Update
Well folks, a lot has happened since my last post. In late October, David and Brenda took a vacation together to Florida, and apparently had a wonderful time. When they returned, however, something seemed slightly "off." I couldn't put my finger on it, but Brenda seemed to be a bit stressed, though she would not talk about it. For the next couple of weeks, David was spending more than half of his time at our place, and I was traveling a lot out of town.
In mid-November, while I was in Chicago on business, I received a message that David had called me, and wanted me to call him back. This was quite a surprise, as we rarely would talk on the phone one-on-one, though we were always friendly when the three of us were together. When I called David back, he said that he needed to "bare his soul" to me in a way that he would feel uncomfortable doing so in person. David told me that he wanted to speak with me *before* approaching Brenda with what he had to say out of "respect" for me. I responded, "What the hell are you talking about?"
The long and short of it was that David had fallen in love with Brenda, and wanted to have her 100 percent as his woman. David had gotten the impression, based on my allowing him exclusive sexual access to Brenda, that neither Brenda nor I were happy being married to each other, and were simply afraid to "let go." So, David called me to ask me to consider "stepping aside" and having the "courage" to end the marriage, rather than putting Brenda in the uncomfortable position of choosing between the two of us. Then, he had the NERVE to ask me not to tell Brenda about his call! Well, at that point, I hung up the phone, cut short my trip, checked out of my hotel, and caught a red-eye back home.
When I arrived home, Brenda was sitting in our living room sofa with the lights out. She then told me, "We need to talk." Naturally, I believed the worst, and thought that Brenda was going to dump me. Now, I feel ashamed that I had so little faith in Brenda, or in the strength of our marriage.
Brenda told me that David had just left about 2 hours before I got home, and that he had tried to get her to leave the marriage to go live with him. She then said that, with those words spoken, she knew without a doubt that she never wanted to see David again. In fact, she said that, in the past weeks, he had become overly "clingy" and possessive of her, and even got mad one time when she was having an innocent, friendly chat with a guy near the hotel pool when they were on vacation. But once David tried to force her to, in effect, choose between him and her marriage, Brenda knew that there was no way their relationship could continue. After she explained all this, my eye swelled up with tears. Then, Brenda smiled, kissed me on the lips, and said, "Rick, you are the man I want to spend my life with, don't you know that?"
Surprisingly, Brenda didn't need her normal "mourning period" after ending her relationship with David. After our talk, she took me by the hand, led me to our bedroom, and said "I need you!"... And we made passionate love several times in a row.
David contacted Brenda several days later in an attempt to do an "about face" and return to their old relationship, but she would have nothing to do with him. She said that once a guy crosses a certain line, and disrespects her marriage, then "that is that." When David asked if they could be "friends," Brenda told him that she never wanted to see his face, or hear his voice, ever again.
God, I love Brenda! I feel so ashamed that I could ever doubt her loyalty. In any case, since her breakup with David, Brenda and I have been like newlyweds, making love every day, sometimes more. We don't know whether Brenda will want to have another affair, but I'm not worried about it. She has proven to me that our marriage will survive anything. If, down the road, Brenda wants to have another fling, with us having a sexual "break," that will be fine by me.
So, for now, I guess Brenda and I are a typical bring vanilla married couple, certainly nothing anyone would want to read about here. But if things change, I will let y'all know. Take care, everyone.
Rick