I've told my wife this story a time or two, and she still doesn't believe me. All I can say is she has seen the change in me, and she likes it, and I have no other explanation to offer.
For most of my life, I was a creature of structure, order, and control. Maybe I was born that way, but I can say for sure that I had my life mapped out by the time I was ten years old. It was a good plan, a solid plan, and I adhered to it with solid devotion.
Following the plan, I finished high school early, I graduated college by the time I was twenty, I found and married a woman who conformed to the plan; we built careers, we procreated, and we prospered.
Perhaps the only flaw in all that I did was that I did not get a solid commitment from my wife that she would always abide by the plan. In many ways, she is on the same page as I am, and things work out wonderfully. Every once in a while, she will go off the tracks, and that used to make me miserable for days.
The planning and execution of our vacation last year is probably the best example of her allowing things to go awry. We had everything planned and in order to attend her family's reunion at the end of September. Suddenly, several of her cousins discovered they had a conflict, and everything was rescheduled for the middle of August. That gave us barely two weeks to get things properly arranged.
I guess I can't blame my wife for the commitment I made at work to support a project that had a critical timeline. I structured things to finish up the project by that Thursday.
I can't blame her for the final delay that meant I had to work that Friday morning. I was rather upset that she decided to catch a ride with her sister to make sure she got to the reunion on time. I was even more upset when I finally got home and nothing was packed in our pull-behind camper. I was well behind schedule in leaving the house, and my blood was boiling.
Six hours and a flat trailer tire later, they had another dagger to stab into my sanity. The reunion was being held at a campground, and we had commandeered one whole end of it. We had meticulously planned how the campers and tents would be arranged. When I got there, not only did I discover that no one had followed the plan, but they also hadn't even left space for our camper.
My wife didn't want to deal with my frustration, so I ended up setting up our camper at the outskirts of our area by myself.
The kick that nearly sent me over the edge came just as I was finished setting up. I was looking forward to finally settling in to relax, to maybe find some food, and to definitely find an adult beverage to enjoy. My wife and her family had other plans.
Suddenly, one of the cousins came running back from somewhere, and he joyfully announced that there was free ice cream down by the lake, to be followed by fireworks. The lake was just far enough away that my wife wanted to take the car, and since my van had lots of seats, she wanted me to drive. I grumbled and growled, and I gave her the keys so she could drive. In minutes the camp was vacated, leaving me alone to scrounge for food and tend to the campfire.
As I sat down with a beverage and the scrapings from a bowl of potato salad, a twittering laugh from across the way drew my attention.
I hadn't really paid much attention to our neighbors as I set up. All I really noticed was that he was older, she was younger, and they had a really good-looking, mid-sized motor home. I remember that I was momentarily envious because they probably didn't have to do anything except park the thing, while I had to spend lots of time and effort in opening up our camper.
The woman saw that I had noted her laughter. She whispered something to the man, and then, with a big smile on her face, she sauntered over to join me by our fire.
"You should have mixed that drink a lot stronger than you did," she teased. "Living with that much stress in your life is going to kill you. Maybe take a lesson from free spirits like my husband and me."
I shrugged and nodded, and willed her to go away. She was very pretty and very under-dressed, and she was exactly the kind of woman that my wife would have been upset to find chatting with me.
As if she had heard my thoughts, the woman tittered again, and then she struck a provocative pose.
"Your wife is going to be away for a while," she pointed out. "Perhaps you would help me with a little something."
When I didn't answer, she said, "It's just that my husband and I perpetually amuse each other with little bets, and I hate when he wins. I just won our last two bets, but it will be meaningless if I don't win this next one. You'd help me out with that, wouldn't you?"
I nearly shook my head, but before I could speak, she shocked the hell out of me by dropping to her knees between my legs. Her hands on my thighs were burning hot as she gave me a steaming smile.
"Our first bet was whether or not someone would help you set up," she said. "I set the stakes at who would mix our next round of drinks, and it was nice to have him serve me for a change. The next bet was whether or not your wife would convince you to go to the lake or not. My husband set the stakes, and if I had lost, I would have owed him a blowjob."