The Symmetry of Sin

The theme of this story is about a wife who had a once or twice a year lover for many, many years, which her husband (who is not a cuck) discovered when he was close to retirement. Not to give anything away, the end is more 'living well is the best revenge' than BTB.

This story is copyrighted by Chilleywilley and may not be republished.

*

I've been accused of thinking too much, and it's probably true, I'm not one to react hastily, preferring to understand the problem and then choose the best alternative if there isn't a solution. As an engineer, almost every course of action involves 'on the one hand...but on the other". For example, when designing a piece of machinery, sometimes it costs a little more to make it easier to maintain, suppose on the one hand, an additional $100 in manufacturing cost saves $100 a year in maintenance cost, $2,000 over the equipment's lifetime. No brainer, right? Maybe not! If sales can't demonstrate the value of the extra cost, the customer won't pay the extra $100 cost, and we lose the sale! In reality, cost of maintenance is not always a factor in buying new equipment. It's cynical, but true, and in this case sales may veto a $100 in additional cost because they fear they will lose business.

Very often there isn't a perfect solution to a problem, good enough will have to do, and it's a principle I've used throughout my life. And it's a good life. I married a good woman who gave us two fine children, and I considered my marriage a successful one. My wife is a good mother, good companion, hard working, interesting mind, good looking, my best friend, cheerful, and...adequate in bed.

I suppose most men think that more and better sex would be a good thing...well, I think that anyway. I kept hoping a new age of sexuality would bloom in our marriage when the kids were grown enough to need less care, or again when they moved out, or maybe after menopause, instead a frost has settled in. Now I didn't marry my wife for sex. Frankly, I married her in spite of her modest sex drive, the mismatch in our libidos was something I came to terms with years ago, I accepted things as they were.

Never the less, I couldn't help myself for harboring an irrational hope that the mismatch in our sex drives would at least narrow...even though while this dog wants to learn, it's a bit late and unfair to expect an old bitch to learn new tricks.

Perhaps those who grew up in this modern age where sex is so heavily emphasized can't imagine a life where sex is just a one of many things to look for in a spouse along with appreciation of good food, good conversation, great sense of humor, and a pleasant, thoughtful demeanor. And love. Karen and I, we certainly love each other.

The discords in our marriage were mostly over and done with, now we were comfortable with each other like old shoes, I was content with it. It was good enough. Still, it came as a shock to have her announce one evening, that she had absolutely no further interest in sex. She'd been to her doctor, discussed it and was told there was nothing that could be done about it, no Viagra for women. Desire was what it was. She loved me, but just had no interest whatsoever in sex.

"Well Viagra helps men get an erection, it doesn't directly affect desire, but on the main point...So you wish us to be celibate starting from last month?"

It went over her head, she was puzzled,

"What did you say?"

I shook my head and smiled,

"Just trying to be droll. You want to be chaste from now on. Our relationship will go from husband and wife occasionally sharing our bodies with each other, to brother and sister, right? We remain tender and considerate to each other, do all of the social things we do now, and drop all but the most innocuous kissing and touching? Have I got that right?"

"Just so! You expressed it better than I."

"Well, we are in complete agreement on one thing."

She had looked anxious before, but now her face shone with relief.

"I'm so glad! I was so afraid you wouldn't take this well."

I ignored her comment and continued,

"We're both in agreement that the sex we've shared up to now isn't worth much effort to continue. It's stale, as rigidly scripted as a high mass, so as I see it, there are several choices available."

I held my hand up dramatically and raised a finger with each point:

"We can:

• Have mundane, vanilla sex with each other, (our practice all these years). As Saint Paul said, "Better to marry than to burn"

• Do what you've suggested, have no sex at all. Paraphrasing Paul, 'Marry but still burn.

• Have an open marriage, you know, fuck around, singularly or as a pair. Sort of be married, be merry, and don't burn, at least in this life.

• Or...try to make sexual relations with each other more interesting

...You look shocked Karen."

Actually she looked stunned, her shoulders hunched and her expression like a rigid mask.

"Chris, you're telling me you don't...didn't like to have sex with me? After all these years? I can't believe it. I certainly liked it!"

I just shrugged, "You almost never initiated sex, which suggested to me that you didn't particularly like it. What you allowed us to do in our bed was not the boon you apparently think it was, but even vanilla sex is better than no sex. So frankly, I admit I blew hot and cold with the ritual sex, but you refused everything I suggested, so at some now forgotten point years ago you had worn me down, and I gave up all hope of improving either the frequency or the quality of our sexual activity. It's now apparent you value it even less than I do."

"That's not true! We did lots of different things in bed. You're so very negative."

"We ever do anal? You ever lick my ass? I did yours, you never even commented on it. I might as well been licking my thumb. And how about blow jobs with happy endings, remember doing those?"

"Those are disgusting things, very few people do anything like that!" she said with a grimace

"How about dirty talk, sex about anywhere besides in bed, role playing, dominance and submission games. How about that? Ever do any of that?"

"You never asked me to do that."

"Rubbish! But have it your way, what did you ever ask me to do? I can't remember a thing!"

Sort of a pregnant pause as she frantically tried to think of something

I broke the silence, "Karen, we remember it differently...but it's no matter. This conversation began with your withdrawal from connubial sex, and the details don't matter much at this point. We did it to ourselves, the lousy sex."

I was pissed at her, and my long buried resentment kept coming to the surface. I was so mad at her right now; I wasn't much worried about her feelings so I had no problem throwing that last line about lousy sex just to add oil to the fire. She was livid barely containing herself, and I was obviously pissed off with her revelation too, not a good time to have a discussion.

"Let's move on and let that crack lie, pun intended. I notice you didn't comment on the options I laid out. We both agree our current sex life is unsatisfactory although for different reasons, you because you want no sex, and me because I want more and better sex. You've proposed Item two, 'both of us have no sex at all, the marry and burn option. I use my one veto on that one, so you get to pick either of the remaining two:

• Have an open relationship, be married, be merry, and don't burn.

Or

• Try to make our sexual relations with each other more interesting

Which do you prefer?"

Always give a person a choice. Sometimes it works.

"Chris, it's not about your sex appeal or skills as a lover, I'm trying to say it's not your fault, it's about my lack of desire. I'll do it if you insist, but I have no interest or desire...are you listening to me?"

My facial expression must have given me away.

"Sorry, doing you duty lying on your back spreading your legs and thinking of England is not lovemaking, or even fucking, it's a lesser form of rape. I would have said you were the one not listening. What will you do? Sex outside of marriage or better sex within the marriage? Which?"

She was finally fighting back,

"Bull shit! That's a false choice; it's you that's not listening. I don't want any sex at all. None, nada, zed, zip zilch zero! No interest, but if you insist, we keep on as we are."

"Indeed I am totally focused on what you said. Let me think. Look, you gotta not do what you gotta not do, right? So we declare sex to be outside our marriage vows. That satisfies us both, our marriage continues, you can be chaste, which is what you want, and I can be chasing, not my first choice, but it satisfies us both."

"Chris you're not taking this well. What's the matter?"

"Well, clearly sex has always been a lot more important to me than it was to you and s I was unable to change it, I accepted it. I'm not going to force you; it's no fun to be a trial to one's spouse. And I'm certainly not going to throw you out. I want you to know that this is really really difficult for me. You expect me to abandon part of my identity, my sense of self worth, my manliness, and my youth. My need for sex, my sex drive is running as strong as it ever did...and masturbation is not a substitute for the intimate touching, stroking, kissing, and joining together. It's not just the intercourse. Do you see?"

"Chris! I still love you. I just can't be as physical as you want me to be. We still have all the rest. That's not changed."

"I supposed we have an unspoken agreement here where each of us get the minimum they need one way or another, as something we can live with. We'll do the best we can, and after all, our marriage's never been defined by sex." I wasn't really sure she knew what I had said, but it really didn't matter to me.

Actually, my discontent with marital sex had already gotten into the planning stage of an affair; well perhaps just thinking about fucking around would be more accurate. I figured one problem with having an affair would be that it might be easier to start than to end. What if I fell in love or the woman went bat shit crazy, or had a jealous husband would come round looking to exercise his second amendment rights on me. Maybe paying for it was the better deal, except that I didn't really like the idea of sex with strangers.

Not two weeks earlier, I had been sitting on my screen porch one lovely Sunday morning in June, reading the Magazine section of the NY Times, and saw an article about sugar babes and sugar daddies. In the old days, if you wanted what was called a kept woman, I guess you just asked around or something, but like everything else these days there are internet sites to help you do whatever it is you want to do. The article was interesting, although basically hype for a particular site, evidently there were lots of struggling students, single women, married women, men and god knows who all else that were looking for rent money.

A paltry(to me) $750 to $1,200 a month buys both companionship and sex once a week. Of course that was cash, so I suppose to the sex worker paying no taxes on it, in purchasing power it was worth more than that. You paid a modest fee to the website in order to read the bios and pictures of the currently available sugar babes as well as being able to e mail them. The ages were 18 to 45, and they varied from real lookers to...well, let's call them the ill favored. Assuming that they were real prospects and their pictures and ages were current.

Now, after the wife's announcement, what had been theoretical pie in the sky became 'Whoa! Let's take a real look at this!' For about $50 bucks I could join the website and check them out. This was still a bit of fantasy, but if I were to hire one, I was resolved to be picky. I wanted someone who lived about an hour away so I wouldn't run into them in the supermarket. They had to read, preferably non fiction books, so I could talk to them. I didn't want a dummy. Unmarried at the moment so no husband with a baseball bat. I didn't want a total slut who looked and sounded like a middle aged street walker with bad feet, I preferred willing but nervous. I am partial to dark haired women, and foreign born is another attraction as I find them exotic, or at least different.

I wanted someone who looked nice, but was not a total head turner. My experience in dating lo these many years ago was that really good looking women tended to be very high maintenance, and I didn't need that. And lastly, a grownup. Someone who didn't end all her sentences with an up swing in their voice. I didn't want to smell bubblegum on their breath. Not surprising, of course, no one even remotely fitted the bill. I got a great dog on Petfinders the first time I looked at the SPCA website. Finding a mistress would evidently be more difficult.

I subscribed to two sugerbabe websites, and over the next few months I considered the time I spent looking to be pleasant recreational window shopping. No harm in day dreams, they've entertained me all my life. June slid past, then July into August I saw nothing that met my criteria, and bit by bit I lowered my expectations. I e-mailed several, met two for a practice interview, but neither one of them elicited a spark. A third woman seemed interesting, and we hooked up for six weeks. She was a nice black woman (I'm white). The sex was the full catalog, but I sensed that neither she nor I had our hearts in it. We broke it off by mutual consent. She felt 'funny' sleeping with a white man. I felt awkward because we had little to talk about across the divides of age, race, money, and culture.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The wife was out shopping with a couple of friends while I tackled some 'honey do' jobs. The drain in our bathtub was really slow. It has a built in stopper and typically it gets clogged with hair and soap scum, and it can be cleaned out from the tub side. This time the problem was in the drain pipes below. Access to this area is through a panel in back wall of the closet in the spare bedroom. Emptying out the junk so I could get to the panel, I came across a tin document box. I didn't recognize it but it had a really cheap lock which would have been easy to pick, but that wasn't necessary, it wasn't locked! Some papers had kept the lid from closing enough to engage the lock. Well isn't that an invitation? Pandora? Where are you?

Inside were the love letters I had sent to my wife during our courtship, and a few from later on when I was traveling. Cards and letters the children wrote. The nice things in life that are so good to remember. Oddly underneath those were some envelopes from companies offering coupons for storm windows and duct cleaning and what not. What the hell was this crap? Well! Inside those envelopes was another set of love letters, from Mikhail A.K.A. Mikhail Borodin. What the fuck! I know the name! It took a moment to dredge it up, Yes! He was the Russian spy, a diplomat in China back in the 1920's? Or at least that was where I remembered the name. Certainly not this guy. The junk mail envelopes all had a stick on label addressed to "occupent," and our address. Obviously I would not have bothered with them regardless of the spelling of occupant but the misspelled word "occupent" would have allowed her to see that this apparent junk mail was special.

That explains why my wife had a hissy fit one day years and years ago when she saw me sorting the junk mail directly into the trash before bringing the rest it into the house. She announced she wanted to look them over for coupons and such like. Hmmh! I probably handed some of those very letters to my wife. There were only one or two per year, and as I read them, most were setting up a day of just an afternoon for them to meet, starting as early as the fifth year of our marriage! A few times they managed to have an overnight fuck fest, other years they only met once for lunch and an afternoon of fucking. Of course they might have met much more often if they were in telephone contact, but the phone records were long gone.

The letters stopped abruptly twelve years ago, no tearful or furious 'goodbyes'. Did he die? Did they break it off? I copied them all, and carefully set everything back in place, pushing down the lid so it locked. I finished clearing the tub drain. Shit! I cleared the pipes only to see my marriage go down the drain. I pondered what to do. Its one thing if it had ended years ago, another since it didn't. Well, if she fucked around once, why not twice...or god knows how often.

We got the computer about 12 years ago, so...they probably moved their correspondence onto that! I had some time yet before Wifey was due home, so I fired it up. Well, nothing, as far as I could see. I went on line and bought a program that would record the keystrokes, web pages visited, and such and installed it. $29.95! I didn't know what else to do, so I decided to do nothing for the moment.

I can't begin to tell you all of the problems I have worked out by being patient, studying, gaining understanding of what is going on, and then putting it aside for a while. On this, nothing has to be done right away, a few weeks of intelligence gathering, planning and thought would reduce the chance of an undesirable outcome.

If what I've written makes you think I did not mourn for my marriage, cry at the bitterness of betrayal for a good while, you would be wrong. I was a wreck, as anyone would be, learning of a lifelong betrayal. We speak of women having a good cry and feeling better...it's true for men too, I didn't feel good, just a little better. It was with a great effort I kept a good face on things that evening, and said nothing about my discovery.

The next morning I checked the keystroke program, and felt stupid doing so...there was nothing from her because she hadn't been on the computer. Just for hoots and giggles I opened windows explorer, and did a series of searches on the C drive. "Borodin" brought up nothing. "Mikhail" brought up a nearly a hundred contacts in my customers file, and one odd ball file name I had never heard of. Bingo! She never even password protected it! She just buried it under a series of innocuous file names. She kept a diary in Word of her affair starting from a few years before we got the computer.

In another file were copies of the E mails between them. What the hell was she thinking of, going to write a book? I had to get more paper at the office store to print all this shit up. Oddly enough there weren't any pictures. None at all, I had no idea what he looked like. Naturally I thought the worst, tall, blond and handsome, and ignored the thought that he might be short, dark, and smelling of vodka. I also had no idea where they met.

The affair varied in intensity over these years. The letters began when he lived in Massachusetts and at that time we lived in Bordentown, NJ, and I don't remember her being up there, but it doesn't matter. Like I said during the years covered by the letters, they got together 1-2 times some years, not at all in others and the pattern continued through their e mail years until a year ago.

At that point, he retired, moved to Wilmington, Delaware, and since then they get together every other week. Isn't that fucking nice! He's apparently sick, poor bastard. You know, as in sick and dying, although more is the pity, not right away. He's taking heavy pain meds and can't get it up anymore and his doctor won't let him take Viagra so now they have a platonic relationship too. I can't say he's the cause of her cutting me off, but shit on a stick! Has she been doling out sex to me out of a sense of fairness? They went to Rehoboth Beach for two nights in a mini vacation this spring while I was at her goddamn mother's house parging the basement wall. You think you know someone, and then find out something like this!