Disclaimer: This story and all characters are fiction. All characters are over eighteen.
There will be mistakes it's just the way it is. If that's a problem for you, then I suggest you move on.
The story is pure fantasy it is not based on any real events or people it is just for the fun of a story.
Alice met her husband Jake while she was working what would normally be an uneventful exhibition of all the latest office equipment and software. She had been one of the many pretty young girls dressed in the company attire she was representing in the many corporate exhibition halls. The girls were used to lure in middle age men for a conversation before a proper representative came out to talk real business. Jake got chatting to her that day, he wasn't that interested in the company she representing. Even after a short flirty chat they seemed to have a connection they could both feel it even after such a brief meeting. They exchanged mobile numbers on that day with Jake following up with a dinner date invite very shortly after.
He was extremely good looking, and lots of her girlfriends were hot for him. The two of them had sensed a connection that grew and grew. They dated quietly for the next three years while Alice continued her part time modelling work, but they both wanted to marry start their lives together so they eventually tied the knot.
They were totally in love with one another so everyone said, and just as Jake was considered a great catch by most women, so too was Alice an extremely good looking young woman.
Alice's everlasting regret was she wanted was to pursue a career in fashion modelling. It was something that she had dreamed of when growing up; Jake said it was almost an obsession. Basic modelling as she saw it was all well and good to pay the Bills, but fashion was what she really wanted. Now she worked as a receptionist part-time at the local doctor's surgery, all very boring but it paid the Bills.
Jake was a little upset when she packed in pursuing a career in fashion modelling; he loved to tell his friends that his wife was a model. He hoped she would go back to it one day and he was trying to do everything to convince her. So far he had zero luck.
Over the early years of their marriage, they had two children and did all of the things with their kids that happy families do.
As Jake expected Alice was the perfect mother. She adored Kim our eldest daughter. She wanted to be a stay-at-home mum while the kids were young and not at school. We talked about it long and hard but that's what she wanted apart from the fill in job. The arrival of John, our first son, we decided at that point two children would be our lot. Our family was now complete so we could get on with our careers and build a home for our family once the kids were at school.
Like most newlyweds, they decided to buy an expensive house in one of those middle class suburbs. They could not really afford it, but a couple of years ago, interest rates were low and the mortgage broker told them they should aim high, pay next to nothing on the interest and, if and when rates did go up his salary would have gone up so there should be no problem in repaying the loan. Like so many others, they bought into this dream and they bought a house in the affluent town to many well paid bankers.
Alas now not only had interest rates rocketed up to eye watering levels, but the credit crisis had caused a wave of redundancies across the financial sector around the world. The once great banking names of the financial world were now on their feet and there were cutbacks galore in London. New managers arrived with an aggressive way of doing business. Failure was not tolerated and everyone had to prove themselves. Bonuses were ruthlessly cut and salaries frozen. They found it increasingly difficult to meet their mortgage repayments, especially on one person's main income. Then the inevitable happened Jake lost his job.
Jake at 32 years old decided to get out of the banking world there was going to be no jobs it that field of work for a long time. So he found a new job with a new up and coming company in the digital world. The company was owned by very private Billionaire who owned companies dotted all over the world he was a famous investor that people followed.
Jake found a new job with this company as project manager, it was a bit of a come down from the banking world of high salaries and big bonuses but he had to start again with a new career somewhere.
With getting a new job with the regular salary, it took the pressure off Alice to return to work full time, which was great as Alice slipped into the world of motherhood with ease or so he thought.
It took a while to get to the bottom of her bad moods, but eventually it came out during a rather heated argument, "Jake, I want more in my life, I want more children if not to start a new career like we said we would when we married; but we need more money to do that I don't know what to do."
"There's no need to feel like that darling. We have two wonderful healthy children. We should be happy content some people can't even have kids. Please don't feel sad."
We hugged and she sighed. "I love you babe, are you sure though?"
It took months before we managed to get back onto level ground after many arguments, our lives together have never really returned to what we enjoyed at the start of our romance. We started arguing all the time over the smallest things, it didn't matter what we argued about, and she seemed to always want the last word.
That had always been the same with Jake he didn't want to argue maybe too laid back. I think she saw as a sign of weakness that he was not assertive enough for her; maybe she wanted a stronger more successful dominant man than him he thought.
Jake was the more the get stuck in type of guy, he didn't blow his own trumpet she thought. It meant Jake got passed over for promotion a couple of times. Alice started to wonder why he was constantly getting over looked for promotion she wanted her man to be more assertive and successful.
Alice began to hate that he got passed over, and it affected her more than Jake. We were starting to make progress with paying down the mortgage though, the kids were starting to go to school by now, we really wanted for nothing, in Jakes little world everything was great.
Alice loved the kids more than anything; she pampered them continuously, showering them with love and affection. She spent her hours at home reading with them, teaching new things, she had an incredible relationship with them.
I guess all young couples go through the same period after children. Our social life evaporated, there was no more late nights going out on dinner dates, no going out at all. We made new friends, who also had children, and they had their lunches and shopping trips. I kept in touch with some old school mates but that was it.
During arguments it became clear that she was disillusioned with me; she expected more. She wanted me to become more ambitious at work, seek out more opportunities.
The company Jake worked at specialised in software development for the digital revolution happening all across the world. We were one of the smaller companies circa 250 employees, but the financial backer of the company which no one ever met made a conscious decision to aim higher, he had the money to back up his ambitions we were starting to enjoy the ride.
