I learned a lesson the other day. I found out that doing your best to take care of your family is not always appreciated and in some instances it can actually destroy your marriage.

Candace and I have been married for more than twenty-five years and during that time we lived what most would consider an upper middle class life. We had three children, acquired a house, two cars, and all of the other things that people accumulate over the years. We also acquired the debt that goes with all those things. Candace was a stay at home mom and it fell to me to see to it that the money for the mortgage, car payments, furniture payments, money for braces for the kids, etc., etc., kept coming in. It didn't matter how much I made, it was never enough. Candace, while not necessarily greedy, never the less had an endless list of things we just had to have; tuition fund for the kids so they could go to college, a patio off the back of the house so we could entertain, new carpet because the old was showing wear, new furniture because the old stuff was sagging, new clothes because the old was out of style or did not fit any more. The end result was that the bills continued to pile up. To make the money I needed to fuel the "family machine" I worked long hours and as a result saw less and less of the family that I was taking care of. With the third child a larger house was needed which meant a larger mortgage and the need to make more money. With the new house came all the expenses of a new house like drapes, blinds, furniture for additional rooms, landscaping and a whole host of other things. This of course meant more hours at work to earn the necessary raises to cover the additional bill. It was a never ending cycle.

Probably the biggest casualty of the fight to stay solvent was the sex life that Candace and I had so enjoyed in our early years. Candace had a strong sex drive, but as I put in more and more hours to be more successful in meeting my family's needs, those hours began to sap my strength and I came home tired and beat. Candace would have sex every day if she could get it, but I was lucky if I could help her out two or three times a week. Candace began to masturbate regularly and I was glad because it took some of the pressure off me to perform. For her birthday I gave her a gag gift - a shoebox full of dildos of various sizes and she ended up using them often. Looking back on it now it seems strange that I never gave any thought to any of the other possible outlets for an attractive woman with a powerful need for sex.

In my quest for raises and promotions that brought with them a higher pay scale I finally hit pay dirt. Following several years of successfully completed projects I was called into the bosses' office and offered a promotion to vice president. The reason I was being offered the promotion instead of just being given it was because the job entailed quite a bit of travel. The company had already learned the hard way that unless the new VP didn't really mind traveling he wouldn't last long in the job. For me the money was too good to pass up, six months of paychecks would take me out of debt. Those six months flew by and the debt slowly disappeared and as an added bonus I wasn't always tired when I got home and Candace and I saw an improvement in our sex life. True, it was usually only on the week ends, but we were making love five and six times between Friday night and Monday morning. I'd leave on Monday morning, be gone until Friday and then we would do it all over again. Life was good, money was coming in, debt was disappearing and Candace and I were rediscovering each other sexually.