Everything he was saying was beginning to make perfect sense to me. The videos he was watching were all about wives sleeping with other men. I didn’t see anything about husbands sleeping with other women. On top of that, the woman in the video looked exactly like me, a fact that I’d pointed out to him when I found out what he had been watching.

Still, even knowing that this wasn’t a trick to set me up for a divorce or for him to be allowed to sleep with other women, I still had plenty of questions. I wanted to be happy that he was willing to share his fantasy with me, but the only reason I knew about it in the first place was because I’d caught him.

“If I asked you a question, would you give me an honest answer?” I inquired.

“Of course. I’ll always be straight with you. You should know that by now.”

“All right, there’s something I’m confused about here. You say that I’m your ultimate fantasy and that you’re so turned on by me, right?”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay, if that’s true and I turn you on so much, why have you been so distant for so long? Why did you stop paying attention to me? Why did you become all about work and start to ignore me?”

“Kayla, are you sure you really want to talk about this right now?”

“Yes, I think about this stuff all the time. I’ve wanted to ask you for a long time, but I was scared that maybe I didn’t want to know the answer. Well, I think I deserve to know what it is about me that started making you act like I didn’t exist.”

“I’m not really sure the right way to say this because I don’t want either of us to leave this conversation feeling bad about ourselves or one another.”

“Just say it. Tell me what you feel. This conversation has been a long time coming. We both know it. If we don’t get things out in the open now, when are we going to do it? It’s not like things are going to get better on their own. We need to talk about this.”

“Okay, then I’m just gonna spit it out. The distance between us isn’t all my fault. It takes two to tango and all that.”

“Two to tango? What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means I’m not the only person in this relationship that has allowed our marriage to go to shit. You started to shut down long before I did.”

“What? I never shut down. I’ve been the same person since the day we got married.”

“Really? You’ve seen me getting distant but not yourself? Think about how things were when we first got married. We used to go out all the time. You’d get all made up, and I’d take you out to nice dinners and dancing. You used to throw on one of my jerseys and go to hockey games with me. You used to do your hair and makeup when you weren’t even leaving the house and when I asked why you were getting all made up, do you remember what you used to say?”

“That I just wanted to look good for you,” I replied, trying very hard not to allow my eyes to fill up with tears.

“Yeah, you would put on your makeup and do your hair just because you wanted to look good for me. I never expected it, and I told you all the time that you looked beautiful without it, but you still wanted to do it for me. When you stopped doing it, I took notice.”

“I never thought about that.”

“I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. That’s why I made such a big deal about you doing it when you were getting ready for work. I didn’t understand why I didn’t deserve it anymore, but a bunch of strangers did. It really bothered me.”

“I can understand that.”

“As far as going out, you put the brakes on that too. You started telling me you just wanted to cook when I asked if you wanted to go out to dinner. If I wanted to take you to a movie, you’d tell me there was nothing out that you wanted to see, which I found strange because you always found new releases to watch on Netflix. The only time I get to take you out is when a pharmaceutical rep is in town, and even then, I feel like I’m pulling teeth.”

“Wow, I didn’t realize you felt this way. What changed in the bedroom?”

“Are you serious? All of this is what changed in the bedroom. I know you’re saying that you’ve felt unloved and unwanted for a long time, but how do you think I’ve felt? When you stopped wanting much to do with me in everyday life, I felt rejected. When it came to sex, you used to be up for it all the time, but you started telling me that you were too tired or that you weren’t in the mood. I stopped trying because I didn’t want to be rejected anymore.”

I lost the battle in my fight to hold back my tears as I started sobbing uncontrollably. I was so focused on what had changed with Dillon, that I never even bothered to look at the part I played in our relationship changing.

Even after everything, he hated to see me cry. At the first sight of a tear rolling down my check, he pulled me close to him, kissed me on my forehead and told me everything was going to be just fine. We could work on things if I wanted to. At that moment, I know that working on things was exactly what I wanted to do.

* * *

It had been a month since we had our talk and decided that all we both wanted was to save our marriage. He started closing the practice one day a week to match my weeknight off.

One thing we committed to was a weekly date night. The rules are simple enough. We would each take turns picking where we went and what we did. While on our date, our phones would be put away and neither of us would talk about work. For one night every week, things were all about us.

For the first couple of weeks, we didn’t talk about anything in particular. It was just catching up and talking about everything and not nothing all at the same time, just like we used to do.

During our third date, I decided to ask him about his fantasy. In many ways, I credit his fantasy for fixing our marriage. If I had never used his laptop and saw what h had been watching, we may not have ever opened a dialog about what we were feeling.

He was very open about his fantasy and didn’t have a problem with any questions I asked, regardless of how dumb they were. The more he told me about the fantasy; the more intrigued I became.

Although it was something I didn’t ever plan on doing, the thoughts he was planting in my mind were beginning to turn me on. Before I knew it, his fantasy began to consume my thoughts. When he wasn’t home, I started going to the websites and watching the videos. I started taking extra long showers so I could masturbate. Slowly, I began to realize that his fantasy was becoming my fantasy too.