I Stop Losing

This is a conclusion to a story written by TQM called "Lost Her to the Ex". It was the most popular story on another erotica site, so of course I had to read it.

And I found I rather enjoyed it on some level. But it was just the start of the story, and not the end. Melanie felt that life was beautiful. She was fucking the cock of her life AND had a husband to dote on her.

Life isn't like that. The Wheel Turns.

So, for those who do not like having to read the prior story, there is a summary so you can get the gist. Anyone who has read LW stories already knows the plot. All I'm doing in adding a few names and details to get the ball rolling. TQM was kind enough to give me permission to write the story.

There IS sex in this story...but not too much.

Many thanks to TQM for writing the original and for giving me permission to write this follow up.

****

"Honey, have you seen my gray mini skirt?"

That question may seem rather innocuous to you, but that was actually the opening salvo of a war.

****

Let me step back a bit and explain. I've been married to Melanie, a third grade school teacher, for a few years. We had, heretofore, had an excellent marriage. Then Tanner happened again. Tanner was my wife's long term ex-boyfriend. To me he was just a name.

He came back to town in July for a short term job and asked after Melanie. My bitch of a sister in law, Beth, gave him all her contact information. In fact, looking back, she took a certain amount of glee in doing so. Beth told me that I needed to tread softly because Tanner and Mel had been quite an item. So when Mel asked about having lunch with him, I was a big dope and said yes.

To cut to the chase, my wife started seeing (read fucking)Tanner almost every day during long lunches during his job while she was on summer break. After a month or so of this, she came to me and confessed.

It seems they had a very long, very steamy relationship that he broke off when he got a job a long way away. He dumped her and she had been devastated for a long time. She started putting her life back together, seeing someone seriously again. Then Tanner visited for a week and destroyed that relationship after she fucked him for three days straight. She eventually met and married me. Needless to say, I did not know any of this history until she confessed to me after telling me that she'd been fucking around.

We fought. We cried. I wanted to know what she intended. She refused to promise to stop fucking him. He was 'sexual perfection'. She swore she didn't want to lose me, and said if Tanner asked her to leave me, 'she'd go out of her mind'. Isn't that sweet! She wouldn't stop seeing him for me, but she'd feel conflicted if HE asked her to stop seeming me.

I started raising hell and Beth, the SIL called and bitched me out, as much as telling me if I didn't let this happen, I'd lose her totally.

Mel also told the son of a bitch that she told me. Since I had not immediately dumped her, she would now use her freedom to see him after work and over weekends, though she swore to be discrete and 'still loved me'. At this point I didn't want to lose her, but I felt helpless to stop this assignation without the nuclear option of divorce.

She set up an immediate meeting and wore the special gray mini skirt we had bought together during a date. When I protested it was mine, she said she wanted to look good 'for him' as she walked out the door

I felt I had lost her to the ex.

***

I felt as low as I ever had when I walked into the bar. My friend Keith had some marital issues with infidelity in the past and he had suggested that I look up Ed. He was a bartender.

Walking into the bar, I almost immediately walked out. The place was moderately full. A woman laughed. It was a full and throaty laugh and reminded me of Melanie and, of course, that reminded me of what she was doing and probably laughing about right now with Tanner. Merriment conflicted with my mood.

Keith had been adamant though, that I talk to Ed. So I tried not to cringe and went to the bar. Ed went for a very traditional look on a barkeep: a white shirt, a black vest and a mustache. I almost looked for those stupid armbands that you see in the old black and white photos, but obviously he wasn't THAT obsessive.

He took one look at me and then just shook his head. He grabbed a couple of bottles from under the counter and started pouring. He set a shot glass in front of me. "Drink up." I looked at him questioningly, but he just gestured to the glass.

Gamely, I took a swig and immediately almost spat it out again. "My GOD! That was awful!" I almost shouted, looking at him accusingly. I almost reached over to grab his vest and put my fist through his face. I looked at the glass instead. "What is that?!?"

He grinned at me. "Yeah. It should be. It's olive and onion juice with a bit of chili and bitters."

I glared at him some more. "What did you do that for? I'm not paying for that!"

"It's on the house. But I got you angry instead of glum. You aren't looking like a whipped dog and I bet that you haven't thought about...whatever for the last two minutes."

I thought about it and he was right! Of course, just recognizing the fact brought it all crashing back. But it was hard to focus on that when I wanted to take a cheese grater to my tongue.

"I'm Ed. You look like you need to talk."

Did I ever! It was hard to relate the details of my cuckoldry to a stranger, but Ed had an answer to that too. He lined up four shots of alcohol (I checked what bottle he was using. He just snickered that it was a good thing that I could learn) and told me he'd be back to chat after I finished them up.

I went through them pretty quickly and we started to talk about innocuous things first: my job, my car, what teams I liked etc. He pointed out a few nice looking ladies and we made suitable chest thumping male statements about their physical attributes on the sly. Standard guy stuff. I got a sick expression after a bit. "Wonder how many of them are leaving stupid husbands at home?" I said bitterly.

"Bingo." Ed said. He excused himself and went to a dark end of the bar. He had a few words with the patrons there and they smiled at him, finished their drinks quickly and left. He returned. "Why don't you sit over there? The night is young and the people are thirsty. When things wind down, we can talk about it a little more."

So that's what I did. He kept me professionally lubricated enough to soften the edges of my grief without pushing me over the edge of consciousness or into maudlin displays. A couple of times, I felt like getting up and leaving, but I recalled my promise to Keith.

A couple of hours later, the last patrons were leaving. Ed gestured to one of the waitresses and she sighed. "Jeez, Ed. Do you ever close up? I think your therapy sessions are just an excuse to avoid clean up." She was smiling as she said it.

"Don't sass me Reba, or I'll fire your ass."

She rolled her eyes. "Promises promises." She dropped off a couple of coffees before she emptied the carafes and started setting things up in the back of the bar, leaving us alone.

We started slow. I started talking, only saying that my wife was cheating on me. Slowly, he started asking questions, quietly and just waiting for me to answer. I didn't really want to talk about it. It's humiliating in our day and age to reveal that you are sitting there accepting this kind of situation. I was just going to relate the bare minimum of facts.

A funny thing happened though. I slowly but surely told more and more to Ed. It didn't all come spewing out in one go. No, it was like lancing an abscess. Occasionally, he had to ask question, massaging the wound and a bit more pus would come out. At a certain point, he'd ask a question which would rip my heart open again. It's okay, sir. We're just cutting a bit deeper to get the last of it out. This won't hurt a bit...

What made me do it was compassion. His expression didn't have a trace of pity or even sympathy. Those would have made me clam up in an instant. No, it was one of compassion. I was suffering, so he was suffering. I could see my words wound him almost as much as they did me. A strange word to attach to another man, but it seems I was learning a lot these days.

I wound down and just sat there, embarrassed.

He sipped at his coffee for a while. "So...what do you want to see happen out of all of this?" he asked delicately.

"I want this to have never happened in the first place! I want Melanie back! I want..." I wanted Tanner eaten alive by rabid dachshunds, but how exactly do you verbalize that to someone else that you just met. "I want my life back!"

"Your wife. She isn't cutting you off from sex?" I shook my head. "So...can you come to grips with this? Just accept the role as the back up cock?" he said softly. I winced visibly and shook my head vigorously. "Good. At least you have some self respect. But you don't want to leave her?"

A final shake. "If I just go, he wins everything! But I've already lost! He's won her!"

"Horseshit!" Ed said angrily. "He didn't win anything! There wasn't a contest! You were fighting to keep your wife. But your sister in law was and is fighting you to let her sister do this. Tanner, of course, wants to keep fucking a woman he doesn't have to pay for, and your wife, the one who should be fighting to keep you two together, is fighting on his side! You, my friend, are outnumbered and they are trying to sucker your head into accepting that this is all normal; that the wisest thing in the world for you to do is accept her little 'fling'."

"But WHY?" I wailed. Yes, I wailed, I'm ashamed to say.

"Because your wife doesn't think she's going to experience any loss. May I see her picture?" Slowly, I pulled my wallet out of my pants and handed it to him flipped open to the photo. "Ah. Yes. Very pretty. Any man would love to have sex with her. No wonder."

"No wonder what?" I said dully.

"No wonder she thinks she can do this. She thinks she's not going to feel any pain, that she is the package that any man would want and that you'd be a fool to throw her away. What you need is a plan to cure her of that delusion."

"But what if I lose her?" Yes. I wailed again. I was beginning to hate the fact I was sounding like a big pussy.

"Why did you marry her?" Ed asked, looking at me with a raised eyebrow.

"Because I love her. Because she's beautiful. Because we were really good together, emotionally and sexually Because I loved how she made me feel about myself." I answered as honestly as possible.

"Do you still love how she's making you feel about yourself?"

We stayed up late that night, making the plan.

****

I found myself at home the next day on my couch. I had never been one for heavy hangovers but this one had left me with a sizeable headache. I wandered into my kitchen, with the beating of my head synchronized to the beating of my pulse. Throb, Throb, Throb. If I had the ability to count at this point, I'd know my pulse rate.

I thought back over what Ed and I had discussed so late into the night. Heck, I even had a pad with some notes on it. That was a mistake right there! Part of the plan was supposed to be that this should sneak up on her. I quickly hid it under the file drawers in the bedroom cum office.

***

"So...you want to keep her?" Ed asked me again.

"I want to try. I'm not quitting on this marriage."

"Okay. That means you can't give her an ultimatum. She's made it quite clear that you can't ask her to give up this Tanner ass, but he could ask her to give you up. If you give her that ultimatum, which frankly, you already pretty much did, though you framed it pretty weakly, then even if she gives him up, she'll resent you for making her. And that is likely to put the kibosh on the relationship just as thoroughly as her running off with this ass. Likewise you can't do something stupid like kill his cheating ass, or even beat him. But we'll talk more on that last later."

"So what do I do do?" We were a bit deep in our cups.

"You stay put and try to remind her of all the things she loves about you. You need to make the choices very stark for her. This might cost you a bit." he warned.

"It's already costing me my marriage and self respect. What's some money?" I said morosely. "Are you saying to just stay with her, and when he's finished fucking her, that I just act like nothing's happened?"

He frowned. "Is that what you want to do?"

"NO! I want to win!"

"Well, there's winning and there's winning. You are hanging around long enough for her to come to her senses. Everyone makes a mistake. What you are going to do is give her chances to make the right choices."

"What if she makes the wrong choice?"

He looked sad and shrugged. "Then you get to make some of them too, well aware of what is going on. And you give yourself time to prepare."

"Prepare?" But he wouldn't say any more on that.

***

My first stop was to a stationary store. This was something I wanted to do for myself, not something I discussed with Ed.

I was carrying the large "Year at a Glance" Calendar to the register when I walked by the rack of pens. The colors caught my eye and I took a look at the display. Finally settling on my selections, I picked up the red and blue Sharpies, paid and left.

At the apartment, I put it up in the bedroom set as an office. It got put into the wall with washers and screws drilled through the heavily laminated paper and into the studs. I was feeling a bit of anger and I didn't want this just disappearing. Plus using tools made me feel in some small way more manly.

Then, starting on January 1st, I started marking every day with a little blue check in the corner of the day. This went on for quite a while, but it distracted me from the fact that Melanie still wasn't in the apartment and was over at Tanner's, fucking him senseless in the gray skirt I bought her. I made a mental note of THAT little detail.

When I got to July, during the lunch that I foolishly allowed her to go to with Tanner, not knowing the history of their relationship (the relationship she hid), I started to draw in small red Xs in the corner of the day. They were nothing huge. But if one was focusing on the calendar, one saw a sea of blue and then...red specks which got more and more frequent. Every single time I thought or suspected she was with Tanner, the day got an X.

I finally got up to The Day, that horrible day that my wife, my beloved wife, told me that she was cheating on me and that she wanted to continue cheating on me. I stared at it...and finally, I drove the red Sharpie right through the calendar and into the drywall!

Dammit! So much for subtle. Now I'd need to go back and replace the whole thing.

***

At this point, we were sipping foreign beers, Ed and I. Because we were in strange mental territory. Okay, it made sense at the time but we were both half in the bag!

"I'm a bit curious about the timing of her revelation." Ed said slowly. We were both talking slowly now and Reba just kept giving us the evil eye every once in a while.

"How do you mean?" I asked owl eyed.

"You said she was fucking him at lunch when you were at work. He tuk...took long lunches."

I nodded. "Yup! She was home. It was summer. She's a school teacher," I said helpfully.

"And she tol-d you at the end of August?"

"More the middle." I said, not sure where he was going with this.

"When does the school year start?" he asked significantly.

I felt like some giant was squeezing my chest, expelling all the air from my lungs. She'd come to me, professing her love and her guilt, saying that she respected me too much to continue to 'cheat' on me (but certainly not enough to stop making me a cuckold).

My face must have paled as well, because Ed said "Ah...you see it too now." And I did. She was telling me in August because the school year and her duties were starting soon. She wouldn't be free to go out with Tanner and fuck him during his lunches because she's be busy at school, teaching and watching the children during lunch period. I wasn't sure where the fucker lived, but I doubted very much he lived close enough for more then a few strokes with her limited lunch time. And if she saw him after school, then she ran the very likely risk that I would come home early and note her gone.

"I'm being played. She doesn't love me at all." My stomach felt full of acid.

"Well, I'm not sure that I'd go that far. 'All' is a strong word. But she certainly is conflicted and is treating you badly. She seems to be making more efforts to stay with you then she did in the past, if that means anything. What she should be doing is end it with him or end it with you, not torture you over this half on, half off mess."

Tortured. Yes, he'd hit the nail on the head. That was exactly how I felt. Whipsawed by mad hope and crushing doubts about my masculinity, her love and our future. "If she luh luh loves him like this," I was close to breaking down again, I'm sorry to say, "Why doesn't she just go?"

He sighed. "Could be a lot of things. But if she was veritably his stalker in the old days, then you know there's some kind of reason. You'll just have to see if you can figure it out.

***

She came back from her weekend tryst. It was a tense couple of days after that. She didn't discuss it, though she tried to act normally. I watched a lot of television and drank some beers. I can't say I tried to be warm about it, but as Ed had said, I tried very hard not to be an asshole. All that would do would be to drive her away and hurt me too. I needed to keep holding the moral high ground. If she wanted to wallow with the filth, that was her decision. I needed to show her how bad that decision was. She needed to feel a sense of loss.

We didn't have sex. I didn't feel the desire, and she, for whatever reason, didn't approach me either. Then again, after a couple nights of sex, she was probably all fucked out.

Things were starting to approach 'normal' or at least the new 'normal'. We were discussing chores and work and things to do around the house. "Honey," she asked. "Have you seen my gray miniskirt?"

"Why?"

"I wanted to wash it and I can't find it in the hamper." She was carrying a large basket of laundry.

"That's because I already took care of it."

"It's not in my closet. You really need to hang it up so it doesn't wrinkle." she chided lightly. This was a perennial tease between the two of us, criticizing how the other dealt with the laundry, the ironing, the folding, where the specific items went. A couple thing. "Which drawer did you put it in?"

"I didn't. I put it in a dumpster." I sipped my soft drink.

"Why did you throw away my skirt?" she said, starting to get angry.

"Because it wasn't your skirt. It was my skirt. You gave it away. And when I looked at it, it was stained and soiled and I never want to see it again."

She watched me with hooded eyes for a while. "Is there anything else you want to throw away?" she said with a pointed tone.

"Not at the moment, no." I didn't look away from the television.

I decided to lay a few more cards on the table. "You said you'd be very discrete. That it was just sex. That's all well and good, but I am taking 'discrete' to be 'absolutely fucking secret'. If I hear that anyone has seen you with him, if I find you've been walking in the park with him, I am going straight to a lawyer. I want to be clear on that. You've made my place in your heart perfectly plain." She held her hand up to forestall me, but I continued. "You have! You want to feed his ego and make him feel like a conqueror. That is so incredibly hurtful, I can't begin to tell you. So if you have any hope, a single prayer of us staying together, you go to his place and fuck him, and that's it!.This is nonnegotiable. If this is a sexual fling, you better keep it that way! But if you start to date him and take him out in public, it's over. Period."