Sexual Trials of a Young Professor

I am Jennifer Lahey, now 30 years old. I teach literature at a small private college. This is the improbable story of how my marriage with my husband reached a crisis stage and how that was resolved.

My husband Edward and I came from the same small Midwestern town. We started to date at the start of our senior year in high school. Edward was very attractive physically and a very popular student but we had never seemed to click. He was deeply interested in sports at the point and I had little interest. I was a bit shy and took academics more seriously than he did. Then, all of a sudden, he asked me to go to a dance with him and I accepted. For whatever reasons it seemed like the right thing to do.

I had kissed boys before Edward; none of them had generated an eager response on my part. I came to be regarded by boys as too prim and proper and perhaps not worth much effort. Now, for the first time with Edward, kisses were passionate and I desperately wanted them to continue. After only a few times out together I began to allow Edward's hands to cover my breasts, at first only outside my sweaters, and then soon under my bra to tease my nipples. Then a few dates later I let his hand touch the insides of my thighs for the first time, then to stroke my pussy through my panties and then inside them. It seemed that every time we could be alone together Edward was able to give me a wonderful orgasm in this way. This was new for me and I craved it. A few times, to excite and reward him, I dared to leave my panties off altogether when we went out, once to a dance where I also danced with other boys. That did excite Edward--a lot. One night I recall vividly he fingered me to a quick orgasm with his right hand as he drove us through the town park on a dark night.

For my part I let Edward move my hand so I would feel his hard cock through his slacks. For awhile I was not ready to go further. Then one night, at a party in a friends's house, Edward and I found a spare bedroom, locked the door, and began to touch one another freely. He removed my panties and brought me off very quickly. Then I heard him unzip his pants and he moved my hand to wrap it around his dick. There was a small table lamp on in the corner and, for the first time, I could see what his penis looked like. I watched intently as I moved my hand up and down slowly and softly until I heard him say, "faster, Jennifer." I did. I liked knowing I could make him feel good and his breathing told me he was becoming more and more excited. I realized he was losing control, so I prepared for what I had heard friends talk about. Edward gasped, "I'm going to come, Jennifer!" I quickly lowered my mouth onto his cock as he shot his sperm. At first I gagged and then I struggled several times to swallow before I felt I could lift my head and look into his eyes. I was so proud and I knew I was smiling, probably blushing too. I have never heard anyone sound so grateful for something I had done. I knew I had given Edward the perfect gift.

All in all that was a wonderful senior year. We both turned eighteen during the first semester and felt we were real adults. We began to "go all the way" shortly before graduation and, like most kids our age, our desire quotient was very high and our bodies were fully capable of responding, frequently. Sex was exciting and almost always rewarding. What was there to complain about?

Of course I had recognized for several years in high school and then I did even more in college that boys found me attractive from a sexual perspective. I saw the way they looked at me, noticed them commenting to one another as I walked by. I wanted to believe that they thought I was a nice person and beautiful as well as sexy. But everyone who knew me assumed Edward and I were a committed pair and so again boys did not waste their time pursuing me. Now I wish I had dated more boys in high school and in college, had experienced more with them, that more of them had turned me on.

After graduation, Edward and I began our freshman year at the state university about forty miles away. No one in either of our families had gone to college. Edward chose business school where he majored in personal finance. From the first he knew he wanted to become a financial advisor for people, like our own families, who lacked the knowledge and experience to act in their own best financial interest. At university, I majored in literature with a minor in art history. We both became much busier during college. We worked hard in our classes. we both carried partial scholarships from the university contingent on us maintain a high grad point average. We both worked student jobs to help cover our expenses.

In college, where fewer boys knew I was with Edward, more boys asked me for dates. Again I often could feel their stares as I walked on campus or in the town. Largely ignoring the interest from other men I treated my commitment to Edward almost like a religious vocation. Despite our schedules we found time and places to be together to satisfy our sexual needs and confirm our love and respect for one another. We fully expected our friendship and our sexual satisfaction would continue unabated for all the years to come. They did for the first five or six years of our marriage.

We married, both of us 22, a month after graduation and rented an apartment near the university. Edward went to work for a small financial planning firm. I wanted ultimately to teach at the college level so I immediately began work on a Master's degree hoping to continue for a Ph.D. While I worked on my degrees I also worked part time as a tutor for the athletic department, helping both young men and women remain eligible for their sport and their scholarship.

Edward helped support my graduate work through the four long years it took for me to complete my course work, write a dissertation, and receive my doctorate in American and British Literature. After three years of good experience at the financial planning company he started his own firm and was soon doing quite well. He was competent, friendly and a straight shooter who put his clients welfare first.

I found a first teaching position as an assistant professor in a small liberal arts college in a town twenty-five miles north of the where we lived. I became a popular teacher and I began work on a first book drawing heavily on the research I did for my dissertation. Although we were both very busy with our careers we bought an older fixer upper near the university in a neighborhood where many faculty members lived. Gradually, over several years, we transformed that house into a very elegant place with tasteful furnishings and art to my own taste. A landscape designer helped us with the final stage. I was very pleased with what we had done. Edward was not very interested in quality design or stylish furniture or the art on the walls though he appreciated the higher value that came with the changes.

After six years of marriage we were proud of what we had accomplished professionally and personally. Now we could afford to give parties, eat out, have nice clothes, travel, and more. We were successful beyond our expectations. Only one aspect of our lives was becoming less than fully satisfying.

Gradually, very gradually, worrisome issues began to arise that negatively impacted our sexual relationship--and then extended beyond that. For one thing, while we said we wanted to expand our still limited circle of close friends, we discovered that our different tastes in people became much more obvious. Not surprisingly I enjoyed most of all my colleagues in the college where I taught and other academics I had met in the university. These were people interested in literature, art, and history in particular; by and large they were people who kept current on cultural, social and political issues and trends. Also not surprisingly, Edward's friendships mostly grew from his growing business relationships and with local people primarily engaged with local issues. Predictably perhaps, my favorite people and Edward's preferred crowd often did not mix comfortably and so we gradually had fewer parties than we had expected and we likewise had very different levels of enthusiasm in responding to invitations from others. Sometimes, and increasingly, we went our separate ways in our socializing.

Edward was very busy, often preoccupied with his business. For whatever reasons, he became more demanding and less patient with me at home. He expected more wifely attention to our house, our meals, what he regarded as my household responsibilities. We did not agree on this. I wanted us to hire house and lawn care services, to eat out more or to bring home prepared meals, to hire staff to help when we did choose to give a party, to travel more beyond the midwest. If we managed our incomes carefully we could afford all of these. Much of what I thought of as essentials Edward considered unnecessary, luxuries even.

During the several years after I began to teach, I made a number of new close friends at my college and in the university whose interests meshed with my own. I enjoyed my social and intellectual life with them and felt that I was becoming more my own person, not always as one part of a couple, and not the junior partner. My friends usually were the guests I wanted to invite to my house and it was their invitations that I wanted to accept. Edward often felt left out in these situations. His local friends and my academic friends did not mix well--even though many of his clients were in fact academics.

Along with this increasing separateness in our social and intellection interests our sex life had become stale and, for me, increasingly uncomfortable. Edward expected me always to be ready for sex when he wanted it and he became more demanding and directive in the kind of sex he wanted from me, perhaps needing proof that he was in control. He was less generous than before in responding to my needs, so my expectation for satisfaction rapidly decreased. My response, the only one I could think of then, was to show less interest in sex. While I needed sex much more than I admitted to him, I knew Edward began to feel it was sex with him that I was not interested in. This began to make him jealous and suspicious because he thought my lack of interest in sex at home might indicate that my sexual interests were in other directions, in some other particular man or men. This was not the case then, but I could see that Edward might become paranoid at my lack of responsiveness to what seemed to me his insensitive demands.

During this same time it became obvious to me that Edward was becoming more engaged in reading erotic stories and in watching erotic films, often on one of the major pornographic internet sites. He began to link them to the large television screen in our study and expected that I would watch with him and then perform for him as eagerly as did the women he watched on videos. He insisted that he had a right to expect me to meet his wishes, in effect to become a submissive wife. I usually resisted this but sometimes it was easier just to give in to his requests if they were not too repulsive.

He also began to want me to wear sexier clothes, usually when we were going out but even when we were home. Sometimes at home he asked me to undress for him, while he watched, to strip for him really. If I was very horny myself, sometimes I obliged him, wanting to learn how to be sexy but blanking out the particular setting I was in. He told me I was incredibly hot and that he wanted other men to see what a sexy wife he had. He asked for oral sex much more frequently, often telling me how much better I was at it than I used to be. He wondered if I was practicing on someone else. Each time we had sex he wanted to rotate through all of the common positions, directing each change to demonstrate that he was in charge. He began to ask me, almost every time we had sex, if I had done a particular thing with someone else. My answer was always no. I had not been unfaithful to him.

Then Edward began especially to watch videos purportedly showing men, often while masturbating, watching their wives have sex with other men. He often insisted that I watch these with him. He became very excited by these videos and wanted to talk with me about them, telling me that he would like for me to do what we were watching and asking me what kind of man I would like to have sex with while he watched. I told him I would never do that for him. I did not reveal that sometimes I found it arousing to think about someone watching me, envisioning myself having the power to sexually excite others by my desirability. I kept my fantasies to myself knowing that anything I said would lead Edward to imagine ever more fanciful situations and press me to enact them for his pleasure.

During this period I continued occasionally to tutor for University Athletic Department. That gave me free access to the main fitness center which I finally started to take advantage of. I began a vigorous workout five days a week with weight machines and cardiac work on a bike and a rowing machine. After several months my body began to show the results. I went from soft to firm -- and now I can't do without those workouts. I began to dress more stylishly and to move more confidently. Edward hardly noticed until several of his friends remarked to him how much more attractive I was with a new body and a new look. He began to tell me how desirable I had become to other men and how he liked when we were out together to watch other men openly admiring me and sometimes hitting on me when they did not know he was my husband.

One night after we each had several glasses of wine Edward was being unusually gentle and sweet to me. We were sitting on the couch in our library and he was kissing my neck, my ears and fondling my breasts, touches he knew I had especially enjoyed in the past. He began to stroke my pussy, very slowly and gently, seeking my pleasure rather than only his own. His finger felt good on my clit, not too soft but not too hard, bringing me toward a rare orgasm from his touches. When I did have that very nice orgasm I thanked him for it.

Then, as we sat quietly, Edward said to me, "Jennifer, I know you often don't like sex with me anymore. It is not what you want or need. You must be having sex with some man who appeals to you more, probably someone at your college or at the university. I no longer of interest you. Sometimes I picture you with another man. It is not surprising that many men want to be with you. You are growing more beautiful and much sexier too and men you know must lust for you. I'm sure you know some of these men hunger for sex with you. Since you don't seem interested in me anymore you must want sex with some of these other men. You must need it. Jennifer, I won't try to stop you. I just want you to tell me about it when it happens, how it is for you being with other men. You owe me that at least and I want to hear about it. I need that from you, Jennifer."

Edward was right only in that I did find several men I knew very attractive and I recognized they were interested in me. They made it a point to talk with me whenever we were together, to flirt with me at parties and receptions, and to give off other signs. I believed I never acted in an obvious way to raise their hopes, nothing that would entitle my husband to accuse me of betrayal. I expressed over and over to Edward that I had not been unfaithful to him. I did not say "yet"--though maybe that was what I was beginning to feel.

Edward began to share his very explicit fantasies with me in great detail while we were in bed and he asked me to tell him of mine. I chose not to do so, fearing that anything I said would convince him I was planning to or had already fulfilled his fantasy of me with someone else. When I did not respond, he began to describe his favorite fantasies over and over while we lay in bed. He no longer pleaded with me to have sex with him, only with others. It was like he was talking to himself when he was describing me having sex with some other man. He would talk endlessly about taking me to a bar where he would watch while someone picked me up, that I would leave with the man to have sex with him in his car, in a hotel, in our house even. He insisted that if he was not able to watch I would tell him later in extreme detail what had happened. Often while he was talking through these fantasies with me beside him Edward would be masturbating, really paying very little attention to me, a captive audience of one. Not surprisingly I resented almost everything about this situation: his so far unwarranted suspicion, his desire to pimp me for his own gratification, his selfishness, his obvious insecurity.

I fully realized something had to change. It was far too late to retrieve the kind of caring and respectful relationship we once had. Would our marriage hold together much longer? Was it worth saving?

Then, one day when I arrived home, Edward met me at the door. He took me into our living room and introduced me to James, one of his clients, the director of a branch bank in the next town over. Edward told me that James had remarked to him how beautiful and desirable he found me when he saw me walking at the pool at the country club and then again after dancing with me at the Chamber of Commerce annual ball. Edward said "I told him that not only did you look sexy when you were out but that you looked even better when you were home and took off all your clothes. I explained to James that I knew you were fucking other men and I thought you might like to fuck him too. As you can see he is very handsome and in very good shape and I would love to watch you and him together, just the kind of situation we have talked about so many times, Jennifer."

I was shocked. I saw this James looking at me expectantly and I saw virtually the same expression on Edward's face. I thought for a few seconds as to how I might best respond so that my husband would never have the audacity to try something like this again.

"Edward, are you crazy? How do you have the temerity to include me in this absurd childish acting out of your obsessive fantasy. You are pathetic. James, whoever you are, so are you! I don't know what delusional picture Edward has painted for you but please leave our house immediately and do not come back, ever, or ever speak to me. Now leave!"

After this foolish badly misled man departed I told Edward how embarrassed I felt, not for me nearly as much as for him. Edward said only he was very disappointed in me, he thought I would want to have sex with someone new and I must just be in a bad mood. He wanted me to know he intended to try again soon when I was feeling more need for sex and he would try to find someone more interesting to me, perhaps someone from the university.

Edward did not, apparently could not, make himself stop creating the fantasies, insisting that I owed him what he wanted, that he would find someone desirable to me. "Why will you never do anything sexual for me, Jennifer? Even if you don't want sex with me, why are you so inflexible about doing it with someone else?"

I told him finally, "Edward, if I ever should want to have sex with someone else I'm sure I don't need for you to find someone for me or to be involved in any way. I can find someone, Edward, and more than one."

I tried to persuade Edward to seek counseling, warning him his fantasies had taken him too far from reality, I could not remain his wife if he insisted in pursuing this. Edward said he did not believe me, his fantasies were not a problem except I would not fulfill them and after so many years together I surely would not leave him over this.

I felt I needed to take some action. My day to day life with Edward had become unpleasant, upsetting, clearly unacceptable. I was often sad--and more and more I found him repulsive. I began to consider an early divorce might be the logical course of action. So I set in motion a plan to either force Edward into a return to normalcy or to agree to end our marriage.