There was no date on the note. This was not unusual as all her initial notes were without dates. Now I empty the trash exactly once one week no more and no less. I do this religiously every Sunday evening prior to the Monday morning trash pickup. The note had to have been written this past week. I looked again at the penciled note. On the other side was another note: take check to Curves. I remembered that yesterday (Saturday) she reminded me that she had gone to exercise at Curves on the previous day (Friday) and also paid them their monthly fee.
I thought back to last week. I had been out of town on business from very early Thursday morning until very late Friday night. Yesterday we had gone grocery shopping then eaten out. She always seemed pleased to have me arrive home. Last Friday was no exception. A sterile kiss on the cheek is all I get. I have given up trying for anything more. She always has prepared a weekend "Honey do" list for me. I guess that one had already disappeared into the garbage container. Everything was accomplished that was on it. I didn't look for it.
Our children have long since left our house. That leaves just Sherrie and me. Sherrie had moved out of our common marital bed seven years ago. Then three years ago we purchased a smaller town-house in a nearby bedroom community. She insisted on having her own bedroom and bath. "You snore!" was her excuse. I didn't and still don't. I had set up a sound activated recorder several nights at bedside. It caught my occasional cough and turning in the bed but no snoring. Sherrie just said I didn't test enough nights. Three nights was plenty for me to convince myself that snoring was not the problem. Then she said I get up at night to pee and that wakes her up. I don't get up since I quit drinking a glass of water with my nighttime blood pressure medicine. Just a sip will get it down. Regardless, of all arguments and pleadings, I was cut off from all intimacies such as snuggling and sex. As a result our communications went to hell in a handbasket.
Our sexual relations had already stopped at that point, having tapered off over the previous several years. This was cause for a serious disagreement but I lost out. I believe she cheated me out of my spousal rights as surely as if she had been actively cheating with another man. When I told her this she really hit the ceiling calling me a pervert and mentally whacky. I was left with accepting her as she had become, argue incessantly, or leave.
I gave serious consideration to the latter. Due to my strongly held religious views on marriage, I had accepted the new norm of sleeping solo. I rapidly became not only her handyman, but my own. Gradually I came to prefer her absence. We had slipped into this less than optimal buddy living arrangement against my will and better judgment but felt I had no alternative. I suggested marital and or sexual counseling but these were rejected forthwith on multiple occasions. Each time was associated with increasingly loud vocal rejection. I came to believe that life was actually better the less we saw of each other. This made avoiding the pain of having a beautiful room mate who was off limits to emotional and sexual sharing much more tolerable.
I still worked regularly but with fewer total hours and significantly fewer overnights away from home for the past four years. I now had breakfast at home and usually got home well before five pm having avoided most of the evening traffic. Lunch hours disappeared of course. These welcome work changes came about after being promoted to a senior position four years ago. Our income was more than adequate especially now with the promotion plus our three kids out of college and living independently.
Essentially we were like long time acquaintances living together. I would say we shared a lot but that really wasn't true anymore. We had shared for the first twenty five years but the past few years became an increasingly dry desert emotionally. Sherrie had never worked so her sharing the burden of the household activities was now relegated to some charity work, exercising, watching television and fixing an evening meal. Of late, this meal had become simply a TV dinner with small side salad. In my mind, she had retired from home making, child rearing and husband satisfying. I couldn't understand how she could go without sex as she demanded of me. I wondered if her pussy was as dry as the desert we lived in.
She had a gynecologist but never discussed or revealed what they talked about or if she took replacement hormones or whatever women take in her age bracket. She refused to talk about sex, arousal, menopause or anything about her body with me. Maybe I was lucky as my friends told me of the numerous complaints there wives had with hormones, sleep, weight gain and depression all arising, seemingly, from their empty nest syndrome.
So where does this leave us. It was an uncomfortable living arrangement but with familiarity of a mutual past history of thirty some years and shared children. Otherwise we lived separate lives. Mine was work, exercise, music and stunt flying as a hobby. Hers was whatever she did while I was out earning the way for the two of us. I had never given any previous thought that she might be fooling around as she, in our early years had been so insecure acting She continued dressing very conservatively. There was no change in fear that others might see her with a hair out of place or a speck of dust in the house. My friends sometimes commented on how "proper" she was. She dressed sloppily around the house and, to my way of thinking, did a piss poor job of housekeeping. Still, she had kept herself in really good physical shape. Whenever, on those rare occasions, I got to see her partially undressed, I saw a beautiful sexy body. It was body I longed for but that was off limits to me.
I frequently told her I missed sex with her but her reply was, "Well we are getting older and I have no need for that anymore".
Somewhat angrily my reply was usually something like, "Well I still have needs and I hate to just masturbate in private because you refuse me".
"Honey, have I ever refused you?"
"Yes, on many occasions. It is usually not an outright refusal necessarily, but always and excuse or an unfulfilled promise as in 'tomorrow I promise'". Of course tomorrow never came.
Somewhat angrily she replied, "Honey, I will lay down and spread my legs on your bed and allow you to get off in me if that's what you demand of me. Just remember you always make a mess in me and then I have to shower to clean up. You just wipe off your dick and are ready to go. You have no consideration for my hygiene. You think I smell good but I know I always stink down there, especially when you're done with me.".
"Sherrie, the biggest turn off in the world is to have an unwilling, non participating and submissive wife while the greatest turn on is to have a sexual partner who enjoys and wants sex and actively participates. Something you have not done in years".
"Jon, I cannot will myself to want sex. It is over for me."
"Does that mean that I have to look elsewhere for sexual gratification, Sherrie?"
"I thought you told me you masturbated to get your jollies. Is that not enough. You are getting old also and shouldn't be thinking about sex all the time."
Thus it went. I did think seriously of finding a willing and needy partner but my religious background and beliefs about infidelity were just too strong. She told me many times, also, that she considered infidelity as being wrong. I was now beginning to think that she had been telling that to me for my benefit, not hers
So here I am standing at the trash can with this disturbing note, trying to sort out what it all meant.
Having read many stories "on line" in Literotica in the "Loving Wives" section and how husbands always did all the interesting electronic investigations or hired a P.I., I wondered how I should proceed. Of course, I never thought such fiction would ever become reality in my life. I wondered how terribly difficult and expensive all this was going to be. In these stories the investigation was usually a large part of the story and frankly, I enjoy that part a lot. I'm part industrial investigator as part of my job. Now I thought I was going to have to go through all those things the other authors so cleverly described. I mean, GPS's and hidden microphones. I had looked at the tiny cameras and knew I could never hide one in our house without her finding it. She had eagle eyes for the smallest changes.
Then there was the confrontation. I wondered how I was going to manage that. Of course, I had condemned her already on just a flimsy note. It certainly seemed pretty damning to me however.
I decided not to confront Sherrie, at least not immediately. More information was needed to confirm my suspicions. I actually began to look forward to the search and investigation. I decided right then that I wanted a well built case before doing anything like a confrontation. Our relationship was still important to me.
