It all started five months ago when I realized that I wanted to fuck another man.
First, a word about my marriage: Its earliest chapters began when we were kids, in grade school. There were sleepovers where we slept in each others’ beds. There was groping and whispering, yes, as six-year-olds. We loved each other before we knew what love was.
Separated by our parents’ choice, reunited as college students, Geoff and I felt that we couldn’t interfere with fate. We married at 23, and never doubted our choice. Six happy years passed – we worked, traveled, did our own thing together. Sex was always good, but in a quiet way. Then three kids arrived. Yes, all planned. I wanted to be in the middle of that, to be swamped with motherhood. And the kids did the trick. They took all that we had to give.
Now to the present. I turned 35 this year. I am the most me that I have ever been. I begin to take stock of my life. Where am I going from here? I begin running. I fucking love to run. Me, who has never run anywhere willingly before now. I make Geoff a deal. By the time I am 36 I will be on a path back to work outside the home. I need to show my kids how it’s done.
In January, I get a sinking feeling in bed one night. Geoff is bored. Or I am. I set out to improve our sex life. My hunt for inspiration takes me to the bookshelf, the Victoria’s Secret catalog, and finally, to the internet. There, I find what I hoped for, and it turns out to be a disaster. There I find a blog, a weird and outrageously hot blog, which – just so creepily – seems to be written for me. I know, that’s delusional. But I just could not resist that blog. And I went so far as to email the blogger. And email him again from a secret email address. Oh, it gets worse. I dragged Geoff into it, and we shared a sort of e-tryst with that blogger for several months. I shared pictures, emails, recordings. I loved every minute of it, until I didn’t anymore. I loved, and I didn’t love, the confusion that our interactions brought me, the need for self-reflection, so long missing from my life.
Around the end of March, the interaction began to feel out of control. I wanted to stop, Geoff wanted me to stop, hell, even the blogger wanted me to stop. But I just couldn’t. For some reason, the whole process had brought out my creative side. Ten years after grad school, five years of not working, and I found that I had a lot to say. I started my blog, at first with Geoff. I wanted to write, draw, make art, all the time. How could I give that up? But Geoff would not stand for it. Our marriage counselor wouldn’t stand for it. Even our friends didn’t approve.
So I paid a visit to a well recommended psychiatrist, a previously unimaginable idea for me. That’s a post for another day. It took a lot of courage. It left me with a script for a mood stabilizer and more confused than ever. To find clarity, I am blogging. I am searching for what it means for me to be a sexy mom, a loving wife, a hot smart girl, a nice person who is mean sometimes, a good girl who has a dark side. All at once.
