Chapter 19 Jealous Husband

After lunch, the children outside blissfully playing, the questions began at the kitchen table. I didn't know how to answer. I’d been gone too long, came home too late and obviously had taken a shower just before returning yet still reeked of sex. He kept pestering me, to tell the truth, assured me he already knew, claimed he understood and it was okay but, to be honest. I knew I should deny, but he wouldn’t accept my lies. I was cornered. The only out, surrender. I finally blurted out.

"We screwed!"

Just two words, once said, immediately regretted, grieved for a lifetime.

Stunned, he started questioning about details, wanted to know who, if I had an orgasm and if we used a condom and even whose when I said we used one. I yelled in defense he was jealous as I knew he would be and walked out to the bedroom, afraid he would be enraged and hit me, something I’d never feared before.

Instead of attacking me with jealousy, he followed and again attacked me sexually. He grabbed me, threw me on the bed, stripped off my clothes, spread my legs and entered me, a look of rage on his face. I didn’t resist. I accepted marriage rape as a deserved punishment. Not having answered his question if I experienced an orgasm the night before, I faked one as he finished.

After sex, he bombarded me with questions about his performance, his rage somewhat abated.

"Am I as good? Did you enjoy it? Do you still love me?"

The last question almost a plea. He was insecure, his male ego shattered. I tried to hug him but he pulled away. I pleaded.

“You don’t need to worry. Only you are my husband. I only did it because it was part of your swinging thing. I wanted to see if you still loved me, to see if you’d get jealous. I’m sorry I hurt you. I won’t do it again. It’s over.”

Lies spewed on the wing of the moment. Well, not all, I was sorry I hurt him.

We avoided one another for the rest of the day. That night, in the living room, the kids tucked in bed, he started anew. He demanded to know who it was, who had entered his wife.

“Who screwed you!”

I couldn’t reveal Edward. If I did it was all over with Edward, perhaps even my marriage. I still wanted both. We had a screaming match as hubby kept cross-examining to box in my lies. I told him I couldn’t talk about it. It only made him jealous and it was over, I wouldn’t do it again. Finally, I yelled.

"Shut up! Shut up!"

This sent him into a screaming argument which I responded to in like manner. I then shut down, hands on my ears and refused to talk. He responded by stomping to our bedroom and slamming the door shut, as if to say I was now out, out of our marriage, out of his life.

I sat on the sofa pretending to watch TV as my situation played out before me. I knew Edward was a dead-end but knew I couldn’t stop seeing him. I knew I loved my family and didn’t want a divorce. I knew I was making a mess of my life.

I got up and checked on the kids, terrified they heard the yelling. They were both asleep. Assured, I tossed and turned on the sofa until drifting asleep about an hour before I had to rise again to get the kids off to school and my husband to work.

As my eyes opened, he stood before me. He was holding a cup of coffee. I was scared he might throw it at me. Instead, he said he loved me and offered it to me. I stood up and told him I loved him and would never leave him, what was done was done but wouldn’t happen again. I could see he, like me, had spent a night of tossing and turning without sleep. My heart went out to him, so sorry I’d hurt him, who I loved. I hugged him and we lay on the sofa hugging without a word until the kids demanded breakfast.

I got up and fixed waffles and sausages until the kids could eat no more. Hubby ate little. Sullen but without further argument he got ready for work. The kids assured all was well in their world left for school. It was like old times but it wasn’t.

As hubby left for work, I stopped him.

“It’s okay, honey. You needn’t worry. It’s over. I’m never going to be “sociable” again. I didn’t want to anyway. It’s done. It’s over. We’re going to move on and forget it.”

He didn’t respond, just left. I accepted his silence as the first step in his healing.

The words blurted out, "We screwed!" could never be retrieved. My Camelot had crumbled, Sir Lancelot had breached the moat. I was Guenevere, the traitor, hubby, poor King Arthur. When swing shift time came, it was the first time I took sick leave but not the last.

My only option was guile, convince hubby it was over, create an artifice of faithfulness with a secrete me, one who met Edward, to live two lives in one.

That evening, in front of him, I threw away the condoms he bought for his swinging agenda to convince him it was truly over and mollify his wrath by placing some guilt on him. I changed the bedsheets and climbed in and waited in the nightie he most liked me to wear while he brushed his teeth. He came out of the bathroom, looked about and climbed in bed.

He took me softly, as his wife. We were back together, in our bedroom, in our marriage bed. I knew it wasn’t the end of his ire but it was the beginning.

Assured, sleep greeted me after he withdrew. I happily slept on the wet spot. Thereafter I let him have sex whenever he sought and always climaxed even if faked. We still argued but not about my admission. Its friction generated arguments about little things but the “we screwed” words were in the marriage closet.

Afraid of his jealousy, I avoided any mention of swinging or infidelity. If adultery inadvertently popped up, I covered by saying it’s a terrible mistake, like a car accident something which happens, that for me it was a mistake but just sex, like his proposed swinging, inferring it was a mistake we both made.

All untrue, I was seeing Edward.

My clandestine affair went into a complex stealth mode. I wanted to spend nights with Edward when possible rather than race home as if Cinderella. Edward switched his once a weeknight off from Saturday to Friday. With ample sick leave, two to three times a month I called in “sick” on Friday and Edward and I spent the night together, unfettered by the clock’s stroke of midnight.

During the week, I drove to Edward’s for “nooners” Tuesdays and Thursdays. It was sex with Edward two to three times a week, and ditto for hubby. In two segregated worlds, I milked two men and loved them both. The trick was keeping my separated lives from accidental commingling.

My marriage changed. I became the dominant half. Hubby lacked his former confidence. I switched his underwear to boxer trunks and bought brass candle holders and bee's wax candles for our bedroom. As a woman, however, I worked at rebuilding his ego even while betraying and endangering it.

I no longer played the girl act for hubby. Edward had changed me. I wasn’t, however, the woman Edward assumed. I began to assert myself by redecorating his apartment, did his laundry and cooked for him, inserting my influence over him. I tried to control both male guppies as a woman is wont to do.

Author Notes: Torn by love and to keep her husband and family the wife goes into deep lies by developing 2 separate lives.

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