All Comments on 'The Luckiest Man in the World'

A sad yet beautiful story. Great job!!!! 5*****

I understand what the husband did and why, but to me. She lied, cheated, put him in jail, dated some dude for 6 months, help turn the kids against him and for what. He died all but alone anyway. Were was the family doing the rest of the time when they turned their backs on him and choose their mother. Where was the love for the father, most kids would have stayed out of it or atleast tried to get them to be civil to each other. One phone call and they turned their back's on him. He cheated, lied or tricked them in to getting mad at him. But he was still their dad. They still abanded him not the other way around.So, where was the luck? Their all sorry now, but what if he wasn't dying? She would be just another lying whore that got over with the help of the court system. And Marge should have been taken out back and thrown out with the rest of the trash. This was just another story that shows the double standard. If he did half of what she did, how many of you would calling this a tear jerker? Like I said it's extremely well written story.

plays out a facade and takes the brunt of the fall-out. TK U MLJ LV NV

If only the site allowed some way to show that a story was truly superior. As an emotional story, this one was tops and the ending was superb.

Thank you.

Viewpoints

Husband : In pain , loves his wife, will forget and forgive anything - so it works from his standpoint.

Wife : Husband cheats, so puts him in jail on trumped up charges and takes him to the cleaners in spite of his actually giving her more than she wanted ( she couldn't take a minute to figure that out?)

Children: Believe that their loving father (and mother's loving husband) of 25 years is an abuser all of a sudden (especially with corroboration from Margie - a woman who was abused and hates their father)

Stupid insurance fraud that costs the taxpayers at the expense of a family that has over a Million in assets!

Life is depressing enough without adding salt to the wound. Now I need an SS06 story to get that smile back. Still top notch writing

Well written.....Love sometimes requires sacrifice.

She was living a lie for half a year. Emotionally, she cheated. Try and sugarcoat this as much as you like. Well written, but made me so very sad. She threw him away.

Not happy I read this. It will linger with me most of the day.

Powerful, exhausting work.

I hope this story does not win because it would be sad to see wimps win. She puts him in jail and they get back together? How can you hate men so much?

nwhaler complained: "Insurance fraud (from a family with more than a million in assets)"

Alan followed the law. If you want to complain about something, complain about the system that is set up to ensure that the health insurance corporations are able to extract every last dime from their customers' misfortune and misery. Complain about how the health insurance corporations are able to blatantly BUY politicians that will craft laws that benefit their corporate masters.

Every day people are forced to spend themselves into poverty before they can get the health care they need. Unlike Alan, most of them have no way to avoid spending their entire life savings.

A very good story. It might have been better the author had done more at the end to show all the locked doors that left Alan with no option but to force the woman he loved to divorce him.

what a load of crap

anyone ? hello mcFly?

as a general rule I never comment Tx Tall Tales because well they are irrational with these massive plot holes. The Husband tells everyone that she cut him and that she is cheating... then says on his death .."I know you never cheated ..."

as she did is cheating,, plain and simple.

As usual I did not enjoy it but it is powerful... It left me with a couple of questions though. Why did she start going out with her friends and lying to him? Why did she kill their sex life? Did he take advantage of these errors on her part or did he somehow provoke it. For a lot of people the simplest solution would have been a bullet....

You led us to believe the wife was a Cheater. and he was getting Revenge with a Hot Hooker only to find out he was trying to save her and the Kids from going down with him.

If he had untreatable, inoperable cancer, ANY insurance plan would cover the cost of hospice care, pain meds, in-home nursing, etc. That wouldn't cost all that much, even if he just paid for it himself. Apparently this guy had plenty of money, more than enough for such care. And being an executive, he no doubt would have had an excellent health care plan. It is not believeable that he would have had to do all this, just so medicare would cover it. Besides, he was apparently too young for medicare, and wouldn't qualify for medicaid. The italicised portions were long and boring, and the remainder was just nonsense.

Very ambitious & artsy ode to true love with flip flops back & forth in time. Ditto on Humvee-sized plot holes undermining story foundation. I'm a romantic but not a blind one. Tx Tall Tales is the master of taking breathtaking calculated risks in his fiction, akin to Patton in WW2. This time he built a bridge too far.

Look for him to rattle off successive coup d'etats, complete with hot ratings in his upcoming submissions. TTT has too much talent to be denied for long.

50

You whole response appears to me like an administrator reaction, not like someone who is/had lived with the strain of caring/watching a loved one waste away right in front of you.

From my perspective Alan made some hard choices to force his family to leave him physically, financially and emotionally. Then he pulled a Houdini trying to make it permanent. Regardless not a bad story ****

I guess some explanations and apologies are in order.

This story was mainly written as an indictment of issues with Domestic Violence and Insurance, two separate issues. I have no direct experience with either, but know people that have had similar outcomes as in the story.

Domestic Violence is a serious matter. It is also currently a big problem for men, here in Texas. After a recent law was passed, any accusation, without any evidence, is cause for immediate arrest. It's become a popular tool in ugly divorces to get the house and children without going through channels. Many women don't understand that once the accusation gets made, even if false in the heat of the moment, it's permanent and can't be dropped. The state will go ahead and prosecute, and if the woman tries to deny it, she can be charged as well, while the original accusation is still followed up on.

A friend's wife had ALS. Its expense exceeded their insurance, and wiped out their savings. I don't know all the details about why it was so expensive, but she did have home care. Once they were broke, Medicare/Medicaid took over (I don't remember which). After the wife died, the husband had to work his ass of to get caught up. I wondered what she would have done, if the tables were reversed. She hadn't worked in nearly 20 years. - Thus a story idea is born.

The apology is for rushing the story. It was written in one long session over the weekend, and was not researched enough. I had an ending I wanted and tried to force the story down that path. Holes in the plot are rightfully pointed out, and are obvious to me in retrospect. It's the second fastest story I've produced (after Football Bet FTW) and the hurried way in which I wrote, edited and submitted it shows.

It's not always clear that Alan was forcing much of the issues, including the lack of sex (which he exaggerates to make a point), and alienation of his family. The issue of him going away secretly when he claims to be on vacation is a hot point that is not addressed correctly either - he was undergoing medical testing and hid it, his wife knows he lied about his trip. He was the sex instigator, and stopped, although she also had turned him down a few times, and he reacted to that, not bothering to ask. Then he avoided it purposely, as part of his 'plan'.

In order for the expense of Alan's treatment to exceed their insurance and money, the disease would have to be long-term, longer than I allowed in this story, trying to fit a timeline. Largest plot mistake on my part. Mea Culpa.

Their family was not wealthy. Middle class. Decent insurance, not excellent. Most of their money was tied up in the home, in 401K (which is where the bulk of the payoffs came from) and stock options. It was their retirement money, which, if used for medical would leave the wife in dire straits, in his mind. Probably wrong, if he had a large insurance policy, which probably should have been omitted as well. Another mistake. (Yeah, I know, I made quite a few in this story).

The dancing being cheating was also probably the wrong way to set this up, but I was writing without an outline and only a shell of a plot. Not a valid excuse, I admit. I got caught up in the fun of trying to trick the reader into thinking there was something going on that wasn't. The gimmick of describing her dancing as something more like sex was fun to write, but probably not the best way to set things up. Probably better off, if I wanted to stick with the dancing issue, to make it a 'girl's night out', that was known about, but he used as hammer. Or something else, I'd have to give it a few more thoughts.

Just a little insight that goes into why this writer does some things, and not always for the best. I had a shell of an idea, started writing, got on a roll. I had 7000 words done before I decided I'd just finish it and get it out of the way, so I could work on other stories that really deserve my attention. As any writers out there know, when the Muse calls, it's never good to ignore her. About 10 hours later I had a story, another hour or two to do edits for grammar and spelling, and then maybe 20 minutes to get it submitted (a pain because each page break kills the italics in the flashback scenes, and I have to go back and add them at the end of the page, and review everything again.) Most of my stories have at least 10 hours invested for each Literotica page. Often more. I have no idea how guys like StangStar can put out a quality story a week. It boggles the mind.

I like the story, and the idea, and it was a fun write. Not as well thought out as it should have been, I'll readily admit. I hope some of you enjoy it anyway, and maybe, just maybe, if I finish the other huge stack of ongoing stories I'm working on, I'll go back and give this one the justice it deserves.

Thanks for all the well thought out comments, and for taking the time and energy to vote and give me additional guidance. Thanks for calling me on a less than stellar effort in terms of plot and details. I appreciate all the responses, yes, including the negative. Without those I wouldn't have reviewed my own work and seen the issues. Hopefully it will make future works better.

Not my cup of tea. I am not sure about the "Loving Wife" category, but I could not find a genre for "Married Morbidity".

on the one hand i congratulate you for doing something outside the box. so much of what we read on here is just the same 5 or 6 stories over and over

but on the other hand this was really depressing and not erotic at all so just from a straight enjoyment angle i didn't like it

i know not everything on this site is meant to be a stroke story but i guess its just not my cup of tea

Wow! So well done. Hope you do well in the contest. You deserve to!

both are way-sideways romances.

Who knew?

Green-something

I can relate to the story as I too have wondered what I would do in a similar situation. I've seen others whose life savings went down the rabbit hole when everyone knew how it was going to end up.

I enjoy reading your stories and can't say that I enjoyed this one but that's not to say that it wasn't good, just that it's like when Old Yeller died. How about writing some of your usual smut to liven up the atmosphere.

Emotionally draining, that one.

Thank you.

Holes and all:)Nice to see in the comments the fantasy that health insurance would cover everything,maybe in,a Mitt Romney's wet dream but not in reality.The biggest cause for bankruptcy is not credit card bills for luxury items,it is medical bills and a lot of those people had insurance so Tex is correct. U

The head of united healthcare made 100 million one year,think how that happened.

Nice job,tex,sad but incredible.

Not much more you can say than that this was a story that showed what true love looks like. A little literary sleight of hand, but it worked. Incredibly sad, but moving. Everybody dies, and what nobody wants to think about when you're young and strong is that there will come a day when that ends. It's on that day that you prove your love. This was dramatized, but in one fashion or another a variation of this story goes on every day somewhere. Really, really good story.

Bravo! And thank you.

Having been very happily married for over 42 years, I can identify quite well with the feelings (and actions) of this character. The story is very well-written. Unexpectedly so!

Though it's really freaking hard to like the main character; he admits that the reason he put her through hell, making her believe he thought she was cheating on him, making her feel at fault for cutting him off when the pain was stopping him from wanting sex, outright cheating on her with a prostitute, breaking up her friendship with her friend who realizes that he is the one at fault, putting the entire family through emotional hell and then cutting them all completely out of his life... That's not even mentioning the way he deliberately put her so far off balance that she reluctantly made a criminal out of him.

.... all so that he can get away with what appears to be a form of fraud? I realize that he's doing it for them, but ugh. It was all a deliberate act on his part, her actions a result of his manipulations.

Terribly sad. Very creative, and a unique spin on the old themes, but the general nastiness of the character all in the name of "doing the right thing" just makes me hate him. The story was great and kept me entertained, so I'll give it a 5.

This is what I was talking about when I say that you've written better stories. This is as good as Gamer Goddess, and more infused with emotion.

I loved the story...life is messy...thanks for crafting this sad story with a happy ending.

what a tear jerker.

I couldn't help but snicker at times at the main character's motives. If only he realised that what his family truly wanted was him and not money, his last moments could've been ones of true peace and contentment. He was a noble fool, but still I admire him - for his conviction, his love, and his self-sacrifice in a way. He knew the predicament his family would face upon his death and still resolved to provide for them, in a selfless but misguided manner.

Tx Tall Tales, as usual you've crafted a tremendously entertaining and compelling story - well done sir. :)

Wimps deserve to die slowly from cancer, or any other dread disease, so that part was pretty good.

So was cuck boy stupid?

Or just a moron?

It's truly sickening to see a non-man go to such great lengths to take care of a cheating whore. I'm not sure what the point of alienating the kids and family was all about, once her affair became known, she would have become the brunt of the ill will and deservedly so!

I've got to wonder when uber wimp Matt Morou moved to Texas and changed his name.

Tx Wimp Tales would be a more accurate moniker. (Really! Is that you Matt?)

I hope you realize those red necks down there don't much care for wimps and pussy boys very much, so try to fool them into thinking you're a man.

You covered all the bases you made the husband look like a real hero. The wife I would have to go along with some of the others even if she was only dancing she was still lying about it and hiding behind the bridge party to get out of the house. if it had gone on it would have lead to something. I would have never believed that she would go out for 6 months with out cheating in the bed room as well. The Killer was cutting him off in the bed room. If she had realy loved him why did she not know how serious his condition was. Hey I liked the story and that what it is a story real life just doesn't work out this well. thanks for writing it.

An outstanding story. Really one of the best shorts I've read here. Keep writing & thanks for sharing!

To Zed0; did you even READ the story?? If you don't enjoy a particular author's style or subject matter, then don't read them. Comments like the one you posted have no value what so ever. I give you credit for being able to spell and construct a complete sentence, and at least put your user name to it (if I had one, it would be here). Perhaps your shriveled little sack will someday grow big enough to allow you to post a story of your own and open your narrow minded, insecure and most likely unimaginative, effort to comment?

You'll win the contest without a doubt!

Sad that he deceived her as he did. Heartwarming that he devised a way to make sure she would be secure after he was gone.

Yes, it was factually fundamentally flawed, but it moved me a great deal and was creatively and beautifully written.

I think the biggest flaw was his decision not to get her into his plan. If they were soul-mates, of course they could have perpetrated the scheme together. Hurting her as he did, betraying her as he did, filling her with anger, pain and guilt (yes, guilt: despite her righteous anger, she felt guilty for sending him to the big house for a couple of days and 'making him a criminal'), was not necessary.

The wife's secret nights out dancing? Not really sure why that device was necessary. Again, seemed strangely at odds with a 'perfect marriage.'

The concept was very good, but perhaps the author bit off more than he could chew with the storyline and characters.

Nevertheless, I was moved and appreciated the upshot. Handled with less skill, the logical disconnects would have irritated me to no end. But, I had to give it 5 stars.

Maybe the only story that I felt really didn't work, but still made a favorite.

Faked me out completely! I kept waiting for some new life to bloom. But damn the government for making choices like this necessary!

One of the only story in general, and only one on literotica, to move me to close to tears. You rock, tx tall tales :-D

very well told.

Didn't expect that ending, I loved it!

I wish I could give it a 10!

Excellent. Saw the ending sooner than I wanted to but a great ride anyway.

AND ALL 0F THIS IN 5 PAGES. AUTHORS TAKE NOTE YOU CAN WRITE AN AWFUL LOT OF GOOD STUFF IN 5 PAGES AND NOT TAKE UP SO MUCH PAPER WITH MEANINGLESS REPETITION. GOOD JOB

Excellent! Most heartening story!!!!

that was the stuff movies are made from....

Yep your story has holes - who cares, you write because you enjoy it and I have to say in the majority of the cases I enjoy the output.

If people want to be pedantic and say where the holes were then let them - but dont apologise please - you put too much into your stories to have them ripped apart for no real reason.

Lets be honest here - they could have easily done this on the sly -

Sit up one evening - over a bottle of wine he lets her know that he has cancer - suggests they plan an irreconcilable divorce scenario, she gets it all and he gets public care. I just dont think it would have had the same impact.

Thanks for your stories mate, keep writing and please igonore the idiots.

sad but great story. I liked the twist of him devising the elaborate plot to pass on his estate to his family in as much tack as possible to avoid medical costs (BIG issue socially). But I most appreciated seeing their marriage in flashbacks over the years. May we all have a storybook love that lasts 25 years and produces a beautiful family, home and career...

' The end justifies the means '

A few holes. She actually did cheat didn't she?

So different from last year. Just as brilliant. Sat here with salty tears falling down my face instead of cunt juice trickling down my thighs.....

I will happily ignore any minor storyline inconsistencies to have a story with believable characters interacting in a believable way. Well done.

Zed0 is a troll.

that is all. :-(

more tears than i shed watching ET

WOW buddy, really wonderful reading. This is one of those stories that will stick to the back of my mind for a long long time. Hope you write many more like this one. This one is right up there at the top with some of the other great pieces on Literotica.

Painfully well-written.

A heart-touching story, but heart-rending too.

I hate that I never saw this one when it was first posted. It is an outstanding piece, which I thank you for sharing. For those who thought it wasn't sexy, I'm afraid you may have limited your own definition of sexuality too severely. To those who thought the medical/financial consequences were unrealistic, you must not yet have had the misfortune to find yourself violated by what I call the U.S. "medical-industrial complex." To those who believe the relationship was unrealistic, you must not yet have had the pleasure of being married for 25 years to someone you adore.

I don't see the fundamental plot holes myself. I caught a few proofreading oversights, but I know they're oversights because you clearly know how to do it right.

Bravo! (and I'm going to go look up more of your stuff!) 5/5

TTT. Still like your writing and stories. This one caught my eye and needed to comment. Gave me lots to think about. For that, as an author, I hope you take this as a thank you for opening my eyes to the need for further estate planning. Would I go to this extreme? Don't know. Is it an option? possibly. I guess in this day and age nothing should be off the table. 5 stars. Thank You!

How many husbands could be this strong? 5* FYI, the financial end is correct. Get diabetes, no more life insurance. High blood pressure, ditto. Heart disease, ditto. Pray you keep your job, or family health insurance goes to $10,000 a year. The Medicare check on finances is called due diligence, and they take everything, including SS. 60% of all personal bankruptcies in the US are due to medical bills and 40% of them had medical insurance. I have told my wife if she finds me dead, make it look like an accident (double indemnity).

Uhhh I didn't cry... Something just got in my eyes a lot

No tears here... just tons of pollen in the air and in my eyes

Fuck you write good for a flatlander!!!!!!!!!

I understand and sympathize with his motivation, but to cause so much hurt and pain for his family, even for a good cause, rubs me the wrong way. Still 4*, wish I could have given 5.

You Americans are really fucked up if someone has to do this because his health insurance is going to screw him over.

cut him off for 6 months. Does not sound like the most wonderful wife described throughout the story

Someone suggested that they could have sat down together and planned it out to look like this instead of actually doing it.

But here is the biggest problem with that;

Then she would have stayed with him because she was too loyal* and she would have suffered through the whole time of watching the man she loved die slowly in great pain.

The sad truth is that this is the smart way.

Until a couples savings are down to $1500 or $2000 Medicare doesn't pay for the nursing home care, and that isn't much for the surviving spouse to live on for the next 30 years or so.

*Normally I would never say that there is such a thing as too loyal, but his plan only works if she breaks completely with him and he loved her too much to leave her destitute.

Why did she cut him off? And for six months?

Especially as loving as they were all the time before

That is the big question.

Other than a symptom of menopause?

But still, why not say something?

As well as they communicated through all the years before, that is a hole.

five stars. Well done. The opening scene with Becca was brilliantly written. I had to re-read it at the end because I was certain she was screwing the guy. Well nuanced.

the bit about her cutting him off sexually was confusing, especially if she wasn't cheating. Menopause I'm sure, but it did need to be addressed.

Also, he didn't actually have to have intercourse to get her to divorce him. If he was willing to go to such complicated measures to handle her finances, he could have easily staged a scene where sex took place. The premise is a bit out there.

Anytime a woman (or a man) does things (dating, dancing, etc.) with someone else and then lies to her husband about it for six months and then cuts him off sexually is a big problem. I guess it's not sexual cheating...yet, but it is definitely emotional cheating. Rubbing up against a guy while dancing and holding him tight is a little over the line. The lying she must have been doing and then to lie about her husband hitting her. That is just too much to take. It was a well-written story and very sad. I felt sorry for the guy, not the wife or children. He did manipulate the children but they ditched him all too easily. Thanks for a very good story.

He was dying from cancer and during the part of the story WE were part of, he was taking painkillers in order to function through some of the worst of it.

The "cutting him off" was a combination of things. She didn't feel like sex after dancing all night. He went off for some form of medical thing (probably) but told her it was business - she knew it wasn't and suspected him of an affair (or at least having cheated on her). It sounds like she might have started through menopause - for once him wanting sex more than her. Then he was making excuses (headaches, upset stomach - which we now know were probably true, not excuses). He was traveling more (maybe medically related?).

He let her think what she wanted - almost needed her to.

And he NEEDED her to both believe and truly act like a woman getting divorced. Does anyone really think a woman married 25 years to the love of her life would have been able to act hostile to him in order to get divorced while KNOWING he was dying and in pain...?

And he's right about the money. Government help would have required they as a couple to basically have NOTHING left before they'd have helped. And in fact depending on the case worker, for instance, if they had $10,000 set aside for medical bills they knew were on their way, the government might make them wait until after that money was gone.

That happened to my mother. I knew she had a lot of bills coming after her stroke and so didn't spend her money on any of her bills until most of them had shown up. To me, the money was already "spent", to the case worker it was money that had to still be gone. Resulted in her getting no assistance for an additional two months. So much for me acting responsibly for her. She'd have been better off if I'd wasted her money.

I did not see that ending coming, great story of love and devotiion!

In the rest of the developed world, universal healthcare would have spared him the need to do this to avoid seeing his family ruined by his illness.

What a heart-warming and at the same time heart-breaking story.

This must be the most heartbraking end of a story i ever read

5*****

So sad. Really wellwritten

Beautifully written and well thought out.

Thank you. Well written and a heart breaker.

Really really good read. Five * I enjoyed it immensely emotional sop that I am

Heartbreaking! You made me cry. Thank you for sharing this with us.

Loved it. Tears. Chills. Sadness. True love. True sacrifice. Thank you.

DAMN, you rocked me with the ending.

I don't know anyone, or even if there is anyone who could be that insightful and thoughtful about their own mortality and so caring of others

To be able to come with such a plot and deal with it so masterfully, I stand in AWE

no matter that I like your work very much

You, Sir, are an excellent writer.

I totally feel with the protagonists here, and my hate grow for a good 4 pages.

How on earth can that smug a**hole throw away a perfect 25 year old relationship just because she went out with her girls?

How can he just plan everything so perfect, being so cold to her?

And then you, Mr. TTT, left me crying, in shambles, and i consider me a man almost unable to shed a tear, just because i can see a bit of me and my wife in Alan and Becca.

You did this thing with my feelings with almost every story i read, you really know how to get a picture in the readers mind going...

I love you for that, and i hate you for being able to play with my feelings at the same time.

Not many writers can do that, and you're not only capable, but really good at it.

Please, keep up with this good work!

great LW story Just say fuck you to annony he's just an old ugly fat fag who can't get anyone but fat old ugly little cock fags to suck off.

I would do this in a heartbeat.

you got to me with that one Scotty

did anyone read page 1 where she was fucking around on her husband???

No, anonoymous

They were dancing.

Just made to sound like fucking, but when you re read it after you find out it was just dancing later, you can see that.

That being said, I just could not handle all the "flashbacks" and I ended up skimming and skipping.

I am not a lazy reader at all. But, it should not have to be more work to read than it may have took to write.

Didn't like it.

That actually made me cry. Incredible story. Damn.

I'm crying!!!!

I knew there was a reason, bjt did not see that coming. Well done tx. A little cry omce in a while is a good thing. Thx

One of the best emotional stories I've read. I cried and felt for your characters. I hope you can write more stories like this where I can feel for the characters and not hate them. Good writing, great characters and terrific plot. You did a wonderful job, keep writing you've got the touch.

This was 'short'? Sorry skipped all the flashbacks, boring as hell.

You made me cry like a little girl! A truly amazing story! Thank you for your work.

Her husband is dying and the cunt is fucking someone else?

Anon 3/23 - You witless wonder; did you even read the story? She wasn't screwing another man, she was out dancing. True, lying about where she was and what she was doing didn't help her case but that's what he wanted anyway.

Several things he could have done different. First he could have talked to her about his condition (cancer I assume) and could have amicably divorced her leaving her everything. If that hadn't been acceptable, hiding funds is always an alternative. Moving everything to the children is another option. Secondly, he didn't have to be screwing Amber every time. Just having her up to the room and lying about what they did would have been enough up until the last time when he knew she was there. Then just being naked with her when the wife showed up would have been enough. Finally, assuming that the medical community would have taken all their money is probably correct, but making the government pay for everything is wrong also. Give as much as you can to the children for their mother's future and pay what medical expenses that you can.

But if all these plans were used it wouldn't be much of a story would it? I might have put it in romance but I understand the need to keep the readers on their toes. Thanks for this heartwarming tale.