Swinging for Dummies

"Wait a moment. Mel and I feel a bit bad, although we haven't done anything wrong. Hell, nobody has technically done anything wrong. There will be quite a few hot girls there..."

"Wait, wait, wait," I interrupted him. "You seriously think nobody has done anything wrong?"

"You don't think so?" He seemed genuinely surprised.

"You can't seriously..." I stopped because I had problems formulating my point, whatever it was.

"Look, Martin. She gave you permission to do something, whatever that is, with Pauline. You gave her permission to do something with Michel. You both fucked up because you didn't communicate clearly enough. I guess you assumed you both would just make out a bit while she assumed you both meant a one-night stand."

"To be honest, the first time I even thought about what exactly I had agreed to was when she was gone."

"That's even worse than we thought, but technically, she did nothing wrong. You both agreed to some kind of swinging, but failed to define the boundaries."

"Hmm. Right," I reluctantly agreed.

"Swinging might be okay for some. You surprised me when you did it. You didn't seem to be the type of couple for it. Anyway, the first rule is to talk about everything. You need clearly defined boundaries or everything is going to crash."

"Tell me about it," I replied sarcastically.

"It is definitely not something you spontaneously decide to do in a drunken and horny state," he continued to lecture, as if that train hadn't already left the station.

"I know that now."

"Anyway, she didn't do anything wrong."

"What?"

"Martin, you were the one who started this by practically fucking Pauline on the dance floor, in front of everybody. What did you expect Carla to do? Just stand around, doing nothing, looking like a total loser? Of course, she wanted the same, you agreed and Michel volunteered."

"Hmm." Damn, he was right, but I didn't want to hear it.

"Afterwards she fell in love with the guy she had your consent to have a fling with. Well, more or less consent, anyway. She at least had reason to think you had consented. Then she broke it off with you and moved in with him. I can't see anything immoral in that. We're not living in Saudi Arabia; we're free to leave our spouse if we've found someone else."

"She...," I started, "I don't know... You're probably right. We both fucked things up."

"Mel and I think so, too. The whole situation is just sad for both of you. You were such a nice couple. You are alone now and she will be after he drops her, but if there was a thing like a relationship code of law, she wouldn't have violated it."

He had a point there, but that didn't mean I wanted to hear it. Being a victim was much easier to handle.

"So, what about the party, Martin?"

"I really appreciate it, but I have different priorities these days. I don't need women in my life right now."

"Okay, man. Let me know when this has changed. We're here for you. Take care, Martin."

A year later, friends told me that they were still together, surprising everyone. There had obviously been a lot of speculation, even a few bets, about the length of their relationship, but none of the guesses had exceeded three months.

I tried to act nonchalant about it, but the news dismayed me more than I wanted to admit.

A few days later, I saw them in a supermarket parking lot. They had a kid with them in a stroller. Seeing them like this was surprisingly painful. I had thought that I was over her, but this was still a sore spot. This was the child I always wanted to have with her and which she had always refused to have. They stuffed loads of diapers and stuff into a very old clunker, but they looked like a happy very attractive family, from afar.

Needless to say, I fled the scene as quickly as I could. It wasn't until later that I began to wonder. Mr. Irresistible must have had money when he met Carla; otherwise, he wouldn't have been invited to Lucas's party, or be able to pay for his Spandex. So why were he and Carla in some old clunker? Oh, well. Not my problem.

I didn't hear anything about the happy couple for about a year. I had lost almost all contact with our old friends. Maybe I was ashamed to have lost my wife to a player, maybe I couldn't stand their pity or matchmaking attempts anymore, maybe my whole life had changed too much and they symbolized the old skin which I had mostly shed. I didn't take the time to determine which, as I was busy building my new life.

I had a deja vu moment one Tuesday evening as I opened the door, expecting a delivery and finding Carla. I decided that I definitely wanted a peephole in my next apartment door.

She stood there, looking sheepishly at my feet. She seemed different, I thought. I still recognized her as Carla, yet she wasn't the same woman who had left me. She seemed... bigger? Not fat, but a bit heavier all around. Rounder face, fuller figure. Not obese, but surely not the lean, elegant woman who had been my wife, anymore.

I was still at a loss for words when her head suddenly snapped up and she looked me intently in the eyes. Damn, I had always loved those eyes. Those brows, that nose. Her face still made my knees wobbly. Before I could react, she pushed me backwards into the apartment. She kept pushing me, through the corridor and into our, wait, my bedroom. All the time, she kissed me as if her life depended on it.

She grinned as she pushed me onto our bed and sat on top of me, grinding her crotch against my embarrassingly hard cock. It got worse as she took off her shirt. She was trying the shock and awe strategy and I had to admit that it was working, so far. I didn't like being so weak, but I was overwhelmed, surprised, lonely and maybe still a little bit in love. You would think her spending two years with an asshole and having his kid would be enough to kill that off. I guess not.

She was topless and still grinning as she slid herself down my legs and started opening my trousers. I broke my gaze away from her still pretty face to get a look at those marvelous, mid-sized boobs again for the first time in years.

"Oh," escaped my mouth before I could stop it.

"What?" She obviously was a bit confused by my reaction.

I just stared at her breasts.

"They've changed a bit, right?" she tentatively asked.

That was quite an understatement.

"They are a lot bigger now." She embarrassingly tried to praise the goods on offer, but I wasn't convinced.

Sure, her boobs were bigger, but shape was always more important than size for me. Now she had gained size, but had no shape anymore. There was no use in mincing words, she had saggy boobs. Her flat, muscled belly had been replaced by a hilly landscape traversed by stretch marks.

This would have been expected, totally okay and even alluring if it had been my child that caused this. But it wasn't. These were the traces Michel's child had left on her body. This was the result of her betrayal.

It was a complete turnoff. My erection took the first flight out of the country and sex, or even touching her, was the farthest thing from my mind.

She might have anticipated this; she watched my reaction intently. She looked like she was about to cry.

"I work out all the time, but the belly won't go away. The saggy boobs are normal, the doctor has told me. Some women get those and it has nothing to do with breast feeding, apparently."

"So, Michel doesn't like your body anymore?" I cruelly asked, as she was still sitting on my, mercifully still closed, trousers in a cowgirl position. She was still topless and I thought that this was probably the weirdest post-divorce talk in history.

"I have no idea. We haven't had sex since I was six months pregnant."

"He's seeing other women now?"

"Of course, he always has. He never made a secret of it."

She really did prefer a small part of him over all of me. The fact that I'd been right wasn't much comfort. It was still a blow for my ego.

"You still live at his place?"

"Yes, but he wants to get rid of me and little Mike. He can't stand to hear him cry. He hates any kind of disorder in his apartment, and Mike's walking now so he's all over the place. He always wanted a son, but he's not born to actually raise one. But you are. You finally could be."

She looked hopefully at me while I was simply at a loss for words.

"Martin, do you want me back?" she asked.

If there is such a thing as more speechless, I was it. She actually seemed to be serious, ridiculous as that was. Mistaking my silence for consent, she went on.

"It will be so good. I will be so good to you. We can have another kid immediately. Mike is a great kid, you will love him. You wanted to have kids with me anyway."

"You can't be serious."

"Of course I am. Martin, I never cheated on you. Yes, I had sex with Michel one time, after the party, but I had your permission. I never had sex with him again; hell, I didn't even see him again until I had actually left you. Martin, just regard me as a single mother you have feelings for. You could have a ready-made family. I never stopped loving you."

I looked at her, still speechless. Thoughts I had suppressed for years were flooding back with a vengeance. I remembered the love we once had, the plans we had, how we had wanted to grow old together, to die in each other's arms, surrounded by children and grandchildren.

I also remembered her betrayal. Was it even a betrayal? In my fuzzy mind back then I had probably agreed that she could have sex one time with him. Technically, she had not cheated that night. She had stayed the night and the next morning, stretching my consent to the max, but not breaking it. Lucas had been correct when he had pointed out that we were both at fault.

Then she had probably stayed true to me for a few days before she had announced that she was leaving me because she had fallen in love with another man. While on paper, we were still married for a while afterwards, she had, de facto, ended our relationship with me before moving in with him. The official stuff, like filing for divorce, wasn't the decisive point for us.

None of this could count as a betrayal. Falling in love with a man and leaving another wasn't condemnable. She had just followed her feelings and had been very open and straightforward about it. Morally, none of this was inexcusable or unforgivable.

I came to a decision with surprising ease.

"No."

She deflated, dropped off me sideways and lay limply on her side of the bed.

"I understand," she said sadly. I wondered if she really did.

"I can't even say that you ever really betrayed me. You had sex with him while we were married, but I probably had more or less agreed to it. Then you ended our relationship, moved in with your new man and had a child with him. That hurt, but none of it is immoral. But this isn't a trial..."

"Martin, I really need you," she interrupted me. "Not just because I'm in a bind, but because I've never stopped loving you. In my whole life I've only loved three persons, even including my family. That's you, little Mike and Michel. My love for you was overshadowed by Michel for a while, but what I felt for him was never true. It was nothing deep or lasting, it was just a physical attraction clouding my brain. That is gone now, and I can see the true solid love we once had. Martin, I love you and I want to spend my life with you. I'm so sorry for what I've put you through. Let me make it up to you."

"Carla, there is no one to blame, nothing to forgive, no need to be sorry. What happened at the party was a mistake and we both made it. We had no idea it would destroy what we had, but it did. We were both idiots." That part, I think, was actually true. Of course, if she had adhered to the vague, unspoken deal of a quick one-timer, this wouldn't have escalated and our marriage wouldn't have been shot to pieces. She seemed to think along the same lines, as she looked as skeptical as I felt. "Carla, as I've said, this is not a court. I can't condemn what you've done. Technically, nothing you've done can be seen as adultery. You cleanly ended our relationship before moving in with him. The following divorce was just a technicality.

"The problem is, even if you were absolutely not at fault, it wouldn't mean that our relationship is to be resurrected. It might if we both want it to, and I just don't. You bring too much baggage, I see too many problems ahead. There will be drama, counseling, conflict, guilt, anger, self-loathing, bad memories, problems with friends and families, embarrassment, trouble explaining things to kids we might have. There is not enough love left in me to make me want to deal with all of this. There is a lot of potential for negative things and not much for positive ones. I know he was a master at sex. Hey, how could he not be? He had sex with hundreds, maybe thousands of women. Even the biggest idiot learns something with this kind of training. Even the most self-centered man will use at least some of it."

"He was good, but love is much more important," she answered. She was not very convincing.

"I know. You already told me several times that you loved him more than me."

"No. No, that was just my hormone-clouded mind. I never loved him as much as I loved you, and still do, and I realized it after a while. I was already pregnant by then and didn't know what to do. I decided to try to build a family with him, even though I had already started to loathe him. I had to think about little Mike as well, so I tried to form some kind of family with Michel."

I looked skeptical. "It doesn't really matter, anyway. I could never compete with his memory. I've had sex with just one woman. You. You know we never experimented much, so..."

"Wait, what?" she shrieked. "You never... Please don't tell me that you had no sex for... Oh my God, this is a complete nightmare." Pity was written all over her face, making me feel like a total loser.

"I've been kind of busy." It sounded lame even as I said it.

"Busy? Doing what?"

"I have my own small company now. I've been working 10 to 16 hours per day, seven days a week. It helped to avoid thinking about... other things. I'm quite successful, actually. I've recently hired a third programmer and a secretary. We're growing fast."

"Wow, you're moving upwards while I move down."

"What?"

"Michel is lazy as hell, he's always broke and I'm pretty sure he will never support me or Mike in any meaningful way."

This didn't really help her case as it made her look like a gold digger. There was no need to say it.

"Anyway, my personal life, let me just say that I'm ready... well... I'm over it enough..." I stuttered. "I can enjoy my free time more than I could back then. It's... I don't have to think about you and him constantly, anymore. I can deal with not working all the time now. It's time to enjoy life a bit more." I don't think she believed that stuff any more than I did.

"I'm so sorry about the hurt I've caused. You can't imagine how much I've agonized about that." She was right. As I remembered her attitude going back to the day after the party, I couldn't imagine that she had done that. "You really don't think you can enjoy life with me?" She looked so hopeful that it was really cute.

"Carla, you left me for a more attractive man, making me second choice. Why would I want to live with that knowledge?"

"I know it seems like that, but it's not true. Leaving you was not just the dumbest thing I ever did, it was the hardest decision ever. That's why I was so moody after returning home after... after the party."

"You never thanked me for giving you a wild card; instead, you treated me like a leper."

"I know. I was feeling so guilty for what was about to come. Not for having sex with him, you had agreed to that, but for falling in love with him. That was pure betrayal. I loved two men and it tore me apart. Touching you would have felt like betraying him, not touching you felt like betraying you. As leaving you seemed inevitable, I tried to distance myself from you and it seemed to be exactly what you wanted, as well. When I told you that I loved him more than I loved you, it was just to set you free, to let you move on."

It all sounded like revisionist history combined with buyer's remorse, but it didn't really matter. "Carla, you knew how much I wanted children, still you refused while we were married. You agreed to have his immediately."

"I know. All I can say is that I'm sorry. I was very confused at the time. Like an idiot, I wanted to use the child to preserve something that was doomed from the start. I wanted to have kids with you while we were married, but not so soon and not for this reason."

Using a child for such a purpose seemed repulsive, but I decided there was no reason to point it out.

"That might be true, but the child cost you the last chance to possibly salvage what we had. Whenever I see your body, I will see the physical changes he left on you. I don't think I could ever enjoy sex with you the way I once did. If I met a single mom with the same traces of pregnancy, I might not have a problem with it, but your body has the permanent signature of a man I hate all over it."

"If I had your kid his signature would be overwritten."

"I doubt it, but I don't think I'll ever find out. The biggest problem is his son. You even gave him Michel's name. You expect me to raise the son of the man who stole my wife?"

"It is just your negative perception that keeps you from being happy. That keeps us from being happy. From growing old together, like we always wanted to."

"I guess your perception of the last two years has been much more positive than mine. Your life might not have been perfect. You told me he didn't want to have sex with you for most of your relationship. You told me he had sex with other women all the time. He more or less kicked you out in the end. That has to hurt." The look on her face told me that I was right. "But you had a lot of good times, especially in the beginning. I didn't have those. I just had my pain, my humiliation, my loneliness."

"I'm sorry, Martin. But don't let that stop you from being happy. We could..."

"Carla, for once, please be honest," I interrupted her. "If he hadn't kicked you out, if he wanted to raise your son together with you, would you be sitting here now? Even if he was always broke and continued to have sex with other women, would you have left him?"

Finally, I had gotten through to her. She stared at me with wide eyes for what felt like an eternity, although it couldn't have been more than a few moments. Tears gathered in her eyes.

"Let's be honest for once, okay? When you left me, you told me you didn't want a divorce and still loved me, just not as much as you loved him. The real reason is that you needed me as a fallback for the likely case that he'd dump you. My feelings at the time were of no concern for you. Then you saw that you couldn't fully bind him to you, so you came up with having his child, hoping this might force him to change. Of course, you failed. Having a child to stabilize a failing relationship is never a good idea. Again, my feelings were totally irrelevant.

"Now you see that plan A has finally failed, and you come up with plan B. Poor, dumb Martin is still good enough to pick up the pieces of your life. You just breeze in here, show me your boobs and think I'm simple enough to fall for it? I think you're delusional, selfish and for some reason, you seem to think I have no pride or emotions at all."

She looked at me, obviously unable to come up with a reply.

"There is another thing, Carla." She looked at me, waiting for the next blow. It was no fun, but a few things just needed to be said. "The fact that you have so little respect for yourself that you would allow yourself to be treated as you have allowed Michael to treat you makes you incredibly unattractive, at least for me. If you ever want to have a happy life, you need to find out why you were willing to be debased and exploited by that man. Before you even ask, no, you'll have to do that on your own. I'm not even interested in the answers anymore."