To the brink and back again

Everyone has a limit, a breaking point.  We usually believe we know ourselves well enough that we know just where that line in the sand is, but sometimes it’s not a hard limit after all.  Sometimes that breaking point becomes something more fluid, more like that mirage that is always just at the edge of your field of view on a hot summer day driving down the highway.  It shimmers out there, but every time you think you are about to be there … it’s moved away again.  That’s how my breaking point has proven to be with this relationship.

This past weekend that breaking point was right in front of me, I could have sworn I drove right over it, but still it seems to shimmer in front of me.  The lies and deception had piled up and every time I peeled back one layer, I found a deeper level of dishonesty hiding behind the last.  For at least the third time in less than two weeks, our relationship reached the boiling point and went screaming past it.  And for at least the third time in less than two months, she recognized that the lies and deception had no place as part of this open and honest relationship we had promised to cultivate and nurture between the two of us.  For the third time in the last couple of months, she “ended” her relationship with her lover, but I knew from previous history that these endings were all too temporary so after being asked for a do-over the first time and simply told it would restart the second time, I had little hope that this ending would do much to slow down the powerful bull that was handily making a mess of our china shop.  But here it was, another chance before me to salvage things and I jumped at it like I had the first two.  More admissions of deception from both her and her lover, but she was still at a loss to explain them but there was the concept that they were lying to protect one another … from me?  How had this distorted triangle managed to twist in on itself to the point that the loyalty and protective instincts all revolved around this secondary pairing and there was none of that left for what we had at home?  I asked “do you have any secrets that you and I have that you keep from him?  Is there anything you are lying to HIM about?”  I already suspected the answer, but still the “no” that came out was still a painful slap in the face.  Completely open and honest with the man who has lied to you literally from the first moment you met, but secrets, deception and outright lies for me.

So here we are, riding around town, trying to piece back together a relationship that just a few months ago seemed to be as strong as steel but now seemed to be nothing more than an ill-assembled house of cards.  Both of us hesitant to return home because our apartment seems to harbor too much bad energy of late.  Too few good memories there and so many fights and screams and threats of the end.  We’ve even bought incense to try and chase away the bad juju that seems to have taken up residence with us.  So instead of going home, we go for a late dinner out and while we are parking, he responds to her email, and to her credit she shows me his response.  Not hours or days later, but immediately.  It’s pretty much what I suspected, pretty much what I would have done under the circumstances.  Despite the fact the he promised her months ago if this ever got to the point that she felt the need to end it he would honor her request with no questions asked and fade away, here is his response … full of “I don’t know what went wrong” and “I just want to understand” and “please let’s meet face to face.”  Exactly what you would expect from someone who has shown no hesitation to put THIS relationship in harm’s way without any sign of remorse while his investment remains zero and he slinks home to the wife and child and leaves chaos here in his wake.  I am too quick to respond, to quick to snap out verbally and tell her hell no!  Then I realize that I am still the outsider in my own relationship.  I have to remind myself that I am the guest here, just watching them play out this drama in front of me.  I have front row tickets, but all I can do is boo, jeer, heckle or applaud at what is being played out before me.  I’m not the director, not even really an actor in this production.  I retract my hasty NO! and give her the time and space to respond, asking only that the lies and coverups stop now.  I ask to be kept in the loop on her reply or any contact going forward and to know what is discussed WHEN it is discussed, not hours or days later when the mood seems right or after I’ve already figured out what happened.  With an agreement for total openness, we move forward …

A day or two passes and I inquire a few times if she has responded or even decided on what she wants to say in response to his request, but she hasn’t.  She is unsure of herself and how to reply because while she wants to keep him in her life, as a friend if nothing more, she is aware that those options come with a price because keeping him on any level means risking us.  Too much pain, too many lies and too many months of fighting and unhappiness have tainted anything that could have been there … not to mention the fact that trying to build a polyamorous relationship and a triad around one member who is a liar and the cheating half of a “monogamous” relationship is a recipe for disaster.  Foolishly, I thought that perhaps she would let the email from him be the end of things and not reply, but the weekend comes and while we are out with friends, I look up and she is gone.  Checking on her, she tells me she had to make a bathroom run, but something in my gut is twisting, it doesn’t feel right.  She is gone quite a while and when she returns, the feeling is still there.  Something nagging at me.  I ask again about the bathroom break and about how long it took and she says that’s all it was.  So I let it go.  We leave the group behind and we make our way to dinner, the conversation is a little strained and she asks me what’s on my mind, I can’t put words to it.  My suspicions are there, swirling just beneath the surface, but I’ve asked her and pressed her on the issue and she has stood firm so I let it ride for now.

Once we are home and she is in bed, my thoughts won’t settle and a quick check of our phone carrier on-line confirms why I’ve felt the way I have all night.  During that trip to the bathroom, an 11 minute call.  Inbound, from his cell phone.   The contact I asked to know about and here it was.  My first thought is to go snap on the light and wake her from her sound sleep and confront her, but I decide to let it go for now.  I will try my best again tomorrow to press her on the missing time in the hope that she will open up and be honest about the call without forcing my hand.  Try as I might, I continue to ask about the bathroom trip, I even press on how long it was and even that I felt something strange but she continues to stand firm that it was a potty run and nothing else.  I then ask her if she knows that phone logs are available on line and still nothing, so in the end I have to call her on her lie once again.  To the bitter end she tries to deny it and play it off, just as he did with his wife even after we knew her name.  Finally she quietly admits to the call, swears that he called her out of the blue during the twenty minutes she happened to be in the bathroom (and away from me for basically the first time in three days) and says only that he was emotional and wanted to understand more of what happened and that she told him it had to end.  Of course my question then becomes why not tell me?  She can’t say.  She didn’t want me upset, didn’t want to deal with my anger, frustration or pain any more.  But she was going to tell me … eventually … she swears.

There is that mirage again.  Just on the horizon, but this time I’m gaining on it fast and this time I catch it.  The breaking point is finally within reach and I grab for it with both hands.  Another lie, another secret for them to share behind my back, another chance for them to build and for “us” to be broken down, even if the dialog on the call was what she tells me.  But how can I be sure.  How can I ever know?  If you didn’t even want to tell me the call took place, how can I trust you to recap it for me once you get caught in your bullshit once again?  An 11 minute call … a sneaky, hidden call with the lying, married man she has fallen for rated above the opportunity to rebuild trust and salvage our relationship.  This is it then, the straw that has been waiting to fall on the camel’s back for five months now.  She can only email me from the other room with an “I’m sorry” and tell me she will accept whatever decision I make at this point on how to proceed.  I reply in kind and my email makes it clear that I have no decisions to make.  I made my decisions the first, second, third, fourth, fifth times that I forgave and asked for some effort on her part, on their part, to be honest and stop the lies and the secrets.  My ability to forgive has been tapped dry and now all that is left is a deep and overwhelming sadness for the loss of what could have been.  I wish her the best in my email and leave to spend a day cleaning my car and my psyche.

The cleaning is therapeutic.  I listen to the mix-CD of hopeful love songs I made for her a few weeks ago and shed so many tears that my plan to drive around town becomes a dangerous one and I retreat to the park, to her park, the place she loves to come to decompress.  The same park we were at only days earlier when she was mourning her loss of HIM for the third time and now here I am watching the sunset.  My Oakleys covering my eyes so people who pass me on the walk don’t have to wonder about the tears welling there.  And as I watch the sunset alone, I am struck by the difference in my view.  Just days ago, while the mood was somber, there was hope in my heart.  As I watched her stare out at the water from the same perch I sat on now, I could be hurt that she was mourning the loss of someone else but still hopeful about the future, about OUR future.  But now, sitting here in the same spot, I could only look out on the sunset alone and mourn my own loss.  And the sadness that I felt was truly overwhelming.  That simple act of watching the sunset and not having her with me to share it drove home my loss like I couldn’t believe.

With my love and without.

I sent her this collage of images, the one taken days earlier as I watched her and the one I saw today.  What followed was an outpouring of emotion from both of us.  A cascade of memories of travels and adventures and laughter and fantasies and dreams imagined and fulfilled.  We revisited the first four years together and how good they were and imagined the next twenty and how good they could have been.  All of which led back to the same question.  Why?  Why were a series of stolen moments with a married man worth the loss of what we both said, even now, was everything we had waited for all our lives.  Chatting on text it seemed we were able to remove some of the noise and the anger and frustration that had clouded our communication face-to-face of late.  She found it easier to open up and be honest and I found it easier to remain calm and absorb without responding.  We broke through some walls that had been keeping us from making progress and we talked about the chemistry that the two of them shared and the passion and the heat in their lovemaking that we had allowed to cool between the two of us over the last few years.  In part because of my leaning toward oral and her desire for penetration, but also in large part because many of the bedroom joys that they shared were things that she had not been open to in the past … nipple play and biting and kissing and spanking … all things that I took pleasure in coming into this relationship and all things she had no desire for with me.  All things I had filed away because they didn’t appeal to her … but all things that she and her new love made a regular part of their repertoire, all things that helped them to elevate to the level of passion that she described as the best sex of her life.  People can change what they like she would say.

So at the end of a long day of texting, apologies and reconciliation, I decided to patch that camel up for one more trip.  I brushed some of the straw from his back and got him up and moving.  I asked her once and for all to tell me what she wanted.  She said she wanted me, she wanted this, she wanted us.  In all caps and with a few exclamation points thrown in for good measure.  And I believed her, I had to.  Because that’s what I want, it’s all I’ve wanted for many years now.  I can’t close my eyes and imagine anyone else in my life, I can’t see sharing my hopes, dreams or memories with anyone else by my side.  So I willed that breaking point to be fluid again, to be a mirage off in the distance and we worked on moving forward.  I asked her to promise me that from this point forward there would be no more lies and no more deception between the two of us.  She did.  I asked her to let me burn this relationship to the ground, the one that neither she nor her lover could seem to let go.  She said I could.  She said she was done, she didn’t want it or him any more and she had made her decision and I could do whatever I wanted.  So I told her to come find me.  I gave her hints of where I would be … one of the special spots that had meaning for us because of the role it played in some of our first dates and it was really the spot where we discussed some of the parameters of this relationship we are in and decided we could make a go of it.  She caught my hints and figured out where I would be waiting and made her way to me with a little help from my son who I had lined up to be on call for her if she decided she needed a late night ride.  Seeing her walk in was a powerful moment.  Even though we had only been separated physically for a few short hours, we had been separated emotionally more than we had since we started this relationship four and a half years ago.  For the first time we had both agreed to end something we never imagined would come to a close and certainly not so soon.  So we grabbed a late dinner, the three of us.  And she and I hugged and kissed in the booth like schoolkids with a crush and I was so happy to have her back in my arms again.

Arriving home we talked for hours more sitting in my truck outside our apartment.  Both of us afraid to break the spell and go back into the apartment and allow the negative energy there to drag us down, but it was almost 4 am by this time so we came inside and if the negativity was there waiting for us, we overcame it.  We seemed to be back on solid ground, rebuilding needed to be done certainly, but at least we had a place to start from.

So the next day, I wanted to reach out to her lover and make sure he understood our decision.  I wanted to be certain that he didn’t call again out of the blue and prove a continuing thorn in our side.  When I mentioned making the call, however, she talked me out of it.  She was certain that the last call was in fact the last call.  She felt that she had expressed her decision to him and that he would now understand it was over and they both had to move on, even though she acknowledged that they both ended the call with their “I love you” sentiments for one another.  Something nagged at me about this sudden about face after she gave me the green light the night before, but I was floating too high on cloud 9 to give it much thought.  Perhaps she was right and there was no reason to even look down that hallway if the door had truly been closed.

But it wasn’t closed.  Clearly it wasn’t.  Because the next day, I got a text.  A text from her lover asking for a meeting with me, instead of me taking the power and pushing for us to connect to clear the air and end things once and for all, now I was back on my heels and the power was his once again.  He wanted to meet because he couldn’t understand why this couldn’t work.  Not a problem I said to myself but I could see instantly on her face that she had prayed for this moment not to come.  Despite promising me two things to convince me to give this another try … complete honesty and allowing me to close this door with her lover on my own terms … she hadn’t meant either of those.  Two more lies and more to be revealed in the moments to come as she finally came clean about the Saturday phone call.  As I suspected, the timing of the call was no coincidence nor was it initiated by him.  The call had been incoming, but only because SHE had reached out to HIM and asked him to call!  How many lies?  Too many to count.  More lies than truth between us for five months now, that much I do know.  So here she was, now professing this was the last of the lies!  Another one she had no reason to keep from me and yet she did.  Another secret for the two of them to share and the reason she had no intention of letting me reach out to him … because the first words I would have spoken would have been to ask why he called and then her lies would once again have been laid bare.  At this moment I have the revelation that she has lost the basic ability to be honest with me.  It is no longer within her power to tell me anything truthful about herself and this man, even when she claims it’s over, even when she claims she doesn’t want him, she still can’t keep herself from building a fortress of secrets around the two of them and what they share.  I can never trust anything she says to me about herself and this married man she has fallen head-over-heels in love with.   If I can ever trust her again in any way remains to be seen, but where he is concerned, certainly I cannot.  It has been proven time and again that they will both lie to protect one another from me as I am the real or perceived enemy that stands between them and whatever future they plan to build in their world of secrecy, lies and infidelity.  Once again that breaking point is clearly in view.  All of the outpouring of heartfelt emotion only days before is now tainted.  How much of it was real?  How much of what she says can I believe any more?  The love scavenger hunt to find me and start “us” over again … it seemed like a way for me to put a bookmark in our story.  A touchstone in our history together that could help us overlook the chapter before and the five sad months where our ship was blown off course, but now she has effectively shit all over that noble attempt and made it just another inside joke between the two of them.

So here I am.  That shimmering breaking point is just off in the distance.  If it’s a mirage this time or the real thing, tangible and final, I can’t say just yet.  Once again she has given him all of the power in our relationship, once again they have secrets that only they will ever know and I will have to let them decide what happens from here.  I know that there is nothing either of them can say to me that I can trust.  I want to say that the only person who has been honest with me these last five months is me … but that isn’t reality.  I have lied to myself almost as much as the two of them have.  I’ve lied to myself all along the way, telling myself this was his last lie, her last betrayal, their last secret and yet I knew every time I knew in my heart that it wasn’t the case.  But even if I have lied to myself, I am still the only one I can put any trust in here and all I can base the next few days on is what I want.  I want her in my life more than I have wanted anything I can ever remember.  Despite the lies and the broken trust, no one else brings me the joy that she does, no one else knows me for who I really am like she does and there is no one else in the world I would rather share the rest of my life with.  But having said all that, there is absolutely no way I can be in this relationship if he is friend, lover, confidant, Facebook buddy or any other connection with her.  So now we will see what the future holds and as I told her on Saturday, she has once again taken my ability to make a decision away from me.  Whatever the future holds now is not in my hands.  Whatever is ahead is just over the next hill and I won’t know if it’s a mirage, a breaking point or a brick wall until it’s too late to do anything about it.

Ruminations on honesty and trust

If falsehood, like truth, had but one face, we would be more on equal terms.  For we would consider the contrary of what the liar said to be certain.  But the opposite of truth has a hundred thousand faces and an infinite field. – Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Some people will not tolerate such emotional honesty in communication. They would rather defend their dishonesty on the grounds that it might hurt others. Therefore, having rationalized their phoniness into nobility, they settle for superficial relationships. – Author Unknown

Someday a computer will give a wrong answer to spare someone’s feelings, and man will have invented artificial intelligence. – Robert Brault

We tell lies when we are afraid… afraid of what we don’t know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger. – Tad Williams

Every lie is two lies — the lie we tell others and the lie we tell ourselves to justify it. – Robert Brault

I love you, and because I love you, I would sooner have you hate me for telling you the truth than adore me for telling you lies. – Pietro Aretino

Eyes or Ears?

Actions or words?  Which do you believe?  Which one is the truth?  Ben Franklin was quoted as saying “believe none of what you hear and half of what you see.”  Interesting quote and probably not too far from correct.

What does it mean when someone’s words don’t match their actions?  In the simplest form, to me, it means that that person is lying to you.  How else can you explain a 180º difference between words and actions?  There is an old expression that a good friend of mine used to wear out … “Say what you mean and mean what you say.”  It sounds so simple and yet in real life, and especially in relationships, I’ve found that is isn’t all that common.  There are so many reasons for being dishonest and insincere and it’s almost an art form to make lying to your partner sound like not only the right thing to do, but the only thing to do and in their best interest after all!  I mean who could fault someone for hiding something that would hurt their partner, right?  That just seems like it’s such a sweet thing to do, doesn’t it?  Not hurt your partner, the person who you claim to love.

I speak from experience on that, having been unfaithful and dishonest in two marriages and several other committed relationships in my past.  When I was about to cheat, after I cheated, when I had a second relationship going on, when I was texting or emailing someone else sitting in the room with my partner, when I was running late not because of traffic but because of a quicky in the back of the car.  All great times to lie, omit, shade the truth or just generally be dishonest in the best interest of protecting your partner from being hurt.  Why put them through the pain of knowing what I just did or what I’m feeling or what I really want to be doing right now instead of being here with them?  I was so good to my wives and partners over the years!  I saved them from so much pain!!  Well.  That’s the biggest lie of them all because that’s the one I told myself to make me feel good.  It really didn’t have a damn thing to do with protecting them from pain … if that’s what I had really wanted after all then I would never have put myself in the position to have to lie to them to keep them from knowing how I had cheated on them physically, mentally or emotionally.

So now we fast forward past the vast wasteland of relationships that I’ve ruined in the past.  Flying high at 30,000 feet so we don’t have to see the tears and the anger on the faces of those left behind, but we can still see the pattern of devastation which repeated itself over and over, despite all of the sweet little lies that I told to try and protect everyone from the pain.  We get off the plane and we board a ship, a relation-ship if you will.  A different one than any of the ones we’ve left behind, this one starts with a promise and a commitment of openness and honesty.  I have a long history of everything that is the antitheses of those two words, but this time it’s going to be different and I know it has to be because I can’t allow this relation-ship to sink.  I look into this eyes of this woman standing in front of me and trying to focus on her beautiful face through my own tears of both pain and fear, I make a promise to be different.  She knows my history.  She knows that I am standing in her kitchen today still very raw from a marriage I destroyed because I couldn’t be faithful and I couldn’t be honest and I couldn’t be open.  I’m trying to focus on her face through the tears in my eyes which are coming from the anger at myself for breaking the heart of a woman I loved who did not deserve to be a part of that wasteland we just flew over to get here.  But those tears aren’t just for the past, but also for fear of the future.  I know what I’ve done, I’ve lied to myself and I’ve lied to others and now here I am, hoping that the words I’m saying now, the commitment I’m making today, won’t end in more devastation somewhere down the line.  And they don’t!  It wasn’t always easy and it wasn’t something that I didn’t sometimes have to think about, but I made it through.  You may say it was easy because our relationship is non-monogamous, but I will argue that infidelity is just as possible in an open relationship as it is in a monogamous one.  Infidelity can be commonly referred to as cheating, adultery, or having an affair, but it can also be argued that it is the subjective feeling that one’s partner has violated a set of rules or relationship norms.  But still I made it, I made it one year and surprised even myself and then made it to four in what seemed like the blink of an eye.

So why am I here writing about this then?  Well I’m coming to grips with what it feels like for that left shoe to feel like the right.  I’m trying to get comfortable with how it feels to be protected from pain by a shield of lies.  Yes, that shoe is on the other foot.  Now I get to be the one sitting back, wondering should I believe any of what I hear and can I believe even half of what I see?  Here we are trying to sail around the world on this ship of ours that was built of truth and honesty and four years into this lifetime cruise we realize that we have brought a stowaway on board.  Good old fashioned lies and deceit and dishonesty are sailing right along with us.  And they are the worst of lies, they are those lies I know so well, the ones I used to tell so easily.  Her partner tells her he lied to her about his marriage, his family, his feelings, his intentions all because he didn’t want to hurt her.  And she in turn tells me she lied to me about her feelings and her desires and her intentions because she didn’t want to hurt me.  So now here we are, deep in the ocean, no land in sight.  Sailing this ship into uncharted waters and trying to bail like crazy because suddenly the once calm ocean is churning and the ship that kept us safe and dry for four years isn’t any longer because almost without warning we are chest deep in lies.  But then I realize I’m the only one bailing.  I’m the only one feeling the way that I do because after all, he isn’t being lied to.  He got honesty from day one from both of us.  And her days of being lied to are apparently over, or at least she believes so.  She knows about his family and she knows about his life and now she also knows about his love for her and his desire to have her in his life, forever.

I’m the only one bailing this ship.

I’m bailing because what I see and what I hear, what I experience and what I am being told, what I’m being asked to believe and what I feel in my bones … just don’t match.  I’m bailing because I know what it’s like to convince yourself that you are lying to your partner to protect them from pain.  I’m bailing because I know that what you are really doing in those situations is protecting yourself from losing whatever it is you are lying to keep hidden.

And I’m bailing because I keep hearing the words that are meant to heal my broken heart … that I am the only one she wants.  That I am the captain of this ship.  That we will sail side-by-side forever off into that beautiful sunset together.  That no one else could ever take her away from me because I am all she has ever wanted and more than she could have ever wished for.  My ears keep sending me those signals.  Keep passing along that message.  But my eyes tell me a different story all together.  My eyes tell me that despite the escalation of arguments that have ended recently with one or both of us calling for an end to this relation-ship as often as several times a week … despite the clear evidence of my depression and my pain … despite the risk that any moment could be our last on this ship together … despite all that there is never a moment of hesitation to bring him back into her bed.  To keep her heart wide open to receive him.  The words tell me “I would never leave you for him” and the actions tell me that she already has.

I’m bailing because I don’t want this ship to sink.

But then I realize I am the only one bailing because I’m the only one chest deep in cold, bone chilling water.  I’m the only one on a sinking ship.  When they are together, there isn’t anything to distract them, there is nothing holding them back or pulling them down.  I know the feeling from his perspective, I’ve been there and done that.  More than a decade in a marriage, going through the motions, family responsibilities, bills, routine, baggage.  The sex is good if you’re lucky but it’s not passionate any more.  And it doesn’t keep you satisfied, especially if you’re a cheater like I was, like he is.  Now he has something new, he has my baby in his life, the most beautiful and most wonderful woman who has ever come into my life has now walked into his.  And she has given him both her body and her heart.  He shows up at our door and he finds her waiting for him every time, a smile on her face and an eager look in her eye.  The passion he lacks at home is waiting for him here and there are no bills and no baggage and nothing to weigh him down.  He can escape his world for three or four hours in her arms and her heart.  And he has everything she wants.  She is attracted to him, she is comfortable with him.  The sex isn’t just good, it’s the best she’s ever had.  She doesn’t hesitate or bat and eye to let you know that it is.  And the connection and the conversation are even better than the sex.  She doesn’t just want him in her bed, she wants him in her life, in her heart.  And now finally that fear she had of it being one-sided, that she had given her heart to him but didn’t get the emotion from him in return.  Now that one last fear is finally gone, he’s confessed his love and poured out his heart and she knows he doesn’t ever want to lose her from his life.  So there is nothing negative to push them apart, only the positive to pull them together.  Whatever lies they have told one another have been washed away and forgiven in the passion and the sweat that they bathe in together every time they connect.  Whatever lies they both tell me, well, those are just to protect me, that’s all.

So my ears tell me everything is fine, the ship is strong and watertight and sailing through calm waters and most of all I am still it’s captain.  But with my eyes I see the ship, sailing away into the sunset, I focus on it steaming away and I understand I’m bailing alone because I am alone.  I am still the captain of my ship, or my lifeboat, but it’s going down and I am powerless to stop it.

Do over done wrong

Sometimes before you can celebrate a success story, it undergoes a re-write and becomes more of a cautionary tale than a a true success story.  This is one of those times.

After four rocky months culminated with my baby breaking up with her favorite play partner in our four year history on the heels of broken rules, lies and betrayal … we seemed to make lemons into lemonade and salvage their relationship after deciding on a “do over”.  This seemed to be the best possible solution since she described the sex between her and her lover as the best of her life and their connection seemed to stretch well beyond the bedroom and opened the door for a possible full-blown second relationship for the first time.

The problem was that despite all three of us giving lip service to the fresh start and the honesty that needed to be at the very core of this “new” relationship between the two of them, only two of us were on board.  I was very vocal and clear on what I needed to feel secure in my position on the outside looking in and my baby was prepared to give me the full disclosure that we had always had up until these last four months.  Even her partner seemed on board, my one-on-one meeting with him left me a sense of security (which turned out to be false).

The quick win was great sex for the two of them, which for the first time wasn’t followed by a fight between my love and I … and it seemed we had managed to make the best of a difficult situation.  Their playtime which had been on a fairly laid back pace of 3 to 4 times a month suddenly accelerated without my unhappiness to slow it down … within the first week he had visited 3 times.  Each time together was better than the last by her description with both the sex and the connection growing stronger more fulfilling.  It was natural for her to begin to push for even more, asking him for not just more time in our bed, but for time in his as well.  She was ready to advance the relationship further and wanted to start spending days and nights with him.  As a self-described bachelor who wasn’t dating anyone, there seemed to be no reason that she couldn’t start spending a few nights a week with him, expanding on their time together and their opportunity for building the long-term relationship she wanted.

But her request to visit him instead of hosting him at our place every time was met with one excuse after another.  And then an afternoon of playing “the name game” in between rounds of lovemaking went sideways when he refused to disclose his middle name to her.  Now as her suspicions began to mount she confirmed with him again that he was single and she pressed him to spend that Wednesday with him at his place since he didn’t have to work.  When Tuesday night brought more excuses, Wednesday turned into a breakfast date and another afternoon spent together in our bed.

Her curiosity over his reluctance to let her visit sparked my own and armed with some basic information and a friend who knew her way around people search sites, I was quickly able to determine not only his middle name, but his wife’s name as well.  Yes, the single man who wasn’t even dating and lived alone turned out to be anything but.  I had to consider whether or not to share this information with my baby when I returned home, it didn’t seem right to keep it from her both from the perspective of being honest with one another and because I didn’t want her to fall deeper into this relationship with a married man all the while thinking he was much more available to her than he was in fact.  My decision was made easier because she confided in me that she pushed him on his secretiveness over breakfast and wasn’t satisfied with his responses or his reaction and that those feeling had remained with her all afternoon and had tainted their time in bed as well.  I took the plunge and gave her the information I had … in the end it wasn’t a surprise but rather a confirmation of what she had suspected for some time.

Things unraveled in short order after that.  A confrontation over text about his full name and the person who appeared to be a wife gave him yet another opportunity to come clean and be honest for the first time in four months … but as with any lie there are two ways to react when you are caught in your shit.  Admit the truth, ask for forgiveness and try to move forward or continue to deny it and dig an even deeper hole for yourself by layering in even more lies.  In his case he continued to lie, but now cornered and unsure of just how much information she had, his stories began to make less and less sense until he finally agreed to “come clean” once he realized no amount of additional lies would dig him out of this situation.  He came clean to her during a brief phone call during which I left the room to allow her the privacy she deserved.  I later learned that he admitted his marriage of over a decade as well as a daughter and could only offer the excuse that he wanted to keep them out of things as to why he lied initially and then continued to deny his situation for months.

So here we are, less than two weeks from a fresh start but again lies and deception have brought things to the same point.  Epic fail.  This time I’m not the main one feeling betrayed because while I was lied to, he only had to lie to me across the table over a few drinks.  His lies to her have been so much more intimate and so much more purposeful.  His well crafted back story has given her false hope of something long term with him.  There were a few rough moments between us after this new truth came to light … her frustration and anger over the revelation feels directed toward me, after all, I am the messenger.  We overcome that and spend a day together in bed, hugging, kissing, supporting one another.  I am the shoulder she needs to cry on and the ear she needs to bend.  She confides her pain to me and questions whether or not she should be feeling this way, feeling so hurt and betrayed and I have to remind her that this was a relationship.  From the first meeting, the two of them had a bond and a chemistry which was only made stronger by the amazing sexual connection they shared.  I give her the support she needs to grieve for the man she’s fallen in love with and broken up with twice now in less than a month.  As the day ends, she is smiling again and we feel connected like we haven’t in months.

That would seem to be the end to the chapter, the ups and downs with this one partner over and the time now to move on to someone new, someone honest and available and ready to bring something positive into our relationship instead of being a corrosive agent positioned to eat away at our bond and our foundation.

But there are still pages left in this chapter.  Pages still to be written it seems.

Because after a full day grieving together in bed, the morning brings with it the revelation that she wants him back.  She slips this revelation in during morning conversation … not as a question or a suggestion, but as a statement.  He will be back she says, just a matter now of deciding how long she will make him wait and what she might put him through before she lets him back in.  So it’s do over part deux.  Or as Shakespeare put it, “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.”

Let’s see what fills the final pages at the end of this chapter.  Comedy, tragedy or something in between … however it turns out, the outcome will determine the path for our relationship and I will be along for the ride.

Coming out of the fog

The simple phrase “do-over” can carry so much energy and potential in the context of a relationship that has seemingly lost it’s way in a fog bank of anger, fear and lies.  For a one-on-one, monogamous relationship, the meaning is relatively straightforward … one partner has likely said or done something out of bounds for the other and forgiveness needs to be granted for the couple to get back on their path.  In our case, it means forgiveness for both my partner and her playmate AND it means trying to walk back down the path hand-in-hand with both of them after the most painful and uncertain four months of our relationship.

For a relationship founded on complete honesty, looking into the eyes of the woman you love body, mind and soul and knowing she is not telling you what she is really thinking and feeling is very painful.  To look into those eyes and know she is lying to you about another man, a man who she has been intimate with for months, a man who has spent hour after hour in our bed with her sharing not just his hard dick but also his soft touch and his inquisitive mind … THAT is exquisite pain indeed.  The edict we’ve had about our play partners for the first four years of this relationship has been tweaked and we have agreed that she could consider a deeper bond with one man, the right man who is comfortable in the lifestyle and in our lives, a man who would like to be her #2 and maintain a deeper on-going relationship.  The one night stands and casual booty calls have gotten old and haven’t given her the satisfaction she desires, so this seems a logical next step, an evolution if you will.  But this man who is getting so much of her attention, this man who lingers with her in bed for hours and hours after every sexual encounter, this man who is both her “good morning” and her “good night” on text every day is only supposed to be that causal sex partner, that “toy with a pulse” as we used to call them early in our relationship.  He means nothing more than physical pleasure … right?  Well, that’s what she confirms for me, with her mouth if not with her actions.  The rules of our relationship are bent if not broken in front of my eyes, not once but time-and-again on each and every visit from him and my reminders of these guardrails meant to keep us on the same path lead to not mere disagreements, but fights the likes of which we have not had to deal with in the past.  Growing pains perhaps, or something more.  If I challenge the fact that this partner is different than all the others who have come and gone, if I contend that this man has more than her body connecting with him and starving for his attention she will dismiss me and assure me that all she wants is his cock and all she ever wants from him is good sex.

And yet…

Her eyes tell a different story.  Her unwillingness to allow me to speak with him directly and in private speaks volumes.  Her decision to risk anger and sadness and uncertainty in our relationship after every visit from this “casual sex partner” tells me more clearly than any words ever could what she gets from him, what she wants from him and in fact what she needs from him.  Watching her with her play partners is something that we have enjoyed from the beginning, the cuckold in me revels in the sights and sounds of her being pleased by someone else and the exhibitionist in her loves having an audience. Our connection DURING sex is always a powerful one when she is with someone else … a shared glance, a held hand or even a stolen kiss between the two of us while someone else has himself buried deep inside her.  So when the opportunity presented itself to watch them together, I was there, sitting at the foot of our bed, waiting for that powerful connection to give me some reassurance that I was off track and just feeling a way because of that lurking green monster jealousy who is always waiting in the wings.

And yet…

Being there and watching did quite the opposite.  There was no kiss shared between us, no hands touched.  Sitting five feet away from them for 45 minutes while the room became incredibly small and oppressively hot, I became the invisible man for the first time in our relationship.  I ceased to exist.  Not only was there no kiss, no smile, no hand, there was not so much as a half-second glance in my direction.  The 45 minutes felt like an eternity as I recognized that I was not watching two strangers fuck, I wasn’t watching two partners have sex … what I was bearing witness to was two people with both a physical and an emotional connection make love to one another.  I didn’t exist to her at that moment because I served no purpose in that room.  She had the cock she wanted inside her, the hands and lips she wanted on her and the eyes she wanted locked on hers, and none of those belonged to me.  It was new for me to be in the place of the peeping tom looking in on two intimate lovers as opposed to the voyeur reveling in the pleasure of his lover as she enjoyed another.  It was painful to say the least.  But what was more painful was to realize that even after their lovemaking was over and they lay side-by-side in our bed, that I was still invisible.  He was still the object of all of her attention, so I faded away and went into the other room to lick my wounds and try to understand what I had just seen and what it meant for the dynamics of our relationship.  And as I sat staring at my laptop screen while it looked back at me, an hour melted away.  No sounds gave me an indication of a second round, but she did come to the kitchen to get water and suddenly I had reappeared to her and she went to give me a hug and the raw energy that was building up inside me spiked and I pulled away, angry and shaking.  Suddenly here we were, a couple again of sorts, and she wanted to discuss what I was feeling and I gave her the core of it … the feeling of being not a voyeur in my own bedroom but a pervert intruding on something intimate.  I told her I felt unclean.  She wanted to talk, but I told her that kind of discussion did not happen with him still here, so she want back to the bedroom and I went back to the couch to prepare myself for the discussion to come in a few moments when he left.

And yet…

He didn’t leave.  I was back in the staring contest with my laptop screen and another hour passed by, this one so much slower than the last.  Still no sounds of sex love-making from the bedroom, but I could hear some talking so clearly they had not fallen asleep.  I couldn’t stand it any longer, to sit there through another intimate hour with my laptop would have driven me insane, so I got up and walked into our bedroom, past the lovers on the bed and threw on some clothes and shoes and left to a few shouted words to her and a “have fun” to him.  Thinking the effort of storming into the bedroom and out of the house would prompt a quick exit from him and or a quick apology from her.

And yet…

Neither of those happened.  They sat together on the bed and watched me leave.

And I drove aimlessly around the city for a bit and ended up in a parking lot when my vision became too blurry with tears to continue.  And eventually I returned home some hours later to a late dinner/early breakfast together and the latest in a series of arguments about this partner with whom she had no connection beyond “good sex”.  Along with my assurance that I never want to see the two of them make love again, I agreed to allow for more time for talking before or after sex than what would normally happen with a play partner, not because there was an emotional attachment or a mutual desire between the two of them to share time together, but simply because if he needed a few hours of talking to give her the “good sex” she was enjoying, it was the least she could do.  Ok.  Again I get the assurance that there is nothing beyond his dick that she is interested in, that she can tolerate talking to him, only because that’s what he seems to like, but that she can take him or leave him if not for that golden dick.

And yet…

It continues as it has.  Weeks drag past and become months and the arguments continue after every visit.  Several of them culminate in one or both of us threatening to walk away from what we have … over what?  A toy with a pulse?  Still the assurances continue that there is no emotional attachment and that what I mistook for love making was just really good sex.  The offer is made for me to watch again, but the thought of that gives me an almost physical pain.  More rules are broken, but I don’t find out at the time, the evidence is hidden from sight and the openness we prided ourselves on just a few months ago before he joined our lives is forgotten in favor of a philosophy of “what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him”.  She confronts him about stretching our boundaries and causing strife between us and he openly admits that he has been aware from the first encounter that he has caused problems in our relationship.  She shares this with me after he leaves for the night and without pausing for a breath after that revelation she follows it with the statement, “I still want to keep fucking him though.”  More pain, this one clearly a tightening in my chest.  A huge fight on Valentine’s Day followed by an even bigger and more painful and public explosion in a swingers club the following day lead to her decision to end things with him and her admission that perhaps there was more than good dick involved, perhaps there were feelings involved that she hadn’t wanted to admit even to herself.  She wanted to take a step back, to ease up on how she was approaching play partners or a potential second relationship until she better understood what had happened here.

And yet…

That simple phrase “do-over” comes up.  Not weeks or months later.  Later the same day as the break-up with her lover she looks at me with tears in her eyes and says she wished that there were some way she could have a do-over.  Hell no!  I have been through the wringer, in emotional pain for months now to the point that it feels almost physical.  I have felt lied to and betrayed and the very foundation of our relationship has crumbled away under my feet to be replaced with makeshift and temporary flooring that will need to be rebuilt and reinforced over time.

And yet…

This is what our relationship means.  It means opening not only our bodies for physical pleasure but our hearts and minds for the emotional connection with other people.  If we are going to continue to sail this ship into the uncharted waters of a polyamorous lifestyle rather than just “swinging”, then this won’t be the last time we face something like this.  I can only hope that there will be lessons learned from this to make the next time better and the time after that better still and so on.  So I don’t say hell no like 99% of me wants to.  I say yes like the 1% is fighting for.  That last little bit of me that still believes in the viability of not just relationships, but open relationships and this relationship specifically.  That 1% that believes firmly in unconditional love was the vocal minority but the 1% was heard loud and clear and it spoke through me to say yes to the possibility of a do-over.

And here we are…

A week removed from the request granted.  This time we are going in with eyes open, not just eyes but hearts and minds as well.  For the first time since she met him for breakfast as their meet and greet four months ago, she and I are actually being honest with one another again.  She has been able to come to terms with the depth of her own feelings for him and able to share them with me, not to hurt me but to heal me.   To let me see her heart again, to lift the fog she was trying to hide behind so I wouldn’t see what was really happening even though I could sense the danger ahead but was powerless to navigate us around it because my vision was clouded by the fog and my own fear.

I’ve met with him one-on-one, a condition of the do-over and something she had expressly forbidden in the past.  He and I cleared the air between us and we each realized that we both want the same thing.  We want to see a smile on her face, we want to hear her laugh and make her cry … but only because her orgasm was so powerful that it brought tears to her eyes.  What he did in the past that I ascribed malicious intentions to were nothing more than his attempts to please her in the context of his role in her life.  What we each saw of one another and of our position in this relationship was clouded because we were trying to navigate in the fog.  Our visibility was limited because we could only truly see through her eyes and she kept visibility to a minimum in an attempt to keep everyone satisfied and happy, not realizing that none of us could really ever get there without a CLEAR vision of where we were or where we hoped to go.

We are a week removed from the do-over and we have reconnected with one another and even I didn’t have a full grasp of just how distant we had become.  These last few days, while still filled with raw emotion and brief bouts of fear, sadness and anger, have been a flashback to the beginning of our relationship … a reminder of how wonderful it feels to share your life with a person who knows you and gets you and wants to see you smile and to smile with you more than anything else in the world.  He’s been back to please her already.  And it was good, for the first time it was good for all three of us.  I wasn’t there in the room to watch (if that time comes again, it won’t be soon) but I was here and I was comfortable giving them their time together and allowing them to connect both physically and emotionally.  And for the first time in four months, there was no argument when he left.  Smiles all around and then she led me by the hand to the bed so I could climb between her legs and please her while she told me how she had enjoyed him moments earlier.

It’s not perfect.  Not yet.  But we can all see again, the fog has been lifted.  We can set a course now for open waters and see just how this ship handles with three passengers instead of two …

3 levels of true!

Its strange how one person can be at one place while the other is reeling from destruction.  It’s one of those things where one can feel that it’s time to move forward while the other is still in pain, and agony of the world-wind that just wiped them out.  Could this be viewed as selfish?  Are we considering the misery that’s been brought to the other person in this duo?

We can never see ourselves. It’s easy to see others and able to point out what they’ve done wrong, where the changed happened and how this person isn’t living up to the standards of a good upstanding individual. We can pick apart any situation and solve it like math, but when it’s us, our demise, our short-comings, our failures we can’t seem to see that picture, that image through the looking glass. We are so determine to just think that its a misstep on the others part. We point fingers, we scream, holler, even down right cry rolling on the floor chanting that I’ve done nothing wrong, I’ve done what I know to be right, earnest, and true!

In spite of the destruction, the world-wind, the demise, we still want to be here, here where we know that its the best place in the world, the place where our heart floats on cloud nine. Where the world around us can crash and burn but your universe is undisturbed. This place is where all things possible is happening, where all hurt, pain, and heartache doesn’t exist. Lollipops, ice cream, cookies and cakes, is the place where every fat kid gets to have its way, its a place where women are fat a happy, where men watch sports and titties at the same time, where animals can be animals! This place is HOME, this place is PEACE, this place is LOVE!