“I need to talk to you about something.”

My wife leaned forward intently. The candlelight from our dinner table cast a soft, intimate glow on her beautiful face. After twenty-three years, I found her as alluring as the day we met.

Five-nine, jet-black hair, and smoldering dark green eyes. Pale skin, gentle turned-up nose. Light makeup only; no enhancements really needed, except for bright red lipstick when her mood turned provocative.

She retained her athlete’s body — slender frame, small natural breasts with nipples that hardened easily, firm, smackable ass, and legs that went on forever. Between them, a carefully trimmed triangle adorned a perfectly smooth mound.

Our two children would be coming home from school for Christmas the next afternoon. We were excited to see them but chastened by the constraints their presence would place on us.

Our sexual appetites knew few boundaries. Every room, and almost every surface therein, had been the stage for some act of raw carnal lust. The mood could strike anytime, anywhere. The fact is, we couldn’t keep our hands off one another.

We also couldn’t keep our hands off others. We had opened our marriage some five years back, when our youngest left for boarding school. It required careful deliberation and a lot of discussion before we took the plunge, but once we did, it seemed like a natural progression in our marriage.

We agreed on a simple and straightforward set of rules. No permission needed. Don’t tell unless asked. No one we know. Not in our house. Condoms always. No emotional entanglements. Beyond that, we were free to play.

We began gradually but quickly embraced the lifestyle. The sight of her lowering herself onto another man’s cock for the first time in that sex club is seared into my memory as a bridge we crossed together to a strange and wonderful new world. We swung together occasionally but most of our play was alone. We each knew when the other was going out, the exception being business travel, when opportunities were assumed to be seized.

While we didn’t often discuss specifics, the experiences we did share made it clear that ethical non-monogamy suited us both and had enriched our lives and our marriage.

Tonight, we had planned a night in, a candlelight dinner, a bottle of wine from the cellar, and passion deep into the night, while we still had the house to ourselves. We savored our meal, enjoyed one another’s company and talked and laughed easily like lovers do.

Then something in her eyes changed, and her expression turned serious. She leaned forward. I waited.

“I’ve always been faithful to our rules.”

She paused, shifted slightly, took a breath, and continued.

“It’s just that….”

An uncomfortable pause followed. I looked at her patiently, my senses on high alert.

Another deep breath in, then a long exhale.

“It’s just that… I don’t know how to say this…”

She glanced down at the table, then up, fixing me with a steady gaze.

“I’m starting to have feelings for someone.”

She paused then, again, and so I filled the silence.

“And… you want to change the rules?”

Her response was a stammer. “Y…yes.”

It was my turn to take a deep breath. I checked my pulse. It was racing.

“Go on,” I urged, as gently as my nerves would allow.

“He’s no one you know, no one I knew until we started seeing one another.”

“How long?” I asked.

“A few months. There was a spark from the beginning. I tried to suppress it, but I’m losing the battle.”

“And so, what, exactly, do you want?” I couldn’t fully disguise the edge in my voice.

“I’m afraid I’m falling in love with him. I want to be able to do that. But that would mean we need to change our rules.”

“Do you want to leave?” I offered, afraid of what I might hear in reply.

Her answer was quick. “No, no, heavens no.”  Another glance down and then up. “I want to be able to be in love with both of you.”

I was speechless.

She continued. “I want to be free to love other men. And other women, if that happens. Right now, it’s just him, but I want to be completely open to the possibilities.”

“He knows about our arrangement?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“And this was his idea?”

“No, it was entirely mine. I’ve told him that I can’t fall in love with him, can’t have a full relationship, unless you and I further open our marriage from ENM to polyamory.”

Then it tumbled out of her. “I don’t want to leave you. I love you. With all my heart. You are my husband. I don’t want to marry anyone else. We have built this amazing life together, raised a family, opened our marriage ethically. I can’t imagine a happier life. I didn’t go looking for it, but it found me. I’ve thought about this long and hard. Really hard.

“I need this.

“This would be mutual. You would be free to love others, not just fuck them. I can live with that. And please know I will always come home to you.”

My head was swirling. “Will you always love me more? What if you don’t?”

“Not necessarily more. There won’t be a hierarchy. You, our family, this house, will always be my anchor, but I want a fully poly relationship, and so for this to work I must be free to love others as much as I love you.”

Clearly, she had thought this through.

“I’m stunned,” was all I could say in response.

“I know. Please understand that if you can’t agree, I won’t go through with this. I will break off my relationship. I would never, ever, have an affair behind your back. Our marriage is based on respect, trust, openness and consent, and that will never change.

“I beg you, don’t say no right away. Take some time to think it over.”

I took a long drink of my wine and gazed at her. My heart was breaking, and yet still so full of love for this remarkable woman.

She rose, came to stand behind me, and wrapped her arms around my neck.

Her mouth grazed my ear, and her whisper was barely audible. “I love you.”

We fucked that night, not the frenzied sex we had planned, but the tender, intimate lovemaking of two people who had traveled many happy roads together and had found themselves at yet another fork, this one consequential.

As she lowered herself onto me, her familiar warmth, wetness, and welcome taking my turgid manhood, I imagined her doing just this thing with another lover. My explosion wasn’t a claiming so much as a primal expression of my love.

Sleep eluded me. I lay gazing as she slumbered peacefully, the moonlight through the open shade casting a warm glow on her erotic form. I reflected on how lucky I was to have built a life with her and yet feared the risk that she might already be slipping away.

In the morning, over coffee, I told her I would give her my answer by Christmas.

----------

The kids arrived, and our lives became a frenzy of holiday activity. In the little time I had to myself, I agonized.

It was my right to say no. That was the easy path, I suppose, at least for me. But to do so would be to deny her the joy and fulfillment she so fervently desired.

The consequences were not trivial, though.

I pictured her returning with another man’s cum dripping out of her — the no condom rule being cast aside as part of the arrangement. Much more frightening than that level of intimacy was the possibility of her choosing to have two or more homes, that she would become only a part-time occupant of ours.

The deliberation was agony. And Christmas Eve rapidly approached.

Suddenly it was here. Our family’s long-time custom was for each of us to open one gift on Christmas Eve.

I chose one for her, and she carefully unwrapped it. Inside the box was a necklace with a heart-shaped padlock, accompanied by a key that would open it.

She burst into tears, then sobbed uncontrollably. The kids were puzzled. I told them it was an old, sentimental joke.

We made passionate, tender love that night. I kissed her desperately as I unloaded myself inside her, my love for her overflowing and yet my heart anxious for what the future would bring.

If you love something, let it go, a wise philosopher once said. And the joy is in the giving so much more than the receiving. This Christmas, I gave freely and lovingly to the most amazing wife a man could ever imagine and placed my trust in her and in fate. Only time will tell what path this journey will travel.