The first few weeks after the seminar were really difficult. I know my husband felt that something had changed. He sometimes just looked at me with a puzzled expression on his face as if to say, 'Who are you and what have you done with my wife?'

I spent those weeks trying to find a way to talk to him about Louise. She and I promised each other that we would find a way to leave our marriages so we could be together. We spoke over the phone every day. We had a code so we didn’t alert our husbands. If we were free to talk we would message the other, ‘Is now a good time?” If it were, the other would ring straight away. If it weren’t, then the message would be ignored.

I was so conflicted. I realised that my life up until then was fairly conventional. I married a man I loved and we raised a beautiful family. But then I met Louise again and had a really intense, weeklong sexual relationship with her. I had never even thought about another woman, but she made me feel so comfortable and special that I fell for her in a big way.

I still hadn’t spoken with him when Louise made plans to come and see me. She was going to get a hotel room for the weekend and invited me to stay with her. I told my husband that some of the women from the seminar were having a weekend away to catch up and that I wanted to go.

He was fine with me going. At this stage I think he was just happy to get me out of the house. I think I was a fair bitch to him when I came back from the seminar. Everything he did, I compared with Louise. He was lazy and did nothing but the bare minimum in terms of maintenance around the house. He rarely cleaned the kitchen after he had made some food for himself and he would no sooner clean the bathroom than grow wings and fly to the moon. He’s even let his weight balloon to over 220 pounds.

Louise, on the other hand, was energetic and beautiful. She was house proud and had pride in her own appearance. She always kept her things tidy. Did I mention how beautiful she was?

Anyway, as the Friday of her arrival dawned, I woke up really nervous for some reason. Then I realised that I was worried that Lou wouldn’t want me anymore and she was visiting to let me know that she was staying with her husband.

As it turned out it was all for nothing. She texted me when she arrived and I went to her hotel to meet her. She had told me her room number in the text so I went straight up and knocked on her door. Suddenly, there she was, my beautiful Louise. I stepped towards her as she went to hug me. We kissed and I melted. It felt, right at that moment, like we had never left the seminar. This time, though, there was only one bed in the room.

We took it slowly, teasingly. I stepped away from that first kiss and unzipped my dress. I slowly and seductively shrugged it off my shoulders and let it drop to my waist, displaying my tits encased in a sexy red bra. I heard a sharp intake of breath from Louise. Then I let my dress drop to the floor, showing her my matching red knickers.

She then undid her blouse. As she spread it I saw her lacy bra and her beautiful tits. She took the blouse off and undid her skirt. She too had matching knickers under her skirt. We stood there facing each other in our underwear. I tried to look at all of her at once. It drove me crazy.

She lay back on the bed and beckoned me to join her. I walked over slowly and lay next to her. We kissed, slowly and lovingly. Not a word had been spoken. I reached behind her and undid her bra. I took her tits out of their confining cups and kissed both of her nipples.

“Oh, I’ve missed these,” I whispered.

I then attacked them with vigour. I nipped then and sucked them. I adored them. I used my hand on the one not in my mouth, then swapped. I was really enjoying myself. Judging by her shortening breaths and moans of joy, Louise was too.

While I was doing that I felt Louise undo my bra. It fell to the bed. She fondled my tits and made the nipples stand up, hard and proud. It felt heavenly. She had a light touch but I needed her to be rougher. She must have known because she began squeezing and pulling at my nipples. My mouth left her breasts and found her mouth. We massaged each other’s tongues while we explored each other’s mouths, all the while playing with each other’s tits.

My hand wormed its way down to her knickers. I felt her wet slit through the thin material. I felt her hand doing the same thing to me. I knew I was sopping wet. I hooked my fingers into the waistband of her knickers and began to tug at them. Louise lifted her bum off the bed to make it easier for me to remove them. As I threw them onto the floor, she grabbed the elastic of mine and pulled. I helped her as much as I could.

We were both naked on the bed. I drank in her beauty. For a fifty-year-old woman, she was perfect. Not classically beautiful but she had a confidence in herself that was beautiful to behold. She projected that she was happy with her body and confident enough to be naked in front of me.

My breasts were larger, but so were my hips. I was fairly happy with my shape considering I have given birth to five children, including twins. The look on Lou’s face seemed to show she was pretty happy with it too.

I kissed her mouth, then worked my way down to her nipples. After a short stay there I kept kissing my way down to her mound. I was in no hurry but I didn’t feel like teasing either. So when I eventually made it to her vagina I began kissing and licking it straight away.

She pushed herself into a position where she could lick me too, so for the next little while we lapped at each other’s pussies. It was unhurried, but suddenly became more urgent for me when I felt the build up to orgasm. I began to lick her faster and harder. She did the same to me. I bit her clit lightly and sucked it into my mouth. The combination of biting and sucking saw Lou approach her first of what I hoped would be many orgasms for the weekend.

We hardly got out of bed for the whole weekend. When we weren’t making love we were talking. We found once again that we had pretty similar outlooks on life. We had both sacrificed our careers for our families, me in teaching and Louise as a nurse. All of our children had left home, leaving just ourselves and our husbands. And, probably most important of all, we seemed to both have problems at home that were similar. Louise said that she felt taken for granted. I felt the same. When I said that it was like we were a piece of furniture, Lou said she felt the same. It was amazing how much we had in common.

We had both been married for a similar amount of time, Lou had just celebrated twenty five years and I was up to twenty seven. We both went to the seminar originally to do something for ourselves for almost the first time in our lives. It was uncanny. Neither had ever thought about a lesbian relationship but both felt that it was exactly what we had been searching for, for a long time.

I had been unhappy in my marriage for about fifteen years, ever since my father died. When he died, I felt that my husband didn’t emotionally support me through his illness. I felt left to my own devices and with no one to talk to about how I was feeling. My husband had lost his father while he was a teenager. I think he just didn’t know that I needed his support. As a result, I felt abandoned and on my own when I most needed him. I had been carrying that resentment around with me for a long time and it affected our relationship in a negative way.

Louise had a similar, but more tragic story. Her eldest son was a victim of suicide when he was eighteen, seven years ago. Her husband blamed Lou for it so she was not only left to grieve on her own but carried a lot of guilt around as well. She said that counselling helped her over the worst of the guilt but she felt abandoned by her husband when her need was greatest, similar to me.

My husband complained about our sexual relationship all the time. The problem for me was that I didn’t feel the deep love for him that I once did. I felt that he just wanted sex for the sake of it. Louise told me she felt the same in her physical relationship with her husband.

We really seemed to connect that weekend on a deeper level that either of had with our husbands for many years. So when we discussed her proposal, my immediate thought was to stay with her from that moment on. That was impractical, I know, but it’s just how I felt.

Louise came from a family with money and her mother was still alive. She knew her mother would support her if she left her husband. She promised me that she would take care of me too. She wanted to support me to go back to my original job in education and she wanted to try her hand at nursing again. We had both tried part-time, secretarial work while our kids had been growing up.

In fact, I had first met Lou a number of years ago when she was a secretary at my husband’s workplace. Neither of us wanted to go back to that again.

We made slow, quiet comfortable love with each other, both of us able to bring the other to quick, loud orgasms. We had loud, rushed sex and made each other scream with delight. One time, when Lou was devouring my pussy and making me squirm, she licked a finger and stuck it up my ass. I hadn’t had that happen before but I hope I’ll have it again. Instead of being on the brink of orgasm, I was a quivering mess of orgasmic bliss.

That was when I realised that making love with Louise was a completely unselfish act. We both wanted the other to feel loved and experience sexual highs and multiple orgasms. With our husbands there was no joy for us. Neither of them even thought about our sexual release. They were selfish lovers.

When Sunday evening came around and it was time for us to say goodbye we both cried. Neither of us wanted to go but we both knew we had to. We both promised to talk to our husbands about our marriages during the week and hope that it was all amiable.

I reluctantly went home to my husband. I knew what was going to happen in the following days and, while I knew it was inevitable, I wasn’t looking forward to it. I arrived home, parked in the driveway and went inside. My heart was pounding. I wasn’t going to say anything that night but I was still really nervous. I thought that he would be able to tell something was going on as soon as he saw me. I opened the door and stepped inside. He wasn’t home.

I breathed a sigh of relief but then thought, “Where’s he gone? He isn’t usually out on a Sunday night.”

My relief turned to anger. I knew it was irrational given that I’d been away two nights but I was angry. Typical of him really, not being there when I arrived.

I unpacked my bag and put the clean things away and the dirties in the laundry basket, separating lights from darks. I unpacked my toiletries and put them away too. Eventually I was finished unpacking. It looked as if I hadn’t been anywhere.

By this time it was ten o’clock, and I was missing Louise.

I sent a text, “Is now a good time?”

My phone rang straight away.

“Hey, gorgeous, how are you? What’s going on?”

“Well, my lump of a husband isn’t home. I’ve got no idea where he is either, and really, I don’t care. I miss you already, lovely lady.”

“I miss you too, Jen. My husband is in bed already. He gave me a kiss hello and then told me he had an early start in the morning. He’s snoring away as we speak.”

I heard a car in our driveway.

“He’s home, Lou, gotta go. Love you.”

“I love you too, Jen. Talk soon. Bye”

I put my phone in my pocket as my husband walked through the door.

“So, you’re home then?”

“What gave it away, the fact that my car is in the driveway, or the fact that I’m standing here talking to you?”

“Hey, don’t get your knickers in a twist, I was just saying…”

“Yes, dear, I’m home. Where have you been?”

“Out!”

“Hmm, OK, I’ll play along. Out where?”

“What does it matter to you where I’ve been. You’ve been away for two nights, I’ve been out for two hours.”

“At least you knew where I was.”

“Yeah, out with your lesbian friends.”

“What? What did you say?”

“I said, out with your lesbian friends,” he shouted.

I was shocked that he would say such a thing, even if it were true.

“What are you talking about? What would you know anyway?”

“Everyone knows that those women’s spirituality seminars are a great big lesbo fest. No man in his right mind would go near any of those dykes.”

“Well, maybe none of those women would want a man with that sort of attitude. Who told you they were lesbians anyway? One of your mates who can’t get it up any more, probably.”

“Yeah, whatever. I’m going to bed.”

I was angry now. I followed him into the bedroom.

“It just so happens that I met some of the most amazing, married women I’ll ever meet. Some of us just wanted some companionship, some friendship, that we weren’t getting at home. You never talk to me any more. We never share anything of ourselves any more. That’s what I went for – to talk with people who shared my feelings and weren’t afraid to say so.”

He said, “Yeah, a lot of dykes who couldn’t get a man if they tried. Those married ones are the worst. They say they’ll love you for ever and then expect you to be somebody different or they shut off the sex.”

“What are you talking about?” I steamed.

“Look, Jen, you and I both know that our marriage is fucked. I was talking about us. We never talk, we never have sex. You want me to change into someone different. And I’ve tried to change, I really have. But, you know, I’d rather be me and take the consequences than be what you want me to be and be miserable. You’ll blame me and I’ll blame you. We both know it. There’s no point saying anything else.”

I was surprised at the depth of his feelings about us. I never even thought he might be unhappy. And here I was trying to find a way to break it to him gently that I was leaving.

“Scott, I know, and I agree. And yes, I’ll blame you for a lot of things. But I’m mature enough to realise that I’m not perfect either. I’ll be leaving tomorrow. Hopefully we can have an amicable split. I don’t hate you; I doubt I’ll ever hate you. But I don’t love you anymore either. I need to leave to find happiness. I think deep down you need this too. I’m sorry it had to end like this but I think it’s for the best.”

I walked out of our bedroom and into the spare room and shut the door.

The next morning I heard him get ready for the day. As soon as he left I got up and readied myself. I began packing my personal belongings. Apart from my clothes, my sewing machine and my books, most of the things left were jointly owned, bought for the family home.

At about ten o’clock, I got a message from Louise, “Is now a good time.”

I rang her straight way.

“Hi, babe. How are you,” I said?

She sobbed. “He hit me.”

“What?”

“I told him I was leaving and he hit me. Punched my right in the face.”

“Oh, Lou, you poor darling. What can I do? Is there a hospital you can go to?”

“Yeah, I’m there already, just waiting. The cops are here too. They want to talk to me.”

“Tell them everything, my darling. I’ll drive over right now to be with you. I told Scott I was leaving. I think he almost expected it. He’s at work and I’ve just packed my things. I’ll put them in the car and head over to see you right away.”

“Thank you, darling. I need a hug.”

“Oh, you’ll be getting more than a hug, that’s for sure.”

I wasn’t sure whether to leave a note or not. In the end I took off my wedding and engagement rings and left them on the kitchen table with a note.

“I’ll talk to you in a few days to sort something out about the house.”

I looked around what had been my home for the last twenty-seven years. I shed some tears but I was secure in the knowledge that I was doing the right thing.

EPILOGUE – Six months later

Scott and I had the amicable split I had hoped for. We both knew it simply had to happen. Fortunately he was happy to sell the house and much of the contents. We took what we wanted – I wanted the bed, he wanted the television. We both owned our cars outright. We split the money evenly between us and promised that we would stay in touch.

The kids were shocked and saddened that we had split up. We both sat them down and explained the situation. They accepted it eventually and the fact that we didn’t hate each other was a bonus.

Louise had a family place not far from where I lived. It was a little place in the country in between the town I lived in and the town she lived in. Her mother gave it to her as a gift. When I got up the courage I invited my children to visit me there. One weekend they all showed up. My eldest daughter with her husband in tow, my second daughter with her boyfriend, my eldest son with his girlfriend and my twins by themselves. Louise wasn’t there for their arrivals. She came later.

When she arrived, I met her car outside and took her by the hand. I led her into out lounge room and said to everybody, “This is Louise, everyone. We met a while ago and fell in love. We are engaged and as soon as those silly politicians get their heads out of their asses and allow gay marriage, we’re getting married.”

There was genuine delight from all of my children, summed up by my youngest son, “Mum, if Louise makes you happy then we’re happy.” He looked at Lou and said, “Welcome to our family, Louise.”