Do You Trust Your Wife?

Many thanks to whoredinarygirl for all the hard work in editing and improving this story.

*****

I didn't do anything wrong. That's what I kept telling myself as we were walking to the car. Sheila was the one who had made a spectacle of herself with Harry.

When I saw him squeezing her ass with his hands while they were dancing and she was rubbing her crotch against his, I should have gone up to them and pulled her away right then and dragged her to the car. But I was so stunned by the sight that I was paralyzed.

The reason I couldn't believe my eyes is that I've always trusted Sheila. It was one of the things that made me serious about her. Soon after we started dating, she told me trust was one of the most important things in her life. Like me, she had been deceived a few times, and she didn't take well to betrayal.

That's putting it mildly. She was almost rabid on the subject. We both agreed that cheating was despicable whenever the subject came up throughout the years, always in discussions about other people - friends, family, co-workers. But I took the position that nobody was perfect, and if someone lapsed once, deeply regretted it and never strayed again, it wasn't the same as someone who schemed and cheated for months or years.

For Sheila, there was no difference. "It's a matter of trust," she always said. "If you trust someone completely and that trust is broken, it can never be the same again. I completely understand how the shock of betrayal can send the most reasonable person over the edge to take a horrible and violent revenge on the cheater, even if it means a prison term. That's what I would do."

I didn't get frightened when Sheila spoke these scary words because, first of all, she spoke them in her charming, lilting voice, which she hardly ever raised. Secondly, I knew there was no way I would never cheat on Sheila, so her reaction was speculation to the extreme.

I was certain the reason Sheila was carrying on with Harry at the company party was her reaction to seeing Scarlett and me. Reaction is the wrong word, because she overreacted. She didn't see me do anything wrong. She reacted to what she thought she saw. I wanted to explain that it didn't mean what she and the others thought it meant, but she never gave me a chance. Her emotions took over and destroyed her trust in me.

When she was hired as my executive assistant, I had the office manager talk to Scarlett about appropriate dress because she didn't seem to have a clue about that, even though she was smart about everything else. She saved my ass so many times, I can't even count them, and Sheila had to admits that she owed Scarlett a lot for my rise up the corporate ladder and the lifestyle we're living.

The first time Sheila saw Scarlett, it was as if they were two lionesses in the jungle interested in the same male. And this was after Scarlett had begun wearing expensive business suits that hardly showed an inch of skin. The trouble is that no matter how nicely a suit is tailored, it can't hide the fact that Scarlett is one of the hottest women on the planet.

So is Sheila, but not in the same way. She looks plenty sexy, but not like she's ready to jump you if you just ask her. Scarlett is not like that either; she just looks like she's dying for sex, like a model in a beer commercial. She's never tried anything with me, even though she knows me almost as well as Sheila and is as fiercely protective of me as my wife. The night of the party, Scarlett was still suffering from a bad breakup with a boyfriend she had been with for more than a year.

She had told me she thought he was the one. I wanted to say something when I met him and realized he was a self-centered jerk and was probably using Scarlett to show off. But it was an unwritten rule that Scarlett would not advise me on my marriage and I wouldn't comment on her social life. We both knew those kinds of discussions could become dangerous.

She must have been feeling hurt and unattractive when she chose her dress for the party, because it wasn't much of a dress. I mean, it was bright red and clingy, but there wasn't much to it. I mean, there was so little material on top that she was falling out of it, and it was so short that everyone at the party quickly knew that the color of her thong matched her dress.

I wasn't the only one who stared at her. So did every other man there. And every woman, too, except they didn't stare, they glared.

Maybe seeing Scarlett dressed like that made Sheila have an extra drink or two. Or maybe it was something one of the other wives said to her, or something she heard one wife say to another wife while they were looking at Scarlett.

As bad as it was, I don't think it would have been a disaster except for what Scarlett did. We were both at the open bar at the same time and we were talking while we were waiting for our drinks. After we got them, we walked away together continuing our conversation. I can't even remember what we were talking about.

We ended up by a wall and I was leaning against it sipping my drink, as Scarlett stood facing me holding her drink. She was close to me but not that close. Nothing was touching, except...

While we were talking, I suddenly became aware of Scarlett stroking my arm. I hadn't noticed immediately because I was wearing a dinner jacket. She noticed at the same time and said, "Oh! Sorry!" and quickly snatched her hand away. She looked away from me, and her eyes scanned the room. So did mine. Every eye was on us.

We both saw Sheila at almost the same time. The look on her face was a mixture of anger, pain and humiliation.

I turned to Scarlett and said something. Two days later at work, she told me I had said, "I have to go to Sheila right now." I turned back toward Sheila and began walking quickly to her, except I didn't see her anymore. I didn't see her for the next 45 minutes even though I kept walking around the large, crowded ballroom.

I was back where I had been talking to Scarlett, leaning against the wall again but with no drink this time. I was scouring the room for Sheila. The band was playing at the other end. I saw two women looking at me and talking. When I looked at them, they turned around and walked away. A moment later, two other women did the same thing. After the third time it happened, I left my position and began circling the room again.

When I got to the dance floor, I saw them, and I saw everyone - at least it seemed like everyone - looking at them and then looking at me. I watched as the dance ended, and then I walked toward them. As soon as he saw me, Harry said something to her and then walked quickly away toward an exit. I glanced at him for a second but then my eyes stayed on Sheila.

She stood stiff and straight as I approached her. She said nothing, but her eyes spoke for her. I saw the same hurt, angry, embarrassed expression as before, but now there was also defiance. Her arms were tight at her side. I reached for her left hand. She didn't give it to me, but she didn't move it away either. I grabbed it and said, "Let's go," and began walking.

She almost fell over as I pulled her. But then she recovered and began matching my pace. She was looking straight ahead, so I didn't see her expression. The crowd parted for us, and we were soon out of the room. When we got to the elevator to the parking lot, she ripped her hand out of mine. She stood next to me silently.

As we walked to the car, I kept telling myself I didn't do anything wrong. At work on Monday, Scarlett told me that when she had been with her former boyfriend, she used to stroke his arm like that wherever they were, and he liked the attention. She said that she must have been wishing he had been more like me and out of habit she had begun lovingly stroking my arm without thinking. She was crying as she asked whether she should call Sheila and explain. I told her that might do more harm than good. Maybe I should have let Scarlett make that call.

Sheila said nothing when we got in the car, but she began talking when we left the parking lot.

"Everybody knew," were the first words she said, and she almost spit them out. "They could all tell what was going on."

I was strangely calm. Later, I thought that maybe if I had been more angry about her and Harry, it might have been a better response. I guess I was still in shock over what I had seen.

"What was going on?" I asked.

"You are having an affair with Scarlett," said Sheila. "The way you were behaving with her, it was obvious to everyone. They all felt sorry for my humiliation."

"I don't care what everyone thinks," I said. "I care what you think. You saw us talking, and now you think I'm having an affair with her."

"You were doing more than talking," she said. "You were touching."

"Tell me, where did I touch her?" I asked.

"Don't twist my words,' she said. "She was touching you, and you didn't stop her. Are you going to deny that?"

"I'm not denying anything that happened," I said. "I know that she was touching the sleeve of my coat with her fingers. I didn't notice it until she pulled her hand away. It couldn't have lasted more than a few seconds."

"A few seconds!" Sheila spat out. "Those few seconds gave you both away. No woman touches a man like that unless she knows him intimately. So you don't deny it. You admit you're sleeping with her."

"Listen to me, Sheila," I said. "I don't deny anything that happened. That never happened."

"Liar!" She screamed and turned toward me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her hand raised as if she was about to slap me. But I didn't react to the threat. I just stared straight ahead at the road. She put her hand down.

For a while we drove on in silence, until I broke it. "Sheila, do you trust me?" I asked.

She didn't answer for a while. "I don't know," she finally said quietly. Her voice was no longer angry. It sounded sad and resigned. I liked the anger a lot better.

"We've been married for sixteen years," I said, "and I've trusted you, and you've always said you trusted me. And then Sheila strokes my arm, and you no longer trust me."

Sheila didn't say anything.

"Where were you for 45 minutes while I was looking for you?" I said.

She still said nothing.

"Were you with Harry?" I said. I thought that might get an angry response from her, but she stared through the windshield and said nothing.

"Why was he massaging your ass while you were grinding into him?" I asked.

She didn't respond to that either. I stopped talking, and it was silent for a few minutes. Then she spoke. Her voice was no longer soft and resigned. It was hard as steel.

"Do you trust me, Sheldon?" she said.

"I've always trusted you," I said.

"What if you found out that Harry had gotten a room at the hotel tonight and took me there so I could recover from finding out about you and Scarlett?" she said.

"Is that what happened?" I said.

"What if Harry comforted me?" she said.

"Are you telling me that you went to bed with him?" I said. I tried to keep my voice calm, but I was about to explode.

"Do you trust me?" she said. "If you trust me, I don't need to answer that question."

"That's not good enough," I said. "Now you're playing games with me. You've never done that before. Why are you doing this?"

"There are a lot of things I've never done before tonight," she said. "I was blind before tonight. Now my eyes are open. Everything's changed."

"So you're throwing away sixteen years and two children because Scarlett stroked my arm," I said.

"I didn't say that," she said. "All I said was that everything's changed. Have you forgotten that we've had this discussion many times about other people? I know you think if the husband makes one mistake and never repeats it, the wife should forgive him.

"And you know that I think the wife is justified in doing almost anything she wants to punish her cheating husband."

"Is that what you were doing with Harry," I asked, "punishing me?"

She ignored my question again. "Our disagreement is irrelevant in this case, Sheldon," she said, "The way she touched you - that doesn't come after one night. That's a caress that a woman gives a man she's been intimate with many times. So even if I went along with your idea that one time doesn't mean anything, you've still destroyed my trust."

"I agree," I said.

"You agree?" she said.

"Yes," I said, "if I ever have an affair with Scarlett, which I never will, your trust in me would be destroyed. If you have an affair with Harry or anyone else, it would be the same."

"You're still trying to twist out of this," she said. "What if I only did it one time with Harry? You said you'd forgive me if it was only one time. Do you still feel that way?"

"You're the one who's twisting my words," I said. "I never said that the husband or wife who cheats gets a free pass. I said that one mistake shouldn't destroy a marriage if the couple deals with it and it never happens again. I'm not going to forgive what you did with Harry just like that. You're going to have to prove I can trust you again."

Sheila burst into laughter. It was not her usual happy laugh. It was a bitter, hysterical laugh, but it wasn't fake. In fact, she had to hold her sides because it overwhelmed her.

When she calmed down, she said, "What did you see me do with Harry, Sheldon? Did you follow us to his room? Did you sneak in from the balcony and watch us? What did we do? Did we take off all our clothes? Did we do it doggy style? What did you see?"

"You know I didn't watch you," I said. "I don't want to know the details."

"But I want to know all the details about you and Scarlett," she said.

"There are no details," I said.

"Yes," she said. "I should just trust you, shouldn't I? Would you trust me if I told you that Harry and I didn't do anything except what you saw?"

I didn't answer right away. Finally, I said, "I wish I could say I would trust you if you told me that. Maybe if you had told me when we first got in the car, I would have trusted you. Now I don't know.

"I can't go back in time. You've said a lot of disturbing things tonight. And you're still asking hypothetical questions. You've never said that you didn't do anything."

"You know me, Sheldon," she said. "You can trust what I did the same way I can trust what you did." She began laughing the bitter laugh again, but she stopped when she saw I was pulling into the garage.

We both looked at the children sleeping, and then I took the babysitter home. When I got back, Sheila was in bed, and the bedroom was dark. I couldn't tell if she was awake because her back was to me. When I got into bed, I thought I felt her body shaking, but I was scared to touch her because I didn't want to continue the earlier conversation.

When I woke up the next day, she wasn't in bed. I dreaded going downstairs, but it turned out to be the usual Sunday whirlwind of church, kids' soccer and a picnic dinner with two other families. There was no time to talk. I watched her to see if I could tell whether she was affected by the night before, but I couldn't tell.

Monday morning was the same as always, getting the kids off to school, grabbing a quick bite and rushing off to work. I looked at Sheila a few times, but I couldn't tell what she was thinking.

A few days went by, and I still couldn't tell, except I was able to see that she wasn't happy. She was avoiding me as much as she could, and she was too enthusiastic about everything the children were doing. When they weren't around, her smile turned to a frown, and her enthusiasm disappeared.

She had been so emotional the night of the party that I was sure she would bring it up again, but she never did. I thought about bringing up Harry, but I decided not to for the time being. I went back and forth in my mind about what she did. In the end, I decided to trust her.

I guess that's what you call it when you make up a story for your wife. She saw me with Scarlett, she misunderstood Scarlett's gesture, she was mortified and angry and drank too much, she went some place to cool down, with or without Harry, but she never did anything with him. She told him to grope her while she rubbed against him to get back at me. That's what I wanted to believe. So I believed it and trusted her, even though we never talked out it.

It sounds like we began living a marriage of convenience, but nothing could be further from the truth. Within a week, Sheila stopped frowning when I was around. For a while, she still stayed away from me as much as she could and focused completely on the kids. And we didn't make love.

Gradually things got better. I can't remember when we finally had sex again, but I remember she was the one who approached me. A few months later, it seemed that our marriage was better than it had ever been. Our house was full of love, and not just for the children.

We had always gotten along well despite our differences in temperament. Our occasional fights were never bitter, and we didn't stay mad at each other very long. Now we weren't even arguing. I felt nothing but tenderness, passion, consideration and gratitude beaming at me from Sheila, and that made me love her more than ever. She tried to outdo herself for me, and I tried to top her by doing things I knew she would like. I wasn't doing it for anything in return, but that seemed to drive her to do even more for me. I was in heaven.

Our sex life was better than ever, too. We had always enjoyed each together, so it was hard to put my finger on it at first, but Sheila seemed to have become even more enthusiastic - and more imaginative. She came up with some wild stuff. Some of it was a bit too far out for me, but usually her ideas got me really turned on. When she saw that I enjoyed what we were doing, it seemed to make her so happy that it made me even happier.

In my mind, there were still shadows. Sometimes I wondered whether what she was doing might be out of guilt for having had sex with Harry. Or I wondered whether her newfound interest in expanding our sexual boundaries might because she still thought I had had an affair with Scarlett and wanted to make sure I would never again go out of the house for satisfaction.

When I thought back to what she always said about everything being different once trust had been destroyed and how the victim of sexual betrayal was justified in taking a terrible revenge, I couldn't reconcile those feeling with what was happening in our lives. So I believed she must have decided to trust me like I decided to trust her.

Nevertheless, since we had never talked about the party after we got home that night, I felt that it was still hanging over our heads. I thought about it sometimes after we had great sex, and I thought about it sometimes at the office when I looked at Scarlett or saw Harry, who seemed to be nervous whenever I was I in the same room as he was. I wondered whether Sheila was putting on a great act and screwing Harry in secret to get back at me for what she thought I had done. But if she was revenging herself on me, why would she keep it a secret?

I wished we could talk about what happened and resolve it. I was sure it would make us even happier to air things out. But she seemed so full of life and so happy that I hesitated to bring it up and spoil her mood. Just because I wouldn't let go of my worries, why drag her back into thinking unhappy thoughts that she had decided to leave behind?

In time, my nagging doubts bothered me less often. Life with Sheila and the kids was good.

One of the things Sheila introduced to our sex life was role playing. She never told me if she got the idea from a friend of hers or some advice column on the Internet. She was as busy as always with the kids and volunteer work, but she seemed to be have time to find things on the Internet, too. She told me that's where she came across some of our new sexual variations. I used to look at porn on the Internet, but after Sheila and I were married, I stopped - not because I thought it was wrong, but because sex with Sheila was so satisfying that I was no longer interested. Now she was interested. She told me that she only looked at things that she thought she could adapt to our lives.