Nighttime Confessions Too

Looking at it dispassionately, I could understand how their offer seemed attractive to her. As a group they validated her beliefs by proposing similar ideas. No wonder she felt so comfortable with them.

Rationally, I could understand how Meg's emotions could have caused her to be unfaithful to me. Rationally, I realized that Meg's actions differed only in degree, not substance from my prior actions with Barb or even with Peggy. Rationally, I was pleased that she rejected further involvement as soon as she thought about the potential consequences.

But emotionally, I was torn up. All I could see was Meg opening her legs for another man. Sucking another man's cock. Seriously considering a long-term relationship. These thoughts made me so angry that I forgot about my actions. All I wanted to do was scream. I realized that I would have to face up to my emotions. If I wanted my marriage to continue, I needed to figure out a way to get past this.

By the end of the day, I was emotionally exhausted. We pulled into the bank and started to make camp quietly. I was no longer visibly mad at Meg; I just did not know how to deal with the situation. As Meg pulled my sleeping gear out of the canoe, she looked at me with a question on her face. She didn't know if I was going to share the tent with her or not. I just gestured for her to leave it. I didn't know either.

After dinner, I sat there staring into the campfire, brooding. Meg had made a few efforts to start conversation, but I was withdrawn. I was still trying to make sense of everything. I knew we had to talk, but I wanted to get a handle on my emotions first.

"What a fucking mess." I exclaimed into the silence. "Christ Meg, how could you do it? How could you fuck us up so bad?"

Meg started to apologize again, but I waved her off. "I know Meg you're sorry. I'm sorry too, but that doesn't get us anywhere." I shook my head. "Look, I thought about this all day long. I think I can even understand how it happened, but goddamn it, it hurts. I just can't get the picture of that asshole fucking you out of my head."

I glanced over at Meg in frustration. "Sometimes I wish you never told me. I believe you when you say that it's not going to happen again. I know he doesn't mean anything to you. You handled the situation yourself, so why didn't you just keep quiet? There's nothing I can do about it now so what's the use in telling me?"

Meg looked at me in shock. She couldn't understand how I could even think that not knowing would be preferable to living with the image of her fucking someone else burned into my mind. "I . . ., I had to tell you. We have to deal with this. Ignoring what happened is not going to make it go away!

"If I didn't tell you about this, it would just make it worse. You know I can never hide anything from you. Hell, you figured out that something was wrong over the phone. You would have seen that I was feeling guilty about something as soon as I got home. You would have gotten mad because I was hiding something from you and it would cause even more problems. It would have been a lot worse for both of us if you found out from someone else that I cheated on you. My lying would have made it worse."

Meg stared at me with a sad look in her eyes. "Besides, I know how shitty it feels to be in the dark. To know something happened but not what. To be humiliated by hearing what happened from someone else. I promised myself a long time ago that if anything else ever came between us, I would make sure it came out in the open. I don't want any more secrets between us. I screwed up and you deserved the truth. It wasn't enough for me to promise myself to make it up to you and never do it again."

I flushed and looked away. Even though she had not directly accused me, I figured she was referring to Barb. We both knew that I hadn't told her everything. I eventually found out exactly what Ruth had told her. But, I never told Meg the whole story. There were times I wanted to, but I couldn't do it. I didn't want to hurt her any more.

When Meg had asked, I had told her the truth; I had never had sex with Barb. But I never told her how close I had come to cheating. I could tell she believed me and I deceived myself into believing that was enough. I justified my silence because there was no point in telling her more; the only thing it would cause was heartache. I was blind to the hurt my silence caused her.

I sighed. "Alright Meg, no more secrets. I know what you are talking about and I'll tell you everything that you want to know. The only reason I didn't tell you before was because I didn't think it would matter. I told you I didn't sleep with Barb and that's the truth. I didn't want to hurt you by telling you how close I had come to screwing up. You have no idea how much it hurt to hear that you had cheated on me."

Meg smiled tightly. "Actually, I have a damned good idea. You may have wanted to save my feelings, but I was left wondering what happened. I know you are hurting because I told you I fucked Phil, but do you think it is any better not to know for sure? To know something happened but not what? I have a pretty good imagination. I came up with a thousand different scenarios of what happened. I saw you fuck Barb in my mind a hundred different ways"

Her vehemence took me off guard. I hadn't thought it through. I had thought that I was being kind, but I hurt her unintentionally. Suddenly, I had a sickening thought. "Meg, was this your revenge? Did you fuck Phil to get back at me for what you thought I did with Barb?"

Meg sighed. "No. It's not that simple. Don, I forgave you for what happened with Barb a long time ago. I'm not going to try to use revenge as an excuse. This had nothing to do with getting back at you. I just screwed up. I just hope that, in time, you can forgive me like I forgave you."

Meg's statement sat there. She didn't have to use my earlier transgressions against me. I was doing it for her. I was caught in a trap of my own making. I knew that if I loved her as much as she loved me, I would have to find a way to forgive her and save our marriage.

I kept my promise. I told her the whole story about Barb. She listened intently and I could see her nodding when the details matched her suspicions. She was surprised at the extent of Barb's flirting, but it seemed to confirm what she had already decided.

When I told her about what happened at the party. I could see the pain on her face as I described what happened in the bedroom. It hurt her to hear how I responded to Barb's caresses. It wasn't my proudest moment. I took some satisfaction in that pain. It matched the pain I felt when I thought of her with Phil.

When I finished, she smiled wanly. "Thank you. It's nice to finally hear your side of the story. I've wanted to know what really happened for a long time. I always blamed Barb for this. It helped me to forgive you if I thought that Barb was the one who started it. I always wondered if I was being fair to her and now I know."

"Meg, I'm sorry I didn't tell you earlier. I never thought about how not knowing would make you feel. I just didn't want to hurt you anymore than you already were. I knew you believed me when I said that I hadn't had sex with her and I thought that would be enough.

"I told you earlier no more secrets. I mean that. I do have something else to confess as well."

"The bachelor party when I was pregnant with Sarah?" Meg interrupted.

"What . . . You knew?" I sputtered.

Meg gave a bitter laugh. "Yes, I heard about it about two weeks later. Why do you think I was so mad at you? I always wanted to know, did you get fucked or just a blow job?"

"Christ Meg, I'm sorry. I didn't want to hurt you. I didn't know what was going to happen until it was too late. Errr. . . . I got a blowjob, but it wasn't something I planned. Roger set me up."

So I told Meg the whole story of the bachelor party. How the dancer came on to me and begged me. How I finally gave in. I admitted my errors and my stupidity for hanging around when I should have left.

Meg asked me a lot of questions about what had happened. She didn't care about what the dancers did with the other guys; she just wanted to find out how I had reacted. What I was feeling when the dancer was coming on to me. When she was satisfied, she looked at me with a sober face.

"Do you have any idea how close I came to divorcing you over this? I thought that you knew that there were going to be strippers and hookers at the party and went anyway. I was convinced that you were out fucking around on me because you couldn't stand to see your pregnant wife. I wanted to kill you.

"The only reason you didn't get kicked out was because I was scared. Even then, I wasn't sure if I was going to leave you after Sarah was born. There were times that I hated you. But then you started to show me how much I meant to you and stopped hanging out with Roger and his buddies. I could tell you were trying to make it up to me so I finally decided to forgive you."

Meg looked at me with an exasperated expression. "Now do you understand why I had to tell you about Phil? I don't think our marriage could have survived another secret."

I was numb. Yesterday, Meg had shocked me with the news that she had cheated on me. Today, I find out she had considered divorcing me and I hadn't even known it. I was beginning to realize that our marriage was not as secure as I had always thought. Meg's words had given me a lot to think about. But I still wanted to make a full confession.

"Meg, I have one other thing I want to tell you about. Nothing happened, but it's the only other time I've ever felt guilty for how I behaved. It's the only other time I've ever been truly tempted to do something that I would have regretted."

As I told Meg about Peggy and the Christmas party, she looked surprised. This was one event that she had no knowledge of. On this occasion, my behavior had not gotten to the point where I felt that I betrayed Meg so my behavior had not changed around her. While I had felt uncomfortable afterwards, I had also felt relief that I had stopped before things has gotten out of hand. As I told the story, I noticed how uncomfortable she looked as I described our dirty dancing and Peggy's antics in the booth.

I thought about her reaction as I told her the rest of the story. Was she seeing herself in my place? Meg had spent a lot of time at the conference dancing and socializing with Phil and the other guys. I suspected that her phone calls hadn't told me about everything that she had done.

"Let me guess, you did this too, didn't you? You flirted with the guys while out dancing with them before Wednesday night?" I asked pointedly. Meg flushed and nodded her head.

I shook my head and sighed. "Meg, the reason I wanted to tell you about this was because I crossed the line. Even though there was no chance I was going to have sex with Peggy, I never should have flirted with her the way that I did. It wasn't the way that a married man should have acted and I was ashamed of my behavior.

"So what happened with you? This is something you didn't tell me about last night."

"We did flirt at the parties before Wednesday, but it didn't mean anything. We were just having fun." Meg admitted. " We didn't get too outrageous, we didn't want to be obvious. At the spa Monday, the girls asked me to help them to tease the guys a little so we danced a little close and rubbed up against them a few times. The guy's hands wandered a bit and I got my ass grabbed a couple of times, but it was under control. Phil did put his arm around me for a while Tuesday night, but he didn't try anything. I was just going along with what the other girls were doing. I guess I should have mentioned it last night, but it didn't seem like that big a deal."

"Tell me". I asked her gently. "Did you do things that you wouldn't have done if I was there?" Megs flushed and slowly nodded. "Then I think you know as well as I do that it was a big deal. Meg, you crossed the line. If it wasn't something you would have felt comfortable doing in front of me, then why are you doing it behind my back?

"Think about it Meg. Even before I knew that you had slept with Phil, I was jealous of the good time you were having with him. My biggest fear was that you were out with some other guy flirting and forgetting that you were married.

"I learned something that night with Peggy. There's no such thing as harmless flirting when you are married. I betrayed you that night with Peggy and you betrayed me when you flirted at the conference. Even when you don't mean anything by it, you can't control the consequences.

"Would Phil have tried to seduce you on Wednesday if he didn't think you were interested?" I asked her flatly. "Do you think you might have given Phil some signals that he had a chance? Was your flirting one of the reasons you ended up cheating on me?"

Meg looked troubled as she thought through what I had just said. While she accepted responsibility for her actions, I was pretty sure that at some level she was shifting part of the blame to Phil. I had just rubbed her nose in her responsibility. I could almost see her brain working as she made the connections between her earlier behavior and the night she got fucked. "Oh God, Don, I did ask for it. I thought that we were just having fun. I thought he was safe and I teased him. I'm so sorry."

I didn't answer Meg but just sat there staring into the fire. The last few days had thrown in my face the fact that my marriage was not as strong as I had thought. I knew that I loved Meg with all of my heart and I was pretty sure she felt the same. I couldn't imagine a life without her. But over time we had drifted apart from one another. My behavior and her behavior had not happened in a vacuum. If we wanted our marriage to survive, we would need to work together to fix it.

Finally Meg looked over at me with a worried expression. "What happens now?"

"I don't know Meg. We both have a lot to think about. I know that I still love you and my mind is telling me to forgive you. But, it's still too soon. I'm still hurting too much to forgive you right now. After all, how long did it take you to forgive me when I screwed up?"

Meg made a face at me and I laughed. She looked pissed for a second, but then she started to laugh too. It was the first real laugh that we had shared since she came back from the conference and we both needed the release. But the laughter didn't last long.

I looked over at Meg and was reminded of how beautiful she was. I knew that I wanted to save our marriage. "I'm going to need some time. When I stop hurting so much, I'll forgive you for this and we both know it. But . . . I don't know if that's enough.

"Meg, I'm scared. Something is wrong with our marriage and I don't know how to fix it. We both love each other, but why do we keep screwing up? If our marriage is so happy, why are we so open to temptation? Neither of us resisted too hard when we were offered something different.

"You told me last night that you wanted the whole package. It wasn't the sex that you were attracted to, but the fun the group was having. Tonight, you tell me that this fun included flirting and acting like you were out on a date with Phil. That scares me worse than the fact you had sex with him. You are out looking for something that he was giving you. It makes me feel like you're bored and looking for ways to replace me. Hell, you liked the romance."

Meg gaped at me and shook her head in denial, but I had developed a full head of steam. "I know, you love me and don't want to divorce me. But let me ask you this. What would have happened if the sex didn't happen and they just asked you join this social club at the conference every year? Would you have done it?"

I didn't wait for her answer. "Think about that Meg. If you feel the need to find excitement dating some other guys, what does that say about our marriage and me? If I can find the time to spend hours talking to Barb, but don't find the time to spend with you, what does that say?

"I don't want our marriage just to be a place where we feel comfortable. I want more than that. I want our marriage to meet all of our needs and desires and it isn't doing that right now. There is something missing in our marriage."

Meg just sat there with tears in her eyes. She started to speak, but I stopped her. "Not tonight Meg. We're both too tired to deal with this anymore tonight. Besides, we both have some thinking to do. Let's go to bed and talk about this some more tomorrow night."

Meg nodded her acceptance and got up to walk to the tent. After a few steps, she stopped with a question. "Don, where are you sleeping tonight?"

"I'll sleep in the tent, but Meg, I'm not ready to cuddle with you or share a sleeping bag. That's going to take some time."

The rest of that canoe trip was intense. By day we would paddle in silence, each of us thinking about the prior nights conversation. No, the silence wasn't shared, but it was no longer a barrier between us. It was a start. At night, we sat and discussed our marriage. We talked about what was right and what was wrong and how we could work to fix it.

We were both scared. Meg's confession had opened a big can of worms that needed to be dealt with. We had not worked on our relationship with the care and concern that we had spent on our kids, our jobs, or the rest of our lives. We had drifted along thinking everything was okay without looking ahead. Yes, we cuddled and talked at night, but we weren't spending enough time together. I wasn't giving Meg the romance she needed outside the bedroom.

We had fallen into a parent trap. We hadn't thought about ourselves for a long time. Our lives were tied up in Brad and Sarah and outside interests. Even our canoe trips and hikes had taken a back seat to more pressing concerns. We talked about what would happen in a few years when the kids left home for college. We had better start working on us if we were going to be ready for the empty nest.

We also figured out that my earlier problems had indirectly affected Meg's actions at the conference. Meg didn't act out of revenge, but she did act in the belief that I had done similar acts in the past. Subconsciously, she acted with the belief that there would be minimal consequences for her behavior. She forgave me so she assumed that I would forgive her. My "getting away with it" colored her response to the temptation. It helped to hide the potential consequences.

We talked a lot about consequences and our failures to communicate fully. We understood that our marriage was on shaky ground. The trust had been eroded on both sides. One further slip by either of us could end it, no matter how much we loved one another. We promised ourselves that we would continue to talk and work on bridging the gap that had been created. We also promised that we would both think about the consequences of our actions. We agreed to never do anything apart that we wouldn't do in front of each other.

And we talked about sex. Even though sex had never been the raison d'être for our marriage, we had neglected it for too long. We had gotten into a rut. We settled for simply satisfying each other. We never tried to bring it to the next level. We decided it was time to change our mindset. It wasn't that we wanted to get wild and try exotic new things, but we decided that it couldn't hurt to spice it up a little. At the very least, we needed to slow down and take our time. I wanted to give Meg the fireworks she had seen with Phil and she wanted to see how she could make my orgasms more intense as well.

It wasn't a fun week. At times, my anger would come to the forefront and I would lash out at Meg. At times she lashed out at me as well. Many nights ended in tears. But, we kept at it. It may not have been fun, but it was necessary.