I Hate Surprises

PICKING UP THE PIECES

I won't say that Barbara McDonald saved our marriage, but I'm not so sure we would have made it without her.

From the very beginning of our first session she impressed me. A slightly heavy-set, dark-haired woman in her late 30s, she had an intelligent manner and a sense of humor. You could tell right off that she didn't waste time on bullshit.

We told her why we were there, and she asked a couple of general questions. Then she said, "I'll want mostly to listen to both of you for a while; then after a month or so I'll probably have more to say, once I have a preliminary sense of what the main issues are. We should begin with two sessions a week—later we can see each other less often, if that seems appropriate. Do you have any questions for me at this point?"

"Actually, I have two," I said. "First: are you straight?"

She looked amused. "That's rather a personal question; why do you ask?"

"Because my wife is very beautiful. Ever since I've known her I've seen the effect her looks have on men—they lose a lot of their common sense, and react to her differently because of her beauty. That's why I insisted on a female marriage counselor. And that's why I asked if you were straight."

She nodded. "I understand, Brad. And yes, I am straight."

"Thank you. Here's my other question. Several people who have had counseling like this have said to me, 'no matter whose fault it is, by the time you get done with counseling you're each 50% to blame'. Is that really true?"

She laughed, enjoying the question. "There's a bit of truth there, but it's certainly exaggerated. All my experience and training have taught me that when two people are truly happy in a marriage, neither of them cheats. So since Jennie has committed adultery"—she said this very matter-of-factly—"it's reasonable to conclude that there are some problems between you that you may not be aware of.

"That doesn't mean the blame is 50-50, as you put it. Infidelity is a deeply destructive act, and Jennie has to take responsibility for it. But it's likely that somewhere along the line, Brad, I'll want to suggest things you might think about in terms of your own behavior in the marriage."

"Fair enough," I said. "Thank you, Barbara."

Our work with Barbara lasted for fourteen months. At first the sessions were very emotional, as we talked about our past relationship, our marriage, and the events of Jennie's affair. Jennie felt incredibly guilty, naturally, but she also had little idea of why she had gotten involved with Anderson. I was full of anger and hurt feelings, and equally baffled about the why.

Above all I wanted our old marriage back, the one that was full of affection and trust—and it took a long time for me to accept that I could never have it back. It was a vase, smashed to a million pieces. It simply couldn't be repaired; it had to be abandoned and replaced with something else.

After a few weeks Barbara began drawing our attention to what she saw as the central issue in our marriage. We talked about it over and over, and gradually the point became clearer to both of us. It also helped that I had such a good friend in Terri, with whom I talked regularly about what was going on with Jennie and me.

In short, Jennie wanted and needed an unusual amount of attention, above all from men. She had grown up with it, had had it all her life, and depended on it. The dissatisfaction and restlessness that had let her be a willing prey of Marlon Anderson arose from a period in our marriage in which she had felt neglected. I was still a loving husband—but I was also building my business, and the level of attention she was getting from me had dropped somewhat.

Barbara stressed to both of us that this was not a moral issue, on either side. "Brad, no one could possibly say that you actually neglected Jennie. From your account and hers you continued to be attentive and loving, to support her emotionally, be available to talk to, and so on.

"On the other hand, the fact that Jennie's need for attention—above all for reinforcement of her feeling of being loved—is unusually high is not a moral failing either. Human beings vary in their appetites and needs for all sorts of things. Some people eat lots of sweets, others very little. Some people have a high sex drive, and want or need sex nearly every day, while others are truly content with sex once a month.

"The need for attention and love also varies. There are people who need to hear 'I love you' constantly, or to be praised and thanked for what they've done; and then there are others who say 'I know she loves me, she doesn't have to say it', and they mean that sincerely.

"So there are two issues here, and we should try to keep them separate. First, of course, Jennie's affair was a deeply hurtful mistake, as she fully recognizes. Jennie, you could have expressed to Brad in a variety of other ways your emotional need for more demonstrations of his love. The choice you made, to seek reassurance and attention outside the marriage, was a bad one, and both of you are still paying the price for that.

"But, Brad, the other issue is that Jennie's 'baseline' need for attention and love is high. You obviously love her, and I hope that—as time passes, and as your anger about her affair diminishes—you will keep that need in mind."

I can't really summarize everything we talked about over fourteen months, but that was at the heart of it: Jennie needs a lot of attention, a lot of affection.

Surprisingly, sex did not come up all that often in our work with Barbara. It was quickly clear to her that Jennie's affair had nothing to do either with sexual dissatisfaction on Jennie's part, or with any sort of desire to experiment. Instead, sex was what Anderson wanted, the natural culmination (to him) of all the flattery and the charm; and she gave him what he wanted, without enjoying it all that much.

Knowing this made it a little easier for me to let go of my rage. One of the other things I learned from Barbara had to do with my reactions to the affair. As she put it, "Brad, you can't control what Jennie did. But you can control how you respond to it. What's done is done—she betrayed your trust, and in a serious way.

"But YOU are the one who gets to decide whether you hold a grudge forever, or let it go. You can let your anger and pain overshadow the love you obviously feel for Jennie, or you can try to let the love govern your behavior more than the anger."

This was a hard thing to accept. I realized that I was holding on to my anger as a way of not accepting that my old marriage was gone forever. Somehow being angry kept alive the illusion that I could have back what I had lost. Once I understood that, then accepting what had happened was the only choice that made any sense.

In one session, fairly early on, I more or less demanded that Jennie tell me all the sexual details of her two encounters with Anderson. To my surprise, Barbara interrupted. "Brad, I don't think that's a good idea. Jennie has confessed what she did, and you know the broad outlines. I don't see how your knowing the details will be good for either of you. It's more likely, in fact, to increase your anger, and make it take longer to dissipate."

I wasn't convinced right away, but on reflection I thought Barbara was probably right, and I didn't ask again. The fact that Jennie hadn't enjoyed sex with Anderson helped, at least somewhat.

And there was one other aspect of our work with Barbara that helped me. In a number of our early sessions I expressed how painful it was for me to think about Jennie's cheating—and I cried a lot. This was a shock to Jennie, who had rarely seen me cry. Being made to listen to me talk about my pain, my anger, my despair at the loss of something irreparable in our marriage made a deep impression on her. Seeing me so deeply wounded, she couldn't avoid facing the consequences of her actions.

For a little over a month I continued to sleep in the guest room. Then one night, without planning it, I got up, walked down the hall, and slipped into bed beside Jennie. The light was out, but she was still half-awake.

"Brad! Oh, honey, I ..."

"Shh," I stopped her. "It's all right, let's not talk." I was afraid she'd accidentally say something that would make me angry again. So I just reached out for her, and she moved to me, putting her arms around me and her head on my shoulder.

I felt the oddest mixture of pain and utter bliss. They did battle for a while, but the bliss won out. We fell asleep in each other's arms.

Strangely, I didn't move right back into our bedroom after that. I continued to sleep many nights in the guest room, sometimes returning to hold Jennie, sometimes staying away. She was wise enough not to press me—always she was delighted when I got in bed with her, but silent and patient on the nights I didn't. It felt like I was working through my own drama of reconciliation, with the many ebbs and flows of feeling.

It was nearly three months before we made love again. By then I was very horny, at least intermittently, and had begun masturbating regularly in the shower. But I felt that I shouldn't rush into sex with Jennie again—I feared that my hurt and anger would blaze up, resulting in a very unhappy scene.

When I thought I was ready, I turned the evening into a surprise, Jennie's favorite form of attention from me. She came home from work one Friday to a note from me on the kitchen table, saying only "We're going out to dinner tonight—please dress for a fancy restaurant, and be ready by 8pm. Your Date"

I'd arranged for the babysitter to come at 7:30, and at precisely 8 pm I appeared at the front door—I had taken my nice suit to work with me, and changed there. I had flowers for Jennie, as though it really was a date. She met me with a big smile, looking absolutely ravishing. She had put on a dark maroon velvet dress that accented her slim figure, and put up her hair in a way she knew I loved. And her eyes were full of sparkle and happiness. She may not have known all that I had in mind, but she knew this was a good sign.

We had a marvelous dinner at the best Italian restaurant in St Louis, with just enough wine to enhance our pleasure without making us drunk. I knew she wondered what the evening was all about, but I responded to a couple of probing questions with a smile and "You'll see," and she realized she had to be patient.

When we got home I paid the babysitter and we looked in on the sleeping Diana. Then I took a wrapped package from the coat closet and presented it to my wife. "Jennie, I'd be grateful if you'd take this with you into our bathroom and get ready for bed. I'll meet you in the bedroom in ten minutes."

She looked at me with shining eyes, kissed me, and hurried up the stairs. Ten minutes later I was naked in our bed, the lights low, when she emerged from the bathroom. Her golden hair was down now, over her shoulders, and she was wearing the very sexy lavender nightie I had bought for her. By now she had figured out what the rest of the surprise was!

It may seem bizarre that I had gone to all this trouble for our first night of sex—almost as though I was the guilty party, going to great lengths to make things up to her. Shouldn't I still have been furious, still making her suffer with every word out of my mouth?

The answer is that Barbara's words had really reached me: I DID have a choice about how to handle my anger, and letting go of it seemed like the best way to make myself happy again. In addition, I had realized that one of the worst things about being cheated on is how passive it made me feel, how much like a victim. Setting up this romantic night for Jennie and me was an active step, a positive step that I was taking to move us beyond the pain of her adultery. I felt ready to take that step.

I got up out of bed, already partly aroused, and went to Jennie. I held her close and said, "you look so gorgeous in that nightie, it's almost a shame to take it off you. That's exactly what I'm going to do, though, so I hope you don't mind if I take my time."

"Take all the time you need, sweetheart," she said into my ear. "I've got no other plans for tonight!"

We lay together on the bed, kissing and touching. After so long, and after what had happened, it felt in a strange way like our first time, which made it intensely exciting. When I caressed her breasts she groaned into my mouth, arching her back to push them harder into my hands. I slid the nightie down off her shoulders and stroked and licked her breasts, feeling her hips start to move against my rigid cock.

I rolled onto my back and pulled her up over me on her hands and knees, so that those beautiful breasts dangled above my face, and I continued to lick and kiss and suck them, using my hands to stroke her legs. I slowly moved up her legs, easing the nightie up past her waist. Then I spent a long time sliding my hands up and down her thighs, coming closer to but never quite reaching her pussy, all the while kissing her breasts and sucking the nipples.

It had probably been years since I had spent so long arousing Jennie, and she was getting more and more excited. She was usually pretty quiet in bed, but her groans of pleasure became more frequent, and her hips churned as she tried to urge my hands into her pussy. Finally I slid one finger all the way up, finding that she was soaking. Using the finger to stimulate inside her vagina, I used my other hand to arouse her clitoris, until her hips were jerking back and forth and she was gasping, "oh, oh, Brad! ohh!"

As she twisted around above me, I kept my mouth at her breasts and my hands on her clitoris and vagina. When she got very close to an orgasm I slowed my motions for about a minute, then built her up again. I did it twice more, and the third time kept right on stroking as she gasped, stopped breathing, jerked uncontrollably, and then sighed, collapsing flat on top of me.

I held her, my face buried between her breasts. I knew that bastard Anderson hadn't made her feel like this—and while that had not been the point, I still felt good about it.

Without lifting her head, Jennie said, "oh, baby, you've killed me. I'm dead. God, that was marvelous." Her voice was deep and totally relaxed. Then after a minute she rolled to one side and tucked herself in next to me, her head on my shoulder, looking at my face. "I have missed you so much," she said simply.

"Me too," I said, meaning it. At that moment I loved her so much—the anger was still inside me, but in a distant place where it didn't seem to matter.

We lay a few minutes longer, our hands idly stroking one another's backs. Then one of hers began to trail, delicately and pleasurably, down to my cock. In no time it was rigid and waving in the air.

"What shall we do with this, Brad?" Jennie asked me with a grin. "Do you want to put it inside me, or ... should I love you with my mouth?"

I was amazed—that was a lot more explicit than Jennie almost ever was in talking about sex, and I liked it. No doubt she was trying to make up to me, but at the moment that didn't bother me a bit.

"Inside you," I answered. "I'm hoping you'll use your mouth later, to get me ready for round two." She looked surprised for a moment, then pleased.

Without speaking we both moved to missionary position, perhaps both wanting to be face-to-face this first time, and in one another's arms. After all the foreplay I was very hard, and she groaned low in her throat as I slid into her, slowly, in one smooth stroke.

We began to couple, moving gently together, savoring every sensation of my cock in her pussy, my chest against her breasts, our arms around one another, her thighs pressed against the outsides of mine. It was a reclaiming—for me at least—but a gentle, loving one. I didn't want to punish her, or fuck her into oblivion. Instead I wanted us to pleasure each other, as much as we possibly could.

For several minutes we fucked in this gentle way, my head tucked into her neck, enjoying one another. Then, without stopping, I raised up so I could see her face. Her cheeks were wet with tears, but she smiled at me and whispered, "I love you so much!"

"I love you too, Jennie."

Still whispering, looking right into my eyes, she said, "I'm so glad you're back!"

Then she pulled me tightly back down to her. With her hips she spurred me into faster strokes, and we gradually built together, increasing the speed and force of our thrusts. I heard her gasping, and I had to remind myself to keep breathing as I approached my climax.

Jennie never came from intercourse alone, and she'd long ago persuaded me that it was fine to go ahead and come when I was ready. But this time when I knew I was only seconds away, her vagina clutched me spasmodically, her breath caught, her arms tightened hard around me, and I knew she had come. Moments later I was shooting into her, lost in my own pleasure, unable to think of anything else.

We lay there in utter collapse, both sweaty, both very happy. I couldn't even think about round two! I pulled the topsheet up over us, and in no time we were both asleep.

What woke me were Jennie's smiling face and the smell of coffee. She was smiling down at me from the side of the bed, wearing a robe, holding two cups. I glanced at the clock—only 7:15.

"I know it's early for a Saturday, but I hoped we could have a little more ... time together before Diana wakes up," Jennie said. She let her robe fall open a bit in front, and there was nothing underneath it. I'm always amazed at how seeing a partly-clothed woman can be so much more arousing at times than a fully naked one!

"Well," I said, feigning gruff reluctance, "you might be able to talk me into it." Then I smiled. "How about a few minutes of coffee and conversation, and then round two?"

She just nodded, sitting down next to me in bed and handing me a cup. Ten minutes later she was getting me ready as promised. She brought a warm washcloth to clean me up first—Jennie was never all that comfortable face-to-face with our fluids on my cock—and then she caressed and teased me with her lips and tongue deliciously, until I was nearly ready to burst.

"From behind this time?" I asked, and she happily agreed, obviously still eager to please me. She knew this was my favorite position. We settled her comfortably on several pillows under her middle, and then I climbed onto the bed behind her.

Her pussy looked so inviting that I couldn't resist a few preliminary kisses, lavishing them along with strokes of my tongue up and down her labia as she made noises of pleasure. Then I slid up close behind her and gently buried myself in her.

I don't know what it is about doggy-style exactly, but something about being behind Jennie is incredibly pleasurable and exciting. The grip of her pussy around me is different, and I get very aroused looking at her gorgeous back and ass, which I can stroke with my hands while we fuck.

"Just ... take me, sweetheart." I heard Jennie's voice. "Don't even worry about me this time, just ... take your pleasure with me. I want you to."

I leaned forward for a moment and kissed her ear, then her cheek. Then I began stroking in and out, smoothly, going as deep as I could, revelling in the heat and tightness of her vagina. I took Jennie's advice, pacing my thrusts to maximize and extend my pleasure, letting my orgasm build in me bit by bit. Knowing that she had given herself to me in that way, that she was available purely for my pleasure, added to the excitement.

I wanted it to last forever, but it was only a few minutes before I was pumping into her rapidly, hugely excited, holding her hips, my thighs smacking her buttocks each time, totally beyond thought. When I came I don't know if I quite saw God, but I certainly went somewhere far away, the sensations rushing through my body like electricity.