Chapter 7: New Information in a Cheater’s Paradise

Tom’s Story

I sailed back to the marina with a much sunnier outlook than what I had when we left. Mind-blowing sex with my stunning wife would lift the spirits of a zombie. More importantly, I was sure that Janet and I had done the right thing.

It was hard to blame Murphy for trying. No functioning male could ignore Janet’s spectacular face, figure or smoldering sexuality. And I am sure that most of the men she has encountered have had fleeting thoughts about what it would be like to seduce her. They just didn’t act on them.

But that is in the civilized universe. What neither of us had faced before was a situation where the person pursuing Janet didn’t care whether she was hurt or not. Janet is a good person and nobody has ever treated her like a pawn before. So, she simply had no way of seeing through Murphy’s actions to their dark, hurtful purpose.

Nothing could have prepared her for what Murphy did to her and I must admit that although he is pathetic at espionage he is stellar at manipulating people; including me. He must have thought enough about his actions to realize that he would be ruining Janet’s marriage and perhaps her life; whether she discovered the truth or not. But he didn’t care about any of her potential pain if he got what he wanted, which was Janet as either his lover, or hostage. So, he homed in on her vulnerabilities with laser guided precision.

He knew that if he, in effect, took me out of her life she would turn to some other alpha male for comfort. And he was smart enough to let her make all of the first moves in the journey to her own downfall. All he had to do was provide a caring and non-threatening shoulder and then “strike when the bitch was hot”, so-to-speak. By her own reckoning, Janet had realized that she would have to learn to navigate by her own internal compass with no help or guidance from me. She was dedicated to learning how to do that and I was committed to helping her.

If it accomplished anything, the time that we had agreed to separate built an emotional firebreak between our past marriage and our prospective one. And I was hoping that when I picked up my life again with her, which I fully intended to do, we would recapture some of the freshness that we had lost over time.

But I had to admit that I was having serious buyer’s remorse about the living in exile part of our arrangement. Five weeks into the mission, it hurt a lot to wake up without her next to me. That sense of loss overcame any disagreeable feelings about the week she spent with Murphy. In fact, those old unpleasant memories were replaced by new, even more disturbing ones. I was constantly wondering what she was doing in the times that I wasn’t around.

We had weekly “dates”, where I took her out and we talked. And they almost always ended up with her fucking me cross-eyed. But I was not with her the other six days of the week. And she is the sort of woman who could sit in a public park for 15 minutes and have any number of potential Prince-Charmings hit on her.

That led to another alarming notion. When she is by herself, stray men are always trying to start conversations with her. That kind of thing has happened to her for as long as I have known her. And Janet is a very open and friendly person, so she will talk to anybody who approaches her.

The fact that she attracts men like country music attracts red-necks never bothered me in the past. That was because I never left her alone long enough for anybody to make any headway. But I was not with her most of the time now. And it was simply inevitable that Janet would interact with a lot of attractive men without me around to discourage them. That prospect gave me a pea-green jealous sensation, “What if Janet discovered that what she REALLY wanted was the variety of the single life?” My little voice nudged me and said, “And why didn’t you think of that possibility before?”

That led me to another chilling thought. Up to this point I had believed that I was grandly enforcing my rights as the wronged party. But, as I thought about it I realized that I had simply just put my very tempting wife out there for the wolves to prey on. From a practical standpoint that was just plain stupid.

Which led me to my final consideration, “Maybe I am actually more naive and complacent than she was?” But what options did I have? We both agreed that we needed separation to put our marriage back together. Given what I do for a living I could easily monitor everything about her life. But that would be a total violation of our agreement, as well as her personal privacy.

I knew I had to stop thinking about what Janet might be doing with other men to keep my own sanity. I had to count on what we had built over the past 17 years and her love for me. That attitude might make me into a total cuckolded weenie at the end of this. But, short of completely unwarranted snooping I didn’t see another alternative except to stick with what we had arranged and trust her to do the right thing.

So, in the end it all came back around to continuing to try to rebuild our marriage. I was mostly able to keep the paranoid insecurity at bay, because I believed that she loved me and she knew the conditions for restarting things from the beginning. But the pain that my incipient jealousy was causing never went away, particularly with the notably boring single life I was leading.

My condo was a lot nicer and more convenient than our house. I was getting the hang of simple housekeeping, so it was not a hardship to live by myself. But the dreadful hours between when I got home, and when I went to bed, were filled with nothing more than me sitting in front of the tube drinking beer and watching sports. There was no loving give-and-take, or interesting discussion. I missed my best friend terribly.

I still don’t cook and so during that period I either ate out every night or brought something home. That’s why I happened to be sitting in our favorite chain restaurant when Janet came in with four of her fellow teachers. It was late July so they must have been doing the normal teacher preparation stuff prior to starting school. She was so beautiful that, if she wasn’t already married to me I would have rushed right over and proposed holy matrimony.

Janet’s beautiful oval face, with its dimples and sharply pointed chin, was framed by her thick auburn hair. Her huge hazel eyes were flashing with the good humor and warmth that just flows out of her. And that spectacular body and those huge tits were like listening to the opening notes of Beethoven’s Ninth. You might have heard it a thousand times but it still moves you.

She was dressed in what I recognize as her schoolmarm garb. The emphasis was on utility not fashion. The outfit was necessary because spending her day minding a boisterous pack of 8-year-old kids is actually very physically demanding work. She didn’t notice me because she was talking animatedly with her friend Rebecca. And I was sitting mostly behind one of those translucent booth dividers.

Marcy and Sharita were with her, along with a guy named Lance. I already knew that Lance was a 29-year-old who taught the sixth grade. And frankly I was not fooled by anybody named Lance who was that tall and handsome and who had worked his entire career in an elementary school. He was a major cockhound and he knew where to find all of the high-grade pussy; from the young mothers to the female teachers at the school.

Rumor had it that he had an adequate trust from his parents and considered Janet’s school to be his happy hunting grounds. Rumor ALSO had it that he had been responsible for the break-up of Rose Winsock’s marriage the year before. He couldn’t take his eyes off of Janet.

I thought, “I might as well find out, right here and now, just how screwed I am.” So I hunkered down behind the divider and waited to see just how bleak my future prospects might be. Janet was not even noticing Lance as she appeared to be telling Rebecca some sort of long funny story. On the other hand, Lance was noticing every movement Janet made. He was constantly scanning the two of them waiting for Janet to finish.

As I have said, I am in the computer security business. When I am in a restaurant by myself I always carry a small tablet computer with a 4G connection to the internet. I use it strictly for entertainment while I eat. But of course, I can also use it for other things. And my little tablet is stocked with goodies for that purpose.

I was only lurking 20 feet away from them so it was nothing to port-scan Lance’s phone, and force-pair it. We call it “Bluebugging”. It was the one thing I had promised Janet I would NEVER do to her. But Lance wasn’t in the agreement. Suddenly I was sitting right there at the table.

Janet, who teaches third grade, was telling Rebecca, who teaches the fourth, about some of the more colorful little rascals she was passing along to her. Listening to my wife’s animated and humorous descriptions of each kid brought a lump to my throat. It was the voice of the person I had loved for all of these years. And it was hard to hear it knowing that for the time being I was not officially part of her life.

There was lighthearted banter for several minutes and I got an education in how elementary school teachers work. From Sharita in the second grade to Lance in the sixth they were running a “file” on every student in the school. What they were passing on was so comprehensive it would have made Interpol jealous. And listening to my wife I had a newfound respect for how totally dedicated and professional she was in her chosen domain. Janet was witty and serious, playful and insightful, and always very intelligent. I would have, fallen in love with the anonymous person I was hearing, even if I had not been fucking that spectacular body for almost 20 years.

Finally, Lance asked her the question that I was waiting for, “So, I hear that you and your husband aren’t together anymore, what happened?” I could hear rustling as they all turned toward her in the booth. Janet’s voice went from lighthearted to sad. She said, “We hit a bump in the road and we decided that we should lead separate lives.”

Janet might have just been trying to deflect the conversation but that was not even close to what I understood our agreement to be. If I had been sitting there like Lance was, I would have taken that as a declaration of independence.

Sharita said with seriousness, “Does that mean that you two are getting a divorce, girlfriend?!” Janet said, “That is one option of course. But that is not what we are thinking about now. We are trying to get our marriage around to more balance.”

You could hear the sadness as she said, “I still love Tom but I realized that from as far back as I can remember I have been living my life centered on him. We had a little problem in the spring, which I am NOT going to get into, but it was obvious that the situation had to change. So we decided that I would have to learn to cope with life on my own if we were ever going to get back together.”

I could hear Lance licking his chops, because the tone of Janet’s voice conveyed that she now considered herself to be completely detached from me. And that she planned to enforce that separation into the foreseeable future. I got what she was saying. She was telling her friends that she was seeking to recapture the Janet of 17 years ago, the one who had steered a relatively successful course through life on her own. That was the general aim of our separation.

But the 25-year-old Janet had no commitments. So there was no moral brake on her experimentation. The desire to experience life in all of its flavors is perfectly appropriate for a woman that age. However, the 42-year-old version had made a pledge to live by all her marriage vows. And, that promise changed the situation entirely. She was now tied to me for better, or for worse, unless she chose to renounce her commitment via divorce.

I don’t think intelligent individuals EVER stop growing. But, unless you choose to literally lead an open marriage, all of the major learning experiences in a couple’s life are filtered through the other person. We had been very successful in our husband and wife partnership. And I had never felt the need to supplement her companionship with another woman. But the fact remained that everything I did and to a great extent THOUGHT was a reflection of my experiences with Janet as my wife.

I believed that she felt the same way. And I was certain that her straying had nothing to do with disinterest. At worst, what she did with Murphy was a classic revenge fuck. And it gave her ONE free pass. But I wasn’t going to ever willingly share her with another man. If that was what she wanted, or needed, then we were finished.

As I was thinking about the implications of Janet as a free-agent, Rebecca said, with concern in her voice, “What happened? Did you catch him cheating?” Janet said, “GOD NO! Tom is as loyal as the family dog.”

She hastily added, “I won’t elaborate on how I know that but I can assure you that I found out the hard way. The problem is with ME. I discovered that I needed HIM too much and that isn’t healthy.” I was pleased that she had announced her deep seated need for me, especially in front of Lance. I was less pleased that she had just compared me to a golden retriever.

Sharita added with a laugh, “You better believe it girlfriend! You can’t trust men and you had better NOT depend on one. They’re all hounds.” Sharita is a gorgeous twenty-six-year-old so she could say that.

Janet said, “Tom and I have always had a very close and trusting relationship. The problem is actually rooted in how close we are. I discovered over the summer that I had lost my own identity in our marriage and if I ever wanted to get any self-respect back I was going to have to re-establish who I was separate from my husband.”

The sadness returned as she said, “So we are living apart while I try to better understand how to cope with life. Tom supports me in that quest. In fact, he was the one who suggested it. We still get together once a week and talk and I have been seeing a counselor twice a week for the past three weeks.”

That was news to me!

Janet continued with, “I knew that I needed to get professional help because I far too easily fell into the arms of another man.” The collective gasp from around the table made heads turn in the restaurant.

I was not happy that Janet was talking about straying, particularly in front of Lance. They were arguably her best friends so I understood why she was willing to open up to them. But it would be FAR too easy for Lance to conclude that his arms would be a nice alternative for her to fall into.

She said, “How I got there and what happened is not something I want to talk about. But my counselor says that I have to be more honest with myself if I want to get stronger.”