All Comments on 'The List'

The concept of the story is good. The MC tells of his concerns about dating a beautiful woman, things which makes one think if being with a celebrity or a sex symbol is such a great idea.

On the other hand, the writing itself is stilted. There are phrasings such as "list is broken" that gives a feeling English is not the author's first language. This is not a showstopper, but can explain the mechanical nature of the writing. Joe Friday was a great character in the show Dragnet; not so much in a literotica story.

Not saying I could do better, just knowing one's limitation and partnering with someone who can write eloquently may be the way to go. Worked for FTDS.

It was an interesting idea for a story, but narrating everything sucked all the excitement out if it. You had a beautiful cheating wife, a gorgeous damsel in distress, a betrayed protagonist with trust issues, and a set of behaviour guidelines that could lead to misunderstandings and complications for Tom and Ginger. There were lots of opportunities for drama and conflict.

I would've broken this up into a 3 part story. Part 1 would focus on the divorce and Tom getting his heart broken. Part 2 is rescuing Ginger and them getting together as she agrees to his guidelines. Finally part 3 for the curve balls life throws at the newly married couple as the rules are tested.

Sorry, but this reads like a grocery list. There was more passion in the instructions I got for putting my bike together.

It works for me. Only spotted one inconsistency; if she moved in with him, why did he move out and where did he go? Not saying that these are the only things that should be discussed before marriage but considering his experiences with his first wife, a smart move. How to handle money, debts, children, religion and where to live would be in there ideally along with others, but weren't germane to the story. He was correct in that putting the list out there ahead of time and in writing was the correct way to go. Memory can be spotty and selective not to mention down the road things can get nasty when things start to change. He was also correct in the fact that creating the list after marriage would be making demands the way the list was written. They did it the correct way, don't rush into it, don't fight about it, discuss it so each agree with the results as it should be the same for both of them for it work.

Don't know if the author spoke from experience, but I've been there myself. Also the name is missing an 'h', but a tip of the hat to Dean Koontz? Signed: BTW

Godzilla died trying to read this.

a set up wo incisive conclusion. The story just fizzles out after such a wonderful wind up. There was a chance to now continue where examples of near the edge behaviors are explored in the context of "the list". Opportunity foregone, unless other chapters are coming but seeming not.

Pathetic is not strong enough word for your main character!

"I was bitten by a friend's dog. I want to go on a crusader to kill all the dogs on the planet"

PS: I don't think you will understand above statement because fear has large eyes.

(and you probably wont understand PS: either) -1

Welcome to Literotica as an author and thanks for a nice Saturday morning LW story.

I’m wondering if the story might flow better with dialog, instead of the many revisions of the list.

Good luck. I’ll look forward to future efforts.

I was an expat for 20 years and have worked in over 30 countries. I have seen plenty of men road warriors and I am trying to think if I can remember just one guy that didn't fool around while on the road. Nope, can't think of one.

This is a fairly accurate description of what a spouse goes through after being cheated on. They respond in a bit excessive manner, need to find confidence and security, and eventually arrive at something reasonable, hopefully. He was being too insecure, but she brought him to a reasonable place. Everyone knows cheating even if sex is not involved and communication is the key to fidelity. It was an interesting story.

and I think his list is way over controlling and no women in her right mind would agree. But hey as a fantasy I suppose it's ok, I think you wrapped it up far too quickly though.

"1. Never go out drinking with anyone but me. No "girl's night" out with drinking and dancing." - Despite what we see in LW, there's nothing inherently wrong with a GNO, no more than with a GUYS Night Out.

"2. Going to dinner with just women was OK but, limit drinks to two." - I don't see any issue if the men are part of a mixed group. As far as the number of drinks, as long as she (or he) keep themselves under control, the number shouldn't matter. Also some drinks are more potent than others; two of one might be worse than three of another.

"3. Do not take a job with traveling involved." - So, it's okay for him to travel?

"4. No job that requires allot of overtime. If the job changes and requires much OT, then quit." - The only concern is whether a person likes OT or not. If it's concern about OT being an opportunity for cheating, then you don't trust the other person to marry them.

"5. No lunches, or dinners, with just you and someone of the opposite sex." - Does that include hubby, like Mother Pence doesn't allow him to have a meal alone with a woman, if so, okay, but if HE can eat with a woman, she should be able to eat with a man.

The bottom line here, is that it shows distrust of the partner. If a partner wants to cheat, following this list might remove some temptation, and limit some opportunities. but cheat they will. If you can't trust your partner, they shouldn't be your partner.

Welcome to LE with a good story. Anon critical comments are just a waste of your time., no backbone to man/woman up as to who they are. This story was far from anonymous and I liked it.

Only a guy stuck in the 70s would mistrust his wife to insist on something so stupid. The overwhelming majority of women who do the things on the list are 100% faithful in the real world. Almost all the cliches are there. You’re missing she wasn’t allowed to attend Bachelorette parties including her own. Don’t worry, the misogynists who view wives as property will love it.

Control freak looking for a Stepford wife?? Why not just look at a lifetime of one night stands? That way only those you associate with get hurt. Showing a little vulnerability goes a long way.

It was reasonably well-written but rather laborious. Much like the following comment!

The subject was interesting. Insecurity is often a good thing-and a natural instinct which has ensured the survival of the human race. Attempts to reduce it by laws and rules (or lists) are also part of human existence.

This story has a 20th Century feel which may well have a special appeal to males in the more conservative parts of the US or Central Europe. It might be worth their while to mentally reverse the sexes. So men should not go out with their friends/co-workers to any place which might have dancing because it's 'on the cusp of cheating'? And they shouldn't take jobs which involve a lot of travel? And they should tell their (often female) bosses that they won't go to lunch with them regularly because it upsets their wives. Get real!

The fact is that the ship has sailed. The majority of business school graduates are women, the lower and middle ranks of many large companies are filled with women managers. It's only a matter of time before the senior ranks will be too. The story would have a more realistic contemporary feel if Ginger had been a mid-level manager rather than a secretary, if she had been earning more than him and if both the MO and his wife had taken time off from work to help raise the children. It would also have highlighted the tension between insecurity and trust in the modern world. In spite of the author's efforts the final version of the list just doesn't resolve it.

"She moved in." was followed just a couple of paragraphs later by, "I moved out." A couple of paragraphs later we get, "We moved back together..." Doesn't say where this time.

This type of error leaves the reader thinking that this was a) thrown together in haste or b) not reread for errors or c) just thrown together on a whim without much real thought or effort. The reader will remember and may not read you again.

Not a bad effort, but definitely 'can do better'. Try, try and try again!

Hi tomas,

Like others, I want to welcome you as a new author. Hopefully, we will see a lot more of your writing. As I am far from being a writer, myself, I always hesitate to give others advice; however, I would like to make a suggestion. As The Style Guy mentioned, stories with dialogue are always more interesting. Your readers get to know the characters that way.

This category is always contentious so don't take any nasty comments to heart. I agree with TheStyleGuy and LaptopWriter that dialog would make it better. Maybe there is a good opportunity to read helpful comments and do a re-write?

.

Either way, I always appreciate someone taking the time to create a story to try and entertain me, for FREE.

Nice to see that your female character is a real woman. She is willing to understand the male character's concerns and fears, but she is not subservient. She wants to be an equal partner in their relationship.

You need to marry someone else. That list person is too much of a control freak. Not much of a loving wives story since it's all about his bachelor days.

3 stars

Water, water please...... I'm so dry after.. this... story 🏜️.

Thank you for the effort, I'm

AMerryman

but interesting. There are certain attitudes that should overlay a secure marriage.

1. You cannot marry out of your league. I don't think I could live with a celebrity or a sports star, but that has to do with life style and values, not worth or class of person. If you think your spouse married beneath his/her self then you already have a weak marriage from the start. You should think you are damn lucky to have your spouse, and your spouse is damn lucky to have you. If your spouse leaves you for another then it is their loss, not yours. You're better off without such an impetuous or short sighted person.

2. Lack of communication or miscommunication is lazy, and may be cowardly. If you have a concern or perception, voice it and clarify it. Allowing an issue to fester is not an act of patience, it is avoiding and most likely worsening the inevitable.

3. Love is not blind, in fact it bestows x-ray vision. If you turn a blind eye to a problem you deserve it, and may be enabling it.

4. Marriage is difficult, challenging, and sometimes messy, like child birth. But if you want the experience you have to be ready to do the work. You don't know if a marriage has been successful until it ends, one way or another.

Good luck. And thanks for the effort.

You have a good idea here and a decent, if a little stiff, story. Listen to advice from Style Guy and Laptop writer. Those two are very good at this writing thing and can help you.

Maybe the Non-erotic category would have worked better. Thanks for sharing.

Good story!

5

... and a year later I caught her fucking the gardner!

The list is an interesting concept but doesn't quite pick up the ways women cheat. The majority of women have cheated on their husband (ex or current) at some time. From my own experience the ones that cheat are the ones that do not go out with anyone other than their husband. One wife I knew was allowed out for a meal with colleagues but had to be home by 9pm, she had to stay sober so she would drive and hitch up with one of us men over the meal and have sex on the way home. Another wife never even did this and worked set hours, her husband managed every hour she was not at work but we all still had sex with her as she would have a quick lunch with one of us in our car or would take us to the store room that she had the only key for, her husband would pick her up from work thinking she could not cheat but she must have had 10 of us. The greater the barrier the greater the motivation to break the barrier

This dude has issues. Like serious control issues. Good lord.

Entertaining story and understandable from a person who was cheated on . I’m not so sure if an educated smart woman would accept a list of rules but he did say they apply to him also. I could see how a woman would. Be pissed but you can understand his fear also . The eating together and getting close to the opposite sex would not be ok for me . Also any person I knew that travels for work was fucking often .also where the work dinner and drinks with anyone who is friendly, easy to get along with and in those times would start to share conversations about there lives . It becomes easy to cheat and also being away from home harder to get caught. Guys tell me it’s 100 easier to fuck coworkers when you travel and the hotels they stay in are packed with people traveling also and looking to fuck. One example a guy I knew traveled often and one woman from his company on g th he opposite coast would only be attending four quarterly trips a year and she was beautiful much older and with the company a long time and explained she enjoyed herself in a safe travel work environment for many years . He loved fucking her and he did say how great her hubby was and always went on about her family. Meanwhile four times a year he was fucking her for the four to seven days there. He also said it was great , he was as young or younger than her kids and let him control the flow which he was rough , dominant, very verbal and as wild in the bed with her as you could think of . He would say sometimes after waking up to a blowjob and relaxing she might talk about her family which he asked occasionally if the marriage was great and she was so in love with hubby than why cheat which she never gave a real answer for but this does go on even when the marriage is good so the topic in this story can be relatable to many. He did meet her whole family one time when she was getting an award. He sat with them and said they were great . The two sons were very friendly, the two daughters were hot and one was trying to hook up with him and the hubby was great, easy to talk to , friendly and he almost felt bad when he was fucking her ass when she snuck to his room the next day . Also dinner that night he told her was going to be fun knowing she had his load in her pussy , ass and mouth . He told her to think about that as he talks with her hubby because he will . He did turn down the daughter telling her it would be disrespectful to her mother with no chance of a relationship with the distance they have in where they live and she said that just makes me want to fuck you more for being such a good guy . This is just one guy and all traveling are fucking mostly married e we woman and this isn’t including the normal fuck fest that go on in big corps through out

more babble from the babblingbrooks.

Is prepared for the worst. I was in foster care for 13 years. I started life with a list of what I didn't want. That was pretty weird for me. But since I had so many influences I knew what I wanted and didn't want.

I'm glad it worked in the story. Marriage is trust and that says it all.

Shame she didn't provide her own list with

List 1 He must wear a cock cage wheb not with her.

List 2 He must always suck her bull's cum from her snatch while it is fresh.

It’s easy to look at the narrator’s list and criticize the man for being a controlling misogynist, but that’s really missing the point, which is the man simply wants to avoid being hurt. Call it selfish if you like, but it’s a fairly universal need in all living things.

A few salient points: He understands that he expects the rules to apply equally to both spouses. He intends an agreement which protects the marriage, not the individual. He’s also willing to negotiate. The list wasn’t written in stone; it’s a tool that by necessity creates dialogue.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with telling a prospective spouse what your expectations are, whether it’s children, social behavior, or finances - whatever. Anyone who has been in a marriage or long term relationship and gone through a painful breakup knows that a lot of that pain could have been avoided with a better understanding of each other’s needs and expectations.

So, for me, I like this story despite its varied faults because it does demonstrate the value, and quite possibly the frustration, of discussing things that a lot of people assume are “just understood” and aren’t entirely comfortable with exploring. Hate the story if you want, but the underlying message is a valuable one and any intelligent partner, the woman in this instance, will appreciate the honesty much more than feel offended by the so-called demands, which were not demands at all.

I have seen, and I’ve even written expanded stories, essays, and articles based on the major themes presented here. Call it my fetish, but the dynamic of interpersonal negotiation, specifically the emotional investment required of demand and sacrifice, is always a fascinating one for me and something I quite often deal with in my professional life.

Nice story, good job, thanks for sharing it with us.

Fly in fly out worker.

2 hrs on a jet plane to a remote mine site.

84 hr working weeks.

Away from home more than half of the time.

Totally knackered the 1st few days back.

Still it's good money.

I enjoyed this story. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Looking at the previous comments, I wonder how many actually paid attention when reading the story. When he gave her the list, he said it would apply to BOTH of them. She brought up marriage, so he ACTUALLY communicated his concerns based on previous experiences and told her what behavior would cause him to seek divorce. He even discussed their feelings on the list together and was willing to make compromise. He sure sounds like a childish insecure misogynistic tyrant to me.

Enjoyed

jtwheels

If a woman can have standards why can’t a man

If more couples were upfront about the list issues and a few others, there would probably be less heartache and divorce. 5 stars.

is creative. Now he needs to learn how to write dialogue and flesh out his excellent plots more. If he can learn to write more fluently, this author will be among the best here.

Well done.

Of course there are more rules in a marriage

than this list includes.

But these are important rules

and well delt with in the story.

Still, the focus on the rules

made the story a little flat.

4 out of 5 from me.

Good story and I enjoyed

A short , but, good story. In fact, a good life lesson story. Well Done!

-

Pasqual

Very good idea its amazing how many people on this site forget about the small things while being married.

Well dumb. Yes thats not misspelled.

Imagine if a woman wrote a story where she demanded the shit this dumpster fire had in it. The collective Alpha crying would break glass.

Most of the "reasons" this witless wonder used to make sure she didnt cheat only apply to the moronic low IQ'ed folks who think what they read here are "factual". We can all agree that far too many actually do. If you think Im wrong just remember according to this sight 98% of women cheat and all men are fucking angels, unless its the guys the cheating bitches are fucking. Correct me if I am wrong.

Great story showing what should be expected in a good marriage. As indicated in the storyline the marriage was warm and loving to the very end with neither ever crossing the line as laid out in the list. Well done 5 stars

She was 30, unmarried, and wanted children. He could have demanded almost anything.

Sorry but any relationship that is dependent on some list is doomed. How can someone be so controlling to put such limits on another and expect the relationship to flourish? Sounds like he would sit around and just wait for a reason to say "Aha I knew you would do that' and then rush off to the lawyer.

Story was fine. Compromising on the theoretical was fine. Story format not so hot. Felt like sitting through a PowerPoint presentation or reading a spreadsheet.

3 Stars.

Strong bond strong marriage that's what my wife and I tried to have. However, the 90's happened and I was gone two years from our home, family, and marriage. It still has not fully healed and we are approaching 54 years of being together, not all happy however. Infidelity was not an issue. I believe. Being along with two teenage girls was, and while my paycheck was here I was not.

It read a little bland. The list was never crossed. Where is the drama that a good story requires?

@phil - believe it or not, some of us like happy end LW stories that don't have nasty drama, and to read about reasonable women who value their mate. Real life has more than enough drama :)

@iameasel - women don't need this shit. They have a whole state-supported injustice system, where if a husband cheats, they can divorce him easily, take his kids (if any) and most of his money AND future income AND home, and live an easy life and find a suitable replacement if they want to. In other words, their spouse cheating isn't the end of the world for them - painful, emotionally, but not Armageddon level.

Whereas if a husband is cheated on, the same injustice man hating system would STILL give most his money, the kids, future income, and house to the cheating wife in case of a divorce. in other words, he's not only facing JUST the risk of emotional damage that both sexes do regarding cheating; but he now is faced with two equally disastrous choices - live a horrible "married" life with a cheater who doesn't love him and doesn't respect him and has no issues hurting him; OR, have his entire life destroyed including losing his kids, in a divorce.

So yeah, it's a lot more important for a man to have such a list. Oh, and just to be clear, the non-job parts of the list are fully fair for both sexes and I'd consider any man refusing the non-job ones to be an asshole I'd advise no woman to marry. But again, for job ones, we have unfair advantage to the women. They have the freedom to have amazing career if they want to; OR; to marry someone well earning and not need to work hard. Whereas if a man isn't earning well, he can't even usually land a girl to marry; and often if he doesn't earn he risks her leaving him for greener pastures - with same disastrous consequences for him in divorce as I mentioned above. In other words, for a man working late and sometimes travel are not optional luxuries for self-actualization like they are for women, but immediate necessities a lot of time.

And yeah, for all the whiners out there in comments, I'll echo earlier comment from @omegaman - women, especially modern ones, have inhumanly high standards (for those not up on the current culture, google what "three sixes" are for women as far as mate choice); **most of which are actually extremely superficial and selfish and shallow** as far as standards go. But the moment a man's standard is "don't cheat on me" it's somehow being "evilly controlling mysogyny" from the snowflake set.

"women, especially modern ones, have inhumanly high standards ..."

Oh please, like any of these commenters know what most women think or even the typical woman....

LOL

Might not have been too bad a story if there had been some dialog included. As it is, the story is more like a list on the community laundry room wall; do this, this and this but don't do that, them make sure this is done and on and on. I might have missed it but was there any romance in the story? Kind of left a dry taste in my mind.

Once a week one-on-one lunch dates with the opposite sex is WAY to much, esp. if it's the same person.