On Housing Hunters

Good story, but can't help wondering if he may not have been better off by himself. Julie seems OK but what if she slips up even a little. Not sure he won't walk away again since he was burned pretty bad.

very good story and characters.

Nice to read about a guy who uses commen sense and has some self-respect not to put up with anyone's bullshit. Thanks for the good read.

I would normally rate the story as a 3. I very rarely give 5's. But this one I went to a 4 because I liked the creativity of the plot, thought Tom's personality was well developed so that the ending should not come as a surprise to the reader.

Specifically Tom is forward focused. He's makes it clear he is looking for a life partner who shares his dream and he is willing to negotiate to develop a shard dream. He knows when to walk away from a bad situation. He made it very clear to LaVerne and the reader that he's a black and white kind of guy but if you are true to him and respect him, you'll never have to doubt his loyalty or love.

Many commenters have revealed the loose ends of the story. How did Tom know about the camera man? Who is Mary, was she HIS therapist, or just a girlfriend who happened to be a therapist? What was she reading? What did the comment about "being ditched at a wedding" mean.

I thought the infidelity device actually degraded the story. Tom experienced disrespect throughout the "home buying" sequence. That was the real deal breaker. The relationship was over when she ignored Tom's input and bought the house she wanted. Whether she cheated was irrelevant.

But oddly none of these questioned distracted me from the essence of the plot.

Enjoyed your story, it was a pretty gentle BTB though.

the grammar Nazis etc may be right about things but the foundation of a good story is there. Keep it up and see what happens youll get better like riding a bike or skiing. I do like the fact that the man acted like one and didn't take any shit. I also think you did a good job with showing PTSD without selling it short or overdoing it dramatically. Nice job hands

I thoroughly enjoyed all three of your “Loving Wives” stories. I hope you keep contributing to this category.

You have no understanding of how to write a story. Your writing is like the spoken word not like a story. Your story is very difficult to read. You should just give this past time up for the sanity of the readers of Literotica!

Sorry to say but this story mainly consists of incoherent blabber shit. I really couldn't tell what the story was about. Thumbs down.

My high school buddy was the most fun care free guy you would ever meet... Then Viet Nam happened! He became a pilot on a helicopter gun ship providing cover for medevac helicopters. In his two and a half tours he was shot twice by ground fire and his helicopters were shot down four times. He spent almost more time in the hospital than he did flying. After being shot down for the fourth time it was his psych evaluation that sent him home with four purple hearts and the silver star. For two years he tried to go back to Nam but the military was done with him. While home he wouldn't have anything to do with his former friends, family or anyone else. Another pilot buddy of his told him to go to Louisiana and apply for a job flying choppers out to the oil rigs. He left Seattle in 1970 and has never returned. I have talked to his sister a few times over the years and she tells me he is doing OK but never recovered. War is Hell!

To read about a guy who knew what he wanted out the of life. What seems to confuse your anonymous readers (other than basic reading comprehension) is the idea that someone would choose to be moral in order to get what he wants; a faithful wife. Laverne only appeared to be moral because Tom was. In time, her character was revealed as a manipulative, self-centered bitch that used her pussy as a bargaining tool to get what she wants. To me, the big question is whether Tom was lucky they played house before marriage; and he found out about her true character before it was too late; or would she had just left him if she was unable to use sex to manipulate him.

I was reading along about mid-story, he leaves Laverne and all of a sudden I felt like I was in a completely different story. Then the tangent about the cousin and I was done. This guy has some serious problems. Why would ANY woman want to marry him? In the first half of the story it felt like he wouldn't really talk to Laverne - just throw out bits and pieces but never the whole truth. How is that ever going to be a good relationship? Then, in the second story, he's sharing his inner most feelings with a woman and she realizes how screwed up his head is and STILL wants to marry him? Too many divergent issues in this to have it be a good read. I think there was a decent idea for a story in there, but you just failed to bring it together in any type of cohesive fashion.

Mary is a therapist, does not mean she is his therapist.

Therapists are not forbidden to have relationships or sex.

(It would be really hard to get anyone to become one if they were)

1 out of a 1000 still puts you on the score board. TK U MLJ LV NV

Numerous commenters have mentioned the various issues: the number of lacunae in the story, the dead-end diversions (e.g., cousin Jimmy's castration, the protaganist's inference that mom cheated), the need for better proof-reading*, the totally implausible change of the not quite "ice princess" to a round heeled slut (with I think it was the camerman, but Laverne's ex-husband is also bandied about, so I don't know who she was boinking. (Perhaps both, and maybe the female producer as well?)). Then we have the probably felonious conduct of his therapist, if she is Mary Teresa, his bride, in having sex with him while he's a patient of hers.**

If the author had called this a fantasy, some of this would have been okay. But he didn't. He said it came from viewing one of those home improvement [not] reality shows and a bad mood. Hence the critical comment, referencing what I think is most people's concept of reality.

But the biggest problem for me was the protaganist's total lack of honesty and candor with Laverne. What sort of a scum bum, piece of dirt knowingly lets the wonan who wants to start nesting with him and buying a house for their future, the woman he was looking for to share his life with, buy a house that is going to be worth less than half of what she paid for it in six months because of the new construction of some city center? What an absolute asshole the protaganist is! A lying, deceiving piece of offal stuck to my shoe sole is what he is! There are suggestions (again, not real clear, due to the lack of clarity of the author) that the protaganist is living in the apartment rent free. Laverne, quite legitimately doesn't want to throw "sixty to a hundred thousand dollars" down the drain by paying rent. Does our hero protagonist tell her by staying in the apartment they can save that sixty to a hundred thousnd dollars? (Or whatever discount he's getting? ). No! Not a single word! He just says he doesn't want to buy a house now. Laverne should have dumped the scum bum then! He's the one who repeats the U.S.M.C , "Semper Fidelis". In English, Always Faithful. He wants someone who shares his morals--someone "who knows what the words fidelity, monogamy and honesty mean". He's real honest, isn't he? He was looking for a real partner, so he said. He's a partner who lets her lose her down payment, waste the closing costs, and ties her to a house worth less than what she's contractually on the hook for without uttering a word about the coming drop in price. Absolute vermin is what he is!

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*(I'm not a grammar Nazi, long since having given up on anyone on this site being able to recognize the difference between contractions and possessives ["who's" v. "whose", "it's v. "its"], but when the mistakes are egregious enough that the story stops in the reader's mind and the reader must construct the proper meaning of the words, the story suffers. Some mistakes are so bad they make no sense at all. Anon (2/27/13) pointed out some that cause this. Indeed, the second example ("tacit" instead of "tactic") was so confusing to me I didn't even think the protaganist must have meant "tactic" until I read Anon's comment. I was wondering how a silent understanding or unspoken agreement (the dictionary definition of the adjective "tacit") was being incorrectly used as a noun. The protaganist's sentence structure calls for "tacit" to be a noun (or its substitute, a pronoun). A noun is a person, place or thing. The protaganist's sentence structure is that "it was an unspoken SOMETHING that can be very effective". I was wondering --an unspoken WHAT? So that took several moments (including opening up my on-line dictionary to see if "tacit" had developed a new definition and a changed part of speech. Finally, not being able to figure it out, I moved on with the story. Now I've read Anon's comment and suggestion of "tactic" as the word the protaganist meant. But if that is what you meant to write, that only irritates me more! A U.S. Marine with combat experience who can't spell "tactics"? I'm a U.S. Army veteran, and I know Marines. They can spell "tactics"! That's a star right there.

So spellng and grammar matter to the reader. Mistakes slow down the reader's train of thought, forcing re-reading, reference to a dictionary, and finally, as in my case here, concluding the author didn't know what the, err, hell, he meant to say.

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**Where I live, in Minnesota, sex between a pyschotherapist and a patient (or within two years after the patient-therapist relstionship ends), OR while the patient is still emotionally attached to the therapist; is Criminal Sexual Conduct in the Fourth Degeee; and Mary Teresa is looking at imprisonment for ten years. Minn. Stat. Section 609.345. Our protagonist CANNOT consent to sex with his therapist. The

Minnesota State Legislature took that ability to consent away from him when they created this crime. Since the protaganist sppears to be marrying his therapist, can anyone possibly say he is not emotionally attached to his therapist?