My Disability

This one is a bit of a departure for me. I read so many stories where the husband wants his wife to be with another man. But what if...

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I loved her. I love her still and I can't think of a world where I won't love her forever. If there is an afterlife, I am sure that I will love Beth there too.

Beth and I met through mutual friends after we both had been through divorce. They were very obviously trying to get us to connect. The funny thing was that we didn't need them. We connected the first second we met and they were just background noise. Three years later we got married. Three years of being nearly inseparable but being very careful about screwing up again. Neither of us ever wanted to divorce again, especially Beth. We discovered our love for each other and found that it not only survived three blissful years, it flourished.

We lived, loved, fought, and made up over the following five years. Our sex life ebbed and flowed as it will do for married couples, but it was always wonderful. Then I started having some issues. I started passing blood. The first time it was a kidney stone. They sedated me and did this blast thing in the hospital. I had to piss through a strainer for a week afterward and save all the shards. Fun stuff. The entire episode was scary at first. I mean, really, who wants to look down and see what looks like a lot of blood coming out while taking a piss. These days having a kidney stone is common and modern medicine knows how to deal with them for the most part.

The second time I started passing blood it was a lot scary, especially since this time it wasn't a kidney stone. This time it was cancer. They put me under at the hospital and did a biopsy. I'll never forget waking up from anesthesia to see Beth crying her eyes out. I remember trying to reassure her and managed to get her to stop by the time we left the hospital. She thought I was going to die. I got lucky. They took my kidney and the cancer was gone.

Beth was wonderful through all of it. She was just glad the cancer was gone and she thought that after I recovered life would go back to normal. I loved that gentle optimism.

It sounds so simple. Take a kidney and 'Wah-Lah', everything is just peachy. It wasn't by any stretch of the imagination. Ten hours of surgery and a scar that runs from my upper abdomen all the way to my groin were just the start. My recovery took six long months, and I was weak as a kitten through most of it. I hope that you never get to experience that. Six months of a mind that is working most of the time trapped in a body that you can't do anything with. Getting fatter by the moment because exercise is nearly impossible. I fell into a deep depression and began drinking way too much. I was sick of being sick.

Of course, it didn't help that my blood pressure was all over the charts during this time. When you lose a kidney your blood pressure needs some help remaining stable. I began taking a plethora of blood pressure medications. Sometimes it takes while to find the right combination of medications that will maintain a correct blood pressure while limiting the side effects. Often one of the side effects is impotency. No matter how much stimulus, it just won't get erect, won't even come close. After months of recovery, I find that I am physically unable to make love to my wife.

That wasn't great news to a guy that had already been in deep depression for months. To put this all into perspective, I was at this point very overweight, deeply depressed, well on my way to being a drunk, and I couldn't get an erection. I must have been a pure joy to live with. I don't really know for sure. The year plus of dealing with cancer and its aftermath are very much a blur. The mind blocks out things that hurt it.

Over the next year some things improved and some did not. I quit drinking heavily and I had moments when I wasn't depressed. I could get busy with something and not think about the fact that Beth and I hadn't made love for nearly two years. She had learned not to kiss me with that special yearning for sex. I would fend her off as best I could without hurting her feelings. At least I tried not to hurt her feelings, but I don't think I was very successful. I always walked away feeling like an utter failure as a husband. I kept asking myself 'What kind of man can't make love to his wife?' What made it even worse was the fact that I knew she missed sex just as much as I did.

Just because the equipment was broke doesn't mean I didn't get horny. I wanted so badly to have an orgasm. In the hope that it was still possible I got a prescription of Viagra. I figured that I would try it first to see if it would work. Chubby is the best word for the result. Half hard would be another. My thought was useless piece of meat that will never satisfy a woman again.

After taking the Viagra I spent hours watching porn. Video clip after video clip until I lost track of time. When I finally looked at the clock it was five in the morning and with a click of the mouse, I closed the browser. Seven hours after I had started surfing porn I finally gave up. I sat there naked in the office chair and I cried. I knew in that moment that I would never make love Beth again and I was grief stricken.

At one point I was so desperate that I stopped taking my medication. I nearly killed myself. I still couldn't get an erection. I don't to this day know what inside me got broken and how it happened, but there was no doubt that my days of penetrating my wife were over.

I began to avoid kissing or touching because I was afraid that I would see her need and have to let her down once again. We became two people that loved each other dearly without any real intimacy. I researched diligently and bought Beth the best vibrator I could find. She barely used it. She told me years later that she never used it past the first charge. She didn't want a vibrator, she wanted me, however I came. She just wanted to be close to me. I wish I had understood that at the time. I wish she had found a way to tell me that. I had taught her not to talk about it by that point.

Through all this Beth had been by my side. She didn't go out in the evening without me, she didn't get a click of girlfriends, and she didn't have drinks with the guys after work. I always knew where she was. In other words, she had never once even let herself be tempted by another man. Beth is an attractive woman without a doubt and it wouldn't have been hard if she had wanted to have an affair. She just wasn't interested. Dumbass me.

The longer we weren't able to have sex, the more I felt like a failure. I felt like I was making her suffer because of my disability. To add insult to injury I developed a severe case of restless leg. I kicked violently in my sleep. Violently enough that I hurt Beth. We ended up having to get separate beds. Now I had another thing to feel guilty about. I couldn't even sleep with my wife without hurting her. Through it all Beth was a rock. She never wavered.

Time went by and we adjusted to our new reality, but it was always on my mind. My guilt was so deep that I couldn't stand it anymore. I wanted Beth to have the joy of sex and if I couldn't give it to her, I thought it was only right for her to have it with someone else. On one of those rare occasions when we kissed, she moaned and I knew that she was getting aroused. I softly told her, "If you want to be with someone else, I understand and won't get in your way."

She looked at me confused, "What do you mean?"

I tried to look her in the eye and failed, "What I mean is if you want to have sex with someone else, I understand and I won't say anything to you about it."

Her face got stern, "That's never going to happen."

Never is a long time. I let the idea rest for months before mentioning it again and I got the same response as before.

Then Bill came along. His mother was friends with my mother in-law. She had always thought that her son would be a great fit with Beth. He was home from the Navy and she had a plan to get them together. Apparently, she didn't care that Beth had a husband. Using some pretense or another, she got our home phone number. The next thing I know I am answering our phone and a man with a deep voice is asking to talk to my wife.

I handed her the phone and went to the living room. I picked up the phone there and hit the mute button. I listened for almost two hours as they talked. It was a friendly talk without any obvious sexual inuendo. They were getting to know each other. I was shaking through all of it. I was devastated that she would even talk with him. The fact that they talked for hours just cut me deeper. I swallowed all of it. When Beth hung up the phone, I asked her who she had talked to.

She was honest about all of it. My mother in-law had told her all about her friend's plan before Bill called. She told me who Bill was and even that his mother wanted Beth and him to be together. I asked her what she thought about that and she told me she didn't know and that she was very confused.

He called again the next day and I again listened. After talking for an hour, he asked her out to dinner and she accepted. I thought my heart would explode. Tears welled up in my eyes and I fought them off. I kept telling myself 'This is what you want for her. She needs intimacy I can't give her.'

After she got off the phone she came to me, "Bill has asked me out to dinner and I'm going to go." She didn't ask me if she could go. She told me she was going to go. That was the point where I got scared. I wanted her to be happy and I also wanted her to be with me. I didn't want to lose her to another man and now I had to face the fact that it might happen. I could lose her to this asshole. The asshole that calls a married woman, my wife, and he knows that I know he's doing it. I'm not some submissive cuckold and I was seriously pissed at the guy. I wanted to punch his lights out. I swallowed all of that, "Just let me know where I stand with you. I need to know what is going on."

The night of her date arrived and I sat in the living room silently as she prepared. When she came into the living room, she looked amazing. I couldn't help but note that she had bought a new dress. That dress is seared into my mind. As beautiful as she looked in it, I never wanted to see it again. I never wanted her to wear it for me after she wore it for him.

He didn't come to the door. She was watching and she left to meet him at the curb. I still didn't know what he looked like.

She was gone for three hours. I was a mess the entire time and I was constantly looking at an unmoving clock. At ten she walked in the front door and came to sit beside me. I asked her how her date went. She told me that they had a nice dinner and talked a lot. I mentioned that I didn't know what he looked like. My heart sank at her description. It was obvious that she found him very attractive. She told me that they had driven around for a while after dinner before parking in a quit spot. They talked and then he kissed her. They kissed for a while before she had him take her home. He asked her for another date before she got out of the car.

I was grief stricken. I knew where things were heading and I could see my place in it at the end. I would lose my wife, my everything. I fought the tears as hard as I could but wasn't entirely successful. Beth noticed right away, "Please don't cry. You wanted me to sleep with someone else and I needed to do this to see how I felt about it. He's a nice looking man that will be a wonderful catch for some woman, but he's not for me.

" As far as how I feel about sleeping with someone else in the first place, I don't like it and I don't want to do it."

I was completely lost for a moment. I finally found my voice, "Beth, I never wanted you to be with another man. It is just that I felt like you deserved another man that could give you what I can't. I was willing to step out of the way so you could be happy. It was never something that I wanted."

Beth threw up her hands in frustration, "Sometimes you can be such a dumbass! I didn't marry what's between your legs. I married you. I love you and want to be with you, not some other man. Yes, it would be nice if we could have sex, but I am fine if we don't. There is other stuff that we can do that can be a lot of fun. I need you to touch me, to show me that you love me. I need you to kiss me like you mean it."

So, I did. I kissed her with as much love and passion as I possibly could. It felt so wonderful to hold her and kiss her again. We were at it for quite a while.

We live on together. I'm not always as intimate with Beth as I should be. Years of training myself not to touch her are hard to shake off, but I work hard at it. She is a great incentive. I still have hope that something new will come along that will cure my disability. In the end I know it doesn't make a difference. Beth will be with me regardless.