Chapter 8: Making Changes

Janet’s Story The summer wore on without any respite from my sense of guilt and emptiness. I knew that the only way we would be able to put our life back on track was if Tom and I talked things through. So, we got together for several hours each week, sat in our house and chatted about the experiences that had led us to where we were.

Then we fucked and he went back to his condo. I use the term “fucked” because those sessions were more for the purpose of me maintaining my sanity than they were us making love. After my cherry was popped I was never able to control my raging libido. I had to have some kind of regular release, or I couldn’t think straight. I am sure there is a good psychological reason for why I needed sexual release so often. But frankly I didn’t care about reasons as long as I had a regular man to take the pressure off.

I enjoyed casual sex with a lot of different men for the first seven years. Then, for the last 17 years I had one man and one man only. I know that isn’t exactly a correct statement since I DID have one slip-up. But in my mind that would never happen again, so I can say with absolute certainty that Tom will be the only man charged with the duty of keeping me sane until death do we part.

Fucking Tom had managed to ensure that I was not actually climbing the walls during our separation. But we both knew that the bouts of sex that we were having were probably still too numerous; that is, if we were trying to truly enforce distance. It was just that we couldn’t leave each other alone. No matter what, we had an attachment that could never be broken. THAT eased my mind a lot. Because, I knew we would make it if we tried hard enough. And I was all-in with that commitment.

So, it was inevitable that when we got together we would end up in bed or on the couch, or the living room floor, or even one time on the table on the patio.

It definitely was not the sort of thing that a man and a woman who are married do. I acted like a crazy person each time we did it; I honestly don’t think I was as wild in our earliest days together. And I wanted him every way I could have him. During those sessions I could have fucked him for 24 straight hours in every hole. But he isn’t as young as he used to be and I didn’t want to kill him. Nevertheless, the sex was inexplicably hot, almost like an affair.

Tom and I have always had an almost mystic physical attraction to each other. That actually began for me before he even said a word. I was standing next to him in our school’s gymnasium. I was not even looking at him. I was watching my little charges as the career fair droned on. But his mere presence exerted some kind of planetary pull. It was like he was emanating gravity rays that were dragging me into his orbit. And frankly the tingle and flutters he was setting off in my lower belly were embarrassing, since they were making me wet.

It had nothing to do with how he looked, or anything about his external self. Our brains are electrical and perhaps that was what was behind the instant physical chemistry. It was like we were resonating on the same frequency. Or maybe it was something subliminally biological. Or perhaps it was something mystical; what the Hindus call Kismet. Whatever it was, my subconscious knew right away that he was the only man in the world who I wanted to TOTALLY give myself to.

And one month, two weeks and 3 days after we agreed to separate I was ready for him to come home to me. That was due to the fact that I had a much deeper understanding of who I was and how I wanted to live the rest of my life. I honestly felt like I had found myself in the relatively short period since we had been apart. That was because I had spent all summer reading and thinking about what I needed to do. And my sessions with Dr. Morningstar had helped me to feel a lot more confident.

I knew that I was not going to complete my voyage to self-discovery without help from other people. And although Tom and I revealed some pretty deep secrets to each other, I thought that I needed to talk to a counselor, preferably a woman. It was the middle of the summer but the administrative staff at my school was still in the building. So at the end of July I went to visit the Principal.

Sadie Craven was well past retirement age but nobody in the School District had the guts to try to enforce that. The old dragon would retire when she dropped dead in the harness. I get along with her pretty well because we both loved teaching and we had an understanding of how serious the responsibility of shaping young minds was. When I came into her Office she was sitting behind the same desk that she had used to strike terror into the hearts of generations of elementary school kids; and most of the teaching staff.

She allowed one corner of her mouth to slightly twitch, which was as close to smiling as I have ever seen. She said in her best old-maid-school-teacher voice, “Janet, what are you doing here? School doesn’t start for another month?”

I said, “And good morning to YOU Miss Craven. I was wondering if you could do me a favor. I am trying to get in touch with Mrs. Morningstar and I need her number.” Chelsea Morningstar was the District’s school psychologist.

Sadie said, “I can do better than that” and she dug around in her desk, which was a true relic of the Eisenhower administration and produced a slip of paper. She dialed her rotary phone and when the person on the other end answered she said with great formality, “Dr. Morningstar, I have somebody who would like to talk with you” and handed the phone to me. She didn’t bother to introduce herself. Everybody knew Sadie Craven’s voice.

I nodded my thanks and held the heavy black plastic instrument to my ear. I said, “Chelsea, this is Janet at Roosevelt Elementary can I stop by your place for a minute? Where are you located?”

Chelsea gave me an address. I thanked Miss Craven and hopped into the sporty new Mercedes that Tom had just bought for me and drove the 15 minutes over to Chelsea’s office. I was surprised when I got there.

I had only known Chelsea as the District psychologist. In that respect, she was just one of my colleagues. I had never actually considered that she had a successful practice. But when I arrived I learned that she was not only successful but obviously thriving.

The office I was ushered into was that of a prosperous health professional. It was subtly decorated, with the carefully built-in tranquility that is characteristic of the offices of people who make a living helping other individuals get a grip on life. The furniture and appointments were comfortable and there were books everywhere.

I wanted to do my therapy with Chelsea because she would understand some of the issues I was experiencing. What I mean is that she is a gorgeous 45-year-old career woman with the same kind of killer body that I have. So I wouldn’t have to explain the problem of male behavior.

She is my exact opposite in the looks category. Chelsea has porcelain skin and long beautiful blond hair, which she wears in an absolute waterfall of brilliant wheaten color. Like my Italian ancestors, I am dusky and I have thick auburn hair that I keep in the same preppy bob that I have worn since I was in college.

Chelsea is tall and model slim with a supple figure and a gorgeous face. I am five foot two and I could best be described as voluptuous, even though thanks to my dance training I don’t have an ounce of fat on my body. Both of us are relentlessly hit on whenever we go out together socially, but she tends to attract the intellectuals and I get the former jocks; lucky me.

She rose graciously from her chair and hugged me. We have worked on a lot of kid issues together and we have a bond in that we both love children, even though neither of us have any kids of our own. Hers is by choice and mine is unfortunately biological. She said, “Janet, what a lovely surprise. What can I do for you? Is Brandon acting up again?”

Brandon was the last project that Chelsea and I had worked on together. At the tender age of eight Brandon had already been nominated by the school staff as, “Most likely to hold up a 7-11 when he grows up”

I laughed and said, “No Chelsea, this is about me. And I proceeded to tell her the whole dreadful story including all of the gory details of my infidelity.”

She looked sympathetic and said, “You two have handled this as well as possible. You have both retired to neutral corners, to get this into perspective, and you are constantly communicating. I even think that the fact that you have kept your physical relationship alive is healthy. I just don’t see where I can help?”

I said, “You can help me better understand how to move through life as a strong and independent woman who can face bad things no matter how awful and unexpected they are.”

She looked surprised so I continued with, “I know now, that I can live my life without constantly referring to Tom. I have thought that situation through and I understand that I cannot turn to alpha-males to solve my problems. But I am not sure why I fell so quickly into the arms of another man. That is what you have to help me to understand and deal with because I am afraid it will happen again, no matter how much I want to remain faithful.”

Chelsea said, “WOW! It sounds like you have already isolated the problem. Do you think you will want to establish a sexual relationship with a man outside of your marriage again? Is that it?”

I said, “Absolutely NOT. I am totally committed to Tom both in terms of the usual measures, like unconditional love, physical attraction, long partnership and unqualified respect. Also, frankly, my fidelity is not so much a matter of my love for Tom as it is an artifact of my own personal self-worth. Two seconds after I did it with Murphy I felt like a worthless slut and the guilt was crushing. Keep in mind that I still believed that Tom was fucking around on me, so those feelings were my own, not something imposed by external conditions.”

I added, “And I told Murphy that it would never happen again. That was because having sex outside of my marriage vows attacked my personal self-respect. It’s not that I am inhibited. I would have fucked Murphy’s brains out if I had NOT made a pledge. But as long as that pledge is in effect I was betraying my OWN sense of values by breaking it. So I can assure you that I NEVER plan to go out and have some kind of fling while married.”

I said ruefully, “But I have to admit that I was falling in love with the guy too. And in my universe it is more adulterous to have those feelings, even if you don’t act on them. And I think that in Tom’s mind an emotional affair is even worse than a physical one. He actually told me that he could get past my fucking the guy but he was having a hard time forgiving the emotional connection that I had formed with him.”

I finished with, “Fucking is just mindless sex but crossing the line between simple friendship and the bond that exists between husband and wife is a much more profound betrayal. It breaks a connection that can only exist between two people, not three. And at the time I was definitely NOT undergoing any guilt about my feelings for Murphy. So I need to find out why that happened and make sure it never happens again.”

Chelsea looked at me judiciously and said, “Does Tom give you everything you need and expect in a marriage?”

I said, “Of course he does. He is an excellent provider, an intellectually stimulating man with a range of interests, he can make me laugh, he is kind, considerate and loving to a fault and he makes me cum in ways that I can’t even describe. So YES, he gives me everything a girl could ever want out of a marriage.”

Chelsea said, “And yet you generated romantic feelings for another man in a very short period of time?”

I said, “That is the problem EXACTLY! There were extenuating circumstances, like I thought I had been betrayed and Murphy was my only friend, but to respond to his comforting by falling in romantic love with him is not the logical response to betrayal.”

I said, “I have thought about it enough to realize that my natural reaction to fear or unhappiness is to turn to a man to make it right. And to say the least Murphy was charming. He didn’t make a move on me and so I thought he cared about me, not my obvious assets. And as a result, when we were together I felt an exciting sense of getting to know a new and very attractive person.”

I continued with, “Perhaps it was the novelty that made it so easy for me to semi-fall in love with him. I was attracted to him in a romantic sense because he appealed to different parts of me. Murphy was different from Tom in a lot of ways, younger, more vigorous and a total rogue. Tom is controlled, steady and reliable. Murphy was spirited and whimsically imaginative. He gave me a sense of freshness and new adventure that Tom and I lost many years ago.”

I added wistfully, “Murphy was also a puzzle and a challenge. Unlike Tom, I couldn’t predict his every thought and action and it was interesting to interact with somebody who was NOT so closely attached to you by your mutual history. It was kind-of an experiment to watch him react in unique ways to the little things we did with each other. None of that was better than with Tom. It was just different and intriguing.”

I gave her a conspiratorial wink and said, “Just like you do, I like to get every man in the room’s attention, even if I have no desire to actually get physical with them. So I tried to tempt Murphy with my body and he didn’t even show interest. Rather than reassuring me that he was safe, that made me want to find out why he hadn’t made a move on me. I actually thought ‘Maybe he’s gay?’ I know now that it was all an act designed to force me to try to seduce him rather than the other way around.”

I added, “From our long experience with men, you and I both know that it’s the woman who decides whether to have sex or not, men are always ready. And by the time he had wined and dined me and danced with me for hours he had gotten me so wound up sexually that I made the first move, kissing him while we were dancing on the patio of the club. And we made out like teenagers in his car when he took me home.”

I blushed and said, “I haven’t had the delicious sensation of doing something sexual in a parked car since I started dating guys with apartments. And I haven’t looked out of steamed up windows like that in twenty years. It was an exhilaratingly naughty experience from my youth. And from the time when we met, Tom and I have never done anything like that. It only underscored Murphy’s exciting difference.”

I continued with, “Besides the freshness of a different pair of lips and hands, Murphy’s loving-me-up like that was also a reaffirmation. I am used to being the hottest woman in the room. But at 42 I needed to know that I hadn’t lost it. The woman who I thought Tom was screwing was easily ten years younger and equally well-endowed. And I know Tom gets sort-of helpless in the face of a really big pair of titties.” I said with regret in my voice, “I wanted to fuck Murphy right there in the back seat but he told me “no”. Again, I thought that was because he cared about me, but he was really just setting the hook. He knew he could have me in a much more convenient spot any time he wanted. And the fact that we didn’t do anything much more than just kiss that first time also didn’t set off any guilt reaction.”

I said with true guilt, “Like I said, I was in puppy love at that point in the seduction and when he invited me over to his place I was pretty sure that I knew what would happen. Why I went is something that I will regret to my dying day. I was feeling exhilarated and totally wicked.”

I hastily added, “As I told you, that all came crashing down the minute we finished fucking. I must be schizophrenic or something because it was like a different person took over in my head. The silly romantic girl was replaced by the woman I have become. I instantly understood how irresponsible I had been and the implications of what I had done were soul crushing.”

I turned to Chelsea, who was looking at me with utter sympathy, and said, “So what’s my problem? What could have caused my totally uncharacteristic behavior?”

She said, “Let me ask you a question. Would you have ever considered any of that if you had not thought that your marriage to Tom was sunk?”

I said, “Certainly not! First of all, I would have never even looked at Murphy in a romantic way. I never had any desire to please any man but my husband. It was just that I was coming to grips with the idea that Tom was no longer part of my life. I could not tolerate somebody cheating on me like I thought that he had.”

I added with emphasis, “It broke my heart. But I am strong enough to terminate a situation like that. I had done it in the past and I was telling myself that I had to do it again”

Chelsea said, “So, in your mind you had closed the door on your marriage?”

I thought for a second and then I said, “I suppose I had. You probably think that I am stupid but it never occurred to me that those pictures weren’t real and if they WERE real; then my pride and self-respect demanded that I would have to divorce him.”

Chelsea said, “Was it that simple? You would just walk away if he was cheating?”

I said, “Chelsea, you and I BOTH know that men are simple creatures. They make the decisions that we want them to make. They might THINK that they are in charge. But it is the woman who decides all of the important things in a relationship; whether and when we will have sex, whether we will be a couple and most important whether the marriage will survive.”