Couples Therapy Vol. 02

My first story was about how I met Rich and how he and I found our connection. This is the story of how I almost lost that relationship, and how -- with a little help from another woman - I managed to save it.

When I started dating, I learned quickly that I had an appetite for sex. I had sex when I wanted, with whoever I wanted. I didn't have sex with just anyone, just who I wanted. I'm sure a lot of guys I met thought of me as the bitch they couldn't get. I was hot, I had my pick of guys, and I didn't give out pity fucks. But I also didn't have the best judgment and I got cheated on. A lot. So I cheated. And that's pretty much how I thought relationships went. Cheating and making up was intense, and the sex that went along with it became pretty addicting. Not healthy, but hot, and I didn't know any better. Unfortunately, even getting together with Rich didn't change me. At least not right away...

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I was living with, well, I'll say a roommate. Her name is Connie, you'll meet her later. I am telling you how I almost blew it with Rich, and the crazy way we managed to stay together. When we started seeing each other, we both worked a lot, we both already had full schedules, and we saw each other when we could. Because of my fucked-up past, in my mind, when a guy wasn't with me, he was with someone else. I had the party-hosting gig in town, and my other gig was doing set-up and product demonstrations at trade shows. I traveled a lot, and Rich traveled a lot for his job. Even though Rich and I were together, I kept doing what I had always done. I slept with other guys when he wasn't around, and I assumed he was doing the same thing.

But with Rich, one thing was different: I started to feel bad about it. (That probably made it pretty intense for the guy I was fucking. I was having some very dirty anger sex and he didn't even know it. I bet there's somebody writing another story about me right now, and it begins something like "You're not going to believe this...")

So, yeah, I felt guilty. I had never felt guilty before. Feeling guilty made me angry. And my angry was directed at him for cheating on me, even though I didn't know if he even was cheating, and I had never told him not to cheat anyway, and it was purely an assumption on my part. I was angry at him because I thought it was his fault that I was cheating, because I had to cheat because I knew he was cheating. I was mad, I was guilty, I was madder because I was guilty, so I did more stupid shit, making me more guilty.

In other words, I was fucked up. But, true to form, when we would get back together after he'd been out of town, the sex was atmos-fucking-pheric. I don't know how to describe it. He heated me from the inside out until I melted. By the time we'd spent a weekend together I was a well-fucked puddle of limp satisfaction. I'm sure it was good for him, too, because, since I was so sure he was cheating, I drained him dry as often as I could when we were together. It was dysfunctional, and misguided, but it was all, somehow, because I cared about him. I just didn't know that relationships were about anything other than sex. And the sex was incredible.

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One Saturday evening I was getting dressed, getting ready to meet Rich, who was coming back from a work trip. I was leaving Monday myself on a trade show trip, so we were going to have two night together. I headed downstairs and on the landing of the stairwell I could see Connie (the roommate) on the pool deck. She was in gym gear, doing yoga. I stopped to watch for a minute.

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This is where I should tell you about Connie. Connie was older than me and had a grown daughter who she had had quite young. She was on her own for years, eventually landing in an office where they recognized some of her talents. She met a guy, they got married, but he was a little older, and unfortunately, he had died. She was alone in a big house, and when I heard she wanted a roommate, it was a win-win.

That tells you a little bit about her, but not everything. She is beautiful. I mean beautiful as in men-walk-into-walls-crash-their-cars-get-slapped-by-their-wives-when-she-passes-by beautiful. I was a little taller, and at age twenty-five a little thinner, and I was sexy, but she was by far the more beautiful. She had that beautiful feminine softness that was both sexy and maternal, if that makes sense. I don't know if guys think of it that way, but that's how I saw her. And she was in great shape, because, (no shade here, guys, but this is the truth) she had not been worn down by men. She was 42 years old with the body of a 28-year old.

Speaking of her body, the story wouldn't make sense without telling you about her body. There's no other way to say this but to tell you her body looked like a man's wet dream. She had beautiful, big, round tits, and a slim waist with hips that curved in a perfect hourglass into a firm, round butt. And just so you understand, when I say her tits were big, they were more than just big. Her tits were huge, and they were perfect. Guys could not help but stare at her. Even Rich flicked his eyes around her body when he came over, and I used to joke about it with him. It was my typical way of disarming my own insecurity, I guess, but the fact is, even though he occasionally looked at her, I never felt an ounce of jealousy over Connie. In fact, I never had any reason to believe (other than my own fucked up assumptions) that he had ever been with anyone other than me since that first crazy weekend.

But I kept up the jokes, and every once in a while, when I was leaving town, I would ask if he was going to be okay, and if he was going to sleep with anyone else, and maybe he should stay at my house. That became a bit of a running joke -- that when I left town, he would ask what Connie was doing while I was gone. In reality, he could not have been sweeter to her. He changed the oil on her car, he changed light bulbs, he drove her to the airport on occasion, and all that time I never thought about being jealous. (Which is weird, because I would have been, and was, ferociously jealous of any other woman he spent any time with. Which also made me feel insecure, and that made me mad, and so on. Again, fucked up. I know.)

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Back to Saturday evening. Connie's doing yoga on the deck, and my phone chirps with a text from Rich.

Rich: Coming over

Me: K

Me: You home early?

Rich: Last night

Rich: Coming over.

That was a little short, I thought. We had planned to meet at his place, which is why I was getting ready. I didn't have much time to think about it anymore because he arrived with a screech of tires in the driveway.

He walked past my hug and said, "Do you have anything you want to tell me?"

"Umm, I want seafood tonight?"

He frowned and turned his head to the side in the way that he used when he was pissed and didn't want to overreact.

"Seriously, that's what you're telling me?"

He started to walk upstairs. I had no idea what was going on, and I waited for him to come back down. I heard him walk to my room, then my bathroom, then start back down the stairs. He stopped on the landing.

I went over to the stairs, and he was on the landing staring out the window. I walked up the stairs to stand next to him. He was looking out at Connie. I purred at him. "She is a hottie, isn't she?"

He sighed an exasperated sigh and he looked at me. "How did you go from that" he punched a finger in the direction of the patio, and then pointed the finger at me "to that? How?"

"What are you talking about?" I walked up the stairs. Connie was doing down dog. "I can do down dog." I still didn't know what his problem was, because I was still in my own paradigm, and all I could think was that whatever this was about, we were going to be in for some killer make-up sex! "Do you want me to show you? Or..." I let me voice get a little low and dirty "...do you want to keep looking at her?" I let me voice drop into a whisper "She does have incredible tits, doesn't she?"

Like I said, we had had a running joke about her for a while, so this wasn't exactly out of bounds for us. And, truth, any guy would love to watch Connie do yoga, as many of my boyfriends had proven over the years. So, I was a little surprised when he didn't take the bait.

He looked at me incredulously. "Are you serious?"

"Well, I know I don't have her curves, but I can totally do down dog!" I was still trying to play this back into familiar territory, and it was still going nowhere.

He sighed and leaned down, both hands on the windowsill. Now Connie was in playful puppy pose, chest and chin to the ground, ass in the air. If I had a cock, it would have been hard. Like I said, she had a fantasy body. But where was I? Oh yeah. Rich. A very pissed off Rich that I had never seen before, and I still didn't know the half of it.

I still thought I could tease him out of it, and I stretched against the wall, sticking my ass out. "Do you want me to go down?" I purred.

He laughed. If I had not been such an idiot, I would have recognized that laugh had a very unfamiliar edge to it. "Yeah, that's it. Get into down dog. Stick your ass out. I used to love that. And I'm not the only one, am I, Kat?"

I looked up at him in shock. He had never ever said anything like that to me. Then he really lost it.

"Jesus fucking Christ Kat! What the hell is wrong with you?"

He had never raised his voice in anger, not at me or anyone else I had ever seen. I still didn't know what was going on.

"You're not going to tell me where you were last night?"

I froze. In slow motion, I realized the big, obvious, blinding fact that had escaped me ever since Rich had saved me from being raped in that parking garage: He was the one guy in my entire life that had been faithful to me. He was my Clark Kent, my literal Superman, and I had treated him like every long-haired pick-up artist asshole I had ever dated.

I sagged against the wall.

"How many fucking guys have there been, Kat? How many?"

He was screaming at me now, and I was cowering, and crying and trying to figure out in my mind how I had been so stupid, and so blind.

That's when we both heard a glass shatter on the floor. Connie was at the foot of the stairs, her face ashen. "Richard..." she whispered.

He looked at her, then back at me, cowering in fear in front of him. He seemed to snap out of his rage.

He walked past me down the stairs, and she reached out to touch his shoulder as he walked by. Then he stopped, and without looking at her, in a ragged hoarse voice, he said her name.

"Connie." He choked back a sob. "Connie, I'm sorry. I have to get out of here."

The front door slammed behind him, and we heard his car scream out of the driveway.

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Connie came upstairs and put her arms around me. "Kat, what in the world is going on?"

I was sobbing. "I fucked up. I fucked up bad."

I told her everything I'd never told her about myself, and about how I had assumed things were with Rich, and what I now thought about what had really been going on, and how I now realized I had been a cheating bitch to the one guy who had deserved everything I could possibly give him.

When I finished, she was crying, too. She looked at me with the worst look of all, the one that told me I really had fucked up, in a way that neither she nor I could fix, and she couldn't even forgive. She looked at me with pity.

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Forty-five minutes later I was cried out and we were almost through a bottle of Beaujolais when I decided I better do something. I picked up my phone and looked at it. I looked at Connie. She looked back at me and nodded. I started to scroll through to call him, and then put the phone back down.

"I can't do it!"

"You'll lose him if you don't."

I started to cry again, and she began to tear up, too. "I can't talk to him now. You do it."

"What?" Connie looked at me like I was crazy.

"He trusts you! He loves you; you know that. And I don't think he feels either of those things for me right now."

"What are you talking about? That's ridiculous!" She was talking a little too fast and blushing a little.

"It's true. He trusts you!"

She shrugged her shoulders, but she didn't say no.

I kept talking. "And you know how much he loves you. He does everything for you already!"

"That's because of you."

"Ha!" I snorted. "If he wasn't dating me, believe me, he'd be more than happy to be dating you! Just like every other one of my boyfriends who's ever seen you!"

Color blushed across her face, and she tried to conceal her smile by taking a sip of wine. She shushed me, but she picked up the phone, and went out to the patio, closing the door behind her.

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I could see her outside, talking on the phone. I couldn't hear what they were saying, but they were talking. That was a good sign. But she came back inside way too soon, and I was afraid it was all over.

"He's at the draft house on Sunrise. He's been drinking -- even before he came over here, I think. I'll call a Lyft, so if he's not okay to drive, we can deal with it."

"Well, shouldn't I come with you?"

"One step at a time, honey. I'm going to try to get him to come back here. He needs to understand some things about you, and I don't know if it will be better coming from me or coming from you. If I can get him to come back here, at least we'll know he's willing to listen."

At this point, anything that kept him talking was probably good, and I was willing to go along. He did like Connie, I hadn't been kidding about that, so it made sense. She was still in her yoga gear, but she didn't waste time changing. She threw on a long sweatshirt and took off.

I was nervous and upset and scared, and I kept nursing my wine while I waited. I had just finished the bottle when I heard them come through the door.

Rich didn't even look at me. Connie led him in by the hand. We'd all been drinking, and we were all tipsy and emotional. She walked Rich right down to the lounge in the basement and poured us all rum and Coke. She gave one to Rich, and then gave him a hug.

"Richard. Honey. You've been great for Kat, and I think she's been good for you. I know how you are feeling. You have every right to be angry and upset. But if I can tell you a few things, you might start to feel differently. And at least, if it's over, you'll understand her a little better."

Connie turned to me. "Kat, I'm going to talk, and you can agree or disagree, or take over if you want. I'll start with this: we don't always know why we do the things we do. There are lots of things that move us in one direction or another."

She told Rich about my parents, how I hadn't really had a good father figure. Then she started to talk about my dating life, occasionally looking at me for verification, and to see if I objected to her continuing. Her explanations started to make sense in ways I mentioned earlier: I expected to be cheated on, so I cheated. I expected relationships to end, so I gave myself an out, another person to move on with. When I found someone I really wanted to be with, my behavior just accelerated, because the hurt was going to be even worse. They were sitting at the bar and I was on the couch. It was easier that way -- I couldn't stand him looking at me during this conversation -- in fact, I don't think anyone made eye contact until Connie started talking about her husband's death. She got a little weepy at this point, and Rich couldn't help trying to comfort her. He was that kind of guy. He just put his arms around her in almost a big brotherly way.

I got up to use the bathroom. I still hadn't figured out what to say, but I knew just apologizing wouldn't be enough. He could accept my apology and still be gone. So I had to somehow do three things: I had to make things up to him for everything I'd done wrong so far, I had to make him understand that I appreciated him, and I had to give him a reason to want to stay.

When I came back, Connie was wrapping up. She had her hand on Rich's chest, she was looking up at him, and telling him how she knew I loved him, how much he meant to me, and how she herself was rooting for us, but it was going to be up to us to figure it out, no one else could make that happen. He was looking at her like he believed her, so that was good, and then they hugged tightly for a long time. I walked in and they both turned and looked at me as I came in. Connie had ditched the sweatshirt somewhere along the line, and looking at her, next to Mr. Tall and Handsome, I got a crazy drunken idea of what to do.

I came right over. Connie started to back out, but I hugged her with one arm, and Rich with the other, so we were all snuggled up together. I started talking into Rich's chest about how sorry I was, and that Connie was right about everything, and I would try to be better. I told them they were the two most important people in the world to me, and how much I appreciated them both.

I told Rich that this has been the best relationship of my life, and I asked him if he knew that. I could feel him nod. Then I went a little further. I asked him if he had been happy, and I felt him nod again. I told Rich how sorry I was, and that I couldn't take it back, but I could change. No one had ever been faithful to me before. I had never been able to trust anyone. I apologized for not understanding that he was better than that, and I told him he had every right to be angry, and that I would make it up to him. Then I asked him if he could have been happy, had I been able to be faithful. He took in a ragged, emotional breath, and nodded. I asked him if I could make it up to him, that if there is anything I could do, I would do it, and did he understand that? He didn't respond, and I told him there was nothing I wouldn't do, and I asked him to please tell me if there was anything he could ask of me that would make this right.

In true Rich fashion, he said something that broke the tension. "Can you let me go to the bathroom, please?" We all laughed, and I loosened my embrace. He went off down the hall.

I poured three more drinks and looked at Connie. She nodded encouragingly.

"You're doing good!" she whispered.

I handed her a drink and guided it up to her mouth. I whispered back. "You have to help me."

"Of course I will Kat. Of course I will. You just need to figure out how to let him give you that chance."

I nodded. "I have figured that out. And you're going to help me." I felt like I was repeating myself, and I was. I was drunk.

Connie nodded at me earnestly. I wasn't the only one that was drunk.

"Come over here and sit down." I led her over to the couch and sat her down. I sat on the coffee table, knees to knees, and took her hands in mine. She was still holding her drink. "I need to give Rich a reason to stay with me, so I have time to prove I can be faithful. Right?"

She nodded.

"Okay. Now, Rich is awesome, he's better than anyone else I've ever met. But he's still a guy, right?"

Another earnest nod. (And another sip of rum and Coke. That was going to help with what I was going to say next. I crossed my fingers.)

"I'm going to ask him to stay here while I'm on my next trip. And you're going to, um, you know, keep him company."

"Okay."

I hadn't expected her to agree so easily. She didn't know what I meant. We were both quiet for a minute. I could hear Rich coming back down the stairs.

I spoke quickly. "Remember when you walked in on us that time?"

"Yes. I sure do." She had come down to this very room once while I was giving Rich a blowjob. I had seen her, she had seen me, but Rich didn't know. And not to put it too bluntly, but she had seen enough of Rich to make it interesting. She nodded slowly, as if she were still thinking about it.