He Left His Heart in San Francisco

Sandy looked at her. "You really don't get it, do you? You have destroyed your poor, lovely husband. Everything he thought he knew has been taken away from him by you! The one person in this world he thought he could rely on!"

She next rounded on Mitchell. "And as for you, Mitchell, I feel nothing but contempt for you! The director level job which involved so much travel and days and nights away from home from his wife, that was a fake job, wasn't it? You cooked that up just so you could have unfettered access to that slut, didn't you?"

Mitchell nodded. "Yes, but for what it's worth, it turned out well as he did a very good job for the company."

Sandy gave a snort of derision. "Well, isn't that just so wonderful? You make me sick! I don't know how Brandon thinks about this, but I am going to divorce you. Brandon, honey? What about you? Do you think you have a future married to Alana?"

He shook his head. "I doubt if I have a future of any kind. But I'll tell you what, that damn woman does not figure in my future!"

Alana began sobbing, as she realised she had just lost everything she had ever wanted.

Sandy was worried about Brandon, so she took him to the hospital. The duty doctor at the ER confirmed that he seemed to have had a nervous breakdown. He had him moved to the psych ward and the staff there looked after him. Alana had booked him in using the company insurance plan.

She visited him every day and over a period of two weeks he began to respond to the treatment.

"Why hasn't Alana been to visit me?" he asked her.

Sandy shook her head. "I don't know. I think she feels guilty over what she did. By the way, I threw Mitchell out. I think he is rooming with Alana at your house. I think they are still an item, as it were.

"Look, the doctors here think you'll be ready to leave hospital, soon. You'll need somewhere to stay. Would you think it an imposition if I asked you to come and stay with me?"

He smiled and shook his head. "Not an imposition, but rather a nice gesture to help a friend. If you thought I could not stand to live with Alana, well, Sandy, you are right. After the humiliation she put me through, I could not stand the thought of being with her. In fact, these couple of weeks in the hospital have given me time to think about a whole lot of stuff. One part of me wants to get back with her, to try to continue our marriage but realistically? The Chief Rabi has more chance of becoming the Pope!"

Sandy looked at him. "Are you thinking of divorce? That's where my head is at, too. I can't bear to think of how Mitchell tricked and cajoled me into helping him live his fantasy fuck lifestyle, by becoming a swinger. Just the fact that I would have to get STD tests, ahh, what's the use? Let's face it, Brandon! Those two lousy, low, no good bastards were never good enough for us! I just thank God we found out what they were really like before any children came on the scene!"

Brandon nodded, and paused for a while before replying. "Yes, Sandy, you are right. We are worth more than they are. So right about the idea of kids. I'd hate a pair of jackals like Mitchell and Alana having children!" He shuddered at the thought.

"And as for your other point? Yes, divorce is the only option I can realistically stomach. Spending any time with her would crack me up. Shall we use the same lawyer?"

The divorce wound its way through the court process. As California is a no fault state, the adultery was not actually grounds for divorce, but, truth to tell, the facts of the adultery would impinge on the outcome of the divorce.

At the insistence of the co-respondents the judge ordered the two couples to undergo counselling to investigate if there was a possibility of reconciliation.

Dr David Moore was not an MD, he was a PhD, in psychology and he held an MA in marital counselling.

He addressed the two couples. "My name is Dr David Moore, I am your court-appointed marriage counsellor. If I believe there is any chance of reconciliation by any party, then I will recommend further counselling sessions. But if I don't, then I will recommend to the judge that any further counselling sessions would be worthless and may even cause more angst and heartache for you."

He had them in a room that were normally used for group meetings of the staff as he had never had to counsel such a large group of spouses at the same time.

He allowed them to choose where to sit. This would help him to determine how to proceed.

Interesting! Each spouse sat with the partner of the other. That was telling him of the dynamic of the group. And even at this early stage it didn't look hopeful for reconciliation.

OK, why don't you tell me what happened?" He asked the group. They all started at once, so Dr Moore put his hand up and said, in a commanding voice, "Not all at once, please!"

He looked at them and his eyes fell on Sandy. "Sandy, perhaps you could start, please?"

As he heard her story he began to feel irritated with Mitchell and Alana, but he was too much the seasoned pro to allow this to be expressed in his demeanour.

When she had finished her story of open marriages, of betrayal and of cuckolding, he knew their marriages had a bleak future. Even if they did agree to remain married, he knew they'd be separated within a few years.

"Well, does everyone else agree with Sandy's version of events? Please don't talk, yet, just nod."

He noticed that Brandon's nod was empathic, those of Mitchell and Alana were weak and rather desultory.

"So, let me see... Let me ask you, a question, Alana. Why on earth should your husband remain married to you?"

Alana's head jerked up. The question had taken her unawares, due to its bluntness.

She looked up at Dr Moore, trying to focus on him. "I... why, because he loves me and I love him!"

"You have an almost unique way of expressing that love for him. You take a lover, you help your lover arrange to have your husband sent out of town at least once a week so that you can have as much sex as you want with your lover, the husband of your best friend) you turn your husband into a cuckold, you make your husband eat your lover's sperm out of you, you plan to have your lover get you pregnant but aim to fool your husband into believing your lover's bastard child is you poor husband's and have him raise it as if it were his child. Anything else I left out?"

Alana was sobbing, dabbing her eyes with some tissues that were in a box placed before her chair on a small table.

"You see, Alana, I believe very firmly in reconciliation in marriage. I really do. But in some cases things are just too bad to fix.

However, that's not my call to make. Who here believes their marriages can be saved? Just put your hands up. Mitchell and Alana put their hands up, but Sandy and Brandon kept their hands stiffly at their sides, almost as if they were Afraid of accidentally flexing a muscle that might be wrongly interpreted as a yes vote.

Dr Moore shook his head. "That vote tells me all I need to know. The loyal, faithful spouses do not think their marriages can be saved, the cheating spouses think they can be. This is because many cheating spouses live in denial and refuse to acknowledge the harm they have done."

"But it can't be over! We must reconcile!" howled Mitchell. "If we divorce our business will be sold, I'll only get half of it!"

"Oh, shit!" shouted Sandy. "So that's why you keep trying to block the divorce? So you can keep your precious business? Listen, shit-for-brains, I worked just as hard as you did to get Applied Synergies started. In the early days it was just a pipedream, but we built the damn thing into what it is, now!

"If you didn't want this to happen, why did you decide to take Alana as your lover?"

The argument continued for a while longer. They were starting to give Dr Moore a headache.

Whilst they were arguing in his office, he filed his report to the court, briefly and succinctly outlining why he thought the two marriages were broken beyond repair and why he did not think, in his professional opinion, that further marriage counselling would be of benefit.

He pressed "send" on his email, and then stood up, clapping his hands to gain their attention. "Right!" He shouted, "That's enough! You really have no hope of saving your marriages, because neither of your cheated spouses wants to save it. And why should they? You cheated on them and the consequences are that they no longer love you, or, as I suspect, they still love you, but their love is not enough to get over the hurt of your betrayal and your lies."

They stood up and left his office. The two betrayers and the two betrayed seemed to have paired off together. "Interesting," Dr Moore mused to himself. "Maybe some good can come out of this mess, after all?"

A month later the divorces were final. The company as sold at a good price. It wasn't often that a Silicon Valley company of the standing of Applied Synergies went on the market. It wasn't a Google, or a Yahoo! But it was fairly big and a tempting target. After all, there was still money about to be invested in the right project.

They got their lawyers to enact a house swap, so each of the betrayed spouses had a house.

Mitchell and Alana lived together, but didn't marry, Sandy and Brandon did get married.

Mitchell and Alana did not get n invitation to the wedding. But on the day of the wedding, Alana became tearful. She realised she had lost something and someone that was very important to her.

After all, Mitchell Clifton was a good man. But he was certainly no Brandon Smart.