The Husband's Story

"I was already feeling it was coming to an end," she said. "But when I looked at Julie and Ray with the little one in between them in the back seat of the kombi I knew I had to tell Ray it was over. He has to be a proper husband and father." Then she dissolved into tears. "I'm not proud of what I did," she sniffled.

I hugged her and tried to calm her. I needed to reassure her that I believed she had good reasons for doing what she did. We had both been trapped in an unsatisfactory marriage during our 'staying together for the sake of the kids' period, and what she had done had brought that sad phase of our marriage to an end. I said "Don't blame yourself. What you did was not wrong. Somebody had to do something. You did it and I'm glad you did."

It took a while, but little by little I started to feel that Lue understood the way my beliefs had changed and the impact of the seagull philosophy on my ideas about love and freedom. For those first few weeks after the affair ended she had refused to mention Ray in our conversations, but eventually she became comfortable talking about him and started telling me anecdotes about their trysts in the kombi. She laughed as she reminisced, and my bubbly happy Lue was back. Life was good again.

She said "Anneke was right. It was a bit of variety. But I don't think I'll bother trying it again."

**********

Kylie the Coordinator

The consulting practice had been going well again for a couple of years. Lue worked from home doing the administrative work while I was out with clients most days of the week. One contract required monthly trips up north to conduct two-day workshops.

"Tell me about Kylie. What's she really like?" Lue asked me one evening at home. Kylie was a coordinator with the conference company and she managed all the workshops and speaking sessions that I was involved with. Lue dealt with her over the phone organising dates, travel, accommodation, equipment and payments.

"She's a big girl. Not fat, but big." I replied. "She looks like you would expect her to from talking with her. She dresses smartly and she's always busy. She has a very tidy mind, always making sure that everything is in its place. Everything has to happen exactly the way it is supposed to."

I knew Lue was impressed with Kylie's efficiency and found her easy to work with. "Yes, I suppose I would expect her to dress well," she said. "How old is she?"

"She's only 22."

"Good grief! I would have thought she was at least thirty." It was not surprising that Lue thought Kylie would be older. She was a most impressive young woman.

A few weeks later they had arranged the details for a workshop I was scheduled to conduct on the following Monday and Tuesday. That evening, Lue said "Kylie didn't sound her usual self this morning. Is anything wrong?"

"Not that I know of Lue," I replied. "Sometimes things don't go quite according to plan up there and she likes to be on top of everything so that nothing goes wrong. It's her tidy mind. She gets worried easily."

On Sunday morning Lue bundled the kids into the kombi and drove me to the airport. Kylie collected me at the other end and took me to the venue. I did the setup for the workshop during the afternoon and in the evening I gave Lue a call to say Hi. The workshops required a fair bit of attention, so I wouldn't be calling home again until Tuesday evening after the participants had left and I was tidying up and winding down.

Talking with Kylie on the drive from the airport and while we were setting up, I learned why she had sounded somewhat diffident on the phone. She and her partner Greg had split up. He had been her first true love and she was feeling shattered by their separation. I told Lue about the split and said "I have suggested to her that she try to get some time off from work so she can come to our place with me on Wednesday and we can help her get over it."

Lue agreed that it could help her to get away for a while and coming down to our place would be good if she didn't have family up there or anybody better to talk it over with. Kylie's family was down south anyhow, so I told Lue it would work out well.

On Tuesday evening after the workshop people had gone, I suggested to Kylie that she should pack her things and stay at the venue so that we could talk and then depart together in the morning. We sat in my room and had a few drinks while we talked. Things had not been going well between Kylie and Greg for several months and Greg wanted to move over to the west where he could get a well-paid job in the mining industry. Kylie had her own career with the conference company and didn't want to move. There was no work for women in the mining towns. Greg said he was going anyhow and he had moved out of their flat to stay with his parents until he could arrange to move to the west.

Kylie's emotions were mixed, but they were all negative. She was angry: "I hate him. I hate him for what he has done to me." But she was also feeling rejected because he had walked out on her. Over the nearly a year I had been working with her we had talked about many things, including how our beliefs determine the way we feel and the seagull philosophy. "I know he's not coming back to me," she said. "I loved him so much, and now he's left me. I didn't set him free. He just walked out. He didn't think I was good enough for him to stay with me."

She was in tears and I hugged her close and tried to console her. I was talking with her about the need to now look to the future rather than the past and to move forward, to see this as an opportunity for her to exercise her own freedom. She continued crying inconsolably and little by little it became rather obvious that while I had initiated the close hugging, what I was receiving in return had a much more intimate intent.

"Will you take me to bed? . . . Please, Don? . . . Please?"

Much as I would have enjoyed taking up the offer, that would have been a mistake. "Tonight I'll put you to bed, I won't take you to bed. Not tonight Kylie. Some other night when we can both enjoy it more, but tonight isn't the right time while you are feeling bad."

There were twin beds in the room so we lay together on one of them. Lue phoned at 9pm. "Is Kylie coming with you tomorrow?" I told her that she was. "You didn't call me at the usual time and I was wondering what was happening."

"Kylie has packed her things," I said. "She is staying with me here tonight and we'll both come down there tomorrow."

"OK," said Lue. "I'll pick you both up from the airport at 10 tomorrow. Seeya."

"OK. See you then." I hung up and lay back with Kylie until she had calmed a little more. Then I moved over to the other bed and we both slept.

Lue collected us from the airport on Wednesday morning. After lunch and before the kids came home we sat in the lounge room and talked. Kylie told Lue that she thought there was no way back to how she and Greg had been before, and she didn't think that she wanted to now that Greg had done what he had done.

She told Lue that talking to me had been a help. I said "There's a lot of blokes out there who are a lot better than Greg. They'll be pushing each other out of the way to be first in line." Lue's approach to things like that is very different to mine. She was sympathetic. She counselled caution. She had friends who had made hasty decisions when on the rebound from a failed relationship and she suggested that Kylie take it slowly.

After dinner when the kids were in bed and Kylie was set up in the spare room, Lue and I went to our bedroom. It was our first chance to talk privately since she had collected us from the airport. Lue wanted to know what had happened on Tuesday night when Kylie and I had stayed together.

I told her that we had talked for a long time and that Kylie had been quite upset. But I thought she was much better today and would get over the break up fairly easily. "She's a logical girl," I said.

"Did you sleep with her?"

"Yes," I said. "I slept with her, but I didn't have sex with her if that's what you are asking. It was literally just that; we slept together in the same room. There were twin beds."

"Would you have done it if she would?" she asked.

"Not last night," I said. "She had been crying and she was upsetting herself and it wouldn't have been good for her or for me."

We left the conversation hanging there. I had an early start tomorrow and wanted to sleep. We didn't make welcome-home love which we usually did after I had been away.

When I came home on Thursday evening, after dinner we sat and talked some more. Kylie seemed to have become quite settled and she spoke very little about Greg. She had talked with Lue during the day and had found that helpful.

Her parents lived locally and she had friends down here as well, so she had phoned them all during the day and arranged to visit them tomorrow evening and Saturday. I said that I would drive her over there tomorrow afternoon.

In bed that night Lue said, in a rather concerned tone, "Did you tell Kylie about Ray and me?"

I said that of course I hadn't; it had nothing to do with her, and why do you ask? She said that she thought Kylie was infatuated with me and that she had picked up on my ideas about freedom and being in control of your own feelings to dismiss Greg from her mind. "She used the 'If you love something, set it free' quote," Lue said, "and I was wondering what you had told her."

Lue continued: "I think you are who she really wants."

"Well, she can borrow me but she can't have me," I laughed.

"How much can she borrow?" she asked. "Would you fuck her?" (That was a word Lue rarely used.)

"Probably," I replied. "She wanted to on Tuesday night, but it wouldn't have been right for her or for me. She's over her upset now, so we probably will do it some time before she moves on."

"What do you mean, 'moves on'."

"She'll find herself a proper partner some time and settle down again like she did with Greg. That's the kind of person she is. And she'll want to have kids one day, you saw how she was with ours. But it will do her good to play the field for a while before she goes steady again."

"And you'll be the first one in the field available to play with?" she said.

"Could be," I replied. "I'm not going to say No."

**********

Friday's fuck

I was home all day Friday, and Lue had a parents' meeting early in the morning. After Lue had departed, Kylie and I went into the master bedroom, stripped off and fucked.

She surprised me with how little she knew about receiving pleasure. I said to her "This time will be for you. Next time for me. Now, what do you like best?"

She didn't know! She really didn't know! Apparently pleasure-giving had all been one way in her sexual relationship with Greg and there had been nobody else before him. So I said "I'll just do as much as I know how to until we've both had enough."

And that's what we did.

She was noisy, and not only while in the throes of orgasm. Lue had been my only sexual partner until that day, and she was quiet. Even Lue's orgasms, although intense, were quiet. Kylie's cries filled the bedroom and I was rather pleased that Lue wasn't home.

Or so I thought.

Her meeting had finished early and she had come home. My 'bit of variety' with Kylie eventually came to an end and while she packed a few things to take for her visit to her parents' place, I stepped outside. Lue was sitting in the garden. Surprised, I said "Hi Lue, I didn't know you were home. What are you doing out here?"

"I was waiting for you to finish. I didn't want to interrupt the two of you." Lue clearly was not happy, but then she had not had as long to think through my relationship with Kylie as I had when thinking about her relationship with Ray. This was something we could talk through later.

"Oh, OK," I said. "Kylie is packing a few things and I'm going to run her across to her parents' place. She's going to stay there for the weekend and come back here on Sunday night. She'll be going back up north on Monday morning. Would you be able to take her out to the airport then?"

We went back inside. Kylie thanked Lue for the days she spent with us, said she would see her again on Sunday evening, and said goodbye. I ran her across to her parents' place and stayed there talking with them for most of the afternoon. 'Interesting,' I thought as I drove home. 'Her parents are not much older than me.'

I told Lue after we had dinner and the children were in bed. "Well," she replied, "if you had started early enough, at forty you would be just about old enough yourself to have a 22 year old. What does it feel like to have sex with a girl young enough to be your daughter?"

I ignored the sarcasm. "Yeah, it's been a while since I had sex with someone that age," I said. "She's probably about the second-best 22 year old I've fucked."

"Only second best?"

"The first one was better."

"Yes, but she's 36 now."

"Still good."

**********

Lue fell apart on Saturday

Saturday was occupied with the usual things - running the children and their friends to various sporting and social activities. All day I could see that Lue was unhappy. Then, after dinner, a bit of TV and putting the kids to bed, she sat on the lounge next to me. She wrapped her arms around me, buried her face against my shoulder and burst into tears.

"I'm not coping," she sobbed. "I'm not strong like you. How can I compete with somebody who is only 22?"

I hugged her close until she had calmed a little. "Lulue, it's not a competition," I said softly. I had stuffed up big time. I had an unhappy wife. I hadn't wanted to see it before, but there could be no ignoring it now.

"Don't tell me that you weren't comparing her with me while you were fucking her." (That word again.)

"I will tell you that," I responded. "I was too busy enjoying what we were doing to make comparisons. Look, of course, I was just being led by my cock. She wanted it. She wanted it on Tuesday night but it wasn't right then. It was right yesterday so we did it."

"You took advantage of her."

"If you say so. But she took advantage of me just as much as the other way round. Look, Lue, Kylie had never had anybody other than Greg, so she was experimenting. And, I must admit, so was I. It was different. It was good and I'm not going to say that I am sorry I did it. But I'm not going to feel any great need to do it again and I suppose I can now say I won't go to my grave wondering what it would be like with someone other than my first and only."

I could feel sympathy for Lue that she was not coping, and I would try to do everything I could to help her come to terms with what I had done, but considering our past experiences together I wasn't going to apologise for it or say I was wrong to do it.

She leaned back and looked at me. "You really won't want to do it again?" Then, before I could answer she leaned back against me: "Oh Don, I'm so sorry. After what I did, and after I kept on doing it, how can I ask you not to do it again?"

"Lulue, what you did was different. Our marriage was ratshit when you broke free. No, you can ask me not to do it again and I won't. Not with Kylie, not with anybody. It hurt you, and I won't."

She kissed me. Long and lovingly. "Care for a cuddle?"

Still good.

**********

Home time for Kylie

We went to the park with the family all Sunday morning and I collected Kylie in the afternoon. I told her about Lue's upset on the way home and she wanted to apologise to Lue when we arrived. But Lue said "Let's leave it for now. It's OK. Don and I have sorted things out."

After dinner we talked about Kylie's family, her friends, her trip into the city on Saturday morning and the party she went to on Saturday night. It had been almost a year since she had last been down here to visit her mum and dad. She said her mother hadn't been very fond of Greg, and wasn't sorry about the split up. Her brother would probably go up north to visit her in a month or so. And so on.

I thought to myself 'I've been through a conversation like this before,' although Kylie was much more talkative than Ray had been. Maybe that's a girl thing.

I left early on Monday to work with a client. When I arrived home that evening Lue told me that she had a long morning conversation with Kylie before taking her to the airport. They had talked everything through and parted friends. I was amazed by the intimate details they had exchanged. Kylie had given Lue chapter and verse of our tryst. Is nothing sacred? Then Lue had responded by telling Kylie about her taste of freedom with Ray.

Lue and Kylie's continuing friendship was a rather good thing, as the workshops ran for two more years, requiring them to work together on the administrative arrangements. In the meantime Kylie did much as I had predicted and played the field. She did it with the same efficiency that she applied to everything else she did, and I was given progress reports each time I went north.

Kylie was undertaking a management course at the local technical college, and on an occasion when I went to her place I noticed her collection of management texts on a bookshelf. On the shelf below was Alex Comfort's The Joy of Sex. Lue had given it to her.

Kylie said there was much in it that she hadn't tried yet, but she was working on it.

**********

'Til death do us part

There's an old saying about learning from experience:

'Some have had many years of experience, others have had one year's experience many times over'.

Well, as a married couple we've had quite a few years that weren't especially different from earlier years. Most years were certainly quite good in their own way, and each has been an advance on the one before.

But there were a couple of outstanding years that provided us with decidedly different experiences to all the others. Even after all this time, these few years are the ones that stay most vividly in memory.

There's another old saying:

'You wouldn't have missed it for quids'.

While there's no knowing what may have happened if we hadn't had those experiences, we both now look back and happily say we're glad they happened and turned out the way they did.

We discovered things and learned things we otherwise would have missed. You might say we were lucky. We have friends whose marriages didn't survive a spouse seeking a bit of variety. While what we did ended up being right for us, it wasn't right for them. Who's to say what's right and what's wrong?

To me, my biggest stroke of luck in all this (apart from meeting Luellen in the first place) was meeting the two seagulls down at the pub. Their philosophy gave me a way of putting together all the ideas I had been exposed to over the years since that evening when we caught the bus to the George Shearing concert.

And one last old saying:

'That which doesn't kill us makes us stronger'.

I doubt that applies for somebody who has only just survived a massive heart attack, but maybe it does with marriage.

We might not have done all that well on the 'forsaking all others' bit of our marriage vows, but it looks as though, 'for better or worse', 'death do us part' is the only thing that will 'put our union asunder'.

**********

Postscript

In the comments sections of several Literotica stories I have criticised votes when they are based on whether readers liked what the story is saying rather than how well the story says it. My view is that if you don't like a story's content, don't read it and don't vote.

But comments are different to votes, and especially so for a story such as this one which is clearly based on a belief about adultery that is not widely shared.

So please feel free to comment; on the characters, on their beliefs or on their behaviour. Agree or disagree, it's all OK. The only thing I would suggest you don't do is predict what will happen. It's too late for that.