All Comments on 'Stepping in the River, Twice Ch. 02'

...but would have been better with proper editing (e. g. "waste" is a little different from "waist").

Margot has no one to blame but herself. And he is right wondering if she has always been faithful. To romantically kiss another guy merely to make her husband jealous? That's a little to comfortable and familiar for my taste. How many times has that happened before. Makes you wonder what her limits are. If she didn't consider kissing another man breaking her vow, then what else would be considered not cheating. An interesting debate - would it be considered cheating if her motivation was simply to test him? I fall on the side that the action constitutes cheating regardless of the motivation. If you could prove the motive to be more noble, I might feel otherwise (I.e. to save someone's life). But her motive was selfish.

Five stars for good writing and an engaging storyline. Can't wait to see where this goes. I am especially interested in the significance of the title you have chosen.

It is full of surprises and at this point it is difficult to know who to believe about what. He may have been just set up by Jenny, for Margot..... Personally that kind of testing would be a deal breaker for me... I do wonder what she thought would be his reaction to catching her kissing another man.. The only one that I can imagine would to slug the guy and he might end in jail. Was that what she wanted?

Why did she start yelling at the guy when he was leaving the office, if it was all an agreed upon theater? Too much double dealing here to cause one to even consider continuing the marriage.

Looking forward to part three.

I really enjoyed the eastern locale descriptions. The actual story attached didn't flow very well. The narrator was so locked up in his head yet was supposed to be a fantastic lover.. I wasn't feeling it. He was just too passive, too reactive to be convincing.

Yet the ambition to write a intellectual, provocative story out of the norm is appreciated.This author is finding his voice and his future efforts are worth taking note of.

She wanted to make me jealous. It worked. She got home and her stuff was all over the lawn. Ladies, don't test your husbands/boyfriends like that. You will NOT like the results. As far as I'm concerned, kissing someone like a lover when in a committed relationship is Cheating. Pure and simple.

5 Big Stars for having Matthew do what he felt needed to be done. Wifey was most likely lying her ass off about not sleeping with her boss. Hubby got some back with the cute receptionist. If wifey can't handle that, tough shit. I won't say his act of cheating itself was right, but payback is payback. Wifey only has herself to blame for that one!

I find the story compelling and admit to checking every day for the next chapter. I am giving it four right now only because the final outcome and how it develops must determine the final vote. But, I feel that it is headed for a 5 star

Thanks and hope to see it soon.

Not ex-patriot

rode - not road

It's well written, but very hard to read. The words are used well and the emotion does seep through, but it just seems like the reader has to skim paragraphs at a time to find the meat of the story. I may be the only reader that feels that way. I also have some trouble identifying with the wife. She seems to be slightly crazy. The dialogue he has with her makes little sense much of the time. It's like she's a hippy and is trying to lead him someplace without just telling him what she wants. I have a lot of trouble with the theory that she would involve her boss in a fake love triangle, and that the boss would agree. Obviously, she is trying to lead her husband someplace rather than discuss it, and that annoys the hell out of me. He is being played like a violin. If half the words were dropped from this story, I would find it more readable and enjoyable, but the manipulation is extreme and annoying.

Looking forward to further chapters - this has a great plot and very good writing.

Have to reiterate IDs post, had a tester. Dropped her like she had the Plague. Testing implies " lack of trust" and that for me is a death knell in a relationship.

Thx!

Greetings. I received an especially to-the-point response from someone who exclaimed "How Dare You Post Again". Critical comments, for the most part are welcomed. That is how I learn and seek to improve. This comment tells me someone has taken the story personally which is neither good or bad. I only hope this person asks themselves, honestly, why they reacted so strongly.

There are 3 more postings to this story. I just submitted the final chapter. For the individual who took such strong offense I would invite him/her to write and let me know what is (or has) happened to cause such a response. I will listen.

Hope she divorced him and takes his cheating ass to the cleaners. And her friend"? She went with him willingly, what kind of friend does that?

Frankly, I hope he dies broke and alone.

Looking at the situation from outside the frame of reference the characters find themselves in, this story doesn't look very likely to end well. The author seems to know where he wants to go with the tale he's telling, but awkward construction, excessive prolixity, and incorrect word choices ("ex-patriot" instead of"expatriate," to cite just the most egregious example,) made both installments of this story much more difficult to read than they needed to be.

I'd strongly recommend a GOOD copy editor.

It wasn't just a kiss, it was fucking with his mind. It was using him. You don't do that to someone you love -- if you really love them.

<P>

Granted, he probably should have waited to make a formal separation, but if he has any respect for himself, the marriage is over.

This story is a paradox. I'd like to add that I believe Margo has been cheating all along and is hoping to have an open marriage. Jenny is a back-stabber and took the husbands private anguish and reported it to the slut Margo. Still early and I can't see where the author is going with this but I have my thoughts. Waiting for ch. 3.

I stilldont get his running from the scene he walked into. She is passonitly kissing her boss. He takes off with the receptionist who is working with the wife, telling her all.now she is a virgin and seduces Matthew . Maybe she will get pregnant ,was she on the pill. A little to far out to be plausible . So the wife is testing him , makes no sense unless she is cheating. Why risk his alienation for some stupid test , that has already backfired on her. Why did Jenny who is a virgin go with him, now she gives herself to him and now has feelings for her,and Jenny has a M B A. This story is interesting but where is the logic to this madness.

Could someone please explain how the "test" angle works? It makes no sense. He catches her kissing - deeply - her boss (with him virtually grabbing her ass). What's the test? He has every justification to be mad, leave her or kick her to the curb. If you make a commitment to be faithful to each other, then you don't make out with someone else. That is breaking the commitment. The test angle is bullshit, pure and simple. Even if he passes her so called test, she is fucked. I have come across this test angle in numerous stories and don't get the infatuation with it. There is testing someone by setting up circumstances to see if they falter (I get that), then there is intentionally doing something wrong to see if you can catch the other person doing something wrong. That contradictory thinking and the height of hypocrisy.

I agree with HDK that there must be more to this story. She has a hidden agenda. The test hypothesis is hokum.

The "test" part of this story seems to be its biggest weakness imho.

From what we have learned the "test" was supposed to be hubby catching wife making out with her boss and then his reaction. However the aftermath of this event is where the story starts to fall apart bigtime.

The hubby not only walks out but leaves the country with a friend of the wife and takes her on holiday which is something the wife could never have foreseen. We then learn the friend is still in contact with the wife every night yet the "test" continues?

Nobody could be so stupid as to allow this to continue without telling the friend to spill the beans to hubby asap for any hope to save her marriage yet nothing is said even when hubby calls home! And the same friend already told the wife her "test" could backfire on her?

Way to much crazy shit just dosen't add up.

Yes, I too agree. This is a story about a paraxial decision/choice that needs to be made, or has been made. Making a decision is a decision. Margot, for the most part, has already made her decisions. If we understand that a paradoxical decision means choosing between two bad/displeasing choices then Margot has chosen money (her commissions) at the expense of fidelity to her husband. Then she tries to figure out how to have both (his love and her commissions) which we know never really works. Matthew's paradox is also just as difficult and he stands to lose regardless of his end decisions (at least with regard to being married). So what are his two (or more) choices that all have crash-and-burn outcomes?

I have already finished the story and enjoy many of your astute comments. It is important we keep in mind life is a paradox. It is a struggle that is different for each of us (thank goodness!) and only in our dreams do we ever find reasonable satisfaction.

A totally unsanitary act and unromantic to boot. waist, I think, was meant.

Did the authors comment below give away upcoming developments in the story? She chose money over fidelity? I am eager for the rest of this story. Did you let that slip, or were you giving the readers a quick tease.

A lot of accurate positive and negative comments. Several have pointed out occasional 'writing mechanics' errors, citing a few examples! INSUFFICIENT!

The errors were bountiful. It was painful. ONE sentence had THREE homophones (or near-homophones, like 'and' for 'an') which were screwed up, two of them back to back. Better if the author had provided an audio option. Or used AND (sic) editor. I suspect it was dictated into an uncalibrated voice recognition program, but the output was never reviewed! If so, Calibrate, speak clearly, REVIEW, then submit to a Good Editor!

Sophist has ideas which are way too good to then leave a bad taste! - as though a cabinet-maker sanded his mahogany product to a very smooth finish, then applied paint - sloppily!

4* (woulda, shoulda been a 5)

Is Margo trying to open up the marriage? She stimulated a desire for hubby to get away with Jenny; she probably instructed Jenny to seduce hubby and then he'll have directly cheated by screwing anther woman. Probably she'll claim she can then fuck another guy, and so it begins. Also agree with other comments about the use of the word "waste" when the author meant "waist." There were other little errors as well; a better editing job might help. Thanks for writing.

I finally figured out that "ex-patriots", which makes no sense in context, must be a (creative) misspelling of "expatriates".

So after all his bitching about fidelity and his moaning about how he was faithful because of his religion, the first thing he does is cheat on his wife after finding out she's been completely faithful to him, on nothing more than hurt feelings? Really? The dude's a spineless turd with none of the honor he spent the first chapter pretending he had, and one who has broken every oath he ever made, and is using the excuse of "love" to do it. Fucking a virgin to spite one's wife is not an act of love.

Yours is very different from mine. These two do not belong married. Best friends? No. Devoted lovers? No. Loyal? No. What on earth are they doing together? And why are you writing them into this corner?

A paradox is a contradiction. Choices, no matter how difficult, are seldom paradoxes.

Good for Matthew making love to virginal Jenny. I f he thinks for one instant that Margo was just kissing her boss to test his love for her, the he is babky mistaken. Where theres a kiss like that there's been fucking in voled and for all he knows he's been eating her bosses cum out of her hole when they had sex

...tests are usually administered determined a reaction under a given set of circumstances.....and if the one testing sees a need to build in a safeguard to prevent a specific reaction, it is a safeguard that they themselves lack.

Then we need two constants...here a wife and the specific scenario (choice of lover...she had long running inter-action with Stan, not a flirt with a random first-time stranger, raising question of, was she trying too see if he was, a clueless husband, a "willing" cuckold looking to be drawn out....but not an equal partner willing or otherwise....note the choice of virgin and friend as control)....,and the variable, here the husband whose reaction was to be managed by either "the talk", or the virgin and friend Jenny.....ps being virgin at her age with her looks must be saving it for that special someone and being a close friend, Margo must have been double sure she had Matthew "managed"

That was something else again. Some wild plot developments: sexy, exhibitionistic, mid-20's hot-to-trot virgin who was a co-conspirator with the wife's idiotic and cruel 'test,' who then spontaneously agrees to go with hubby on his Far East escape, but still reports to wife, even 'testing' hubby further (has no one learned a lesson?). She is there for the protag, but also there for the wife, and her loyalties, while split, seem to merge with her sincere hope for reconciliation for the married couple. So, naturally, she gives her virginity to the guy. What now?

I thought hubby's reactions and emotional ebbs and flows had the mark of truth, and people can do stupid things when angry and hurt, but I don't get his decision to get it on with Jenny after he had resisted her before. Hubby believes the story, it seems, that wife acted in a clueless and cruel manner, but wasn't having an affair. The 'test' was a certainly a marriage strainer, but why, in the cold light of day, would he then betray his vows?

It is getting harder and harder for me to fit down this rabbit-hole. But, I'll keep reading. 4*.

I thought the bar-tease scene was pretty hot, btw; but I was too filled with confusion over the characters' actions to find the actual sex scene erotic.

I'm confused about alot of things! His wife tests him by making out with her boss? What was her desired result? Did he fail the test because he didn't kick the living shit out of Stan?

SHE WAS KISSING HER BOSS BEHIND CLOSED DOORS!

That is still cheating and she needs to be taught how to be a faithful wife!

Look forward to part 3.

A little confuse story.........

You just made a shitty story worse. This has to be one of the stupidest moronic stories on here. There is no way a loving wife would or could plan something like this. She has been fucking Stan the whole time the loser husband has been gone. She, her lover Stan, Jenny and everyone in her office are laughing at him. So now after all his righteous commitment to God and his marriage, he is now the cheater. Total bullshit. Bottom line is that his wife is an evil hateful cheating cunt and he is a wimp coward that will be sucking cock for his CUNT wife. At this point husband should do one thing right and just kill himself. Total crap

The wife's test is unbelievable. The plot smells like the author is trying to be clever which is also reflected is the pompous writing style. Don't quit your day job. 1 Star.

I don't know where this story is going but any man who stays married to a woman a cruelly manipulative as Margo deserves a lifetime of pain

A staged kiss? What if he attacked Stan and beat the shit out of him, or lost the fight? Or refused to believe her "just testing"

Dumb on he part, or she may have forgotten the lunch date

Good story , though

Maybe two but who cares. Who is to like here?

Now he's got a choice between a proven tramp and a controlling conniving bitch who's a more than likely adulteress. Good so far but I'm cringing for the finish.

It seems Matthew can’t trust either woman. His wife wouldn’t have ‘tested’ him in her office, unless she was considering an affair (or split). Then there’s Jenny: she’s been Margo’s spy throughout the trip. So how can he believe when she says she won’t tell Margo about his cheating? Matt doesn’t need either of them.

A guy gets his heart ripped out seeing his love cheating and 'nobodys hurt?'.

That's typical female mentality for you

Incredulous Femdom agitprop has gone nowhere so far.