Try Walking in My Shoes

"You know, Tina, these overnight bags really suck," I said on a Tuesday morning while she was packing her stuff before she went to work.

"Yeah, I know. Packing this stuff is a pain and I keep forgetting something all the time."

"Look, there is enough room in my closets."

"What?"

"See?"

I led her to my walk-in closet and showed her how pitiful my few clothes appeared in there.

"I still can´t get my head around the sheer size of this thing."

"Yes, there´s plenty of room, even for the wardrobe of a beautiful woman."

"Umm, Tom, are you asking me to have some stuff at your apartment all the time?"

"Yes."

She was smiling brightly. "Deal."

"Really?" Wow, that easy?

"Sure."

"Whoohoo." Yes! This was it. The first step of her moving in with me.

"But honey?" What? She had called me honey? My blood was mostly replaced by endorphins by now. "I don´t even have that many clothes?"

"What?" My vocabulary was still a little limited due to the natural drugs in my blood stream.

"I have barely enough clothes at all."

"Sure, which woman has?"

"Smartass. Seriously, if I divide what I have between your place and mine... Ralph´s actually, I won´t have enough at neither place. I´d need at least some clothes for work at both places." She had called her former home "Ralph´s place"? This was getting better and better.

"Well, then, we´re going to have to do some serious shopping. No problem."

"Tom, I know you´re pretty well off. At least I assume you have no immediate financial worries, but I´m not that fortunate. I simply can´t afford that many new clothes."

I was still on cloud seven. "What? That´s the least of our problems, okay?"

She was starting to look a bit annoyed now. "Tom, I really don´t have that kind of money. My account is almost maxed out."

"You have separate accounts?"

"Yeah, we always had. It seemed fairer this way. He likes to spend his money for completely different things."

"I see. How much are you in debt?"

"Tom, I´d rather not tell. It´s a lot and I´m not proud of that and I´m afraid you..."

"Come on," I interrupted her.

"About eight thousand." She admitted shyly. I couldn´t help, I had to laugh.

"Asshole. That´s not funny. I never know if I´ll get any cash at the ATM."

"Uh, that sucks. Okay, give me your account number."

"I don´t want your money." She looked stubborn, proud and beautiful. I had to think of something, quick.

"This is no gift."

"What do I have to do? Remember, I´m not here for the money. I´m no whore." She was still looking doubtful. I had to be diplomatic here. This had the potential to go horribly wrong.

"I´ll transfer some money and I´m buying something with it. You will just have to help me actually purchase it. I want a complete set of woman´s clothes, toiletries, cosmetics, everything. All of that will remain here at my place, all of it will remain my property. You might just use it from time to time."

"Ah." Her face lit up. That was a deal she could live with. A shopping spree of that dimension was definitely irresistible for her.

"And I expect some nice lingerie."

"Okay." She was clearly coming around to the idea.

"And Tina.."

"Yeah?"

"I don´t want you to be up the creek financially. I´m going to transfer a little more to help you with your account. Not too much, just to help you getting along, okay? I don´t want you to be worried all the time."

"Okay," she said, smiling timidly like a little girl. Man, I could really get used to her. So many personalities in one woman. So intelligent, full of life, full of emotion. Damn, I realized again that I was fully in love with her. My mind was still a little in turmoil, so I just blurted it out.

"Tina, I love you."

"What?" She was obviously stunned. What did this mean? Had I blown it? She almost looked like she was about to cry.

"Sorry, I mean, I maybe shouldn´t have said that..."

"You dummy. Oh my God..." She leapt into my arms and smothered me with kisses. "I have to go to work now."

"Ah, okay." I had anticipated all kind of reactions, but surely not that.

"See you tomorrow, honey." Honey? Seriously? "Ah, and by the way, I love you too." And off she was. Me, I was still shocked. Had I just really said that I loved her? I knew that I did for a long time, but I had always avoided telling her, afraid to chase her away with that kind of commitment. And had she really not only accepted my confession, but answered that she loved me too? Wow. I was hardly touching the ground for the rest of the day.

xx

The following afternoon brought a beaming Tina to my door step.

"Let´s go!"

"Oh, hi Tina. What a pleasant surprise. What exactly do you have in mind?" I kept a straight face, feigning ignorance.

"Asshole!" She punched me jokingly. "Let´s go. I want to do some serious shopping today. Come on, lazy bum."

I tentatively followed her out of the building. For some reason I felt exposed, like in those dreams where you walk around and suddenly notice that you´re not wearing pants and everybody is gawking. The problem was, I wasn´t just imagining this. Okay, I was wearing some trousers, but everybody was indeed looking at us. Then I calmed down, this was just what it was like to walk around with a stunner like her. I just wasn´t used to that. But apart from the staring people around us, something else felt wrong. I felt like I was leaving the safety of my cave and entered the open plane, feeling vulnerable. I had never felt like that before when I left my building. Then it hit me, I was in public with Tina. I was doing something that had been strictly forbidden for months. I was breaking a taboo.

She of course was totally unperturbed and in a fantastic mood.

A few hours later I returned with a fully packed car and a euphoric Tina. Just seeing her this way made me incredibly happy.

"La, la, la, somebody is going to get lucky tonight," she was singing. I didn´t fancy her singing technique much, but the lyrics sounded quite okay for me.

"You´re going to stay the night?"

"Sure. I want to spend the night with the man I love." But not the only man you love, I thought, but wisely kept my mouth shut.

As we stood in my kitchen, drinking some soda, I had an idea. I rummaged through a drawer and wordlessly handed her a key.

"What´s that?"

"This is called a key."

"Smartass," she laughed. "What does that mean?"

"You live here now." Suddenly I had doubts. How would she react to this? Was I driving her away by being too brash? "Well, at least sometimes," I backpedaled. "As much as you want, of course. Anyway, ah... you should have a key." I had to stop before I totally began to stutter.

"Okay." She just took it nonchalantly. It seemed no big deal for her. For me it was another small sign that she gradually became mine. At this time, I had the feeling that she was forty percent mine and sixty percent Ralph´s. At least that about was the way she distributed her time between us.

xx

Gradually we were able to fill up her closet space and she even started to give my condo a bit of a womanly touch. We still had great sex and managed to avoid the whole Ralph issue. This changed a few months after she accepted her key. She entered my/our condo, being obviously distressed.

"That bastard!" she exclaimed.

"What´s up, honey?"

"Ralph. He´s seeing some bitch."

"Oh." What else could I say? Their divorce was final and in contrast to her he had respected their wedding vows. He was absolutely blameless, as he had been throughout this whole dirty ménage a trois.

"I think he did it just to make me jealous."

"Did it work?"

"Of course not. He can fuck... oh shit. I don´t know. I still love him, you know?"

"I know," I replied sadly.

"I´m sorry, this is so hard for everyone. He doesn´t deserve this, though. We do."

"I know."

"He really drives me crazy sometimes, though. What if he loves her? What if she´s the one for him?"

That would be perfect, I thought, but managed to keep a straight face.

"Does she spend the nights at his place?" I deliberately used the term 'his place'.

"Yeah, I think she does, whenever I´m here."

"I wouldn´t mind if you spent more time here, at our place."

"Is this what this is? Our place?"

"Yes. This is as much your home as it is mine."

"That is so sweet. But you know, I still love Ralph. I can´t just dump him like this."

"Have you thought about condoms?"

"What? Why? I´m on the pill."

"Sure, but you don´t know this woman. She might be a little promiscuous. This might be a health issue." Okay, I was being a bastard there. I knew that condoms would further reduce the appeal of her having sex with Ralph. I hoped they would help drive her more towards me. And of course we should have used them as well from the beginning.

"Oh, I see. Damn."

"He might endanger all three of us this way."

"Well, I can hardly ask him. He certainly does that just to annoy me and to make me jealous. I really don´t want him to think that it works."

"Okay, then just use condoms with him please. I don´t want to start using them with you."

"Oh, no, surely not. I don´t really have all that much sex with him anyway. We´re more like brother and sister by now."

Damn, it was really hard to hear that they had sex at all. Imagining that was enough to make me nauseous. But I had to keep in mind where we had come from; I was the affair and had no right to be jealous. I had to be patient and make her mine gradually. I knew from the beginning this would be hard, but I was willing to do what it took to fulfill my dream. She was spending more time at my/our place than she spent at his, which was quite a success.

"But Tom, it´s still hard to see him disappear into his room with that woman."

"His room?"

"Yes, we have separate rooms since the divorce was final."

Oh, wow, this gets better and better, I thought as we went to the bedroom to have some fun. The bed seemed to have some kind of magnetic pull on us and today was no different.

After the following, particularly hot sex session I just blurted it out again.

"Tina, I love you."

"I know. I love you too. That´s what makes this so difficult. I love Ralph too."

"Yeah. I know. Tina, I´m totally happy with what we have," I lied. "But it rankles me a little that you still don´t want to be seen with me in public, at least not in the evenings. You´re still just going out only with him."

"Tom, I hardly have sex with him anymore. He even has problems achieving an erection with me because he knows I enjoy it so much more with you. But I really enjoy him socially. And I think I owe him at least that."

"Okay. I see." I realized that my jealousy had reached new heights. It almost seemed like Ralph was the affair now, like she was going on dates with some other man.

"But I can do it with you too. It´s not that I´m embarrassed to be seen with you. You´re not ugly, in fact you´re a quite attractive man."

"I know, but I´m not as attractive as he is."

"Don´t make me lie to you. Ralph probably is the most beautiful man I´ve ever seen."

"I know." I felt really low now, although it was the undeniable truth.

"Don´t feel bad. I love you."

"Yeah, I know. Is it really necessary to still have sex with him?"

"Yes, if he´s in the mood, I will certainly not deny him anything. I owe him that, don´t I?"

"Yeah, you´re probably right. It still feels bad though."

"It hardly ever happens anyway."

I just sucked it up like I always did. The long-term goal was important. But as she left our apartment to spend the night with her other man, it nearly tore me apart. I could imagine all too well how Ralph must have felt when he found out about us. It hurt. It really hurt badly. I spent the night being afraid that she would choose him again. Afraid that he would finally improve his sexual skills, in which case I had no doubts about my chances with her. I imagined what they were doing right then. If she was kissing him. If they were in bed together. If she was whispering loving little things in his ear. In short, I spent the night mostly sleepless and full of fear and jealousy, like I always did when she was with him. This was really wearing me down. I felt like the cuckolded husband by then and it was no fun at all.

xx

A few weeks later I couldn´t stand it anymore. She had steadily reduced the number of nights she spent at Ralph´s place to about one or two per week. It lessened my pain a bit, but it was still hard to take. I avoided imagining how Ralph felt while he was slowly losing her. But I had to keep my goal in mind and sparing his feelings wasn´t going to help me. I felt secure enough to take a little risk.

"Tina, what do you think about us making our relationship exclusive?"

"We already have that, don´t we? Or are you seeing someone else?"

"No, I´m not. But you do."

"What? Ah, I see. Well, I rarely have sex with him anyway. But if he wants me, I will be there. I still owe him that much and I still love him. You knew what you were getting into all along."

"I see. So it´s okay for me to have one girlfriend on the side as well?"

"What? No." She looked angry, but calmed down quickly, seeing the situation. "I don´t know. I mean... I don´t know. You see, we have to keep in mind that officially, we are the cheaters. I was married to Ralph, somehow I´m still his woman. I´ve hurt him, while he did nothing wrong. I think I still love him."

"Yeah, I know, but it still hurts."

"Yeah, just like we´ve hurt him."

"Tina, you don´t suffer at all here. You have two men to choose from."

"That´s not true. It killed me to hurt Ralph. And it feels like I´m cheating on both of you. I feel like an unfaithful slut all the time."

"Then end it with Ralph. You live here anyway."

"I can´t. He´s still hoping that we can get back together again. And I still love him in some way."

"Shit."

"Yeah."

xx

For a few weeks, not much changed. Sure, she spent more and more time in public with me and even introduced me to a few of her friends, which meant a lot to me. But nothing fundamentally changed. She still saw Ralph at least once a week. It felt like the was cheating on me and it killed me.

It was time to do something drastic. Call me an asshole, but I decided to use the resources I had to win her over. Maybe this was unfair, but too much was at stake here. I knew that she was going to have two weeks off soon. I guessed that neither she nor Ralph had the money to do something fancy, but she was starting to plan a few short trips with both of us.

"Tina?" The mood was relaxed, we were cuddling on my sofa, watching some nonsense on the tube.

"Yeah?" she answered absent-mindedly.

"You have those two weeks off soon."

"Yeah, starting next week."

"Well, I have booked a little trip for us."

"Oh. You´ve already booked something? Shouldn´t you have asked..."

"Maldives," I interrupted her. Yeah, talk about being unfair.

"WHAT?" She looked incredulous.

"Two weeks. Water bungalow. Nice resort. All inclusive."

"Whoohoo..." She was testing the stability of my ribcage with the following hug. "It´s... I can´t believe... Tom! You´re crazy. I´ve always wanted... I mean, seriously? Maldives?"

"I know, you´ve mentioned it." I was feeling a bit smug. That one had definitely worked.

The following night turned out be... well, interesting. Exhausting, actually. Did I feel like I was buying her? Yeah, a bit maybe. Did it stop me? No way, this was hugely important for my whole life and I wasn´t about to play fair. I wanted to win over the woman I loved and I was determined to do what was necessary.

"Tom, I´m so looking forward to this... oh."

"What?"

"I had planned to go to Hamburg with Ralph to visit his sister."

"I see. Maybe I should cancel..."

"Don´t you dare! We´re just going to visit her later. It´s just going to be a bit difficult to sell this to Ralph. These two weeks will be pure horror for him."

"Yeah, I know." I managed to look sympathetic.

But she somehow managed to convey the news to poor Ralph. I was just glad I didn´t have be present. She unexpectedly spent the night following the discussion with Ralph in our apartment instead of his, like it had been planned initially. I didn´t dare to ask for details. And, even better, she didn´t return to him until we departed to the Maldives. He probably wasn´t a happy camper, but I surely was.

xx

The vacation was nothing short of a total dream. I was the envy of all males present. Of course, we had lots of sex, enjoyed the marvelous food and spent a lot of time diving, snorkeling and with our usual 'indoor activities'.

I chose the mellow mood we usually had after a good round of love making. We were snuggled into a loveseat on the deck above the sea, a warm wind played with her hair. The situation was absolutely perfect and I chose this moment to possibly ruin it.

"Tina, I´ve been wondering..."

"Yeah?"

"Well, how about you spending all of your nights in our apartment?"

"I sure like it a lot more there, but what about Ralph?"

"I really want us to be a couple in the normal way. Exclusively. I want you for me, only for me."

She looked at me with an unreadable expression on her face.

"Oh, Tom, honey, I´d really love to." But it still sounded a bit unsure.

"Just do it."

"But what about Ralph?"

"You have to set him free. He needs to move on. You´re blocking his future."

She looked pensive. "Maybe you´re right," she answered after quite a while.

"It´s better for everyone. This constant hurting has to stop. You have to stop leading him on. He´s still hoping to win you back and that´s plain cruel." To my relief, she nodded. "I know you want to let him down gently. But all you do is prolonging the pain."

"You´re right." Wow, my gamble seemed to have worked. I´ve been afraid she might agree to end his suffering, but doing it by dumping me. Instead, she was suddenly starting to cry. "But it´s so hard. This really is the end of Ralph and me. We wanted kids. We wanted to grow old together. It feels so cheap to desert him like this."

"Just for sex?"

"Oh, no. Don´t you ever think that. I´m not here with you just for the sex. You´re so much more loveable than he is. So caring, so empathetic, so nice, so mature. I love having sex with you, but I wouldn´t be here now if that was the only reason. I´m not that shallow. I love you for who you are. I love spending time with you. I need you around me."

"Same here."

"Okay, Tom. From this day on you´re my man, my only man. You have exclusive rights to this body and to this soul." Sure, it sounded corny, but she had tears in her eyes, which made it very believable. I was moved too and with a broken voice I could just say "yes" without embarrassing myself.

xx

Luckily, I wasn´t present during the final confrontation with Ralph. I really didn´t envy the poor bastard. Slowly losing a woman like Tina over such a long time must have been pure torture. She told me later that it was indeed terrible. He cried, he begged, he went to his knees, he promised never to see the other woman again, he claimed that he never had sex with her anyway. The sad thing was, the latter was even believable. We had slowly destroyed the sexuality of this man.

She returned, still deeply troubled, with the rest of her clothes. No, there was no sex this evening. I just held her and helped her through her crying fits.

xx

So had I won? Yes. Was it that easy? No. The problem that she still loved another man as well and that we both started out as cheaters remained. Morally, our relationship was on shaky ground. But most important - some suspicion remained. Did she still see Ralph behind my back? Did she miss him? Was he maybe able to get it up again, now that he was the affair instead of the cuckolded husband?

So I followed her from time to time and to my horror I found out that she indeed was still seeing Ralph. But I had no access to his apartment and I couldn´t follow her all the time. If she found out that I did it at all, all hell would break loose and I might lose her again. So my possibilities were limited and all I could see were some unsuspicious lunch breaks without even a proper kiss. Still, the fear and jealousy remained. What if she cheated on me with this hunk? The thought was unbearable.