[Author's Note: This is the first part of a fairly long project. This chapter is quite lengthy in itself, on account of the thorough development of the characters. Future installments will be considerably shorter and more to the point, but I believe that this lengthy first installment does its job in every way by the time you reach the end.
My work is geared more toward couples reading together than toward individuals, so I recommend it more in that capacity. Individuals seeking something fast and exciting may be less interested in all the introductory material, although I have done my best to engage the reader with sexuality at a fairly steady pace from the start. Ideally, this will develop into a series of those shorter, more immediate pulse-pounders that individuals may prefer as well once the characters are well established, so I would not necessarily discourage such readers from taking the time to get familiar with this chapter. Ultimately, however, I write with a vision of men and women sharing these words together.
As with all my work, this story champions faithful marriage and healthy sexual expression. And as with all my work, your comments and suggestions are what I look forward to the most. If you read it, do me the honor of letting me know what you think.]
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1.
I once had the bright idea to try talking to my wife. I'm not sure where it started, or what ever made me think it was the brilliant plan I believed it to be, but one day in our eighth year of marriage the thought struck me, and I latched onto it. In fact, I spent several days deliberating on it -- trying to determine the right things to say, the very best words I could think of to express my thoughts, the time to bring it up, the way to bring it up, the things I shouldn't say, the words I shouldn't use, the expectations I ought to bring to the conversation, the things I should not expect...
I put forth such an effort of forethought and planning that I had myself utterly convinced of the outcome before I had even begun. I would approach her with such honesty, such simplicity, such a banquet of words that she would melt in my hands, and suddenly we would have evolved into some new, greater mode of spiritual existence; our marriage would all at once have its inner walls torn down and there would never again be any need for a barrier of any kind between us.
But for all my planning over the course of the week, there was a detail I had forgotten to account for. You see, I had the bright idea to talk to my wife of eight years. I did not have the bright idea to listen. This unfortunate lapse in my judgment caused no small amount of discord, and even seemed at first to have done more harm than good. However, the moral of the story, which we'll be getting to in due time, turns out to be one worth sharing, and I'm inclined to think that a number of the events leading up to it might make for an interesting read as well -- in the proper setting.
This is an intimate story. It's not a love story; it's not an advice column; it's not a social commentary. This is a story straight from the pages of my own personal sex life, complete with examples, and its purpose is no more nor any less than to encourage an intimate evening among all you other happily married men and women out there. If you happen to learn the same lesson that I did along the way, then I'll be happy to have imparted a bit of my wife's good sense to you, but for all intents and purposes you can do yourselves a favor when you're done reading this: keep your mouths shut and just make love to each other.
2.
Now obviously, having been married for eight years and having a five-year-old son, there was a lot going on in our lives that wasn't necessarily sexy. Amanda and I are not exactly the sexual crusaders that everyone else our age seems to have become since the onslaught of the internet in the late 90's; we keep most of our relations in the bedroom where we both generally feel they belong, and we keep the natural relationship between cock and vagina as the centerpiece of our interactions. We rarely get so heated that we lose our heads in a fit of passion and go to any particular extreme -- I think prior to the events of this tale the wildest we'd ever gotten was a quick and unplanned fuck at the computer desk while our son was asleep on the couch, and even that was not entirely spontaneous. We have had an arrangement for years -- since the birth of our son, in fact -- that Saturday nights were 'our night'; the steamy session at our desk happened around naptime on Saturday, and was thus only 'unplanned' by virtue of a couple of hours.