The Desperate Struggle to Reconcile

Chapter 2, Injecting disruption.

Having just watched my wife on a security cam having sex with another man I felt a blind rage towards her. I was also grieving because I loved my wife very much and I had lost her. I was jealous, too, fueled not only because of the affair, but because I could tell from the webcam that Kyle was better equipped sexually than I was, and Linda enjoyed him much more than she ever did me. And with my entire neighborhood aware of her shenanigans, I was humiliated before folks I use to consider friends.

What to do? If I wanted to end the marriage, with the prenup and my recordings she would walk away with virtually nothing. That might satiate my rage somewhat. Kyle had no real income except through his wife as he was a house-husband raising their kids. Linda hadn't had a full-time job in years. Divorce with the prenup would ruin her financially.

Was her relationship with Kyle love? Was Kyle ready to abandon his wife and kids?

The security cameras revealed her other extracurricular activities beside Kyle. Her time spent online for video sex suggests that the physical part was a major component for her and that her desires for Kyle were not exclusive, and Kyle knew that. And Kyle was likely not exclusive to her, either. After all, they met online on a cheater's website.

I knew even attempting to salvage anything of my marriage was foolish. It would not be as before; betrayal usually destroys all. I was probably just in denial, but I still had a need to try.

Still, I quickly formulated a plan.

Derek and I continued to harvest details on Kyle.

I continued to speak with other neighbors and by the end of the week, my plan was ready. I called Linda. I told her I was coming home early and that I had important news we needed to talk again. I tried to sound upbeat so as not give away the fact that she was about to be cornered. She responded sarcastically, "What, more melodrama. I can't wait."

"I should be home in an hour." I kept an upbeat tone going so that she would at least stay engaged.

I spent the hour in a nearby coffee shop. I called Derreck and gave him an update. We discussed my plan. He told me again that I was crazy, that this marriage was broke beyond fixing. I agreed but was going to try anyway.

Arriving home, I saw Linda sitting at the dining room table with a Rum and Coke. I joined her putting my laptop and a file on the table. The laptop was my constant companion, so it didn't draw any notice. The file was something different, and she stared at it.

I started, "I told you on Monday we needed to try to figure things out. I hope you have given it some thought, because I have."

"Not really" she responded. "So, what's tonight's drama going to be?" Her sarcasm suggested she was ready to let the marriage end, just as she had told Kyle.

First, I pulled out the Prenup. "Do you remember this? My Dad made us both sign it when he gifted us this house." She looked at it and her fast scrunched, trying to remember what it was. I quickly added, "It says that if either of us is guilty of adultery, they forfeit their marital property to the injured spouse." She looked at me sideways and her eyes sharpened their focus.

"Are you accusing me cheating?"

"Well, if you are 'going to pull the plug on this marriage,' we need to figure out what are the issues and what is going to happen." I used the term she had used in her post coitus conversations with Kyle about divorcing me. Her eyes sharpened as she tried to figure out if my use of that term was just a coincidence.

I then pulled out a single sheet of paper, with numbers printed out in neat columns.

This is approximately my net worth. Not audit worthy, mind you, just some ballpark numbers. It says that I am worth about 3 million dollars in liquid assets and investments, not counting the house which is worth more than 1 million dollars and not including the value of my law practice, which might be worth another 3 million dollars. So, 7 million dollars roughly. There is also some money in the firm operating account awaiting distribution among the employees is subject to my own draw."

She smiled at that and seemed to like where the conversation was going.

Then I opened my laptop, cued up the page I wanted, then turned it to face her and hit play. It showed her and Kyle, naked with her on top fucking on our floor. The clip was especially selected by Derek based on how clear Linda's face was in the video. It took her a full second to figure out what she was looking at.

Linda's eyes narrowed abruptly, and two seconds later she screamed, "You were spying on me!"

"Yeah, it does kind of look that way." I responded in as calm a manner as I could manage. "And, there is more..." at that point a second clip started to play where Linda could clearly be heard saying that she didn't love me, that she loved Kyle and that she was ready to pull the plug on the marriage.

Then, I handed her a packet of some twenty pages with photos and typed narratives and told her, you need to read this, Kyle might not be who you think he is. The pictures showed another woman who Kyle seemed very affectionate towards. It was not his wife.

I then handed Linda a thumb drive. All the pictures and videos are on here, including Kyle and his other girlfriend.

Linda got up and stormed upstairs and slammed the door shut on our bedroom.

I went to the front window and looked out. Everything was working according to plan.

Half an hour later our bedroom door opened and Linda emerged with a suitcase. She was crying. "Did Kyle answer your call?"

She yelled back, "You bastard, you ruined everything!"

"Linda," I said plaintively, "I don't want to end our marriage. I still love you. When you are ready, I still want to talk." She pretended like I wasn't there.

She opened the front door, took a step out, and froze. She stared for a moment, looked left and right, then stormed back in and yelled at me, "where's my car!"

"You don't have car, dear. Remember the prenup? Since I don't need two cars, I had it put in storage. When you are ready to talk, we can talk about cars.

Linda just stared dumbfounded. She pulled out her cell and started to dial. I interrupted. "if your calling Uber, you need to know all your cards have been cancelled." She looked up with a building rage drawn on her face. I quickly added, "and the cash you use buy your cocaine cash has been cutoff too. No ATM cards." The look of rage was being replaced with a look of panic.

Just one more turn of the knife. "Maybe it's time to call Kyle?" I asked.

She just grit her teeth, then started to dial. "Kyle, I need your help." She listened for a minute, then said in a scream, "you threaten to tell his wife if he even talked to me?"

"Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that one."

"But that still leaves you all your little friends on that silly website of yours." The realization of how much I knew was slowly dawning on her.

After a pause, I said, "may I suggest that we have dinner, spend a quite evening thinking about the events of the day, and talk about where we go from here. Let me suggest we talk about it tomorrow. Figure out what you need, and we will talk it out."

"You think I will eat with you after today!"

"I'll eat here, you will eat wherever you want. I just want you to take time to reflect."

"You think after today, I will ever want you again?"

I replied, slowly and deliberately, "No, I honestly don't think we have much of a chance at all. What you have done has hurt me deeply. But I'm not ready to quit yet. I screwed up by virtually abandoning you for a year. You screwed up by losing all faith in me; by being unfaithful. We are in a hole that we may not be able to climb out of. But, Linda, I love you and I can't give up on you. I want to win you back. But first, you need to see the consequences of your actions."

She just looked at me with disgust and said, "let me know when my food arrives." With that she left for her room.

When the delivery service delivered our meals, I put hers on a tray, I also placed the dossier on Kyle with pictures with him and his other girlfriend and his recent activities, including his drug purchases, statements of our neighbors about what they had seen, my very short summarized financial statement showing my net worth, to which I added the words "your share, $10,000" and finally, the copy of the prenup, with the part about $10,000 being the maximum share of marital assets the party who committed adultery would be entitled to highlighted.

I knocked, said "your meal is on a tray in front of your door." I left for the dining room, heard her door open and a moment later close. I half expected the documents I left on the tray to be thrown off, but she took them in with her.

The next morning, she was up at 8AM. I said nothing, but as she sat down, I fixed her coffee, then scrambled a couple of eggs with bacon, some toast and laid it before her. I warmed up her coffee, then sat down beside her. While she ate, I texted Derek about the surveillance details for the day. When she finished, I poured her more coffee as well as myself a cup, and then she spoke the first words of the day, "how am I getting to work this morning?

"I'll drive you, if that is okay." She nodded.

The next morning, everything was a repeat. After Linda finished breakfast, I asked if we could talk tonight. She said, "no, tomorrow night we talk. I need to talk to Kyle first. You arrange it for tomorrow morning."

"I can do that."

The Monday morning meeting was quick and brutal. Linda showed Kyle the material she had been given on his relationship with his other girlfriend. "Is this true?" she asked.

"Yeah" was his short answer.

"Now that this is in the open, will you leave your wife?" she asked.

"No, like I said, its too early."

"And after residency, she already has a job laid on in her home city?"

"Yeah."

And that was that. Kyle got up and left after that.

She cried after he left.

I had watched this brief scene play out on my spy cam. After a while, I called and told her I could bring her car back now unless she would rather wait until tonight. She said now.

When I arrived I told her the car was still mine, but so long as she was staying here, she could use it. I told her that tonight we would discuss how we were going to proceed in the short term. I also told her that we would be talking about her receiving a cash allowance so that she is not trapped her like a prisoner. I asked her to try to figure out what she would need in order to have some quality of life in the short term. She said nothing about any of that, but I could sense that she was relieved at the news.

Then, with her eyes watering, "what is going to happen to me?"

With her working only part time as a clerk in a small dress shop and with Kyle a house husband raising their two school aged children, she knew that this meant she needed to focus on how to support herself.

"Well, I am not sure we can get back to where we were." I said. "But maybe we can try to save some portion of our marriage, if you want to save it." Then I added, "I want to save it."

"You will forgive me?" she asked, in a very small voice.

"I will try. The betrayal is too fresh, the pain is too awful right now. I want to work towards forgiveness. You see, I love you. My guess is that a big part of your relationship with Kyle is physical, but it seems that you two have connected in another way. So our first step is to figure that bit out."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Do you love him?" I said.

She did not answer.

"Look, you can leave anytime; but I'm asking you to stay. If you stay, I'll provide an allowance. After a few weeks we will figure out where we are. I am not a divorce lawyer, but I have talked to one about our situation. The prenup is valid and enforceable. But it is very important that you find yourself your own lawyer and he review the agreement."

My plan was failing. The best I could hope for with this carrot and stick approach was that she would fall in love with the carrot, not me. Everything logical thing was telling me to kick her to the curb, and yet the decision to simply give up, the logical decision, was just something I couldn't do. It was as if will power alone could create path I wanted. The only thing I was sure of was the love itself was a form of insanity.

So in that frame of mind, I chose the most desperate of choices.

I could tell the more Linda was processing what I was telling her, the more afraid and depressed she became. I then added, "I can't see what is left of this marriage succeeding if you stay with me only for financial reasons. If you dump Kyle and your Internet friends so I can continue to support you, you will resent me for the rest of our miserable lives together. This effort to win you back is not going to work. Maybe there is a third way, something besides divorce or me trapping you in a marriage where you will be miserable. Call Kyle. Tell him that you need to meet him at the Coffee Shop at Northside after he drops the kids off at school in the morning. Tell him its urgent and tell him nothing else."

"You are not going to hurt him, are you?" She said with alarm in her voice.

"No. I am going to propose a way to keep us together and yet allow you to still see Kyle for the time being. Hopefully it will give us each time to figure a way forward."

We got to the coffee shop 15 minutes early. It was only a 5-minute ride from our house. The shop only had two other customers nursing coffee in the corners and working their phones. Linda sat in a booth. I sat at a separate table near Linda, but with my back to the door. Kyle showed up after only a few minutes. He rushed to Linda, leaned in for a kiss, but was offered only a cheek.

"What's up?" he asked, in a voice that reflected a bit of urgency. Linda just looked over as I came up to the booth.

"Hi, Kyle." I said, offering my hand.

Kyle turned, looked at me and turned white. "Uh, hey" is all he managed. He met my offered hand, and we shook.

"Please, sit down." I said in what I hoped sounded like a polite and friendly voice.

He sat opposite Linda. I sat next to her.

"Go to your email." I had captured Kyle's email address from Linda's computer and I forwarded a clip of the video to him. "Mute the sound on your phone so when you open the video you won't disturb the other customers."

He pulled out his phone, opened his email, found the video, muted his phone, watched maybe five seconds of his video, then looked up. His face was pure panic.

"So, hear me out, Kyle" I said in a calm and polite voice. "I want my wife back, but she wants you. So, you guys can keep on banging each other if you want. My hope is that the lust you have for each other will burn itself out." I then paused and went on, "In return I expect you to honor my requests. Otherwise, I have no hesitation in cutting Linda loose and sending this video to your wife. And this is not the only video. I have a number of videos of you so I suspect your wife will not be pleased with you."

"So, you guys can continue your tryst. But you are going to lose some privacy, at least as far as I am concerned. But considering what you both show to the world on the Internet, I suspect you won't find my suggestions too restrictive.

"I expect to be told beforehand of your getting together. You will meet only at my house. I can't have you seen sneaking into a hotel. Also, no more sex in front of windows with the curtains open. The neighbors are already upset, and since they know you two are cheating, they are very unhappy with you. Finally, Linda, you will spend every night in this house. You don't have to have sex with me, and we don't even have to sleep in the same room, but for the next few weeks, you will be here at home.

"I want to win my wife back. But I want her to want come back. So let's all take a few weeks to figure this out. For those weeks, you must play it my way. If you can't go along with my requests, then Kyle, I will get these videos to your wife, and sweetie, you will need to look for a new sugar daddy.

"I know that neither of you see the other as an exclusive outlet for your extracurricular sex. Your appearance on the video sex site tells me you guys are both still hunting. So, Kyle, I have no interest in interfering with your fun in that area. But Linda, if you find any new guys, I will ask the same for them.

"That's it. We can talk again in a few weeks. If we agree we need more time, we will discuss that. If I conclude that I am a fool, then Linda, I will go with the prenup, and you will be on your own. And if you break my rules, you will both be own your own." I handed Kyle my card. "Here is my contact information. If a situation arises that I should know about, contact me. I can be a little flexible."

Now I'm going to get another coffee and sit over there. You guys try to figure out where to go from here.

I sat across the room at a table facing them. I tried not to stare, but I was clearly keeping an eye on them. Linda reached across the table with an open hand, but Kyle was stiff and kept his hands in his lap. I couldn't hear what was said, but I saw Linda mouth, "I don't know what to do, do you?" I couldn't make out Kyle's response. It wasn't even ten minutes when Linda got up. Kyle followed, he headed for the door but he did not make any eye contact with me. Linda came up to my table and said, "Can we go home now?" Her voice was soft, almost weak sounding.

In the car, she started to say something, but I interrupted. I was not going to relinquish control just yet. "So, what did you and Kyle talk about."

"Very little, really. I asked what are we going to do. He said he didn't know. I said I didn't know either. Then she added, "Kyle is scared."

"I know. I want his marriage to work. So long as it does, I might have a chance.

Once home, Linda went into our bedroom and I went into my den and turned on the computer. I knew she needed some time to think. After 20 minutes, I went upstairs, knocked on our bedroom door and opened it. She was sitting in a chair, staring out the window, and turned to me. "Your thoughts?" I asked.

"I have to tell you that I have lost that loving feeling for you. You abandoned me for your work and I can't let go of that. But I do love this house, so let us take some time to figure this out."

"Fair enough." I said. "Look, when I discovered what was up, I saw two choices, ignore what was going on and continue to live in a house with a woman who resented my presence, or kick you out. Neither choice is acceptable. So, I want us to create a third choice.

"I think deep down, I wanted to get caught, which is why I pulled some of the stunts I did. I wanted to hurt you. You hurt me. I was so desperately lonely and then I discovered this whole other world where I was the center of everything. And I discovered Kyle and I became his center."

"I never consciously choose work over you." I said. "I do share blame for all of this. I know you loved me once, and maybe we can get some of that back. But there may be too much pain and hurt for both of us. But I want to at least try." Most of the rest of the day and evening was spent in silence. As she started off to bed an hour earlier than usual, I stopped her and asked, "do you want me to sleep in the guest room tonight?"

She paused, then said, "yes."

The next morning at the office, work was light, which afforded me some time to keep my eye on the house. Linda got up at 10 and went to the computer. She looked around trying to figure out where the security cameras were. She spent two minutes looking then gave up. Then she signed on to her old video sex group. But she didn't turn on her camera, and she didn't chat up anyone, even though her message board immediately rang up when the regulars saw she was on. She was looking for Kyle. After 15 minutes with no Kyle, she emailed him a short message. She started to do some housework but returned to the computer after 20 minutes and again no Kyle. She texted him. "Are you there?" She stared at the screen for several minutes. Nothing. Then she started to restlessly do more housework. She checked her cell. Nothing. It went on like that all morning.