Ch. 2, Therapy

Consequences

By H. Jekyll

CHAPTER 2: Therapy

There's just a little sex in this chapter.

*****

The woman called herself a therapist. A marriage and family counselor. John got three recommendations from his attorney and Myra took their files to Laura, who chose one. They got an appointment almost right away. Each of them had a session with the therapist, followed by a joint meeting. She would compare accounts, get clarification, and give them assignments.

And the first meeting wasn't so bad. The time was spent laying out the who--when--what--where--how details of the situation, to get the basic facts straight.

"Your wife, Laura, had an affair with another man." Another man? Oh, yeah. I guess it could have been a woman. She was brusque. "When did you find out about it?"

"Two weeks ago. Two weeks ago, today."

"Do you know how long it lasted?"

"About six months."

"How did you come to know about it?"

He gave her the cell-phone story, ending with "The stupid bitch!"

"John, please. Insults and diatribes just wind you up. I understand your emotions but go slowly and go over things as factually as possible. If you feel like it's too much, stop for a moment."

He apologized. He was embarrassed to have exploded, but crap, that thread!

"Did you have any suspicion, before that?"

"No. It was out of the blue." There had been 'suspicions,' little ones that he'd dismissed as stupid. For Christ's sake, this was Laura he was thinking about! Yes, she'd seemed distant. Sex had fallen off, both in frequency and intensity. She'd been getting home late from work and taking awfully long to shop on Saturdays. They'd been short with each other. If you browse for 'affair red flags,' those are among the things that pop up. But, as everyone knows, all marriages go through phases. That's what he'd told himself. Afterwards he claimed an honorary title: "I was the village idiot." A lot of people miss signs, probably about as many as see signs that don't actually exist. There's a fine sign line, he rhymed to himself in a Dr. Seuss moment. Anyway, "If she hadn't been so dumb about it, I still might not know."

"And then?"

"I'd read about people getting digital devices to spy on their spouses." He told her that story, and how the evidence became absolute.

"And you confronted her?"

"She tried to deny it. I showed her the evidence. She said she was sorry and that she loved me and so forth ..." John stopped and breathed through his mouth and the therapist let him alone. "Anyway. Blah, blah, blah. What could she say? All the usual things, I guess. She didn't love him. It was only sex. Only! Probably the worst was that she'd never intended to hurt me. Well of course she'd never intended to hurt me! She'd never intended to get caught! If she'd intended to, she'd have made it a lot easier to catch her! Shit! Then she got her back up. It got pretty intense. Anyway, I kicked her out."

Then he'd gone back into their bedroom and remade the bed.

They hadn't talked, not since that ill-fated coffee shop meeting.

"And I understand you're planning to divorce her?"

"Who could stay married to the slut after that? I'm sorry. Yes. I've filed for divorce on the grounds of adultery. I know it's a no-fault state, but I want to make it official. She's going to contest it. I think she thinks that if we drag this out I'll ... oh ... I'll 'come to my senses.'" He used air quotes.

"Why are you seeing me?"

"My mother-in-law, Myra. She's a thoughtful person. Anyway, she says this can give me ... give us both ... better clarity."

*****

"What would you would like to get from the therapy, Laura?"

"I want ... I don't know. I want to understand it. To understand me. And I want to be able to help John. I don't know. Everything." She shifted around on the padded, wooden chair.

"And your marriage?"

Laura had told herself she wouldn't cry, but it happened again. The therapist handed her a box of tissues. "I don't want a divorce, but John's mind seems made up. At least from what Mom says. I want to try to fix things, but I don't know how."

"The affair is important. It brought you ... and John ... here. But it's not the entire story. I'd like some background before the affair, and the circumstances that led to it."

"You mean besides the sex?"

Laura came right to the point, didn't she? Well, the therapist had her go back to the beginning, or the pre-beginning. They'd been flirting, bantering and trading bon mots--oh, just call it all 'flirting'--off and on for more than a year, at both large and small social gatherings, barbeques, potlucks, non-profit work, church dinners. Here and there. It was all innocent. Playful. No one was planning anything. It was 'just' playful. Sure, but Laura had fantasized about sex with George. Just a little. What would he be like? What would he want to do? A lot of people do that but don't carry anything out, right? Maybe most people do. Who knows? We can't know what George had been thinking, not anymore, but no matter. They'd been in each other's houses. Laura and Marge had traded recipes.

'It' itself blossomed the way so many do, with them flirting while alone and free from prying eyes and ears, the bon mots escalating, ever more that lovely tension growing as they faced each other and talked, each feeling it more in the chest than anywhere else, and finally the touch and the kiss. It was innocent until it wasn't.

The touch? They were standing close, too close, and he held his arm toward her as you might to make a point, a little closer, then a little further back, then a little closer, and she watched it only from the corner of her eye while she talked. Finally, he simply touched her cheek and held his hand there and she went silent.

The kiss? He took the half step between them and leaned forward and they did it, still silently, going directly from mere lips to tongues without a clear separation point. He pulled her to him with the one hand and moved his other hand from cheek to breast. There was no "stop," or "we can't do this," or any such thing, no words of any kind at this point, no fakery where 'no' means 'yes.' She reached her hands up to his shoulders while he moved his breast-hand down her belly to her pudendum and caressed her there, up and down. Ah, but her skirt and panties made her smooth and silky. She breathed faster into the kiss. He used his waist-hand to pull one of hers down from his shoulder to his dick, nice and big and straining for her, and after he pressed her hand hard, she, too, began caressing, up and down.

It was so easy and so quick.

It was harder to sex than to seduce because there was no bed. But--happily!--there was an armchair, so once they were both naked she knelt on it, facing the back, and he stood behind her and did it. What a first time! It was tawdry as all hell but she'd never done it like that, so the thrill of adultery was multiplied. They set up their second time before they even dressed.

The only real problem was that John wanted to make love that night and Laura was done for the day. That became a continuing problem.

Did either of them think of marriage or family or other considerations? Actually yes, not so much in the heat of the moment, the action itself lasting less than half an hour, but yes. Obviously not nearly enough.

*****

"Tell me about your home life. Before the affair."

What to tell? There weren't any major problems. Any major problems. Any more than a typical marriage can and will have. It is easy to skip though. Laura wasn't mad at John or sick of the marriage. She was a little bored with it and felt that John neglected her, and their sex had become same-old, same-old, so there was that. And with two small children she was tired a lot, as was John, which led them to being snippy toward each other. George was someone she wasn't being snippy with, who wasn't being snippy with her. Still, those things infect any number of marriages that don't face this. Laura didn't understand the beginning and hoped the therapist could help her. She did recognize that the thing had a long gestation, not exactly as easy and quick as all that but more like Hemingway's account of how a family went bankrupt: gradually and then suddenly.

*****

"Did you have other feelings for George ... let's call him your paramour?"

"I did. I guess you would call it a crush. Long before the affair. It was just a little fantasy. I never thought anything would ever happen ... really, nothing ... but yes, I did. Then ... once the sex started ... it took over. Other than that, we didn't do much of anything. We managed to arrange two dinners out. Two. And we took a few walks. We went to a movie. We talked. Really, that was about it."

The therapist chuckled. "That sounds like home life."

"Yes." Laura scoffed. "Well, we talked about different things than John and I did, and he found me more interesting. John wouldn't usually listen to me, not really. And John and I never seemed to do things together anymore, like have date nights or take little out-of-town trips, just the two of us. But the sex. There was more of it, and it was, well, different. More exciting. I think ... I thought about it a lot, even before we were caught. I think because it was someone new ... and different. His body ..."

"His body?"

"It was just different. And the sex was dangerous. We almost got caught a couple of times. And I explored some things."

"But your sex with John diminished."

A sigh. "Yes. Maybe cut in half? Yes."

"Did that affect your home life?"

"I couldn't tell. John didn't let on if he was ... unhappy. I knew he was disappointed because I said 'no' more often. But I couldn't tell. Maybe I didn't want to know."

"And 'exploring'?"

Laura surprised herself by being able to talk about that. It wasn't dramatic, not in the realm of things that many people do, but it was new to her. The therapist found it pretty mundane. It certainly would be, for a person whose profession brought her into contact with a surprising number of people who engaged in truly perverse sexual variations, some of which she and her partner later tried out--though we're not going to get into that.

Laura talked about the big one, oral sex. "I'd never done it, not all the way. John asked me when we were dating but I wouldn't. The idea seemed disgusting, and I thought I couldn't." Ah, but that was before George! In the early days of the affair everything was blisteringly hot, so when George told her--not asked her but told her--to do it, she agreed to try. She found that she could. And then, "I started to like it, the whole experience and how he responded."

"Was that a regular part of your encounters?"

"Sometimes. I mean there was a lot of oral pleasuring, but all the way, swallowing, wasn't that often, less than half the time." Did Laura find herself getting aroused at the memories of it? Here? In front of the therapist? Stop it! Focus!

The therapist, on her part, never changed her expression.

"And that was what was ..." she looked at her notes, "... 'exploring'?"

"That and my rear."

"Oh? Did that develop the same way as oral?"

"Pretty much. Do I have to talk about John and me?"

"Not it you don't want to."

"Well, John would put a finger in me there, sometimes. But there was nothing beyond that."

"And you liked it? With John?

"I can't say that I liked it. But I didn't dislike it. And I liked that he wanted to play with me."

"And with your paramour?"

"The same. One day he just told me we were going to do it. I was afraid it would hurt, and it did some, but it was his penis, so it was ... exciting." The idea that he spurted into her back there was almost overwhelming.

"Was that a regular part of your encounters?"

"No. Just a few times. Everything else was just, you know, normal sex."

So, Laura's sexual repertoire had expanded from top to bottom, pun intended. One might include the use of that chair, an experience she didn't share with the therapist, which the couple later repeated in George's living room using Marge's favorite rocker, which, as one might suppose, required somewhat different postures and actions. There may have been other wrinkles as well, but as she'd told the therapist it was mostly "you know, normal sex." There doesn't appear to have been anything at all kinkier or more outré. With those few wrinkles and a forbidden lover, she experienced six months of exquisite delight.

The oral and anal sex reminded the therapist of some information her mother had once shared about a close neighbor, whose husband apparently had required her to engage in sex that "isn't Biblical." Ah, Mom! If only you knew! It's possible the supposed sex was outside of what was allowable according to her mother's church, but the phrase was interestingly vague, and she certainly wasn't going to judge. Talk with a theologian about that. She'd had so many clients who practiced both those things that they certainly seemed well within the range of "you know, normal sex." But for Laura they were electrifying.

"Are you still seeing him?"

"No. I sent him a text to explain that I couldn't see him anymore. He answered that maybe, after things settled down a little, we could get back together. I told him 'no'. If there's any chance at all ..." She stopped and took several breaths and dabbed her eyes "... to save our marriage I want to try."

"Does his wife know?"

"I don't think so."

There was another thing, really the main thing for Laura: "Do you think there's any chance for us? For our marriage?" It was a question the therapist hated, but that she was asked all the time. She sometimes questioned herself about it. Sure, she only talked with those who actually came to sessions, but she still wondered: If you liked being with him so much more than with your husband, why are you so desperate to go back? But most of them did, or said they did, both women and men. Anyway, she couldn't give an all-or-nothing answer, and sometimes she was surprised at how things turned out, so she took refuge in the basic statistics.

"Divorce rates are higher when the wife had the affair, Laura. And higher where it is discovered by the non-involved partner, rather than being confessed. And higher still for longer-term affairs. So, there are some real problems." Problems of Laura's own making. "I can't give you an absolute number."

"Something? Some estimate? Anything?" The therapist handed Laura the box of tissues again.

"Just statistically, there's maybe a ten percent chance of maintaining the marriage. Maybe less." Laura began using the tissues.

There was another thing.

"If you and John were to reconcile, have you thought about how this would affect your sex together?"

"I don't know. I just don't know. I'd like to try to reconnect with John. Maybe we could explore together? I just don't know."

"That's an important issue."

*****

*****

It was time for the church-women's food-drive meeting but Laura didn't get the call. She found out about it the day after. She called Stacey Abramson to check on it, but Stacey wasn't answering, and the call went to voice mail. Laura texted but got no reply. She tried calling again and Stacey's phone rang a single time and went to voicemail. She's blocked me! She tried another friend, who apologized. Someone had dropped the ball, but she'd be sure to let Laura know of the next meeting. Laura actually got that notification, but at the meeting several women mostly talked around her, awkwardly, and Stacey ignored her. Later Laura texted Stacey: "Please can we talk?" But Stacey didn't reply. She's ghosting me!

It turned out Stacey wasn't the only one.

*****

*****

The twins were unhappy and acting out, and John didn't know what to do with them. They were delighted when they got to go to Grammy's house to see Mommy, and they didn't want to come home afterwards. They were impossible around the house. They cried at bedtime, they cried for Mommy during the day, they woke crying in the middle of the night. They fought, they wouldn't eat what they were served, and they didn't want to go to pre-school. The cure would be Mommy.

It came up at the end of the first session, when the therapist brought John and Laura together. They sat facing each other and the therapist brought her desk chair around in front of the desk. She'd already gone over the basics with them, the sort of thing every marriage counselor has gone through innumerable times, when John brought up the children. He had an idea and wanted the therapist's thoughts.

"It's affecting the kids. It might help them if she were in the house." Laura looked up at him and her eyes grew large with hope and she began nodding before he was finished. "I'm not sure. I think we can control ourselves in front of them. I don't know if she should use the spare bedroom, or if that would tell them too much."

"Oh yes, John! Thank you! Yes. Oh, I love you so much!"

"Stop it! Nothing has changed. It's up to you. Yes or no?"

The therapist stepped in at that point. Yes, having Laura in the house could be useful. If! An enormous if. If the two of them could manage to be civil in front of the children. A lot of couples couldn't do that, so they should consider the negatives. They might, as the therapist put it, have a short-term "trial non-separation." Neither of them thought the term was funny.

Laura was stricken by the way John had cringed when she had said she loved him. It made her want to hug him and comfort him. She would have in other circumstances. Other ones. Other? Can we ever have other circumstances?

In any event, they agreed to the trial non-separation.

*****

Of course, the kids were ecstatic to have Mommy back home. That evening Laura made dinner and they ate together in the dining room. John and Laura both talked to the kids, but John wouldn't speak with Laura except to ask for the salt or a napkin or some such thing. They all watched a Disney+ movie together, Mommy on the couch with the kids and John on the love seat. They put the kids to bed together. Not exactly together. They each separately put a child to bed, then they changed places to tuck them in and read bedtime stories.

They themselves got ready for bed separately. They would sleep in the same bed for appearances' sake, but Laura got ready for bed first and John stayed out until she was in bed reading. Or pretending to read. He came to bed and pretended to read until it was time to turn out the lights, whereupon they each lay on their respective edges, their backs toward each other.

After a few moments that first night, Laura spoke into the dark, "John? Thank you for letting me come home."

"Sure."

*****

Follow a week or so of this. They were able to be less stilted around each other. Laura tried to start conversations more often, and John would answer her, more or less. More less than more, but it was something. He even smiled at her in front of the children, and one evening they all did a 'group hug,' which made her hopeful. There wasn't much progress with the therapist.

One night after they went to bed Laura reached over and touched John's shoulder. He turned to look at her and patted her hand. He didn't know why he did it. She rose and leaned over him and kissed him and they began kissing and touching each other all over. Out of the blue both of them wanted sex. No, it wasn't out of the blue, except as an overwhelming desire. They stripped, and after several moments she lay on her back and he entered her and they did it, not love-making but not a hate fuck either, just something they both missed and couldn't resist.

Though it didn't matter what you might call it. John couldn't come. He couldn't even stay very hard. He worked and worked at it and was sure Laura had managed to grab some kind of pleasure, but it simply wasn't going to happen for him, so he faked it. Unfortunately, Laura knew how men's bodies responded when that really happened.