Chapter 11: Desire to Convert

Aaron pondered Dave’s remarks about how much he loved Alice and the other women, including the comments about trust and friendship. He said, “But wedding vows are constantly broken or shattered. Look at the divorce rate.”

Dave replied, “Look at the causes. I know I studied them to be sure we’re staying out of the traps. The largest reason, accounting for almost half of divorces, is incompatibility, so to combat that we spend time together talking about everything and every feeling we have; we make sure we’re aligned on the important things that can drive a couple apart.

“The second largest cause of divorce is infidelity – almost a third. Our whole lifestyle addresses that head-on as I told you. Financial disagreements account for a quarter of divorces. Keeping out of this area can also fall back on a lot of communication about our values and how they tie to how we manage our money, what we save and what spend money on, and how we save for the future. Our whole family has had lots of detailed talks about our incomes, budgets, spending patterns, philanthropy, savings, retirement plans, estate plans, and more.

The next largest reason cited for divorce is emotional and-or physical abuse. This is where we’re especially lucky in our large Prentiss family and our extended Circle family. No one is shy; every one of us would speak up if they feel someone is being treated inappropriately. The subject has only arisen a couple of times in our gatherings, but we’ve treated the discussion seriously and addressed what was thought at the time to be questionable behavior.”

Aaron chuckled, “You’ve sure loosened up and gotten smart about relationships. Mom and Dad would be amazed You’ve sure gotten away from many our church’s values. Also, growing up, you avoided talking to anybody if there was something wrong. I get the feeling that’s all changed.”

Dave replied, “It has. Dori Winter, the older blonde at your table, saw that Alice and I were falling into all the old traps. We were tighter than drumheads, uncommunicative about a lot of topics including especially sex and our marriage, and ... I guess pretty dumb about life in general. She gave us challenge after challenge to get us to a new place, and to stress our mettle and resilience. There were a few times, if we’d been living in our old paradigm, that our marriage would have fractured and we’d have separated.”

Aaron looked curious, “Can you share one?”

“After we thought we were fairly well into the new paradigm about our marriage and relationship, even after Pam was living with us and we were making love with the others, Dori gave the entire Circle a challenge. I think she weighted it towards Alice and me, because we were her project and she knew we needed what she did to break through to another level in our loosening up and love process.

“Dori had everyone spend a week being ‘married’ to someone else in the group. We had to live with them. Pam went off with Roy. Christie came to live with me, and brought Heather with her. Alice got paired with Owen, and he flew her to Paris and Rome on his private jet and put a full-court and very romantic press on her to win her over. She was already his, but they fell deeply in passionate love over that week. Alice even confessed to me that if we hadn’t been married, she would have married Owen during the trip. Anyway, I went through all kinds of angst, jealousy, worry, sense of loss, and just about every other negative emotion you could think up.

“In the end, I came back to our new model for a relationship. The relevant quote from Richard Bach is, ‘If you love someone set them free. If they come back, they’re yours. If they don’t, they never were.’ That over simplifies a lot of things and sounds too possessive, but I like the sentiment. I realized I had set Alice free, but even to say that implies ownership that I disavow. Alice did come back to me more open, more trusting and trustworthy, and more loving than ever before in our marriage. We made our choices that day she returned to love each other like we never had before, and here we are. We really did transform our marriage.

“We are not the same people we were, and we certainly are not in the same marriage we were. We’ve redefined and rewritten all our marriage vows.”

Aaron shook his head, “Wow. I’m not sure I could do that with Shelby. Maybe I could. I guess I need to talk to her. We’ve never had discussions like you imply, and when we talk about sex it’s only whether we’re both interested at the same time – kind of like asking permission. Usually, she’s not.”

Dave laughed, “It’s like being back in junior high school, except the stakes are higher. Put it on an adult-adult basis, and create options for when one of you is interested and the other isn’t. What do you suppose happens here?” He gestured around the Circle of homes.

“Errr, you go to visit someone else who is interested?” Aaron offered.

“Yes, but no one makes it a pejorative event. We keep any animosity or ill feelings or judgments out of the interplay.”

Aaron said, “Like, ‘So you’re not interested, I think I’ll go visit Dori’?”

“Yes; a little subtler than that, but yes; be a little smoother. We all know what the options are in the Circle. We enjoy and foster those options, even when we are sure of acceptance of any offer on the home front.”

“But you have four women at your disposal all the time.”

“And I desire to keep fanning the flames of love with all the other women, too; and their partners want to nurture the relationships they have with the women I live with. This works, and it’s the core reason we all decided to create the Circle Cohousing Project, and move into one very close neighborhood together.”

Dave’s sister-in-law Shelby came to him the next morning after breakfast. She and Aaron were staying in one of the rooms in the Tenth House on the Circle. “David, could we talk for a few minutes.”

“Sure. What can I do you for?”

“Last night, you and Aaron had a long talk about the Circle, your lifestyle, and I guess your philosophy about life, marriage, and relationships. He shared it with me last night, in fact, we talked about our own marriage and relationship most of the night.”

“We did talk. I didn’t mean to leave him so apparently unsettled.”

“Oh, you didn’t. You left both of us unsettled by the time he told me all of your talk, and now we’re full of questions, and ideas, and a desire to understand and know more. We’ve never had a talk like that. My heart is still pounding in some ways. I’m nervous, excited, aroused, and full of angst.”

Dave frowned, “I’m not sure I understand.”

Shelby wrapped Dave in a hug and then kissed her brother-in-law on the lips with definite meaning and no rush to completion. Used to regularly kissing many different women, he went with the flow of things allowing her to set the pace. He kissed back and then even felt the flick of his sister-in-law’s tongue against his lips.

Shelby shyly said as she continued to hold on to him, “We find your lifestyle intriguing, fascinating, desirable, and something we want to do.”

“Aaaaah, are you sure? This is no small step from your conservative marriage. This is like jumping off a cliff not sure whether it’s a two-inch drop or a two-hundred feet. Remember that scene from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? Aaron was raised the same way I was, only two years behind me. I know the pressures, memes, lessons, and things he’s been taught. Hell, we went to the same Sunday School. From all that to where I am now is a huge philosophical distance that has many emotional and certainly marital implications. I can tell you that it’s a roller coaster ride between the two points.”

“And what did you do with all of those things you learned and were taught growing up?”

“I had to unlearn just about all of them to get to where I am now. Those principles and their life action implications dealt with a much different world and set of reactions than I have now. Even Aaron admitted to an anchor in that paradigm last night. He’d have to unlearn that, and I know you have some of the same roots, so you would, too.”

Shelby said, “He told you he couldn’t let me go on a trip like you allowed Alice to go on with Owen. Do you think that was a signal that he’d never allow me to change the way you allowed Alice to change?”

“Yes, only the word ‘allow’ sounds too harsh in my case. Those words make it sound like I hold control over her in some way, and Alice and I admitted we didn’t want to live that way. She’s my equal, and so are Pam, Julie, and Heather. They make their own decisions about whom they love and how they do it. I’m here to talk about it with them, help generate ideas, think things through, but I am not an ‘allowing’ or ‘controlling’ person any longer. I was trying to show Aaron that he’s been raised to think differently.”

“That’s what Aaron said. He said Dori gave Alice challenges, but they were as much about your reaction to things as hers. Is that true? What were some of them?”

Dave laughed. “You should ask Dori, but I’ll tell you a few. Initially, she had Alice start to dress much less like an embarrassed and shy nun. She had us watch porn. She had Alice flash her tits at people, and then her pussy. That’s how she met Owen, by the way. Alice had to change her vocabulary to more earthy terms for genitalia and sex acts, and then expand the dirty talk we used with each other as we fucked. Our Saturday get-togethers with the neighbors became sexier and sexier, with increasing nudity, touching, interplay between each other, foreplay, and then sex. I guess you could see how these could gradually escalate a couple like Alice and me from being staid, boring, sex in the missionary position once or twice a week, monogamous, exclusive, and up tight pair who both wanted more out of life but didn’t know what we wanted or what to do, to where we are today. There were other ‘challenges’, too.”

Shelby was hanging on every word, “Yes. Yes. That’s exactly what we need to do, and I love all the challenges she gave you. I bet some of them would work for us, too.”

“Errr, maybe. Look, Shelby, each of the couples in the Circle made some kind of transition to where they are today over the past couple of years. Talk to the others. Learn what they went through. Not everyone had challenges like Dori gave Alice and me, yet they made the journey. Of course, not everyone was as uptight about life and sex as Alice and I were.”

Shelby studied David as she stood well inside his personal space. He could feel the evaluation and the attraction by her. She asked, “Would you sleep with me?”

Dave was shocked by the sudden question. It was out of the blue, and certainly out of character for the sister-in-law he’d known for the past five years. She was supposed to be as conservative, staid, and conventional as Alice had been when they married. More than when they married, right up to about two years earlier when Dori’s challenges to loosen up had started to change them.

Dave stroked Shelby’s face, running a finger down her cheek, her neck, and then to the cleavage her blouse provided. He stopped right at the fabric line above a button. “I would like nothing more than to make love to you, but you are not ready, and Aaron is not ready. The decisions that brought Alice and me to where we are were not made overnight. They were long considered, debated, and thought out. Any of us in the Circle would gladly mentor you through that trip.”

Shelby leaned up and kissed Dave again. “You are such a great guy. Now, I know I’m talking to the right person. Of course, you’re right. We need lots more talk about a new lifestyle.”

“The devil is in the details. Make sure you address those. Remember, Aaron is the guy that told me about ten hours ago that he wasn’t sure he could share you.”

“He declared he could after we’d talked.”

“Test that. I assume he’s still in bed.”

“He was.”

“Go tell him that you and I had sex and that you thought it was the greatest thing that ever happened to you. See how he reacts. I can almost guarantee that it won’t be the easy accommodation to that concept as he thinks it is.”

“What if he thinks we really did?”

“Look around. We have a bevy of witnesses reading, watching TV, and playing with Matthew to know that all we did was sit here in the kitchen. When you’re ready to let him recover from the shock that he may have just lost you to me, then you can tell him what this discussion was really about and how he could verify that we only talked. What’d Reagan say, ‘Trust but verify’?”

Shelby said, “I have to know.” She slipped away out of the core and over to the Tenth House.

Dave chuckled and went to join Alice and Pam who were starting to make waffles for everyone that hadn’t already shown up for breakfast.

Dave was reading his iPad, catching up on several reports from staff in his broader work area at the utility.

A voice from behind him said in a flat statement, “You fucked my wife.”

Dave turned and smiled at his brother, “Maybe. She said you’d declared it was all right.”

“I did, but the reality of the situation has left me in shock.”

From the corner of his eye, he saw Shelby coming to join them. She was on the verge of laughter. She looped an arm around Aaron’s shoulders. “Everything all right?” She teased, “Your brother was amazing. He understood my body like he’d known it all his life. I’m really in love with him. I think we should move here so we can do this more often – like every day and twice a night.”

Aaron all but cried at Shelby’s statements.

Dave allowed a minute or two to pass as he studied the couple, and they alternately looked at him and then at each other. Eventually, he nodded at Shelby.

Shelby said to her husband, “We only talked. We didn’t do anything sexual.”

I gestured to the others in the great room in the cohousing core. “Most of these people were here while we talked. They will gladly verify that Shelby and I never left our coffee cups or the stools at the kitchen counter. Talk was all we did.”

Aaron’s shoulders dropped about four inches in relief. “Really. God, I’m such an ass.”

“Why? Because you love your wife and are afraid of loss? Don’t be. I’ve been there many times and have the t-shirt; Alice even has the tattoos. What you should be thinking about is your reaction to what you thought would be something easy to digest and experience. When you’ve been raised as we were, having your spouse have sex with someone else turns out to be a big deal – a very big deal. Alice and I did it in baby steps over a few months as I told Shelby earlier. Where we are today was not a decision that we made overnight after we understood what some friends were doing. We talked each other to death on the subject, raising contingencies, examples, scenarios, and situations that made both of us squeamish but thoughtful. Personally, I think Alice adapted better and faster than I did, even though I ended up having extramarital sex before she did.”

Aaron nodded at his brother. “I guess I should thank you for hitting me across the head with a two-by-four. I greatly oversimplified what would happen and what my response would be. That little scenario was a wake-up call to what we need to do.”

“When you’re ready, come back. I have an unfulfilled request from your wife to make love to her. I would relish that opportunity. The fact that we both are willing to do that might help you focus your mind on the right issues you two need to talk about.”