Acts of Infidelity - Becky and David

I was careful, at least as far as safe sex was concerned and only twice got myself into a position where I had to go through the motions with someone I would rather not have bedded, but I learned fast and soon came to enjoy even the awkward experiences.

If I'm really honest, one of my very best sessions in bed - at Uni or since - was a drunken night with a boy so unattractive I would never have wanted even to be seen with him in the daytime. Afterwards, I made sure I was never seen with him again but after dark, in bed and with the lights out... wow!

That makes me sound really shallow and maybe I was then. I hope I'm not any more.

I met David in my second year through Nicky, a strong-willed, full-figured brunette who had been in the same Hall of Residence as me the year before and who had become a close friend. She and I were part of a group of six girls sharing a house in one of the infamously student parts of the city. Nicky had a similar attitude to sex and relationships as I did (meaning we were happy to have the one without the other), so it was natural for us to live together.

David (never Dave) was one of a loose group of half a dozen boys we bumped into at parties, got drunk with, had fun with and on multiple occasions slept with, on what was supposed to be a casual, no-strings basis.

On more than a few occasions, Nicky and I slept together too but we did not publicise that.

Though David was not the most attractive of the bunch of boys, I wasn't the most attractive of the girls either so as time passed and some of the no-strings hook-ups morphed into full-on monogamous relationships, he and I ended up together more and more often.

By the time our University studies were ending, David and I had drifted in an unplanned way from casual hook-ups to regular dates and from there into a near-monogamous relationship ourselves. After graduation, we both got jobs in the same city in which we had studied and without actually talking about it, both assumed we would live together.

We found a one-bedroom flat, moved in and before either of us realised it, had become to outward appearances a normal couple starting out on life like so many others all around us. However we felt inside, for over two full years we behaved like a normal couple too, going out with friends, squabbling over furniture and for the first time since we had been together, keeping our relationship mostly monogamous.

To be fair, the pressures of beginning our careers helped us remain faithful to each other too. On the one hand, we were constantly tired and had to study outside of work too so were less able to look elsewhere. On the other hand, we quickly found that both David's school and to a lesser extent, my hospital provided plenty of opportunities for temptation to strike.

I succumbed only twice in the first two years, both were one-night-stands with colleagues, neither was particularly memorable. David knows about them both and has confessed to twice this number himself. Knowing him and his maths, this means he probably slept with half a dozen girls during that time, but we don't compete on numbers.

It was a very pleasant existence during which we grew closer and closer. David is an easy person to live with and to my surprise, it appears I am too. We could have gone on like this with the occasional act of infidelity on both sides for years, but events dictated otherwise.

The watershed came at the beginning of our third year together when I missed a second period, peed on a stick and found I was pregnant.

There was no question who the father was. How it could have happened remains something of a mystery; top of the list of suspects is a drunken evening on holiday after two days of food poisoning during which I must have sicked-up my birth control pills.

David and I had long, deep conversations late into the night before we realised that neither of us could contemplate an abortion and, however we felt about physical fidelity in a relationship, our hearts and souls had become too deeply intertwined to be separated even by this news.

I can't remember which of us first thought of marriage, but I do know that it felt right for both of us; not because either of us felt any social pressure to tie the knot; it just seemed the right thing to do at the time.

Three years on, I have no regrets.

As you might expect given our personalities, the ceremony was non-religious, short, light-hearted and full of close friends, several of whom had slept with one or (in the case of Nicky) both of us in the past, though not necessarily at the same time. We made promises, exchanged rings, laughed, joked, everyone except me drank heavily and our life together moved to its next stage.

A few months later when our daughter was born our lives became more complicated but were still very manageable. I took maternity leave; David took paternity leave and we both began to share the parenting. A few months later David knocked me up again - deliberately this time - and our younger daughter was born nine months after that.

With two babies born barely a year apart, our balanced relationship took a lurch to the left with me taking most of the load for a while. But once I had learned to express milk properly - no small feat with boobs as small as mine - David was able to play a much bigger part and to his credit, did so.

It was less than two years after our wedding - two monogamous years on my part and at a time when having two children under the age of two was most demanding - when David told me that he wanted us to have a more open marriage.

I suppose it shouldn't have come as a shock, but it did.

The pressures of having a young family along with demanding jobs had pushed our sex life into the background more than either of us should have allowed. Given his and my sexual histories, I suppose I should have seen it coming but at the time I was too caught up in being a mother and trying to hold down a job to notice the air of dissatisfaction that had crept into our relationship from both sides.

He broke the news in bed one Sunday evening after I had just made yet another excuse not to have sex with him.

"You mean you want us to split up?" I asked, horrified.

"No!" David insisted so vehemently that I believed him.

"Then you're already sleeping with someone else," I stated as calmly as I could. "Right?"

"Well..." he replied unconvincingly.

"It's either that or you reckon you're onto a winner with some girl and want my okay first."

There was a long pause.

"We're not exactly doing well, sex-wise are we?" he replied rather than answering directly.

That was so obviously true that it needed no response from me.

"Aren't you missing it too?" he asked. "We used to have fun in bed, didn't we?"

"We do have two kids to deal with," I said with more indignation than bitterness.

"I love you and the girls, you know that," he insisted. "I'm really happy being married to you and being their Dad but I just need..."

"To get your end away more often and with more women?"

"I suppose so," he confessed. "It's not as if we haven't done it already."

I was too shaken to reply though it was undeniably true.

"I'd be happy for you to find someone else as well," he added quietly.

"That's generous of you," I snorted sarcastically.

There was an even longer silence before I asked quietly.

"Is she good in bed?"

"Very!"

"Shit!"

I rolled over until my back was towards him then pretended to be asleep.

***

"Have you thought about it?" David asked five days later over a chaotic weekend breakfast with the girls in two high chairs at the rather small kitchen table.

"About what?"

My reply was disingenuous. There could be only one subject he would raise in this way.

"About my idea," he frowned, wiping our youngest daughter's face with her bib.

I had thought about little else since he had broken the news though David, perhaps worried, certainly disappointed by my immediate negative reaction, had not mentioned it again.

My first instinctive reaction was that of any betrayed, vulnerable wife and mother whose other half had just announced that he had slept with another woman and wanted to keep doing so. I felt betrayed, outraged, angry, hurt and afraid all at once.

I had cried alone several times, but when the raw edge of those emotions had become slightly blunted, to my surprise, the more I thought about it, the less terrible the idea began to feel.

The truth was that the period of near-monogamy that had apparently just ended had been the exception rather than the norm in our relationship. We had got together through promiscuity, had slept with other people before our marriage and had deliberately taken no vows of fidelity during the ceremony so why should either of us have expected the other to remain faithful forever?

Our sex life had become moribund, there was no denying that. It was one of the reasons why I had started avoiding intercourse with him. With two small children in the house, tiredness had played its part but in all honestly, that had been an excuse too.

Though I hadn't really recognised it at the time, dissatisfaction had set in on both sides. In truth, the surprise was more that it had been David rather than me who had first come clean about it and suggested a way out.

"About seeing other people," he said impatiently. "What do you think about the idea?"

I looked at the two messy girls, decided they were far too young to understand anything their parents said and replied.

"It'll take a bit of getting used to," I eventually said.

David looked up, his expression a combination of delight and disbelief.

"You're okay with the idea?"

"I don't know," I told him truthfully. "I really don't know. I wasn't expecting it."

"But you're not saying no," he asked eagerly.

"I need more time to think about it."

"How much time?" he asked eagerly.

"Is she putting pressure on you?" I countered.

David looked sheepish and didn't reply.

"When does she want to see you?"

"Tonight," he replied, not looking me in the eye.

"Tonight?"

He nodded sheepishly.

"It's her birthday."

I took a long, deep breath and thought hard. We had no plans for the evening; I was supposed to have been on the late shift, but it had been rescheduled at short notice. I had expected David to cook, the two of us to eat in the flat then maybe - maybe I would have let him make love to me in bed afterwards.

The reluctance with which I had been prepared to let this last thing take place told me all I needed to know. I took a deep breath.

"Go and see her," I said. "Stay the night if you want."

The look of joy on my husband's face almost defied belief.

The feeling of discomfort, unease and disbelief in my belly wasn't far behind.

"Just make sure you're home by ten-thirty tomorrow. Mum and Dad are coming, remember?"

***

The false confidence with which I had given David permission to sleep with his new lover was as much an attempt to convince myself it was okay as it was to convince him. Doubts flooded in throughout the day, especially when he was showering and changing early in the evening.

I have to say he looked drop-dead gorgeous as well as nervous and hesitant when he came into the lounge to kiss me and the girls goodnight. When I presented him my cheek for a peck, my whole body was stiff and I couldn't look him in the eye but, like the cool girl I wanted myself to appear, I went through with it and a few minutes later we three women were alone in the flat for what proved to be a very long night indeed.

Nothing on television could keep my attention. Every single item of clothing we possessed was ironed to within an inch of its life and yes, I did cry several times.

I'm not sure I could have made it and remained sane it if our younger daughter hadn't had a cold and been awake every couple of hours. In the end I brought her into our bed where she passed the night in the space her father usually occupied. My own sleep was fitful, my dreams, waking and sleeping full of images of my husband's lips on his lover's face or even his slim, tight buttocks rising and falling between her open thighs.

But even the longest night must come to an end and eventually this one did too. Both the girls are very early risers so as the day began, their demands helped distract me once again. When our younger daughter went back to sleep around nine o'clock, I had a few minutes to myself so spent them in the bedroom and bathroom making sure I was looking the absolute best I could after a sleepless night when my now-unfaithful husband returned home.

It was just after ten o'clock when we heard his key in the door and his footsteps in the hallway. The three of us were in the kitchen playing at the table, the younger girl in her high chair. They both became excited at their father's return and it took all of my self-control to appear cool and unruffled by the momentous event that had so recently taken place.

With his daughter in his arms, David entered the kitchen, not quite confident in the reception he would find. His nerves were plain to see.

"Hi Bex," he said awkwardly.

I rose to greet him, noting to my delight the appreciative glance he gave both me and my choice of clothes. He bent forward and kissed me on the cheek. The smell of very recent sex was still on him; for a split second an image of the two of them having a last-minute farewell fuck in her doorway flashed through my mind.

"Did you have a nice time?" I asked, suppressing my feelings hard.

"Very nice. Thank you so much," he said with a sincere look on his face.

"It's okay. Want some tea?" I asked as casually as I could manage.

Both relieved at the distraction, there was an awkward silence for perhaps a full minute while we both quietly took stock of the situation. David seemed pleasantly surprised both by my appearance and my reaction to his return. Before my eyes, the air of cool confidence that had characterized his University years flooded back into him in a way I hadn't seen for a long time.

The outward calmness I had fought so hard to present was slowly working its way inside me too. To my surprise, as I looked at my husband I found myself becoming more relaxed, more accepting of what had happened, and a good deal more attracted to him than I had felt in a long time.

We drank our tea, speaking little but meaning a lot as the atmosphere between us gradually softened.

As he played with his older daughter, I began to see my husband differently. Not so much in a new light, but there was something about him - something sexy and exciting that I hadn't seen in years and which had not been there twenty-four hours earlier.

The reasons I had fancied him so much in the first place rushed back upon me. The brightness of his personality, his cheeky cheerfulness, the mischievous glint in his eyes when he looked at me; all these and more began to return. He even carried himself differently; he was more upright, more confident.

Perhaps there was even a trace of swagger about him. Everything about him was so much more desirable

My parents arrived just before eleven and the six of us went out for the day. It was almost impossible not to discuss his night away but of course with the Grandparents around, self-control was an absolute necessity. David's aura of confidence and attractiveness persisted throughout the day so by the time the two kids were in bed, the Grandparents had left and we were finally alone, I was so wound up with lust that I nearly tore his clothes from his body and forced him to give me the hardest, most violent fucking we had enjoyed since the first of our daughters was born.

As his strokes grew faster, deeper and more powerful, I looked up into his dark eyes to see them sparkling with lust. Knowing that those eyes had less than twenty-four hours ago been looking down into those of another girl and that the cock buried deep inside me had so recently been inside her too, drove me to heights of passion that had hardly been seen since our marriage.

Afterwards we lay side by side, panting and sweating in the half-darkness.

"Wow!" David gasped, his eyes wide. "That was amazing! Where did that come from Bex?"

I could only smile. The same question was filling my mind.

"I was worried you'd be upset," he said after a pause to gather breath.

"I am upset, can't you tell?" I replied, my skin still tingling from climactic after-shocks.

"You're hiding it well. You were like an animal," he smiled.

"I'm letting it all out," I corrected him.

There was another pause.

"We need to find someone for you," David eventually said softly. "And soon too, if we're going to open our marriage properly."

"Before I can change my mind about you two?"

"To make it fair for you too," he replied in a voice that told me I had been at least partly right.

"And you're sure YOU can live with someone fucking me?" I asked. "It wasn't easy for me last night."

"If you can stand it, I'll have to, won't I?"

He rose over me once again. My legs opened automatically. As he entered me, I looked up into his handsome face and wondered, after years of monogamy, what it would be like to see the features of another, as yet unknown man, looking lustfully down on me once again.

***

So, the decision was made; David and I were to have an open marriage. Just like that!

But when it came to the reality of how to do it in real life, we weren't sure how to start. Okay, David already had his 'bit on the side' but we knew that unless we got advice and laid down a few rules, things could go badly wrong. We were nervous of course, knowing there were a lot of potential unknowns and with David already sleeping with Sarah once or twice a week, there was pressure to get things sorted quickly.

But who to ask? Though we were no strangers to promiscuity, since University we had had no similarly-thinking community to talk to and now we had kids to consider.

Where else would we start but online? There we found podcasts which purported to provide relationship advice to 'monogamish' couples. We listened to them intently. From there we moved on to blogs and chatrooms, learning how other couples managed their multiple partners, learning a new language en-route; entwinement levels, boundaries and labels.

Eventually we felt confident enough to come out to the one couple from University who we had remained close to and who we believed had been in an open relationship ever since. David and I had slept with them in the past, though not as a group, so we felt more able to ask if they would tell us about their sex lives.

Perhaps if it was working for them, it might work for us too.

What we found was that there are almost as many different relationships as there are couples living them but over time, a common set of rules seemed to materialize.

Apart from understanding that 'no must mean no', it's important to remember preferences and boundaries aren't fixed forever. They can change with time and with partners so listening to each other constantly and without reservation is vital, as is complete honesty, encounter by encounter.

Some hard limits had to be agreed too; everything must be discussed beforehand; our relationship must come first; all questions must be answered. Safe sex at all time, no matter who with and of course the really important one: no falling in love.

The next problem was of course, how to find those extramarital partners.

With Sarah already on the scene, David had suffered no such problem, hitting the ground running as far as our new lifestyle was concerned. He and Sarah spent their first 'official' night together within days of our agreement, but I had no lover waiting in the wings and had to start from scratch.