I want to give a couple of pages of background before getting on to the good stuff, because I think many readers would miss the point if I didn't.
Many who read this will think I'm a wimp husband because I don't keep my wife in a cage. Nothing could be further from the truth. It takes a great deal of emotional strength to love a person without forcing them into a mold of single-minded obedience and subservience. Emotional strength is not most men's strong suit; therefore the stereotype is for the male of the human species to cage his wife by force of will, morality, physical strength and law, often without putting himself in the same cage.
My name's Matt. Suzy and I have been married for ten years. We have a blended family of three kids – my two boys and her daughter, all in their middle teens. Like many couples our arguments are chiefly about money. Our sex life is not bad, although I sometimes get so involved in my work that I don't have the energy.
We found each other after two horrible marriages. Her ex-husband was abusive and controlling and neurotically obsessed with the idea that Suzy was cheating on him. As the love drained from their marriage, it was replaced with a very constricting sort of dominance. Suzy couldn't work. She couldn't have friends. She couldn't even leave the house shopping without detailed information on where she was going and when she would be back. Oddly enough, this obsession had the opposite of the intended effect. Suzy found herself craving simple conversation with a man. She found herself fantasizing about having an affair more and more. Eventually she said to herself, "Enough!" and divorced the guy.
My marriage was the opposite. Marge was a drunk and a cheater. Naively, I trusted her because it is in my nature to trust. Then after two years I caught her in bed with my best friend, who was staying at our house. I kicked the friend out and stomped and screamed until morning. The most astonishing thing was that she didn't feel culpable (she couldn't help herself, don't you know), and threatened to leave
me
because of the fit I was throwing. Later, the therapist would ask, "Why didn't you leave her then? You obviously had different ideas about what marriage meant."
It was years before I could admit the real reason: I was emotionally weak. I couldn't face the prospect that she wasn't the wife I thought she was. I desperately wanted her to conform to my image of what a good wife should be, attentive, devoted, caring, and loyal as a dog. She had to have two more serious, ugly affairs before I could admit to myself that she would never be the wife I deluded myself into thinking she was. I kicked her out, divorced her, and went to therapy for a year. She skipped off with her latest flame without a moment's remorse, leaving the boys with me.
I met Suzy in group. They strongly caution against getting into another relationship "on the bounce," and that's good advice, which we followed. For that reason, we got to know each other's minds and emotions intimately before we realized that we loved each other. Two years after our divorces, we married each other, but only after putting some ground rules in place to ensure that this marriage would "work" in the way that we each wanted it to.
It's very hard to face honestly, but often when someone treats the other badly in a marriage – usually – the person who is wronged does something to encourage or at least facilitate the bad behavior; for example, an alcoholic often has an enabler. In my case, one little piece of the puzzle was that some part of my actions that I wasn't aware of helped my first wife Marge cheat on me. And some part of Suzy's actions that she wasn't aware of encouraged her ex-husband to obsess about her cheating. I'll explain what that was in a moment.
I don't believe in so-called "open marriages," at least not for me, if that means that each partner is free to couple with whomever they feel like on a whim. The thought of my wife with another man is painful, not the least because I have already been severely wounded in that place and still carry the scars. Suzy's sore spot was being emotionally controlled and jailed. Recognizing the fact that occasionally one or the other of us might be attracted to someone of the opposite (or even, conceivably, the same) sex, and realizing that our marriage was more important than our desire for total emotional control over each other, we agreed that our marriage would be strong enough to tolerate the occasional brief affair. Instead, what we would not tolerate would be emotional abandonment. Any outside physical relationship should be brief, discreet, and spontaneous. Any problems in our marriage, on the other hand, should be open and discussed immediately.
We didn't agree not to feel hurt or jealous if we found out about our partner's indiscretion (how could you agree not to feel a certain way?); we just agreed not to let hurtness or jealousy eat away at our marriage. We knew that hearing about our partner having a physical relationship with someone else would be painful, so we agreed not to tell each other about it unless asked.
We also agreed that there would be no more than one such "involvement" a year (if at all), that it would last no more than a day or two, and that actual penis-to-vagina intercourse would not be allowed. Any deviation from these guidelines and we would have to talk about it and all bets were off.
Suzy is one of those people who are sexy rather than magazine-cover beautiful. If you showed her photo to 100 people, you'd get 100 responses saying, "Wow. She's really cute!" She's athletic while remaining curvy. Her constant smile, chirping voice and winning personality make her everyone's instant friend.
Now we come to Suzy's side of what I was talking about earlier. Suzy creates the suspicion of cheating without ever being aware of it because the one word that best describes her is 'fuckable'. She is so easy to talk to, so trusting, and so slow to take offense that there is very little barrier to saying something like, "You have great tits," or, "Why don't we have a drink sometime when your husband's not around?"
The most fuckable thing about Suzy is her posture. You've all seen someone like this: Her natural stance pushes her firm little ass outward, her shoulders back, and her bouncy C-cup tits upward. Being a devout student of her body, I know that that's just how her body is shaped; how her spine is naturally curved and how she stands comfortably. She's not deliberately trying to thrust out her breasts and ass, but it absolutely looks that way. Her body language screams, "Hey! Help yourself to these!" It makes you want to grab her hand and haul her to the nearest bedroom.
So without consciously trying to be that way, Suzy was the perfect specimen of fuckability. Because she was cute but not gorgeous, men were not intimidated about being outclassed. Because she was friendly, candid and open, men were not afraid of being shut down. Because she had a posture that constantly drew attention to her sexy assets and perfect body she gave the impression that she was open to sex. And of course, her perfect tits begged to be squeezed and sucked, her ass to be rubbed, and her pussy to be coaxed out of hiding for some fun. Really, there's no way a man could be married to someone like Suzy without an arrangement like we had, because you just know that she's going to be hit on all the time.
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My attitude about some of these things came to change one summer, for the better, when I found out about one of Suzy's liaisons. Suzy and I always traveled well with each other, meaning that we always got along well and really enjoyed each other's company when all of the demands of the kids and the hassles of work were out of the way. We struggled financially, but always took time for each other to have a vacation alone once a year, even if we went to some less expensive destinations.
We were on vacation at a condo at what was loosely described as a resort at Lake Granby in Colorado. Actually, it was a group of "cabins" along the lines of a motel except that the outside finish made it look like they were made from logs. The resort butts up against a breathtaking national forest high in the Rocky Mountains. We were sitting around the pool with a couple of guys, Ben and Mark, whom we had met two days earlier. They were engineers, taking some time off from some large project in the area. I couldn't get it out of my head that it was a dam, but they kept explaining that it was some other kind of water conservation measure that didn't really make sense to me.
The younger engineer was named Ben, and he looked to be about 25. It was clear from the beginning that he was disturbed by Suzy. He couldn't take his eyes off her, a fact that was lost on no one. Even talking to me about his work, he kept glancing at Suzy, and not just at her face. When she went to get drinks, he watched her ass the way a cat watches a bird. When she talked, he gazed on her with a sort of moonstruck fascination. And speaking of moonstruck fascination, my fuckable little wife could not look away from this young stud, either. She hung on his words and reacted to his simple comments as if they were the most interesting thing she had ever heard. It was obvious she was trying to get him to notice her.
