My Girlfriend Was Cheating on Me and I Didn’t Know What to Feel

My name is Marco. I’m thirty-one years old, I work for a logistics company, and I’ve been with Valeria for a decade. She’s 1.71 meters tall, has white skin and dark brown hair that she almost always wears in a ponytail. Her body creates a specific problem: you can’t walk into any place with her without someone looking at you so they can look at her. Wide hips, a wasp waist, breasts that no bra can hold in without a struggle. She describes it as an inconvenience. It never seemed like one to me.

At the beginning of the relationship we fucked like there was no tomorrow. Four times in a weekend was nothing unusual. I’d fuck her in the morning while she was still asleep face down, put her up on the kitchen counter at noon, and at night I’d eat her out until she came two or three times in a row. As the years went by the frequency dropped, as it does in every couple that’s honest with itself, but the essence didn’t change. Valeria was still the person I wanted to be with and the person I liked most. Those two things together are rarer than they seem.

***

The swinging thing started one night when we were both at home, each with our phone. She texted me that she was watching a series where the neighbors in an American neighborhood swapped partners by season. She asked me what I thought.

I told her it was hot. That if it was something she wanted to explore.

It took her a moment to answer. When she did, she said that the idea of being watched, of watching us, excited her. But nothing beyond that.

That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I wanted the whole exchange: her with another man, me with another woman, all four of us at some point aware of what was happening. That image had been taking up space in my head for months: another man’s cock sinking into Valeria’s cunt while I, with another woman beside me, watched her open her mouth the same way she did with me. And yet Valeria’s answer turned me on anyway, even if it didn’t reach what I was after.

We brought it up again in bed, weeks later. I had her from behind, my cock already buried to the hilt, and I spoke slowly into her ear: what would happen if someone else watched us, what it would be like to share her with another man, how her tits would bounce while two men fucked her at once. She responded with her body before her mouth. Her cunt suddenly tightened around my dick, she moved in a different way, looser, pushing her ass back to drive me deeper, and she pressed herself against me with an urgency she didn’t have when the subject wasn’t on the table. When I asked whether she liked imagining another man sucking on her tits while I fucked her, she let out a yes she couldn’t hide and came with a long convulsion, biting her arm. I followed a few seconds later, emptying inside her. Then, when it was all over, she said they were just words, to leave it alone, that it was enough for it to be just the two of us.

But her body contradicted her every time I touched on the subject.

One Sunday I showed her the website of a swinging club in the city. I thought she’d say absolutely not. She said we could go and see.

That night she put on black lingerie she’d been saving: a thin thong that disappeared between her ass cheeks, a lace bra that barely covered her nipples, already hard with nerves, and a red dress that marked every curve. She did her hair in front of the mirror with more care than usual. When we left, my head was spinning and my cock was hard in my pants.

The club was a disappointment. The atmosphere was dark and a bit forced, the music too loud, and most of the people were twice our age. Valeria tensed as soon as we walked in and never relaxed again that night. After an hour I told her we were leaving and she didn’t protest. In the car back, she took my hand and didn’t say a word the whole way. Neither did I.

***

The company where Valeria worked opened a new office in another city and offered her the transfer. It was a real opportunity, she accepted it, and she rented a place three hours from where we lived. On weekends we went back and forth. It was awkward, but it worked.

It was during that period that Rodrigo appeared.

She mentioned him in passing one Tuesday, while we were talking on the phone before sleeping.

—Hey, you know what? Today I ran into Rodrigo Vargas, the one who went to school with us. He works right next to my office.

I didn’t know him. She told me they’d had coffee and he was nice, that the company he worked for was hiring and that he wanted to see what they offered. I took it normally. I told her that was good.

***

Over the following weeks I noticed little things. That at midday she took a long time to answer. That she said she was going out with coworkers and came home later than that would justify. That on some nighttime calls she was more distracted, in more of a hurry to hang up. Nothing concrete. Nothing that could become an accusation.

One Thursday she didn’t answer me for almost two hours. When she did, she said she’d been reviewing contracts at the office, that she’d lost track of time.

Without thinking too much about it, I opened the location app we’d shared since we started living in different cities. The blue dot that was Valeria wasn’t at her office. It wasn’t at her apartment either. It was marking a hotel ten minutes from the center.

I stared at the screen without moving.

I should have called immediately. I should have felt only rage. Instead I just stayed there, phone in hand, and what I felt was a knot of things I didn’t know how to sort out: betrayal, yes, a coldness in my chest I recognized. But also something else, darker and less presentable, running underneath everything else and that I didn’t want to examine too closely: my cock was getting hard thinking about her with her legs open on that hotel bed, another guy between her thighs.

I waited.

Two hours later Valeria texted me that she was home already, that the day had been exhausting. I answered that I was glad. We talked about nothing for ten minutes and hung up.

That night I gave myself a long, slow handjob, imagining her on her knees sucking a faceless man’s cock. I came with my face buried in the pillow and hated myself a little afterward.

***

The weeks that followed were strange. I kept checking the map. The blue dot went back to that hotel two more times. One of those nights she stopped first at the cinema and reached the hotel after ten. The other was a Wednesday at noon, at the time when she said she ate lunch with coworkers.

During the day I functioned normally. I worked, I ate, I called Valeria at night. Inside, I was a knot I didn’t know whether I wanted to untie.

On weekends she arrived differently. Not in a way anyone else would have noticed, but I knew her well. There was something looser in how she moved, something more direct in how she looked at me. On Friday nights, as soon as we closed the apartment door, she would throw herself at me with a hunger she hadn’t had before: she’d slide her hand into my pants without preamble, pull my cock out, and get on her knees in the hallway, sucking me with her mouth open and her eyes locked on mine, as if she needed to prove something to me.

When I put her on the bed and tore off her thong, her cunt was already dripping. I’d bury myself in one thrust and she’d moan yes, like that, louder, with words she hadn’t used before. She asked me to fuck her harder, to give it to her with more force, not to stop. She’d get on all fours and arch her back, pushing her ass back so every thrust went all the way in. I’d grab her tits from underneath, squeeze them while I drove into her, and she’d let out cries she’d only ever given me when she was about to come.

One night she whispered in my ear, with my cock still inside her, that she wanted more. That she wanted to see me with another woman. That she imagined situations she never finished describing to me. That she imagined another man eating her pussy while I fucked her mouth. I answered her with harder thrusts, grabbing her by the hair, and I hated myself for the level of intensity with which I did it, knowing what I knew. I came inside her hearing her moan the word “another,” and even today I don’t know what to say about that.

***

The confrontation came on a Saturday without me planning it. We were on the sofa, she on her phone, me watching the TV without seeing it. I told her, without raising my voice, that I knew about the hotel. That I’d seen it on the map. More than once.

Silence.

Valeria put her phone on the table slowly. She turned toward me. On her face I didn’t see denial. I saw something more complicated: shame, and a kind of relief she was trying to hide.

—How long have you known? —she asked.

—A month. More or less.

Another long silence.

—Do you want me to tell you what happened? —she said.

I thought about saying no. I thought about getting up, leaving, doing something that made sense. Instead I told her yes. And I told her I wanted the details. All of them.

***

She told it to me like this:

The day she had coffee with Rodrigo, the conversation lasted much longer than either of them expected. They ended up staying until four in the afternoon. He was different from how she remembered him from school: calmer, more direct, with that way of listening that makes people talk more than they meant to.

When they were waiting for the bill, he told her that she really knew how to wear her ponytail.

Valeria doesn’t know why she did what she did next. She let it down without thinking, played with her hair for a moment, then gathered it back up slowly, looking at him as she did. He never looked away.

When they left, Rodrigo offered to drive her home. When he parked in front of her building, they both stayed silent for a moment. He was the one who leaned in first. She was the one who didn’t pull back.

They kissed inside the car, first slowly, then with his tongue deep inside her mouth. Rodrigo’s hand went up her thigh under her skirt until it brushed her thong over the top. She noticed, she told me, that it was already wet. He pulled it aside with two fingers and slid them in without warning. She gasped against his mouth and bit his lower lip. When he asked if she knew a place where they could be alone, she knew exactly what he meant. She said yes.

In the room, Rodrigo wasn’t in a hurry. He started at her neck, moved down her collarbone, undoing buttons without rushing. He took off her bra and paused to look at her tits for a moment before lowering his head and licking them one by one, taking his time with her nipples until he made them so hard they hurt.

—Tell me if you want me to stop —he told her.

She didn’t want him to stop.

He pulled off her pants by biting at them from the hip, tracing the whole path to her underwear with his lips. When he tore off her thong with his teeth, he took a second to look at her shaved cunt before leaning in. He spread her legs with both hands, buried himself between her thighs, and started eating her pussy slowly, giving long licks from below up to the clit, sucking on it with his lips, working his tongue into her as far as he could. He slid his arms under her thighs and lifted her a little from the mattress to reach her better, and she, she told me, had to grab the headboard to keep from losing her mind. She came in his mouth after a few minutes, pressing his head against her cunt with both hands, moaning so loudly she was embarrassed to remember it. What came after was the best she’d had in a long time, and that comparison haunted her for days.

When she was the one who took control, she made him lie down and saw that he was different from me. Thicker, she told me, unable to look me in the face. It didn’t matter. She took him in her mouth with a determination she didn’t know where it came from, slowly at first, sucking just the tip and playing with it with her tongue, and then not so slowly: she took him in to the hilt until he brushed her throat, pulling him out in strings of saliva, spitting on him and taking him back in. She sucked his balls too, one by one, while she gave him a slow handjob. He grabbed her hair and guided her carefully until he turned her and put her on top.

Rodrigo took out a condom. Valeria helped him put it on. Then she pulled it off.

—I want to feel you for real —she told him.

He went in without a barrier and they stayed still for a moment, looking at each other. Her on top, impaled to the hilt, feeling every centimeter of him. Then she started moving, slowly at first, going up and down with her hands on his chest, then faster, riding him with her tits bouncing between them. He held her by the hips and helped drive it deeper, thrusting upward every time she came down. He pulled out, put her on all fours, and fucked her from behind again, grabbing her by the hair, slamming into her while whispering filthy things in her ear. He put his thumb in her ass while he fucked her and she, she told me, almost died.

The orgasm came before she realized she was close. She screamed, unable to help it, and felt her cunt contract in spasms around his cock. He came shortly after, inside her, emptying himself completely, and she pulled him against her so he wouldn’t move away, feeling the hot seed fill her from the inside.

They rested. Then they went into the bathroom. Under the hot water she got on her knees and took him in her mouth again, sucking him slowly until he got hard again, then she took him in her hand, giving him a long handjob with the water falling over them, until he finished again, this time against her palm and over her tits.

When Rodrigo dropped her off in front of the building, they said goodbye with a kiss that lasted longer than a normal goodbye does.

That had happened four times in the last two months.

***

When Valeria finished speaking, the room was silent.

—I’m sorry, Marco —she said—. I don’t know how I got here.

I looked at her. I didn’t know exactly what I felt. There was anger, yes, a dull noise behind my sternum that I recognized as betrayal. But there was also something else, more uncomfortable to name, that ran beneath everything like a current I hadn’t asked for and didn’t know how to stop: I’d had a hard-on for ten minutes, ever since she started describing Rodrigo’s tongue between her legs.

Another man had come inside her. And I had known it for weeks and couldn’t get that image out of my head.

We didn’t talk anymore that night.

We went to bed in the same bed. In the dark, without touching. At three in the morning I felt Valeria inch toward me slowly, and I didn’t move away. Her hand found me under my pants and found me already hard. She didn’t say anything. She pulled my pants down, climbed on top of me without turning on the light, and sank onto me in one motion, all the way in, with a hoarse moan that came up from her chest.

I fucked her like I hadn’t fucked her in years. I grabbed her hips and lifted and lowered her on my cock with all the anger and everything else, and she dug her nails into my chest and moved on top of me as if she were punishing me and begging me at the same time. I asked her in her ear whether his cock was bigger. She said yes. I asked if she came harder with him. She said yes. Every answer made me harder and she felt it and pressed herself more tightly against me. I turned her over, put her face down with her ass up, and shoved it back in, grabbing her by the hair the way she’d described him to me. I asked if he’d fucked her like that. She said yes, harder. I gave it to her harder. I asked if he’d come inside. She said yes, twice. I came inside her with that answer in my head, emptying myself in an orgasm that left me shaking for a long minute.

We stayed like that, her face down, me on top, my cock still inside her, saying nothing, for a very long time.

I don’t know if it was the anger, or the image of what she’d described to me, or something harder to examine. I only know that night changed something between us that has never been exactly the same since.

And that I, despite everything, still couldn’t get that image out of my head.