Vetting a Marriage Ch. 02

Please read "Vetting A Marriage, ch. 1" before reading chapter 2. And remember, if you are using the "Loving Wives" stories to deal with your own anger at your situation, please seek medical, psychological and/or spiritual help.

This is all just for fun.

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Emily's Narrative

My name is Emily Erinson, and this is the worst day of my life. My shame and stupidity have come to fruition. My wonderful, loving husband of 35 years, my friend and hero, my knight in shining armor, and the best man I have ever known, found out I had cheated on our marriage in an act of utter stupidity over 30 years ago.

To be honest, our sex life was the only part of our marriage that was not perfect. I have never really enjoyed intercourse. In the beginning, it was painful. We weren't sure what was wrong -- later we found out it was a combination of physical and psychological factors. After we had kids, I had a surgical procedure that took the pain away, and intercourse went from a burden to simply the least pleasurable aspect of making love with my husband. I really enjoy the cuddling, the touching, the fondling. I like stroking him, and I love what he does to me with his mouth, tongue and hands. I even tolerate putting his penis in my mouth -- although I don't think I'm very good at it. I just don't like to have anything in my vagina. It feels invasive.

Marty is not a very touchy -- feely person. I would bet that if he had been born a generation later, he would have been diagnosed as being on the Autism spectrum. He just doesn't like to touch or be touched, unless it leads to sex. And for him, sex means intercourse. And he has always wanted sex a lot. It has been the one area of our marriage where we just didn't seem to be a good match.

Well, early in our marriage it was just a disaster. I hated the thought of it, because it hurt so much. He would try to get me excited -- he really did. But I just didn't enjoy it.

One day, some of my girlfriends were talking about how good their husbands were in bed. They usually trashed them, and talked about how they were useless slobs in every other way, but now they were talking about how great sex was, and how good they were with their cocks. Then they asked me. Well, maybe it was the wine, but I said more than I should have, and they ganged up on me -- well, really they ganged up on Marty. They told me he was the problem, that he was just a bad lover, and then they asked me to compare him to my previous experiences. When I told them I had been a virgin on our wedding night, well that was it. They decided I needed to experience other men, to know if the problem really was Marty. They were freaking me out, and so I left.

A few days later they approached me with their plan. We were all going to experience each other's husbands. Honestly, I don't think this was as much about me, as their marriages were in trouble. Later on three of the four other marriages fell apart, and the other one stayed together because the husband was a pastor and there is no way his church would let him keep it if his marriage broke up. They had started sharing, with each woman sleeping with each other's husbands. They invited me to join. There was no way Marty would do this -- so they offered me the "opportunity" to participate without him. I really had no desire to cheat, and no desire to have sex with anyone else. But I did wonder if this would be the way to find out who was the cause of the problem -- Marty or me.

I agreed to do it one time, and they said it would be with Brad Quarters. Now Brad fancied himself a real stud, and he always flirted with me. However, I saw nothing in him that I didn't already have twice as good with Marty. But I said okay, as long as I could have another woman in the room. I asked for Judy. Judy was tall, sensual, with skin the color of coffee with cream. She was simply beautiful, and I had often wondered what it would be like to be with her. While I had never slept with a man before marriage, I had enjoyed quite a few women in college. We called it "LUG," Lesbian Until Graduation.

That night I was excited about being with Judy, but not about what would happen with Brad. I made clear that I would not touch his penis, not kiss him in any way, or not even look at him. Almost immediately Judy and I began making out, undressing each other, and enjoying each other's bodies. I was wet and very excited. However, I had not had an orgasm. Then, while Judy was lying on the bed on her back, with me on my knees sucking on her clit, Brad entered me. He just jammed it in, and I was in agony. I yelled at him to stop, but he just kept fucking me. He was wearing a condom, so I don't know if he came, but I was in such pain that was all I felt. Finally, he took it out and I rolled over. I jumped off the bed, ran into the bathroom, and threw up. I stayed there for awhile, and I could hear Brad and Judy continuing. I came out, got dressed while they were still involved, and walked out. I got in my car and came home. Thank God Marty was not home. I sat in the tub and cried.

I did it two other times, with Scott and Becky and with Tom and Vanessa. I enjoyed the women, and hated what I felt with the men. I began to wonder if I really was a lesbian. I knew I was attracted to Marty, really attracted to him. I liked everything he did to me, and was turned on by it -- I just didn't like it when he put his cock in me. I also learned that he wasn't the problem. When I did it with him, it hurt less than with Brad, Scott or Tom.

That was over 30 years ago, and we had completely moved on. No, the sex wasn't great -- but it was okay, and even good.

And now this.

Marty found out. Somehow the FBI came across the entire sorted tale when they were doing a background check on him for a position in the administration, and now he knows everything. I have never seen him so mad, and he has never walked out in anger before. Never.

But there is one thing that is really wrong. The last thing he said was that I had slept with those men many times, and I never did. I only had sex with Brad, Scott and Tom once, and I never had sex with any other man. Where could he have gotten that false information? He even said specific numbers of times. What was that about?

He said Brad 34 times, Scott 26 times, and Tom 17 times, all when he was working on Capitol Hill. Being a packrat, I kept all my date books, neatly filed in my office next to our bedroom. I went back and started counting. It took over an hour, but I found them all.

"That's it! I have to talk to Marty!" I said out loud.

I tried calling him, but it went to voice mail.

"Marty, I love you. Please call me back. I can explain. You've got it all wrong. Please call me. I love you so much honey."

I knew Marty needed time and space. He would calm down and think more rationally with a few days away. So I gave him the weekend.

I called his sister, Linda.

I told her everything I had told Marty, and she was sympathetic. Then I told her the rest of the story.

"Lin, Marty thinks I kept cheating on him. I didn't after those three times, I never had sex with another man again. All those times, I was with the women. I was with Brad's wife Vanessa, with Scott's wife Sylvia, and with Tom's wife Becky. We played together. You understand Lin, just like you and I did those times. Marty will forgive me for that. It's not cheating. I just needed to be touched, like only a woman can. If I can explain it to him, he will forgive me and come home."

"Em, I don't know if he will. Marty is a rational man, and he may think differently about you being with a woman than with a man, but I don't think the problem is just the sex. You kept something from him for all these years. Face it Emily, you are bisexual. Marty doesn't think that's evil or a sin like some people used to, but you went behind his back for years. What we did together was wrong, because you never told him about it. Remember, I told you to tell him. But you said he wouldn't understand -- but you never gave him a chance to understand. That's the deception, that's the betrayal."

"Oh god, Linda. Do you think he will divorce me?"

"I don't know."

It was late on Sunday night, two weeks after Marty left. There was a knock on the door, and two Maryland state troopers were at the door. I recognized one from the detail that guarded our family when Marty was governor.

"Mrs. Erinson, may we come in?"

"Yes, please. Is it about Marty?"

"Mrs. Erinson. I have bad news. The Governor, er... Mr. Erinson's car was found by the early this morning stopped in the right hand lane of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. While we have not yet found him, we think he jumped into the bay. Mrs. Erinson, I'm so sorry."

I don't remember anything after that for several days. I was in the hospital for a week, and then under nurse's care for several more weeks.

They never did find Marty's body.

Marty had been busy in the days after he walked out of our home and out of my life. He wrote a suicide note and sent copies to the Washington Post, New York Times, Dallas Morning News (home of Brad and Vanessa Quarters), Nashville Tennessean (where Tom and Becky House reside), and Columbus Dispatch (home of Scott and Sylvia Malden). In it he described how each of them had contributed to the had destruction of our marriage, and ruination of his life. In the mailing he including excerpts of the FBI file. He sent a 10 minute video to CNN, in which he shared his shock and pain at the discovery of my betrayal.

I never heard how the news of Marty's death affected the lives of the others, except for Tom and Becky House. As expected, Tom was removed as pastor of his megachurch, and they then divorced.

I did hear from Phil Fine. He was the one man in the group who would not have sex with me, because he saw it as betraying Marty, whom he considered a man of integrity. Phil said Marty came to see him in Allentown, PA where Phil now lives, the Friday before Marty jumped off the bridge. This is what Phil told me:

"Marty was sad, and he was angry, but mostly he was confused. He couldn't understand how you could do that to him. I got a sense he was moving forward, and ready to take the next steps in his life."

Our children did not respond to my attempts to contact them. To this day I have not heard from them.

After a year, Marty was declared dead. We never had a memorial service.

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Epilogue

This is Linda, Marty's sister.

I suppose that, technically speaking, we did break the law. We did fake a death. I'm sure the insurance company wouldn't like what we did. But I hate insurance companies.

I made a few phone calls, called in a few favors, not much really. It's surprising how easy it is for a high-ranking official in the White House to break the law. It was the least I could do, helping Marty get over the border. He talked about Cape Breton, and he talked about Saskatchewan. Marty always liked colder weather, and always complained about the miserably hot Maryland summers. Canada likely suits him fine. However, I'm not really sure where he is. Every few months he sends me an email, on my private server. No news, just these words:

"What's shakin, dear heart?"