As I drove home from work that Wednesday evening - the day our lives changed - all I could think was how extraordinary my husband really was, and of course of the incredible events of the last few weeks.
I'm not sure how I expected to feel the day after I told Pete that after over twenty years of faithful monogamy, I had been having an affair with a close family friend. I'm not sure I had thought it through any more carefully than I had planned my affair. I had, I might have suspected that he would react differently from other men; after all, he had been urging me to take a lover for many months. But when the moment had come to tell him, it had come unexpectedly and I had just blurted it out and hope for the best.
But whatever Pete's reaction was, one thing was certain; there was no way I could undo all that had happened. I was a permanently changed person; a fallen woman; a harlot. I could never be the faithful, normal wife and mother again.
Fidelity is like virginity; once it's gone, it's gone forever.
The words had gone round and round in my head for the last two guilt-ridden days and sleepless nights. Outside I still looked like the boring, married, middle-aged scientist and mother of three grown-up children that I had previously been. Inside I had become a cauldron of emotions spurred on by fierce feeling of regret and remorse pitted against the incredible discovery of what an exciting, truly satisfying sex life could be like.
When Pete had first tried to persuade me to take a lover I had thought he wanted us to become swingers. I had suspected he wanted me to see other men so that he could sleep with other women but to my surprise, that hadn't been the case. By writing and publishing erotic stories online and corresponding with several real life cuckolds who had responded to my work, I had come to understand that his motivation was actually quite different.
I had discovered the mindset of the Willing Cuckold.
At first I had studied it objectively as I might have investigated a hypothesis at work. Even with Pete's constant persuasion, I hadn't planned to take a lover in real life; rather I had expected it all to remain in the realm of fantasy. Exciting fantasy to be sure but definitely not part of real life.
But then there had been that Friday in November, the train journey home from London, the engrossment in the erotic story I was writing, the chance meeting with Tony on whom I had modelled one of the main characters in that story. There had been the long involving conversation, the mutual attraction, the lift home, the kiss goodbye, the hands straying onto my bottom... followed by the rapid seduction in our own lounge that had led to my only infidelity in over twenty years of marriage.
Three days later I had gone to Tony's apartment to tell him it all had to end before it had started. Less than two hours later I had left with a double dose of my lover's semen inside me.
The will to end things had gone. The seal of fidelity had been well and truly broken.
Once I had learned how to ignore the considerable feelings of guilt - at least temporarily - it had been so much easier to keep the affair going than to stop. Tony and I had made love more times since that extraordinary Friday afternoon than I could comfortably count, becoming more compatible with every copulation, taking more and more risks and having more frequent and more intense orgasms than my rather capacious vagina had known than at any time in all my previously monogamous life.
But when the physical delights were over I found that along with the extraordinary new pleasures of the bed had come equally intense feelings of guilt. These had grown and grown until finally I had been unable to keep the secret from my husband any longer and had blurted out the truth during one of his many post-coital attempts to persuade me to take a lover.
The pain I had inflicted on my husband when he had heard the news was hard for me to bear so God alone knows how he had felt. Pete had spent the night in the guest room followed by the next two nights away from home, I did not yet know where. Though desperately trying to behave at work as if nothing had happened, I had spent the entire time he was away like a prisoner in the condemned cell, waiting for my marriage, my reputation and my relationships with my children to come to a bitter, recriminatory end.
When Pete finally returned home, waking me very early on the Wednesday morning I had slept very little and expected nothing but the fate I deserved. The conversation that followed was unquestionably the most difficult of my life. At first most of Pete's words simply reinforced the expectation that I had just destroyed both my marriage and my family but thank God it didn't end there.
Eventually and with great emotion, my extraordinary husband told me that despite what I had done, he still loved me wildly and believed he was at least partly responsible for my cheating. Though this reaction had by no means been certain, it was completely in character for the man I loved.
What had not in any way been predictable was the next revelation; that not only could my husband forgive my infidelity, under some non-negotiable conditions, he was content for it to continue. At that point I would have agreed to anything to keep my marriage intact but, if I had paid enough attention to my online cuckold friends, I could have predicted every one of my husband's demands.
The first was no surprise; extreme discretion. The kids and our friends must never know anything at all about our arrangement. Pete might be able to accept being a cuckold in secret but we both recognised this would be almost impossible if anyone else knew.
This was easy to agree to.
The next was that I must answer honestly and in intimate detail any questions he asked about my encounters whenever he asked them. Foolishly, I hadn't been expecting this but the least reference to my online real life cuckold friends would have made it clear that this would be non-negotiable.
I agreed to this too but not without misgivings. Could I really tell my husband all the things Tony and I did in bed? If I wanted my affair to continue, I had to.
The third rule was that my affair must stop immediately if either of us felt that it was becoming a threat to our marriage or if Pete ever asked me to stop for any other reason. This would be much more difficult but I agreed to it apprehensively, still amazed that we could discuss something so deeply personal in such an objective manner.
Pete insisted that, while we were all getting used to the idea, I should sleep with my lover not more than once a week. This was much less often than Tony and I had been seeing each other but when offered by my husband it felt generous.
Tony would have to agree; if he wanted me, I would give him no choice.
I accepted Pete's conditions unreservedly and immediately. He then took me immediately with a passion we hadn't enjoyed for many years, forcing me onto my back across the kitchen table and ramming my night gown under my armpits. He spread my legs forcefully then penetrated my unprepared body so rapidly and with such force and energy that within minutes I was weeping moisture and having the first vaginal orgasm I had enjoyed with my husband for nearly a year. And all before breakfast on a Wednesday morning!
I had called Tony from my car on the way to work and told him the news. He could barely believe his ears. I could barely believe my own as I explained it all. He wasn't at all pleased that we could only see each other once each week but there was no disguising his relief at not having an angry, jealous husband to deal with and the joy in his voice when he learned that our affair could continue was almost palpable.
