore" and then said "she is nothing to me now". I felt he had too much integrity, and pride, to be coerced into a threesome. He would see that he was again being manipulated into accepting something that was completely at odds with his views on marriage and fidelity.

He would already be hugely wounded by the discovery of Karen's infidelity, so to have Avril and Phillipe's family filling his apartment at Thanksgiving, plus his sons who were always aware of her adultery yet never told him, would only add to his anguish by constantly reminding him of the other life Karen had led. Imagine how he must have felt while they were all laughing and smiling together just like old times while he was the outsider - the stranger - in his own house.

Well fuck that! I could never accept that scenario so I decided to place myself in Rob's shoes and write down why I would no longer stay with Karen.

I also wanted Karen to realize that Rob was leaving her not so much because of what she'd done, which would have been reason enough, but more because he'd changed as a result of finding out. He even apologizes to her for the change in the way he sees her, and I like to think this approach would make Karen more remorseful (assuming she's even capable of remorse) than if he'd just endlessly abused her and called her every name under the sun. Besides, he's not an asshole and it's obvious from his final two paragraphs that he still feels something for her despite making up his mind to leave.

Some readers may notice a very slight similarity with Jezzaz's "Words", but only in that the husband is trying to make the wife see the type of person she really is and the damage she's doing (or has done in this case) to the marriage using only words.

This alternative ending should ideally be read after Part 2 of "Another Love" by RichardGerald but with one difference -- it occurs late on Sunday afternoon, the day after Avril's visit and before Karen arrives home later in the week. The scene opens with Rob sitting at a desk in front of the painting and writing a letter, and I've presumed that Avril has told Rob a lot more than was revealed in Part 1, but no more than what Karen reveals in Part 2 (and which Avril would already have known).

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My dearest Karen,

For two days now I've just sat and looked at Phillipe's portrait of you, and it is indeed a beautiful painting. I see the bedroom we decorated together, your grandmother's chair, and the bed we shared, made love in, and snuggled in with our boys when they were young. I see the love in your eyes and the enigmatic smile on your face, just as I've seen it for all our married lives.

But now I know that I was not alone in sharing those special moments and building those intimate memories. The love that I imagined we equally shared turns out to be less than equally shared. You received all of mine, but I didn't receive all of yours.

When Avril arrived yesterday she was stunned to discover that I knew nothing of your extramarital life. I think even she was appalled at how I'd been treated, and I'm sure this is why she eventually, though reluctantly, told me everything about your love affair with Phillipe. At first I refused to believe what she was telling me but she related so many things about you and our family - and she knew her way around our apartment - that I had to believe her. If I had any doubt, then I only had to look at the painting in front of me to confirm all that she said.

From what Avril has told me your affair started about a year or so after the birth of Oscar. She described how you were going through a period of depression and had lost interest in sex with me, and that Phillipe had re-kindled your appetite and that I was the benefactor. I suppose I should be grateful for that, but I don't believe you entered the liaison with the objective of improving our marriage.

Hell, there are plenty of professional counsellors who do nothing but get marriages back on track but I suppose a good fuck or two behind my back was quicker and cheaper and, of course, far more exciting.

Karen, I know I'm not the sort of person who expresses emotions easily, and I'm probably difficult to talk to when discussing emotional things, but couldn't you have tried just a little harder to be honest and confide in me at that time? I know I would've understood and together we could've made our marriage even stronger.

Instead, you turned away from me and found love and understanding elsewhere, and it was the beginning of 20 years of deceiving me in a cruel and selfish way.

Avril told me you love me, and that your affair was just a response to a period of self-doubt that you went through. Hell, it must have been some doubt and some period for it to last at least 13 years of physical adultery and 20 years of emotional attachment, only to be finally broken by the death of your lover three short months ago when you attended his funeral. I thought your recent need to "get away" to visit the boys was just empty-nest syndrome, but I think the real reason is that you're still mourning the loss of your lover.

According to Avril your affair was a loving, pure, and beautiful one and somehow was justified because of that. I doubt you'll be at all surprised that I don't share that opinion. If it was so pure and beautiful why did you hide it from me for the last 20 years? May I suggest that not having to think about children, bills to pay, or obligations to other people and all the other mundane things in life would make any extramarital love affair seem pure and perfect, but the real world has to intrude at some point.

No matter how I try to see it from your point of view I still see a wife who has lived two separate lives -- a mundane but happy one with her unsuspecting husband and an exciting, illicit one with her lover.

I have no problem with the open marriage that Avril and Phillipe had. I gather from Avril that their children and Phillipe's wider family all knew of it and it was accepted because they told each other everything -- there were no secrets between them. You willingly joined their "marriage", even to the extent of having Avril and Phillipe in our house at the same time and taking turns in sharing Phillipe, but there was one important difference -- unlike Avril, you did it without your husband's knowledge and deliberately kept it secret from him!

Karen, what sort of woman are you that you could expose your soul and give your body to your lover for all those years, even to the extent of involving your children, yet keep your own husband totally blinded? From what I can make out you were meeting your lover over at least a 13-year period. Yours was no short-term affair, and surely you must have considered leaving me for him. You had the option at any time of choosing either me or Phillipe, which would have been the honorable thing to do, but chose to keep us both. Was it because you knew you could never have Phillipe entirely to yourself, so you still kept me as a sort of long-term backup?

What is unforgivable is that you, Avril and Phillipe all knew where you stood, but I never knew I was competing with him for your continuing love and affections and you never bothered to tell me. I'm sure you think I'm incredibly gullible because I never suspected, but I was never guilty of being gullible -- I was instead guilty of being so in love with you that I trusted you unconditionally to be as faithful to me as I have always been to you.

They say love is blind, and I was certainly blind to what you were doing. Being so much in love does that to a man and I never once suspected. Hell, why should I even suspect? -- after all, it was me you fell in love with and married and me who fathered our children. It was me you vowed to be faithful to and it was both of us who created a home and a family.

Your lover was none of these things and did none of these things. All your lover ever did was take advantage of your fragile mental state to befriend you and then seduce you, and you fell completely under his spell and he under yours.

Karen, was I really so useless that you could do this to me? Did I somehow fail you so much that I deserved to be cuckolded for 13 years? Even the dog I had when I was a kid was more faithful than you, and he loved me back 10 times over for all the love I gave him. I only asked for equal fidelity and love from you, but you couldn't even manage that.

Have you ever had the courage to look deep inside yourself and ask why you did this, or is it somewhere you don't want to go because you're afraid of the real answer? I honestly believe you need some professional help to understand who and what you are, because despite what you may believe this was not a "loving thing" and you never owed Phillipe anything -- he'd already taken his payment from your body and I'd bet you weren't his only married conquest.

I understand you soon fell in love with Phillipe, even though your affair started as a purely sexual one, but to me he was a less than honorable man. He knew you were married but seduced you anyway, and he would've known of the likely consequence for you if I ever found out. You can protest all you like that he was caring and loving (just like you say I am, but your words don't carry much weight now, do they) and that he "helped" you when you needed it, but you could've sought help in more conventional ways without betraying your marriage in the process. Hell, you could've really thought outside the square and discussed it with your husband!

The sad conclusion is that you're just as dishonorable as him, in fact even more so because you were the one who was doing all the cheating.

Karen, I'm trying to make you see that what you've done is actually very, very destructive -- not only to our marriage and our children, but even ultimately to yourself as I think you'll soon find out. If you can't see this then you really do need some professional counselling.

I know that having an affair is relatively common, and I know of two couples who've had rocky marriages where in one case the wife had a brief affair and in the other the husband had one. Both affairs lasted less than a year and the guilty parties owned up and begged forgiveness which was granted. Both marriages are still going strong decades later.

If they could do it, why couldn't you? I would've understood and reluctantly forgiven you if you'd ended it before I went to Kuwait, but we both know that your adultery actually increased once I'd gone.

I don't know if I ever told you, but the only thing that kept me going every day and night during the war was the thought of you and the boys patiently waiting at home, depending on me to return safely. Can you even begin to imagine the enormous betrayal I now feel when I look at the painting, knowing that as soon as I was out of the door your lover was taking my place - in our house, in our bedroom, and in our bed.

While I was alone in my bunk looking at my photos of you, Kevin and Oscar before I slept, you were with your lover in our bed looking at him. Many were the nights I missed you so much that I went to sleep holding a pillow close to my chest, dreaming I was holding you, while on the other side of the world you spent every night embraced with your lover.

Did he sleep on the same side as me? Did he look into your eyes after you made love, tenderly hold and kiss you and then tell you how much he loved you - like I did? Did you even think of me while entwined with your lover, or were you too preoccupied in your own perfect little world to even notice I was gone?

Then, when I came home again 10 months later, I needed you more than ever to help me heal and get back to normal. Thinking back on that time I always had the impression that you were a bit distant, a little reserved, for at least a year or more, but I put it down to me being overly combat-sensitive and still a bit on-edge.

Damn, what a fool I was! I now see that my gut feeling at that time was correct because your lover had just walked out the door and you couldn't adjust immediately to my presence. After living with him for 10 months you were totally bound to him and were still meeting him as often as you could, sometimes for weekends (I guess those were the weekends you were away visiting "friends"), and in fact your affair was escalating rather than diminishing.

Karen, you started your affair with Phillipe when you needed understanding and compassion to get beyond your sexual problems with me, so is it not reasonable to ask where was the love and compassion I needed when I came home again?

Perhaps it's partially my fault for not letting-on just how much of a mental wreck I really was, especially after my close call with death in the aircraft I was in, and of the constant trauma of injuries from accidents and combat that I saw almost every day. None of this should have made any difference to how you treated me when I got home - and I never wanted you to worry about what I went through - but I felt I was owed a little more of your love and attention than usual.

I've never told you this before, but when I needed you most I've always believed you failed me. You seemed unwilling to reach out completely to me, seemed incapable of finding the empathy that was always apparent in earlier years, and now I know why.

That was the year your affair was at its most intense before Phillipe finished his work in Albany. You were emotionally focused almost completely on Phillipe, and by concentrating on him you denied me all of your love, patience and understanding -- the very same things you had sought from your lover at the start of your affair.

Can you see the irony of this, or the injustice? How could you have been so selfish, yet still have the gall to say you love me? Do you have even the faintest idea of what real love is, or of the total commitment that goes with it?

I guess the answers no longer matter because by then the absolute betrayal of your husband, your marriage and even your own children was already complete, and the painting stands as mute testimony to this.

Which leads me to the subject of the relationship I have with my boys. When your lover moved into our house Kevin was almost six and Oscar would have been three. Do you have any idea at all of the psychological damage you've done to them, especially to Kevin who was old enough to see and understand what was happening? Both were in their formative years when the bond between father and son was starting for Oscar and still developing with Kevin.

When you allowed Phillipe into our house you not only got a lover but the boys got a surrogate father. They saw you and him sleeping in their parents' bedroom and living together just as they had seen us live, and must have wondered why it was happening and what had happened to their daddy.

Isn't it odd that neither of them have ever told me about Phillipe or Avril staying in our house while I was away for ten months? Even if Oscar was too young to understand or notice, Kevin would have talked to him about it as brothers do, yet they've never mentioned or even hinted at the existence of Phillipe and your sleeping arrangements, or mentioned why you went with him to Montreal for Christmas. All they said was that they had a white Christmas there and enjoyed meeting some older girls from a big family who they had fun with, but not much more detail and certainly never a word about your lover.

Karen, the only possible explanation is that you told them they could never divulge your adultery, obligating them to always be careful in what they said in my presence. Living with Phillipe in front of them every day was bad enough, but to get them to promise their silence was even worse. You corrupted their innocence in support of your own gratification, and the obvious result is the increasingly strained, unsettled relationship I have with them today.

How can either of my sons ever look at me with respect when they know I'm an unsuspecting cuckold, and that they helped to facilitate it? What sort of role model have I become in their eyes because of your behavior?

As they've matured into young men they must now be thinking back all those years. The ramifications of what they saw and what they promised will be dawning on them, and they'll be quietly wondering if their future partners will treat them as you have treated me. Or even worse, will they assume that it's acceptable to secretly cheat on their partners?

By living with your lover in our bed for ten months you've not only completely destroyed my trust in you, but you've also permanently damaged the close bond that should exist between me and my sons. I love my sons, and I will never forgive you for treating that bond with such thoughtless contempt.

As you may have noticed from the way I'm writing this I'm feeling a lot of different emotions inside me at the moment, especially anger. In fact, I'm angrier now than at any time in my life. I'm angry at the total disrespect you've shown me, I'm angry because I was obviously not enough for you and you never had the honesty to tell me, but I'm especially angry that I only now discover your infidelity instead of even 10 years ago when I could've moved on while I was still relatively young.

The anger and other conflicting emotions have placed a lot of pressure on me, and you know that I become focused and analytical under pressure. I see things very clearly now and have decided on a path of action, and even though that path pains me greatly I will not deviate from it.

As I write this I keep looking at the painting but what I no longer see is the precious, beautiful wife I had. She's been replaced by a sluttish, duplicitous stranger. Her smile is now a mocking laugh, a callous response to a little "in joke" between her and her lover at my expense.

The painting and everything it says about you and Phillipe has steeled my resolve to plan a new future - a future that no longer includes you. You will never hold me again, never wake up next to me anymore, and never again receive the love I once had for you.

Karen, your choices, and yours alone, have destroyed this marriage, damaged our children, and almost destroyed me. Please understand that I have no desire to ever see you again.

I'm moving out tonight and will not be here when you read this. I'll be starting divorce proceedings tomorrow and will be asking for 50% of all our shared assets, including the apartment. The 50% is accidentally symbolic, because as a percentage of our 26 years together it's how long you were sneaking off and fucking Phillipe.

And please don't even try to contact me to "explain". Avril has already explained everything from your point of view, even though your actions don't require any extra "explanation". And I definitely aren't the slightest bit interested in hearing how sorry you are -- you've had 20 years to tell me that and any sorrow now would be for getting caught, rather than for what you've done.