Adultery My Friend Wants My Mother

[CoreMadness]

Thanks for the story, though well written. It is highly disappointing for various reasons listed below. Time and again authors here fail again and again in establishing proper ending with meaningful conclusions. Yet at the same time, they write other stories in parallel.

Mrs. Madhu’s arc does come full circle. The family photograph, the wall where it all began, and her coming home to Rajesh tie her journey together well. But to me it felt like closure without redemption. She leaves because she’s exhausted and because Gautham has already lost interest, not because she faces up to what happened. The secret stays buried and nothing is repaired. It ends, but it doesn’t feel complete. She thinks she chose rest and relief but its not her choice, it is the only option left for her in order to survive. She lost the meaning in her affair so she left but it did not lose the meaning because she chose it, it lost because she chose wrong person.

My bigger problem is Gautham. He gets no consequences at all. Worse, author whether intentionally could have let it go but normalizing it is insane and immoral in many ways, the ending excuses him: “He is not a bad man, he is just a young man.” But the story itself shows otherwise. He planned a wager, kept a careful campaign going, held onto her photos and notes, threatened Vinay, and told more than one woman she was “the one I chose.” That’s not youthful carelessness. That’s a deliberate pattern. Being young explains inexperience, not manipulation. Vinay and Ananya are the same age and are shown to have a conscience and honesty, so why is youth Gautham’s excuse? In the end the only person who gets a gentle, forgiving goodbye is the one who caused the most harm and shown that the pattern would repeat in his life and he could potentially destroy many families on the name of liberating married woman, what is author trying to show us here? Well written but pathetic story!

Several threads were also left open:

The wager between Vinay and Gautham, which started the whole story, no closure to it.
Gautham’s threats against Vinay that he loves Madhu and asks not to stand in his way, at the end its not love? Why would Madhu accept it the way it is and says yes he never said he would love me? That is some high end bullshit.
The photos and videos he still has as his collection.
Most of all, Madhu and Vinay never really facing each other about what happened, there is no confrontation nor closure. Son simply fades away into his own life, who initially was the pov.

Gautham’s ending didn’t need to be a punishment. A confrontation with Vinay, or Madhu calling his behavior what it was, would have been enough.
Overall it was an engaging read with strong emotional moments, but the ending gave the forgiveness to the wrong person.

Thank you for writing it.