Promise Made, Vow Broken Alternate End

A friend of Bobby's wrote "You bitch! How could you do that do a really good guy who worshiped you the way he did? The guy was completely faithful and totally crazy over you."

The messages went on and on. So much for her thinking that this would just be a one-night fuckfest, and then life would go back to normal. How the hell did she let Jackson talk her into believing that?

Anyway, when I got back to the house later that Sunday, with my rage under control, Traci and I sat down to continue our talk.

She immediately went on the offensive. "How could you possibly be so mean as to subject me to all this humiliation? I thought you loved me." I responded with "How could you possibly have been so mean as to subject me to all the humiliation you did, with no provocation? I thought you loved me."

She came back with "But only a few people knew about your humiliation. You made sure dozens of people know about mine."

I responded with "Yes, only a few people know about mine directly, but none of them were sworn to secrecy. Even without my message, dozens would have known in short order, especially after Asshole started bragging about it. Moreover, you heaped the humiliation on me out of the blue, through no fault of my own. I told people what you did solely so that when we get divorced I will not be blamed for it."

"If you were going to be humiliated when people found out what you did, why did you do it? At the time you seemed sure it was perfectly acceptable. In contrast, I had no choice. I was humiliated because of your actions, not mine."

"But I don't want to be divorced. I love you and only you. I'm the same person today as I was yesterday, ready to get on with our lives together."

"Traci, you sure have a strange way to show you love me, crawling in bed with another man in flagrant violation of our wedding vows -- in violation of a solemn promise that was witnessed by over a hundred of our friends and relatives. Let me tell you, I sure didn't feel at all loved last night. I also made it clear to you that your little fuckfest would mean our divorce. You chose not to believe me."

"Traci, the big problem with the way you are looking at this is that you are thinking only that you have not changed. You aren't thinking at all about how I have changed. I used to love you unconditionally, and I thought you loved me unconditionally. Now I know you don't love me nearly as much as I thought you did, and this has severely damaged my love for you. I used to trust you absolutely, and now I don't trust you at all. You claim that you will never sleep with another man, but why should I believe that? Since you broke our wedding vows so easily, why won't you break any other promises you make now? I used to be confident you would never hurt me or humiliate me or disrespect me, Now I know you will do all of these without a moment's hesitation. Maybe the changes in you don't require a divorce, but the changes in me sure as hell do. Much as I still have feelings for you, I just can't stay married to you the way I feel about you now."

"Moreover, you have changed more than you think. You told me yourself, with starry eyes, that your experience with Jackson was heavenly, the best sex you have ever had. I suspect that if you and I were ever to make love again, you would be thinking of your experience with him and wishing he was in bed with you, instead of me. I couldn't take that."

Later that night I went to bed in the guest room, and she tried to climb in with me. "No way," I said, "No fucking way can I get turned on by you. You'll have to just daydream about your goddam night with Asshole."

She was very upset and surprised by this. "But don't you want to reassert your ownership of me? Jackson assured me that is what you would do."

"Crap, once again you listened to that fucking asshole instead of remembering the many times we have agreed that infidelity is a deal breaker for both of us. He really did brain-wash you. Right now the thought of being in bed with you makes me feel more like throwing up than making love. Moreover, you didn't even use a goddam condom with the bastard, Who knows what goddam fucking diseases [pardon the pun again] you might have."

I had never sworn at her like this before, and she did not take it well. I turned my back on her and went to sleep, but before I drifted off I could hear her sobbing as she went to our marital bed "I really have messed things up, haven't I. In retrospect, it wasn't worth it, not even close. How the hell did I let Jackson talk me into that night?"

By Sunday afternoon two radio stations had mentioned the incident in local news broadcasts, and the local paper had an article about it on their web site, as a prelude to publishing it in Monday's gossip column in the paper. All of these snippets were roughly the same. They stated that home-wrecker Jackson Aloysius Fairchild, local real estate magnate and member of the Board of the Art Gallery, at a party at his house on Saturday had seduced a female employee of the Gallery, a married woman with two children, and took her to his bed Saturday night, walking off with her right in front of her husband. To top it off, Fairchild had assaulted her husband and attempted to choke him to death when the husband complained publicly about what Fairchild had done. Fortunately, in spite of being a much smaller man, the husband had fought him off and put him in the hospital. Dr. Henry Maynard, chairman of the Board of the Gallery, stated that Fairchild had been dropped from the Board and banned from the Gallery for life, for being a sexual predator, and the woman had been fired, for violation of the Gallery's morals clause in her employment contract.

Customers of Fairchild's real estate business started abandoning him in droves. This, on top of his jail sentence, drove his business bankrupt within a few months.

I filed for divorce three days later, on the grounds of adultery.

Traci didn't try to block or even delay the divorce, and she accepted my terms: 50-50 split of assets, and alimony paid to her to achieve equal after-tax incomes between us unless or until she got remarried or cohabited with a lover. However, when the Child Protective Services people viewed the video of our conversation held just before Traci went to the master bedroom with Jackson, with the threats to ruin me financially and turn the children against me, they recommended to the judge that I get full custody of our children, living in the family house, with only limited, supervised visiting rights for Traci. The judge agreed.

However, I badly wanted to keep our divorce as amicable as possible, for the sake of the children. As soon as we left the courthouse I proposed three possible custody arrangements:

(1) The four of us would live in the family house, but with the parents sleeping in separate bedrooms, with no expectation that we would have sex with each other. Each of us could have whatever outside relationships we wanted, but the children could not meet our dates or lovers. We would share the mortgage and other household expenses. With this, our financial situation would be roughly the same as when we were married, at least if Traci got a new job.

(2) We would retain the family home and also jointly rent a small apartment. The children would live in the family home. Traci and I would switch back and forth alternately between the family home and the apartment on a quarterly basis. Whichever parent is living in the apartment would have the children on Wednesdays and alternate weekends. Each of us could have whatever outside relationships we wanted, but the children could not meet our dates or lovers. We would share the expenses of the family home and the apartment. With this arrangement money would be very tight for both of us, although it would not be too bad if Traci got a new job.

(3) I would live in the family home with the children, and Traci would have whatever outside living arrangements she wanted. She would have visitation rights on two weekdays each week (perhaps Monday and Tuesday) and every other weekend. We could each have whatever relationships we wanted, and the children could meet our dates or lovers, as appropriate given the children's ages and sensitivities. I would be responsible for household expenses for the family home, and she would be responsible for household expenses for her living arrangements.

In all cases a week day went from noon one day to noon the next, so that on a school day the children would be picked up after school one day and returned to school the next morning. A weekend went from noon Friday to noon Monday, so when school was in session the children would get picked up after school on Friday and returned to school on Monday morning. The quarters would go from noon January 15 to noon April 14, etc. That would give each parent about half of each season of the year. In each arrangement each of us would have the children an equal amount of time on a yearly basis. Also, special arrangements could be negotiated on special occasions as needed.

In all of these arrangements Traci and I would be expected to be reasonably friendly with each other. This would not be difficult, since we both have feelings for each other, even if I cannot deal with being married to her.

Traci chose (1) -- which is also the arrangement we used while waiting for the divorce to be finalized.

For the first couple of months after the divorce was final I did some dating, and even on one occasion came home at 6:00 AM from a date with the attractive divorcee up the street, smelling like sex (which upset Traci considerably, helping her fully understand for the first time what she did to me when she spent the night with Asshole).

Soon after that Traci told me that with all the text messages and emails she had read on the Sunday after the fateful event, and our conversations and subsequent events, it hit home that what she did was terribly, horribly wrong, and she was very sorry and very ashamed that she had let Jackson talk her into it. She assured me that she would never compare me to him during sex, because just thinking about sex with him made her sick to her stomach.

I didn't make a real connection with anyone I dated, and Traci wasn't dating at all, as far as I could tell, and before long Traci and I agreed to have sex together once a week or so just to get our rocks off, sort of a friends with benefits deal.

Our children thrived in this situation, even though we hid the sex agreement from them. They had two full-time, loving parents who were on friendly terms with each other. We often did things as a family, and we usually went to school events and often to other events as a couple. They slept in different rooms, but were not angry or resentful.

We didn't agree to be exclusive, but that was in fact the case as far as I could tell, and after a while the sex was often more than once a week. The lack of an exclusivity agreement was important to me, since I never did fully regain my trust in her, and I could not deal with always wondering whether she was sleeping with someone else or not. We always used condoms. Nonetheless, our sex got steadily better.

Finally, not long after the children had both left home for college, Traci and I moved back into the same bedroom. (We did not share a bedroom sooner, because we did not want to raise any false hopes in the children that we might get remarried.) We never remarried, and we never formally agreed to be exclusive, even though in fact we were, as far as I could tell. We stopped using condoms with each other, and we agreed to use them with outside partners, if any. (I had to always assume she might be sleeping around on me, so that I would not be devastated if she turned out to be doing that.) We never recovered quite the same trust and closeness as before the fateful night Traci stayed with Asshole, but things became much better than just OK.

We grew old together.

Postscript:

The unconventional child custody options near the end of this story are loosely based on my own life experiences. I was married in 1963, and we moved to the Montlake District in Seattle in 1969. My marriage was shaky at this time and it got shakier. We mutually agreed to get divorced in 1973, and we bought a second house a 30-minute walk away. Our first priority was to minimize the impact of the divorce on our two daughters, aged 7 and 9, so we strove for an amicable divorce, with equitable terms. We split our assets 50-50, with my wife getting our first house and me getting our second house. I was employed full time, and she was just starting graduate school with an assistant-ship, so I paid enough alimony to give us equal incomes. We got joint custody, with the daughters spending equal time with each of us. We remained friendly, although not at all intimate. At first we split our time by weekends and weekdays, but the daughters found that too disruptive, so we went to a quarter system, similar to option (2) in the story. The only difference was that each parent had his/her own house, and the daughters moved back and forth quarterly, instead of the parents. Since we were both working, we had a child-sitter, who went with the children. The daughters grew up happy and well-balanced, and have remained on excellent terms with both of us. The ex and I are still comfortable around each other, although not close. I remarried in 1980, and my second wife and I are still happily married to this day. My ex-wife never remarried, but has been in rewarding, very long-term relationships.