Flash Stories Todays Date Period: Fill & Download for Free

I answered this elsewhere. My apologies if you saw it there.Yes, it is possible for redemption and a good marriage after a spouse cheats.I apologize in advance for the length of this personal story; and also for publishing it anonymously. However, by doing it that way I wanted to accomplish two things. First, I wanted to get a chance to tell my story of events that happened nearly thirty years ago. Mostly because only a very small number of people know the details and we never ever talk about it. Plus, I’ve never had a chance or a forum to tell my story in order to once and for all put it completely behind me. Think of it as therapeutic, the anonymity allows me to say and reveal feelings and thoughts I would never say otherwise.Secondly, so many of the stories I’ve read here of the betrayal and pain of infidelity ended badly with people full of hatred and bitterness. My story has a happy ending; and, I wanted anyone currently suffering from this painful reality to know that it need not end badly. It *may* not be completely hopeless. In fact, I am a better, stronger, and happier man having overcome that most painful episode of my life. I am now just past my fortieth anniversary of my marriage to my first and only wife. By all outward appearances we are a very happy and well adjusted couple with two married adult children and five grandchildren. That characterization is a pretty accurate assessment of our current situation. However, that most definitely was not always the case.My wife and I attended the same high school but because she was two years my junior we didn’t actually get to know each other well until we met at the university where we both eventually earned a bachelors and a masters degree. Her degrees were in education, mine in engineering. (I will hereafter call her “V” which has nothing to do with her real name.)V was very popular both in high school and in college and she had no less then five boyfriends prior to me. I was shy and had no girlfriends before our meeting and dating. Because V was very attractive, buxom, friendly, outgoing, and very intelligent I had a lot of competition while we were dating. (She still possesses all these attributes by the way.) However, V quickly lost interest in everyone except me. Her friends were baffled. Why him they asked her, and no one was more surprised than I was. Although I was very tall and thin and had a reputation for being a very nice and highly intelligent guy I had nothing else going for me. I am by no means unattractive, but I definitely in the middle of the pack on that score. Let’s just say I don’t stand out in a crowd. (Again, all these attributes still apply to me today.) Nonetheless, it was very soon after we started dating the case that we were always together. And, though V was a good Catholic girl, (and therefore not inclined towards causal sex), it wasn’t long before we were at like rabbits every chance we got. We couldn’t keep our hands off of each other. She tells me even today that I was her first sexual encounter. However, we both have high sex drives, so it may or may not be actually true in her case. Although, to tell the truth, it really doesn’t matter to me. She is still my first and only sexual partner.Early in our initial dating period we were not exclusive and dated other people. That period didn’t last long, but while it did there was a certain guy (I’ll call him “X” hereafter). X dated V only once. X was a very handsome guy but was a much shorter than me and about the same height as V. (I’m 6’4”, X and V are about 5’4”). From the beginning I didn’t like the guy. He had a reputation as a playboy and clearly wanted to add V to his list of conquests. I demanded that she not see him anymore and we had a huge fight about it. But when I threatened to move on, V cried and pleaded with me to be with her and only her exclusively. So I did and a year later, while still at the university, we were married in the campus chapel. (I wasn’t then, as I am now, Roman Catholic.)Now flash forward ten years and two young children later. V was going through a difficult period of her life. I was working long hours as a young engineer climbing the corporate ladder and leaving all the household and child-rearing responsibilities to V. After our second child was born V, went into a severe depression. We now know that she is genetically inclined toward bipolar depression. She cycled in roughly six months cycles between a deep depression and then into a period where she was energetic, impulsive, reckless, and inclined toward grandiose and unrealistic schemes. While depressed she sat in a dark room, without makeup in pajamas all day and cried. I had no idea what to do. Then gradually she would come out of it and she would dress attractively and provocatively, be full of life and laughter, spend money foolishly and recklessly, and she always had some grandiose scheme that she was going to undertake. Her sex drive always peaked at that time also.And then one time (while she was on a bipolar high) things suddenly changed. Like so many other people have indicated, I instinctively knew something was wrong but I couldn’t figure out what was behind it all. I never dreamed she was cheating on me and projecting her guilt onto our relationship. One minute she was unusually nice and very sweet to me, and a few minutes later she would find fault with everything I said or did. Plus, she seemed to lose all interest in sex. (That should have tipped me off.) V was, and still is, one of the kindest, generous, and most loving people I know; and I had never known her to lie or be deceitful to me in any way. The idea of her cheating on me just didn’t even seem like even a remote possibility. I did notice that she was buying sexy lingerie and undergarments and never seemed to wear them to bed. In hindsight later I wondered how I could have been so stupid. All the signs were there.What I didn’t know was that while I was at work X had made his reappearance into my life. He was now a married real estate attorney who made occasional business trips to our city. At first he would just drop by our house and just chat with V for a few hours while I was at work. I had no idea this was happening. My wife had two female friends (let’s call them “Y” and “Z”). Both of these woman were in unhappy marriages and they encouraged V to pursue a relationship with X. I’m sure that is what X had planned all along, but thanks to Y and Z he didn’t have to work very hard at it.Soon thereafter V told me she wanted to go out to dinner with Y and Z (who were both supposedly in town) and then visit with them, and she let me know she would be in late. What she actually did was meet with X for dinner and then later went to his four star hotel room for a six hour fuck session. She came in at two a.m., took a shower and crawled in bed with me. When I reached out to hug her, she pushed me away with a “I’m tired.” Like an idiot, I was clueless that anything had just happened.X left town for two weeks, and then returned. Nearly the same thing happened when he came back except they had progressed to a cheap motel room, no dinner, and an eight hour fuck session. I have to admire this guy’s stamina. I later found out that he did it six times in eight hours supposedly coming each time. (He must have been faking it.) However, V wasn’t and later claimed she had six orgasms. Well, I guess he’s beat my record, even to this day, I’m only good for two at one time at the most. Plus, the asshole didn’t even bother to use a condom which, at the time, was the only birth control we used.Anyway, X left town to be with his wife. V decided she had to see him for a repeat performance and concocted a story of why she had to go for a weekend visit to see her friend Y who lived in the same city as X. She brought the kids with her, left them with Y, booked a hotel room and tried to get X to come be with her. Instead he either got spooked or he had moved on to someone else’s wife, because he broke it off with her without meeting her. She suddenly realized that she was just being used a this mans’s personal fuck toy for his own selfish gratification and nothing more; but it was too late.While V was out of town pursuing X, at home she got a letter from her friend Z, and a little voice in my head told me: “You need to read this.” I never read her mail from her friends, but I instinctively knew that I needed to. (This, by the way, story pre-dates email.) Anyway, the letter began with: “Wow! V and X sounds like something out of a Danielle Steele novel! Just be careful and don’t get hurt or pregnant. And, make sure your husband never finds out.” My knees went weak and I had to go to the bathroom to throw up. I was physically ill. I cried my eyes out until she returned home. What happened next was that she tried to deny that anything had happened. Unfortunately for her, her friend, Z’s letter more or less revealed all the details indirectly. Plus I found a a card that came with flowers hidden in her dresser which said: “Last night was amazing! I can’t wait to do it again. Love, X”. There was no denying it. Worst yet, she told me she thought she was pregnant. It turned out that it was a false alarm, but that fact made all the worse.What then happened was two years of pure hell, where our marriage was on the verge of collapse. We argued and fought all the time, and then made up, and then back to fighting again. I badgered her constantly for details of her affair until she finally out of weariness gave in and told me. Everything she told me just made me feel worse. I even went through a ridiculous phase where I imagined my penis was too small. (Apparently it’s not, especially when compared to his, but anyway that has nothing to do with my wife’s affair.) In other words, my self esteem hit rock bottom and I even had to take meds for depression for a short while. What kept me going was the kids. I didn’t want to give them up. We tried marriage counseling. It helped a little. We went to world-wide marriage encounter through our church. That helped a lot.However, the thing that helped the most is that we found a competent doctor that knew how to treat V’s bipolar depression with the proper medication. That was 29 years ago. Time has now healed all wounds, and her affair is now a distant memory. Once again I trust her without reservations of any kind, and we now have a happy and fulfilling marriage — in other words, one where two people are fully committed to each other. And, as strange as it sounds, her affair made me fully appreciate her as a sexy and passionate woman who is actually quite good in bed. That’s no exaggeration. Our sex life tends to be feast or famine: three consecutive days of passionate sex followed by a week or two of abstinence and then we are back at it again. And, I make sure that its not one-sided because I don’t want there to be any chance that she’s not happy in that department. She goes out of her way to do the same. We’re both very happy with at least that part of our life.There are couple weird things that leftover as a consequence of my experience. As silly as it sounds, I am very nervous when I am around any attractive female, and there’s no way I would ever be alone with a woman. I’m terrified of giving in to temptation, and go out of my way to make sure it doesn’t happen. I don’t even trust myself to have close female friends. It’s not that I am not friendly, quite the opposite, I just don’t want a repeat of the past with the shoe on the other foot. I’m also haunted by a recurrent sexual fantasy of my wife having sex with another man. Why do I do this? I haven’t a clue. In reality it is the last thing in the world I would actually want. Even so, its a major turn on for me; and on rare occasions when I’m having performance issues, simply imagining that I am a stranger making love to my wife works better than any little blue pill ever could. Try as I like I can’t banish this fantasy, but since it doesn’t seem to hurt I just live with it.So, bottom line: if your spouse cheated on you there is a glimmer of hope that you can eventually get over it and have a happy marriage once again. It’s really really hard and painful to do this, but it can be done. I’m living proof that this is true.I hope this helps you.

This is a repeat of an answer I posted to a similar question. My Apologies if you saw it there.The answer is yes, forgiveness is possible.I apologize in advance for the length of this personal story; and also for publishing it anonymously. However, by doing it that way I wanted to accomplish two things. First, I wanted to get a chance to tell my story of events that happened nearly thirty years ago. Mostly because only a very small number of people know the details and we never ever talk about it. Plus, I’ve never had a chance or a forum to tell my story in order to once and for all put it completely behind me. Think of it as therapeutic, the anonymity allows me to say and reveal feelings and thoughts I would never say otherwise.Secondly, so many of the stories I’ve read here of the betrayal and pain of infidelity ended badly with people full of hatred and bitterness. My story has a happy ending; and, I wanted anyone currently suffering from this painful reality to know that it need not end badly. It *may* not be completely hopeless. In fact, I am a better, stronger, and happier man having overcome that most painful episode of my life. I am now just past my fortieth anniversary of my marriage to my first and only wife. By all outward appearances we are a very happy and well adjusted couple with two married adult children and five grandchildren. That characterization is a pretty accurate assessment of our current situation. However, that most definitely was not always the case.My wife and I attended the same high school but because she was two years my junior we didn’t actually get to know each other well until we met at the university where we both eventually earned a bachelors and a masters degree. Her degrees were in education, mine in engineering. (I will hereafter call her “V” which has nothing to do with her real name.)V was very popular both in high school and in college and she had no less then five boyfriends prior to me. I was shy and had no girlfriends before our meeting and dating. Because V was very attractive, buxom, friendly, outgoing, and very intelligent I had a lot of competition while we were dating. (She still possesses all these attributes by the way.) However, V quickly lost interest in everyone except me. Her friends were baffled. Why him they asked her, and no one was more surprised than I was. Although I was very tall and thin and had a reputation for being a very nice and highly intelligent guy I had nothing else going for me. I am by no means unattractive, but I definitely in the middle of the pack on that score. Let’s just say I don’t stand out in a crowd. (Again, all these attributes still apply to me today.) Nonetheless, it was very soon after we started dating the case that we were always together. And, though V was a good Catholic girl, (and therefore not inclined towards causal sex), it wasn’t long before we were at like rabbits every chance we got. We couldn’t keep our hands off of each other. She tells me even today that I was her first sexual encounter. However, we both have high sex drives, so it may or may not be actually true in her case. Although, to tell the truth, it really doesn’t matter to me. She is still my first and only sexual partner.Early in our initial dating period we were not exclusive and dated other people. That period didn’t last long, but while it did there was a certain guy (I’ll call him “X” hereafter). X dated V only once. X was a very handsome guy but was a much shorter than me and about the same height as V. (I’m 6’4”, X and V are about 5’4”). From the beginning I didn’t like the guy. He had a reputation as a playboy and clearly wanted to add V to his list of conquests. I demanded that she not see him anymore and we had a huge fight about it. But when I threatened to move on, V cried and pleaded with me to be with her and only her exclusively. So I did and a year later, while still at the university, we were married in the campus chapel. (I wasn’t then, as I am now, Roman Catholic.)Now flash forward ten years and two young children later. V was going through a difficult period of her life. I was working long hours as a young engineer climbing the corporate ladder and leaving all the household and child-rearing responsibilities to V. After our second child was born V, went into a severe depression. We now know that she is genetically inclined toward bipolar depression. She cycled in roughly six months cycles between a deep depression and then into a period where she was energetic, impulsive, reckless, and inclined toward grandiose and unrealistic schemes. While depressed she sat in a dark room, without makeup in pajamas all day and cried. I had no idea what to do. Then gradually she would come out of it and she would dress attractively and provocatively, be full of life and laughter, spend money foolishly and recklessly, and she always had some grandiose scheme that she was going to undertake. Her sex drive always peaked at that time also.And then one time (while she was on a bipolar high) things suddenly changed. Like so many other people have indicated, I instinctively knew something was wrong but I couldn’t figure out what was behind it all. I never dreamed she was cheating on me and projecting her guilt onto our relationship. One minute she was unusually nice and very sweet to me, and a few minutes later she would find fault with everything I said or did. Plus, she seemed to lose all interest in sex. (That should have tipped me off.) V was, and still is, one of the kindest, generous, and most loving people I know; and I had never known her to lie or be deceitful to me in any way. The idea of her cheating on me just didn’t even seem like even a remote possibility. I did notice that she was buying sexy lingerie and undergarments and never seemed to wear them to bed. In hindsight later I wondered how I could have been so stupid. All the signs were there.What I didn’t know was that while I was at work X had made his reappearance into my life. He was now a married real estate attorney who made occasional business trips to our city. At first he would just drop by our house and just chat with V for a few hours while I was at work. I had no idea this was happening. My wife had two female friends (let’s call them “Y” and “Z”). Both of these woman were in unhappy marriages and they encouraged V to pursue a relationship with X. I’m sure that is what X had planned all along, but thanks to Y and Z he didn’t have to work very hard at it.Soon thereafter V told me she wanted to go out to dinner with Y and Z (who were both supposedly in town) and then visit with them, and she let me know she would be in late. What she actually did was meet with X for dinner and then later went to his four star hotel room for a six hour fuck session. She came in at two a.m., took a shower and crawled in bed with me. When I reached out to hug her, she pushed me away with a “I’m tired.” Like an idiot, I was clueless that anything had just happened.X left town for two weeks, and then returned. Nearly the same thing happened when he came back except they had progressed to a cheap motel room, no dinner, and an eight hour fuck session. I have to admire this guy’s stamina. I later found out that he did it six times in eight hours supposedly coming each time. (He must have been faking it.) However, V wasn’t and later claimed she had six orgasms. Well, I guess he’s beat my record, even to this day, I’m only good for two at one time at the most. Plus, the asshole didn’t even bother to use a condom which, at the time, was the only birth control we used.Anyway, X left town to be with his wife. V decided she had to see him for a repeat performance and concocted a story of why she had to go for a weekend visit to see her friend Y who lived in the same city as X. She brought the kids with her, left them with Y, booked a hotel room and tried to get X to come be with her. Instead he either got spooked or he had moved on to someone else’s wife, because he broke it off with her without meeting her. She suddenly realized that she was just being used as this man’s personal fuck toy for his own selfish pleasure; but this realization came too late.While V was out of town pursuing X, at home she got a letter from her friend Z, and a little voice in my head told me: “You need to read this.” I never read her mail from her friends, but I instinctively knew that I needed to. (This, by the way, story pre-dates email.) Anyway, the letter began with: “Wow! V and X sounds like something out of a Danielle Steele novel! Just be careful and don’t get hurt or pregnant. And, make sure your husband never finds out.” My knees went weak and I had to go to the bathroom to throw up. I was physically ill. I cried my eyes out until she returned home. What happened next was that she tried to deny that anything had happened. Unfortunately for her, her friend, Z’s letter more or less revealed all the details indirectly. Plus I found a a card that came with flowers hidden in her dresser which said: “Last night was amazing! I can’t wait to do it again. Love, X”. There was no denying it. Worst yet, she told me she thought she was pregnant. It turned out that it was a false alarm, but that fact made all the worse.What then happened was two years of pure hell, where our marriage was on the verge of collapse. We argued and fought all the time, and then made up, and then back to fighting again. I badgered her constantly for details of her affair until she finally out of weariness gave in and told me. Everything she told me just made me feel worse. I even went through a ridiculous phase where I imagined my penis was too small. (Apparently it’s not, especially when compared to his, but anyway that has nothing to do with my wife’s affair.) In other words, my self esteem hit rock bottom and I even had to take meds for depression for a short while. What kept me going was the kids. I didn’t want to give them up. We tried marriage counseling. It helped a little. We went to world-wide marriage encounter through our church. That helped a lot.However, the thing that helped the most is that we found a competent doctor that knew how to treat V’s bipolar depression with the proper medication. That was 29 years ago. Time has now healed all wounds, and her affair is now a distant memory. Once again I trust her without reservations of any kind, and we now have a happy and fulfilling marriage — in other words, one where two people are fully committed to each other. And, as strange as it sounds, her affair made me fully appreciate her as a sexy and passionate woman who is actually quite good in bed. That’s no exaggeration. Our sex life tends to be feast or famine: three consecutive days of passionate sex followed by a week or two of abstinence and then we are back at it again. And, I make sure that its not one-sided because I don’t want there to be any chance that she’s not happy in that department. She goes out of her way to do the same. We’re both very happy with at least that part of our life.There are couple weird things that leftover as a consequence of my experience. As silly as it sounds, I am very nervous when I am around any attractive female, and there’s no way I would ever be alone with a woman. I’m terrified of giving in to temptation, and go out of my way to make sure it doesn’t happen. I don’t even trust myself to have close female friends. It’s not that I am not friendly, quite the opposite, I just don’t want a repeat of the past with the shoe on the other foot. I’m also haunted by a recurrent sexual fantasy of my wife having sex with another man. Why do I do this? I haven’t a clue. In reality it is the last thing in the world I would actually want. Even so, its a major turn on for me; and on rare occasions when I’m having performance issues, simply imagining that I am a stranger making love to my wife works better than any little blue pill ever could. Try as I like I can’t banish this fantasy, but since it doesn’t seem to hurt I just live with it.So, bottom line: if your spouse cheated on you there is a glimmer of hope that you can eventually get over it and have a happy marriage once again. It’s really really hard and painful to do this, but it can be done. I’m living proof that this is true.I hope this helps.

It should have been obvious.I apologize in advance for the length of this personal story; and also for publishing it anonymously. However, by doing it that way I wanted to accomplish two things. First, I wanted to get a chance to tell my story of events that happened nearly thirty years ago. Mostly because only a very small number of people know the details and we never ever talk about it. Plus, I’ve never had a chance or a forum to tell my story in order to once and for all put it completely behind me. Think of it as therapeutic, the anonymity allows me to say and reveal feelings and thoughts I would never say otherwise.Secondly, so many of the stories I’ve read here of the betrayal and pain of infidelity ended badly with people full of hatred and bitterness. My story has a happy ending; and, I wanted anyone currently suffering from this painful reality to know that it need not end badly. It *may* not be completely hopeless. In fact, I am a better, stronger, and happier man having overcome that most painful episode of my life. I am now just past my fortieth anniversary of my marriage to my first and only wife. By all outward appearances we are a very happy and well adjusted couple with two married adult children and five grandchildren. That characterization is a pretty accurate assessment of our current situation. However, that most definitely was not always the case.My wife and I attended the same high school but because she was two years my junior we didn’t actually get to know each other well until we met at the university where we both eventually earned a bachelors and a masters degree. Her degrees were in education, mine in engineering. (I will hereafter call her “V” which has nothing to do with her real name.)V was very popular both in high school and in college and she had no less then five boyfriends prior to me. I was shy and had no girlfriends before our meeting and dating. Because V was very attractive, buxom, friendly, outgoing, and very intelligent I had a lot of competition while we were dating. (She still possesses all these attributes by the way.) However, V quickly lost interest in everyone except me. Her friends were baffled. Why him they asked her, and no one was more surprised than I was. Although I was very tall and thin and had a reputation for being a very nice and highly intelligent guy I had nothing else going for me. I am by no means unattractive, but I definitely in the middle of the pack on that score. Let’s just say I don’t stand out in a crowd. (Again, all these attributes still apply to me today.) Nonetheless, it was very soon after we started dating the case that we were always together. And, though V was a good Catholic girl, (and therefore not inclined towards causal sex), it wasn’t long before we were at like rabbits every chance we got. We couldn’t keep our hands off of each other. She tells me even today that I was her first sexual encounter. However, we both have high sex drives, so it may or may not be actually true in her case. Although, to tell the truth, it really doesn’t matter to me. She is still my first and only sexual partner.Early in our initial dating period we were not exclusive and dated other people. That period didn’t last long, but while it did there was a certain guy (I’ll call him “X” hereafter). X dated V only once. X was a very handsome guy but was a much shorter than me and about the same height as V. (I’m 6’4”, X and V are about 5’4”). From the beginning I didn’t like the guy. He had a reputation as a playboy and clearly wanted to add V to his list of conquests. I demanded that she not see him anymore and we had a huge fight about it. But when I threatened to move on, V cried and pleaded with me to be with her and only her exclusively. So I did and a year later, while still at the university, we were married in the campus chapel. (I wasn’t then, as I am now, Roman Catholic.)Now flash forward ten years and two young children later. V was going through a difficult period of her life. I was working long hours as a young engineer climbing the corporate ladder and leaving all the household and child-rearing responsibilities to V. After our second child was born V, went into a severe depression. We now know that she is genetically inclined toward bipolar depression. She cycled in roughly six months cycles between a deep depression and then into a period where she was energetic, impulsive, reckless, and inclined toward grandiose and unrealistic schemes. While depressed she sat in a dark room, without makeup in pajamas all day and cried. I had no idea what to do. Then gradually she would come out of it and she would dress attractively and provocatively, be full of life and laughter, spend money foolishly and recklessly, and she always had some grandiose scheme that she was going to undertake. Her sex drive always peaked at that time also.And then one time (while she was on a bipolar high) things suddenly changed. Like so many other people have indicated, I instinctively knew something was wrong but I couldn’t figure out what was behind it all. I never dreamed she was cheating on me and projecting her guilt onto our relationship. One minute she was unusually nice and very sweet to me, and a few minutes later she would find fault with everything I said or did. Plus, she seemed to lose all interest in sex. (That should have tipped me off.) V was, and still is, one of the kindest, generous, and most loving people I know; and I had never known her to lie or be deceitful to me in any way. The idea of her cheating on me just didn’t even seem like even a remote possibility. I did notice that she was buying sexy lingerie and undergarments and never seemed to wear them to bed. In hindsight later I wondered how I could have been so stupid. All the signs were there.What I didn’t know was that while I was at work X had made his reappearance into my life. He was now a married real estate attorney who made occasional business trips to our city. At first he would just drop by our house and just chat with V for a few hours while I was at work. I had no idea this was happening. My wife had two female friends (let’s call them “Y” and “Z”). Both of these woman were in unhappy marriages and they encouraged V to pursue a relationship with X. I’m sure that is what X had planned all along, but thanks to Y and Z he didn’t have to work very hard at it.Soon thereafter V told me she wanted to go out to dinner with Y and Z (who were both supposedly in town) and then visit with them, and she let me know she would be in late. What she actually did was meet with X for dinner and then later went to his four star hotel room for a six hour fuck session. She came in at two a.m., took a shower and crawled in bed with me. When I reached out to hug her, she pushed me away with a “I’m tired.” Like an idiot, I was clueless that anything had just happened.X left town for two weeks, and then returned. Nearly the same thing happened when he came back except they had progressed to a cheap motel room, no dinner, and an eight hour fuck session. I have to admire this guy’s stamina. I later found out that he did it six times in eight hours supposedly coming each time. (He must have been faking it.) However, V wasn’t and later claimed she had six orgasms. Well, I guess he’s beat my record, even to this day, I’m only good for two at one time at the most. Plus, the asshole didn’t even bother to use a condom which, at the time, was the only birth control we used.Anyway, X left town to be with his wife. V decided she had to see him for a repeat performance and concocted a story of why she had to go for a weekend visit to see her friend Y who lived in the same city as X. She brought the kids with her, left them with Y, booked a hotel room and tried to get X to come be with her. Instead he either got spooked or he had moved on to someone else’s wife, because he broke it off with her without meeting her. She suddenly realized that she was just being used for someone’s personal fuck toy, but it was too late.While V was out of town pursuing X, at home she got a letter from her friend Z, and a little voice in my head told me: “You need to read this.” I never read her mail from her friends, but I instinctively knew that I needed to. (This, by the way, story pre-dates email.) Anyway, the letter began with: “Wow! V and X sounds like something out of a Danielle Steele novel! Just be careful and don’t get hurt or pregnant. And, make sure your husband never finds out.” My knees went weak and I had to go to the bathroom to throw up. I was physically ill. I cried my eyes out until she returned home. What happened next was that she tried to deny that anything had happened. Unfortunately for her, her friend, Z’s letter more or less revealed all the details indirectly. Plus I found a a card that came with flowers hidden in her dresser which said: “Last night was amazing! I can’t wait to do it again. Love, X”. There was no denying it. Worst yet, she told me she thought she was pregnant. It turned out that it was a false alarm, but that fact made all the worse.What then happened was two years of pure hell, where our marriage was on the verge of collapse. We argued and fought all the time, and then made up, and then back to fighting again. I badgered her constantly for details of her affair until she finally out of weariness gave in and told me. Everything she told me just made me feel worse. I even went through a ridiculous phase where I imagined my penis was too small. (Apparently it’s not, especially when compared to his, but anyway that has nothing to do with my wife’s affair.) In other words, my self esteem hit rock bottom and I even had to take meds for depression for a short while. What kept me going was the kids. I didn’t want to give them up. We tried marriage counseling. It helped a little. We went to world-wide marriage encounter through our church. That helped a lot.However, the thing that helped the most is that we found a competent doctor that knew how to treat V’s bipolar depression with the proper medication. That was 29 years ago. Time has now healed all wounds, and her affair is now a distant memory. Once again I trust her without reservations of any kind, and we now have a happy and fulfilling marriage — in other words, one where two people are fully committed to each other. And, as strange as it sounds, her affair made me fully appreciate her as a sexy and passionate woman who is actually quite good in bed. That’s no exaggeration. Our sex life tends to be feast or famine: three consecutive days of passionate sex followed by a week or two of abstinence and then we are back at it again. And, I make sure that its not one-sided because I don’t want there to be any chance that she’s not happy in that department. She goes out of her way to do the same. We’re both very happy with at least that part of our life.There are couple weird things that leftover as a consequence of my experience. As silly as it sounds, I am very nervous when I am around any attractive female, and there’s no way I would ever be alone with a woman. I’m terrified of giving in to temptation, and go out of my way to make sure it doesn’t happen. I don’t even trust myself to have close female friends. It’s not that I am not friendly, quite the opposite, I just don’t want a repeat of the past with the shoe on the other foot. I’m also haunted by a recurrent sexual fantasy of my wife having sex with another man. Why do I do this? I haven’t a clue. In reality it is the last thing in the world I would actually want. Even so, its a major turn on for me; and on rare occasions when I’m having performance issues, simply imagining that I am a stranger making love to my wife works better than any little blue pill ever could. Try as I like I can’t banish this fantasy, but since it doesn’t seem to hurt I just live with it.So, bottom line: if your spouse cheated on you there is a glimmer of hope that you can eventually get over it and have a happy marriage once again. It’s really really hard and painful to do this, but it can be done. I’m living proof that this is true.=================================================