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What Goes Around Comes Around. Not.

If you are reading DanielQSteele1's stories, and since you are interested in this essay, you ARE, then know that there are no happy endings in his stories. Not in the way the average reader will recognize. I have read all of his stories on Literotica so far (and am following When We Were Married, the on-going story), and there is one characteristic, one defining trait of his stories that prevents the "happy ending" for the average reader.

And that is the fact that there is no justice, no karma, no payback, no "right", in his stories.

I'll have to go on a tangent for a bit. These stories are fiction. Not real. You can make them as fantastic as you want. Make the characters as saintly, or evil, as you want. But even then there are certain conventions to be followed. Grammar and spelling are a given. If a character is named Clara one moment, and Carla the next, that's just plain shoddy. Other things are harder to define. A character's personality for example. Don't make a character a dumb blonde, and in the next paragraph a rocket scientist.

Generally, people will want to read a story with a happy ending. BECAUSE it is fiction, BECAUSE it is not real life, everything CAN work out for the better. Imagine a man, whose wife cheated on him for years while he worked his ass off, and for him to discover that his kids aren't his, and when he divorces, she gets the house and the kids, has the lover move in, and he has to pay her alimony. The end. Is that a happy ending, if the reader reads it from the husband's point of view? It would leave the reader with a feeling of revenge for the ex-wife, yet that revenge never happens in the story.

I can imagine an ex-husband who will read such "Loving Wives" stories where there is terrible retribution and revenge heaped upon the ex-wife. It would be almost cathartic, and a harmless fantasy. An escape from reality where things do NOT go right.

Imagine a story where the hero, after many hardships, gets killed by the villain, and the last scene is of the villain gloating over the hero's death. Is that satisfying? Is that a good ending?

Imagine a bankrobber shooting up several people in the bank, and escapes. It deals with the families of the killed, and the police who try to track down the bankrobber. The families eventually survive their loss, and move on. The police run out of leads, and give up as a lost case. The ending shows the bankrobber sitting in the sun on a beach in the Cayman Islands, enjoying his ill-gotten money. The end. Is that a good ending?

Even a tragedy, and even if you KNOW it is a tragedy, has to follow certain conventions to let the reader know that the story cannot possibly have a conventional happy ending.

Have you ever watched the movie The Shawshank Redemption? What if the main character, after finally digging his way out, through the shit and the sludge, he comes out, and the prison guards are waiting for him? They take him back to the prison, and the epilogue is that he died in prison? The movie itself would be great, but the ending would SUCK, to the average movie watcher. The Shawshank Redemption was good BECAUSE of that ending, that there IS a good ending for good people. That evil does NOT win in the end.

But in DQS's stories that does not happen. I will assume you have read all of his stories, or none of this will make sense! Let's review and compare his stories:

MOMENT OF CLARITY.

The last scene is the husband Lyle telling his wife Diane that he's divorcing her. The aftermath is not shown. Would you call that a happy ending? After all that has happened? Personally, I would not. Diane had disrespected him for years, cheated on him for years, openly flirted with her ex (to the point of letting her ex fondle her breasts in front of her family), and all the husband did was divorce her, he merely walked away. And because the aftermath is NOT shown, the reader does NOT know how the now ex-wife feels about it.

She could be all remorseful, crying and begging to be taken back, but she could also have said "Good riddance!", move in with her ex the same day, and have hot monkey sex all the time.

Will her family condemn her for her cheating? Will her ex-boyfriend become an abusive alcoholic (like one of her brothers warned)? Will the ex-husband find someone else and become happy? It is not shown.

The dealbreaker for Lyle was that she never said "Don't go!".I think that if Diane HAD said "Don't go!", he WOULD have taken her back, despite everything she has done to him.

Why was Diane like that? Aside from her cheating, why did Diane keep saying to Lyle, "why aren't you fighting for me"? This begs the question in return "why are YOU not fighting for ME, Diane?". Once Diane had said yes and accepted Lyle's marriage proposal, the "fighting" should have been over essentially. By saying yes to him, he "won". This isn't "fighting for", but "fighting over" her. Like two dogs squabbling over a piece of bone. Even after marrying Lyle, she still does not know who is the best for her? She wants him to continue to prove himself to her, while she never tries to prove her love for him. Given the fact that she had been cheating on him with her ex for years, proves that she didn't love Lyle. What she DID love, was the status he brought. The good life, the wealth. She married him because he was a mealticket, and the only thing she grieves for, is that she doesn't have that mealticket anymore. (That is my personal take on it.)

You can say that it's a happy ending because the husband did not take her back, but divorce her, but essentially, the wife got off scotfree with her cheating and her behavior. And THIS story is the one with the most "payback" of DQS's stories.

THE LAST GOODBYE.

After a year of cheating with his business partner and friend, after all of her putdowns and insults about his sexual performance and everything else, Lew takes back Mona, even though he has a wonderful woman in Cyndi, who he knows will not cheat on him because she herself had been cheated on by her ex-husband.

Not to mention the pressure from the entire freaking world for them to get back together. So basically, Lew is back with a woman who has cheated on him, hurled insults and demeaned him in every way a man could be hurt, dragged out their divorce proceedings for a year (costing them a ton of money), and essentially blackmailed him back to her.

All of the hurtful things she has said, seem to vanish into thin air, because of two words. "I lied.". Basically it means that whatever you said, it is all OK afterwards when you say you lied.

One scene stuck out to me, which is when Mona has the phone-conversation replayed, between Lew and his mother. On the basis of THAT conversation, the judge granted Mona permission, and forced Lew, to have marriage counseling. It struck me as odd.

Does admitting that you love a person, automatically mean that you want to live with them? Do you love your parents? If you have a family of your own (spouse and/or children), do you want to go back to living with your parents? If not, why not? Because you can live on your own now? Because you have your own family? Because you don't want to get in eachothers way? According to that judge, those are mere excuses. You love your parents, there is nothing that ACTUALLY prevents you from living together with them again. Not WANTING to live together with them does not count, because hey, you love them. In my opinion it is a very strange thing for the judge to do, after all the things Mona has done that proves she does not love Lew. Actions speak louder than words. Not to mention all the delaying Mona has done (and she is not called out on that either).

Even after the divorce Mona had been sleeping around with a lot of other men (40, by her own admission), while still claiming to love Lew and wanting to get him back, and in the last few conversations, she basically tells him she does not intend to stop. She will give him children (that had been a catalyst for their arguments earlier), so if she cheats again, Lew will not walk away so quickly, because of the children.

Lew on the other hand, agrees, because he thinks that if Mona DOES get children, she will not sleep around. And so, they are back together again.

Is that IN ANY WAY a happy ending? They are USING their future children as a kind of weak insurance so that Mona will not cheat (unlikely), and that Lew will not walk away from her if she cheats. What a horrible reason to have children. Does Mona get punished in any way for her cheating? Nope. She even gets her husband back.

One commenter has said it very eloquently. Lew is like a drug addict. He's trying to kick the habit, a nice woman who understands him is helping him (Cyndi), and after many ups and downs, he finally makes it. Only for him to one day shoot up again, and stare at the ceiling, blissfully high. The end.

In the end, the biggest losers are Cyndi and the future children. Cyndi, because Lew played around with her just like her previous husband had, and the future children because they are mere bargaining chips to their parents. There is no justice, no right for them. Only "shit happens".

In the end I have lost all respect for Lew, any pain Mona will give him in the future is deserved, it will be his own fault.

THE DREAM WIFE.

Despite it being a long tale, I can actually be short with this. I think this quote by Caroline says it all:

"I'm filing for divorce, Dan. I'm leaving you today. I'll get my things together, most of them anyway, tonight and go stay with my mom. And since we're not going to be together, and since I have to start a new life, I decided I was going to fuck another man. Oh, and I wanted to hurt you as bad as humanly possible and I knew that fucking Frank would hurt you more than anything else I could do."

This comes from the woman who knows how badly Dan had been hurt (is still hurting) from the cheating by his previous wife. Malicious intent indeed. And her reason? To shock Dan out of his obsession with Holly, his previous wife...Caroline leaves him, he wants her back (no idea why), and her condition for coming back? He has to forgive Holly for her cheating! Dan has literally a TRAUMA from his ex-wife's cheating, has nightmares about it, and Mona interprets his nightmares as wet dreams about his ex? And to shock him out of his trauma, she gives him a WORSE trauma, by doing the exact same thing, but this time knowing it would hurt him "more than anything else she could do".

One commenter put it as, a boyfriend accusing his girlfriend of cheating on him, because she dreams about her rapist (her nightmares), tells her to get over her rape already, and as revenge for her infidelity (that she's thinking of her rapist, and not him), he fucks another girl. And if his girlfriend wants him back, she has to forgive her rapist. It isn't a completely accurate analogy (the boyfriend would have to rape HER for it to be exactly the same), but you get the idea I hope. (Analogies are incredibly hard to do, because infidelity, cheating and crimes of the heart, are nearly impossible to do an analogy for.)

I think that everything is said with that. Like Caroline said herself, she did THE MOST HURTFUL thing she could possibly do to Dan, and gets off scotfree, and it WORKS. He comes crawling back. You would expect such pain and harm to come from your hated worst enemy, and NOT from the person who supposedly loves you the most. With friends/lovers like these, who needs enemies?

Is there any "revenge", payback, karma for the hurtful things Caroline has done? No. Lew may have tried, but in the end, he came crawling back, doing what she wanted. And that proves to Caroline that if doing the most hurtful she could do to him, would not make him leave, well, she can do anything to him. Again, essentially, the wife gets off scotfree for all the pain she has caused. In fact, in both The Last Goodbye and The Dream Wife, the wives not only get off scotfree, they actually get REWARDED for their evil deeds.

I have no comment on When We Were Married, because it is still on-going, so I'll refrain from commenting.

Aside from Moment Of Clarity, DQS's first story, his stories seem to have "reconciliation at all costs" as a theme, with everything that implies. To wrap up this "essay", for those who are in the "kick the bitch to the curb" crowd and want the wife to get her comeuppance, or those who want an ending where the wife at least takes responsibility for her own actions, this is not for you.

A disclaimer at the end. I whipped up this essay in about half an hour, I've never submitted anything so if there is really screwy alignment, or spelling/grammar mistakes, forgive me. I am only one reader, with only one opinion. Although I have stated many facts, there are ofcourse feelings involved which are subjective. You may agree or disagree with how the wives are treated at the end, but I hope that this essay was a little enlightening, or at least entertaining read.

Mousse9
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