Our Journey To An Open Marriage

"I want a divorce." Those are words no man who loves his wife ever wants to hear. But she had just said them to me. "Let's face it, you are a very good provider but you are not very exciting. And I'm 36 and not getting any younger".

To make it final, she added, "While you were out of town, I had an affair. When that happened before, you told me that if it ever happened again we were done. I won't beg your forgiveness and ask you to take me back as I'm glad it happened and I enjoyed it. We had a neighborhood picnic while you were gone and a friend of Migs and Helen paid a lot of attention to me. It had been so long since I felt like I was attractive to a man and I just fell for him. I couldn't help myself as he really paid attention to me. He invited me to drop by his house later and I did. He was so attracted to me and me to him; he swept me off my feet."

I asked her what she wanted from me. She said I should move out and file for a divorce. I told her I supposed she planned to move her boyfriend, Jim, into my house. She said no but she didn't want me around to interfere with her affair.

I told her to forget it. I planned to stay in the house and she could leave. She stormed upstairs and slammed the bedroom door.

I had been out of town for several months on a project -- I'm a field engineer -- and had missed her terribly. I had satisfied my sexual desires during that time by masturbating while looking at nude pictures of her we had taken before I left. I had returned home with one thing foremost in my mind: wild sex with her to help make up for lost time. Now it really hurt to think that she had found satisfaction in the arms of another man.

The night before, I hadn't suspected a thing. We took a shower together, soaping each other and caressing our sensitive parts and then dried each other before jumping into bed with me on my back and her straddling me with her vulva on my face and my penis in her mouth. I had licked her lower lips up and down and sucked and nibbled her clitoris and even rimmed her anus. Meantime she had sucked and licked my penis and teased the opening with her tongue. She had inserted her finger into my anus as I licked hers. I don't know how many times she climaxed (she is multi-orgasmic) but when I came she rushed to the bathroom to spit it out.

We watched TV awhile until I recovered and then she got on her hands and knees and I entered her from behind as we both loved that position as I could push hard and hit her cervix -- causing her pain but she loved it. She said, "Put your finger in my ass." And I did.

I said, "I have dreamed about going around the world tonight. I want to use your mouth, your pussy, and your ass." She had always denied me anal sex throughout our 10 year marriage, but this night she allowed me to use that tighter opening. I was gentle hoping I would get future chances at it. She held her buttocks open as I applied KY jelly to her anus and then carefully put my penis into that narrow opening.

Toward morning, I awoke and caressed her vulva and she turned and pressed her beautiful behind back against me so I could enter her vagina from behind with us on our sides. When we finished, she went to the bathroom and I heard her washing up but she returned to bed and we slept a couple more hours. This wasn't a record for us as one time after I had worked out of town, we had sex five times the first night.

Now, in the light of day, over coffee, she destroyed all that. Now, as I thought about the previous night, I wondered whether Judie had been thinking of Jim all that time, or if I had fallen short in satisfying her. Maybe I just hadn't measured up to her lover.

After a while, she came down the steps with an overnight bag and said, "I'll be back for my things in a day or so." She jumped into her car and drove away. I jumped into my car and tried to follow. I found I wasn't very good at following. Rushing to catch up close enough to keep her in sight, I found myself beside her at a light! She shot a left and I wasn't even sure whether she had seen me but by the time I shot a "U-turn" in the middle of the block and drove down the same street, she had totally disappeared. I drove around the various city blocks looking for her car but she had vanished into the mostly empty streets.

I drove back home thinking of her in another man's arms and thinking very dangerous thoughts such as contacting our friends to find out who he was so I could track him down and kill him. I eventually returned home and cried myself to sleep on the sofa.

Two days later she returned. She said she wanted to pick up a few things and would be staying at a hotel. Being on edge anyway, I said, "What's the matter? You boyfriend already throw you out?"

She broke into tears. She said she had to find a place to stay as she wasn't going back to Jim's place. Over the next few minutes the story came out.

She said she hadn't really thought things through. She thought I would leave and she would stay at the house. When that didn't happen, she went to Jim's house thinking he understood why she was leaving me. She thought he understood her desire for freedom. Instead, he expected her to move in with him and suddenly become faithful to him. He had not understood that her fling with him had made her realize that she had missed out on a lot of things she wanted to do but could not do within a committed relationship.

When she had called me boring it was because, like most married couples, we were living in a relationship where we expected to be faithful to each other. What she really wanted was to be able to cut loose and do all the things she had fantasized about over the years. She said, "Do you realize I never got a chance to work in a stripper bar and see if other men might go crazy over my body? I never got a chance to see if I would be a good call girl nor to attend a wife swapping party. I know how conservative you are and my doing such things would hurt you. So I want to be free so I can try them and find out what I missed by being an old married lady as a teenager."

I suggested she sleep in the bedroom and I would sleep on the sofa. I was on vacation between assignments but her vacation would not start until the following week (this was on a Thursday). I suggested she work the next day and then we could spend some time figuring out what we could work out between us. That would also give her time to decide what her next move would be. I also told her that had we discussed this BEFORE she made her move we might have worked things out. She replied that only after she had started her affair she discovered her desire to be free to do all the things she felt she had missed.

I moved next to her and put my arms around her. I said, "I do love you, you know. I want you to be happy. I never dreamed you thought you had missed out on life by being married to me. But I wish you had told me before this. We could have worked things out and reached some understanding."

"What understanding?" she said, "We have been married ten years and both expected to be faithful to each other. But when I had the previous affair I knew I was destroying your faith in me. I guess I knew then I had the desire to do other things -- and have sex with other men -- but I suppressed it because you were so obviously hurt by it.

"Then, with Jim, I felt all those desires again and knew I could never be faithful to you for the rest of our lives. So, I will leave so you can get on with your life."

I said, "I love you and I guess I do understand how you feel. I too have desires but have never brought them up to you because I didn't want to hurt our marriage. Maybe we can work out an 'open marriage' arrangement where you can 'sow your oats' and I can live with knowing you are doing so."

She chewed her lip a moment before answering, "Maybe so. But I don't want an open marriage like Migs and Helen where he sleeps around like a tomcat and she doesn't. She claims just knowing she can have another man is enough to make her accept his sleeping around. I want it to be equal -- if I can sleep around so can you."

"Fair enough", I answered, "I have been attracted to many other women but I didn't act on it because I didn't want to mess up what we have -- that sounds stupid now!"

She told me needed to think about things before she decided. She took me up on my offer to stay but said she ought to be the one on the sofa. But we soon agreed she would take the bed.

She woke me up the next morning and said she was off to work. She promised we would have an even longer talk when she returned.

I slept another hour or so and then got up and did some serious thinking of my own. Did I want to live that way? Could I welcome her home after her being in another man's arms? Did I really want to watch her having sex with another? Could I go through life knowing she was sleeping with others?

I decided to make reservations for a nice dinner that evening and surprise her. I expected we would have a long conversation and a break during that conversation might be good.

When she got home, I told her I had reservations. We sat across from each other at the kitchen table with coffee. She told me she was willing to give our new arrangement a try with the understanding that if we couldn't handle it we would go our separate ways without rancor. She was obviously afraid I would be jealous enough to want to hurt her or any man she had sex with. She still thought of me as more conservative than her and less likely to accept the new status.

I asked her whether she remembered a book I had asked her to read a few years earlier, "The Story of O"? She did. I said, "Didn't you know I was having fanaticizes of watching you with other men just as O's lover had in the book?"

She said, "I just thought you were turned on by O being beaten by her lover and the other men -- after all, you can get a little rough at times."

"I could tell you were turned on by my being rough. And I did fanaticize whipping you and watching you being whipped -- you like for me to spank you with my hand and with my belt. But I was also turned on by imagining three other men taking you while I watched. Those were just fantasies but I think I would like to watch you having sex with another man. I'm not asking you to do it but I just wanted you to know I'm not as closed minded as you seem to think. I just never wanted to jeopardize our marriage.

"But, if we have an open marriage it must be honest. I think what hurt me the most both times you had an affair was the dishonesty. You were sneaking around behind my back and lying to me. If this works it will be because we are honest with each other. No lies and no sneaking around. If I find I cannot bear the thought of you with others I will tell you and we can work out a divorce. I expect the same honesty from you."

She said, "Well, let's see how it plays out. Let's go eat and then come back and talk some more."

We ate at a local dinner club that we had frequented in the past, before I was gone so much. It was a cozy atmosphere and good food. We managed to eat without discussing our overriding problems, enjoyed ourselves, and started home feeling comfortable with each other. I stopped at a traffic light and turned to her to find her leaning toward me for a kiss. We kissed until a honk from behind reminded me I was driving. She said, "You know I do love you too. I just need more variety and I really hope we can come to an arrangement we can live with."

Once we were home, we sat together on the sofa and talked some more. It was becoming apparent we could make this work if we could each control our natural jealously (she had also been jealous in the past when a woman paid more attention to me than she liked) and we reached some basic agreements. We would be honest with each other and never hide our desires for another person. Neither of us had veto power over the other's choice of lovers but we agreed to always listen to the other's opinions. We agreed that if either wished to watch the other "in action" we would each do our best to arrange that.

We went to bed together and had the first sexual relations since the first night after I returned.

That whole weekend was spent discussing the need for me to either be at home or take her with me on out-of-town projects. I still had three weeks left before having to take a new assignment and I agreed to make an appointment to see my boss about changing my field assignments. We also discussed some pretty basic things about how different our lives were going to be. A long discussion ensued about the use of condoms.

I made a simple statement about the need for both of us to carry condoms so that we never engaged in unprotected sex. She said something to the effect that she was sterile and didn't need condom protection. I was astounded to learn that she had given no thought to VD (or, as they say today, STDs) and had never used a condom since she had been pronounced sterile. I had to give her the standard talk all men in the military are given about protection.

She had really thought "clean men" didn't carry VD. I tried to be as sensitive to her lack of knowledge as possible as I convinced her to visit her gynecologist and, being truthful about her affair, get checked for VD. She agreed.

So, Monday, I made an appointment with my boss and she made an appointment with her gynecologist. We began to settle into a vacation routine and planned a trip to the beach and another to the mountains. But, first, we had to keep our appointments.

My appointment Tuesday went very well. I explained my job was affecting my marriage and I needed a position which would allow me to be at home like normal people. My boss understood completely and had dealt with this problem many times in the past. He told me to go to the Human Relations Department and check every job opening in the company for which I was qualified and he would recommend me for any I wanted. He also had an opening in his department for which the pay was my current base rate but without the field bonuses -- I had expected to lose the bonus no matter where I worked.

On Wednesday, I received a call to come in for three interviews. I spent most of the day being interviewed for three different positions. I went home in a pretty good mood. When I arrived, I found Judie in tears; her day had not gone as well.

After explaining the situation to her gynecologist, the doctor took blood samples and did a complete exam. Judie had genital warts and the doctor also suspected she had gonorrhea, but had to wait for the results of the blood test to be sure. She had really criticized Judie for having unprotected sex with a man she had just met. She was as astounded as I had been that Judie thought only unclean men carried such diseases. I think Judie was most embarrassed that she had to identify every man with whom she had sexual relations in the past three months and that the doctor was required to either test them or report them to a state agency. Thus, the doctor wanted to test both Jim and me within a week.

I tried to cheer her up by explaining she could be cured and if I was also infected, I could be cured. She said, "I feel so dirty for having infected you and I am angry at Jim for infecting me. He kept telling me he loved me and wanted to marry me and I think I was falling in love with him. And the son of a bitch gave me a disease!

"I think I appreciate you more than I ever have. And I promise I will not have unprotected sex with anyone but you from now on."

We discussed condoms at length; her doctor had impressed the protection against disease aspect. I pointed out some of the other things. I told her I thought women would like condoms, unlike men, because they dull a man's sensitivity but I didn't think they would a woman's. In any case, women's biggest complain about most men is that they don't last long enough before climaxing. By dulling the feel, most men last longer with a condom than without. I warned her that I had read that some men make a show of putting a condom on for a prostitute but then remove it when she isn't watching. I explained why a prostitute just can't take chances with disease.

The doctor had prescribed the use of a tool (it was like a sponge on a stick) with which Judie was to swab her vagina twice per day with a special soap, which smelled terrible. I called for an appointment the next morning and the doctor saw me that very afternoon. She took a blood sample to check me for gonorrhea and checked my genitals for warts. She found none but told me to wash my penis and the area around it twice per day with the same soap until Judie's warts were gone.

A day later, she called and had us come in together for shots to cure the gonorrhea we both had. She said this was the first time she ever treated a person for gonorrhea before he showed any symptoms. I told her I was glad because I had heard the screams in the barracks when fellow Marines had felt the intense pain caused by urinating after the symptoms developed.

She talked to Judie alone and told her Jim had already sought treatment for his gonorrhea and had named Judie as the source. The doctor planned to report that Judie's case was not as far along as his and so the state agency needed to interview him to learn more about where he contracted it.

Needless to say, Judie was livid all the way home and cursed Jim over and over. We never found where he contracted it but he was beaten up in a bar a few weeks later by what the paper said was a jealous husband.

We left for the beach. We checked into a motel which was practically on the beach and stayed five days. We managed to be a loving couple. The only time I got the least bit jealous was when we entered the motel club and as Judie walked toward the rest room, the band broke into "The Girl from Inpanema". The lyrics from the song popped into my head, "Tall and tan and young and lovely, the girl from Inpanema goes walking, and when she passes, each one she passes goes -- ah. When she walks, she's like a samba that swings so cool and sways so gentle that when she passes, each one she passes goes -- ooh." I soon overcame my jealousy by reasoning that if I found her buttocks and walk sexy, I shouldn't be surprised that other men did as well. I had to explain to her about the origins of the song (a prostitute passes a man each day but he can't afford her). It supported what I had been telling her for years: she had very pretty buttocks and a very sexy walk.

We went home with plans to head for the mountains in another few days. We found I had the choice of two job offers within the company as well as the open position in my own department. Things were finally going our way. But my vacation was going to be shorter than expected if I took the job I favored. We put off the rest of I vacation and I started work again. A week later Judie went back to work.