Suffice to say, by Monday morning, I’d decided to continue seeing John. It’s important now for me to understand why. This can’t happen again. I think it was a combination of many factors. I’d survived the most guilt I would ever feel, unscathed. I knew I risked losing John’s attention, and the attendant ego boost, if I stopped. I’d already been unfaithful once, it would be the same if I kept going. John was right. At a risk to our marriages, we’d done something regrettable. Keeping going sort of justified the risks and self-condemnation we felt. All justifiable reasons. In the cold light of hindsight though, I really think it came down to a simple battle between the guilt I felt and the addictive thrill I increasingly experienced from cuckolding Dave. Now, of course, I feel the guilt but can’t remember the thrill.
I made a miraculous recovery Monday morning and worked a full week. To check if Dave was the slightest bit suspicious, I watched his behaviour carefully. I was a little alarmed he didn’t make a move on me Monday or Tuesday. I knew from my research that men commonly stayed away from their wives sexually, if they suspected them. Thank goodness, Dave joined me in the shower Wednesday night, and, well, sexually assaulted me would be a good description. Yes, life was good.
I handled the children issue by not raising the subject of going off the pill like we’d agreed. Dave mentioned it once but didn’t push it. I just told him we had plenty of time and I was loving my job.
The girls at work were gradually opening up to welcoming me into their social circle. It was around that time that Dave and I began to be invited to do things with one or more of them on the weekends and hardly a week went by when one of them didn’t pop in to visit us after work. That spurred me to do what I knew I had to do anyway—make sure no one at work knew a damn thing about John’s and my relationship. After a while, he stopped nagging me to bend over his desk. When I arrived at work, John usually came in to my office, closed the door, and we shared a kiss. That was it. We were even super careful about that, after one of the other girls opened the door just as we broke our clinch.
Coming up to the end of the financial year, John cut down on the out of town trips to concentrate on getting jobs finished and invoiced. That left us with the problem of how to get together. I figured I could ‘work late’ at least one night a week and possibly ‘work’ a half day every second weekend or so. I held John off that first week, having some making up to do with Dave.
I went out with the girls from my old work on Thursday night, for what turned out to be the last time. There were four married girls, two of who had lovers, and three single ones. That was the night the group imploded. Wendy’s husband had found out about her affairs and it came out that Paula, one of the single ones, was the person who gave her away. This discovery was made about an hour into the evening and caused a split. The two cheaters at one table, the rest at another. I stayed with Wendy’s group to pump her for information on how she was caught. Her affair wasn’t common knowledge, even among our group. I only knew after overhearing a hushed conversation. As she was one of my main sources of information on how not to be caught, I thought it important.