On T (Part 1)

I have competing urges when it comes to writing about T, about our relationship, about our sex. I’m proud of us, and like a little boy with his penis, I want to show off the things of which I’m proud. We’ve been through the wars – only some of which you’ve read about, even if you’ve read every word of this blog. And I’m proud not just that we are still standing, but that we’ve forged a path to unprecedented contentment for both of us. (“I’m happier than I’ve ever been,” she said to me one morning last week. I feel the same.) And that our marriage, so unfamiliar in its structure and organization to many, seems, at least for now, to work so very well – and yet, so very differently – for each of us.

I sometimes feel bad about the image created by this blog, of me as a hypersexual free agent, doing my own thing: that’s wrong. I am, on occasion,a free agent. But by far the largest part of my sex life, whether physical or mental, is with my wife – and, that part which isn’t? The sharing of it is itself a big part not just of our sex life, but of our emotional relationship. She reads all of (or at least, all of what she finds interesting in) my (N’s, that is; not my alter’s) email. I read hers (T’s, that is; not her alter’s). And we both read one another’s blogs. (Yes, she has a blog. The writing is far superior to mine, but has about one entry or two per month. And no, you can’t have the link.)  More on our reading one another’s e-mail below.

And there’s the fact of T, of who she is, of how she is, of what she means to me. Anyone reading this blog knows a fuckload about me, and there’s something wrong with someone thinking they know me and not knowing about T, about my feelings about her, about her role in my life, my recovery (such as it was/is), my existence today and prospectively. We are fundamentally in so many ways a unit, and who she is is so fundamental to who I am that I feel almost as if there’s a massive chasm in any image you may have of me from reading this blog without understanding our relationship better.

And finally, about my desire:  this blog is mostly about my desire for people other than T.  But it is, more than anyone else, T whom I desire.  I’ve written about that self-serving lie I told myself during my compulsive, CPOS days – that all of my sexual sojourns were, on some level, in service of our marriage, in service of my sex life with T.

It’s a strange thing, this lie:  clearly it was a self-serving, deluded, pathetic lie.  But you know what?  Just because it was a lie doesn’t mean it wasn’t true.  I wanted, I want, an awesome, fulfilling sex life with T.  I desire her, her body, her mind.  I love fooling around with her, love fucking her. And while it turns out that I’m not (at least not today) either particularly good at nor capable of conventional monogamy, it is in the realm of our relationship, our SEX, that the greatest improvement to my happiness has come since this path all began.

T’s insanely, smolderingly hot – she turns heads, invariably; her legs were the first thing I noticed about her, but they weren’t the last.  Her eyes – steel blue – are glorious, clear, loving and sexy at the same time.  The hottest thing about them?  How they can’t meet mine after we’ve been apart for a day or two, how she gets shy and hides them from me, until we reestablish our connection.  Her ass is perfect, heart-shaped. I have been buying her successively smaller, successively shorter pairs of denim shorts in recent years, as well as sexier panties. I want her clothes to communicate how sexy she is, how sexy I know she is to others, how sexy I find her, I want her to feel it in her bones.  Her breasts are perfect – C-cups, delicious, just more than a handful.  Her cleavage is awesome in just about whatever she wears, even if it’s not meant to highlight her cleavage. Her belly is flat, her neck long, her clavicle, prominent.  In other words, I desperately desire, and am grateful for my access to, her body.

But my ability to communicate this desire, and yes, to a certain extent, this desire itself, was somehow dampened by the sense of her disapproval of, shaming of, me.  I had (have?) a profound, internalized sense of shame; T has, at times, been capable of reinforcing it.  Since that’s eased, first through her forgiveness of me, her acceptance of me; later, through the opening of our marriage; and later, still, through the blog, my ability to communicate my desire for her, the ways in which her body haunts me in the hours we’re apart, the excitement I feel at the thought of sex with her at the end (or beginning) of a day, has blossomed.  Or maybe, has begun to bloom, just a little.  And further, since she has found some of what she had craved from those other than me, she has become infinitely more desirable to me:  hotter, more radiant, more confident.

It pains me that for so long I couldn’t give her this, that I couldn’t do this for her at all for so long.  And I remain ham-handed in my attempts to communicate my desire for her.  But I’m so pleased that she has been able to find some of what she craves – what, for sure, she’s entitled to – away from me.  A guy she has, at times, fucked, recently wrote to her, “There is not a single square inch of your body that doesn’t make me hard.”  She and I haven’t discussed this particular e-mail, but I know her, I know that with this sentence, she got everything she always wishes I would, could give her.

But alas, this is a sentence I just don’t have in me, or at least, haven’t yet.  Not because it’s not true – it is.  But because it’s not how I communicate my desire.  Surely, in part, this is because I’m scared – of being rejected, shamed, of getting it somehow “wrong.”  If you’ve read much of this blog, you’ve seen the depersonalized, somewhat detached way in which I articulate my desire.  I continue to struggle here, to develop. But also, it’s just not how I write.  As I said to her just this evening, discussing this post, “When I write about my desire, it’s about actions, about verbs – it’s not for body parts.  That’s just not how I express my desire, how I feel it.”

In my twenties, I had a long-term girlfriend who was model-hot.  As we were breaking up, she asked me why I’d never once told her I was attracted to her, that she was hot.  The unfortunate answer?  The child my parents raised simply would never so disrespect a woman by commenting on her appearance.

I’m doubly reticent to say things like the things T craves hearing:  first, there’s simple fear – of rejection, of shame.  And second, there’s that internalized political reluctance to reduce a woman’s appeal to her body.

more to come

18 comments

  1. Wow. You sound like my husband. We’ve not moved our marriage on to this stage (officially) but maybe it would help. Interested to read on ..

  2. It is a beautiful post. After having been very happy to find and read some of your earlier posts recently, this post made me even happier. Thanks for sharing this.

  3. I love reading the stuff about you and your wife. I was married for a long time and feel like I can appreciate the joys of a long term relationship. You’re lucky and its heartening to know you realize it.
    For a long time when I heard people say ‘i’m happier than i’ve ever been’ or ‘i never knew it could be this good’, i assumed they were lying, I dont anymore. I think thats progress.

  4. Fascinating and beautiful. I have always had the utmost respect for your relationship to ‘T’ and how you communicate it here.
    I especially understand from experience your comments on how to express yourself. “Personal remarks are odious” does not only condition a child never to comment upon the bad things about a person. As it was explained to me – “If you tell a person they are looking beautifully slim then you might imply that they had previously been fat therefore it is best never to make a personal remark.” You have what I have previously only ever referred to as “The English disease”. 🙂

    1. The English disease is a bit more pervasive, though. For me, it’s limited to a proscription on physical commentary, or even appreciation. I’m downright effusive in other areas.

  5. The final part hits home with me. I’ve just ended a 4-year run of being utterly hung up on a man who simply does not lavish compliment or praise. He said he felt that compliments were worthless and he barely made them. He did at first, to woo me I think. But then as I was drug deeper into being his submissive I craved validation, attention and his desire….things I didn’t think I had because he almost never complimented me. He might have sometimes complimented the photo…or the act the photo depicted..but a compliment about me was few and far between. It hurt. It killed my self esteem. It turned me into a desperate being. And a part of me hates him for that.

    1. I’m sorry for you – and for him.

      One observation: when I have looked to others to explain movements in my self-esteem – whether up or down – I’ve generally been missing the forest for the trees. When I’ve found myself in situations in which others’ behavior (T’s or anyone) was making me feel some way or other about myself, closer examination has invariably showed that it wasn’t she who was making me feel that way. Rather, it was more like a collage I was making for a school project: I selected the things she said or did that matched the internal feeling I was having, and then blamed her, those things, for those feelings.

      No one (other than you) can kill your self-esteem. That’s my religion, at least.

      In any event, it sounds like you are through with him, and, regardless of what the source of your “killed… self-esteem” is, it’s probably good that you’re not with him.

      Thanks.

  6. I love how open you are, in your other posts, but surely so in this one, about yourself, your wife and your relationship. You might not compliment her form, but posts like these are a grand show of affection/desire more so then a single compliment (atleast, they would be to me) and I hope she sees them as such too.

    Your obvervation on Lilly’s comment is so pungently true, making that collage, picking out the “bad” stuff, that’s what I do, I’m just hearing what the depressed self-loathing part of me wants to/needs to hear.

    thanks a lot for sharing.

    Jana xoxo

  7. I hope I’m not too late to the party, but MAN!
    What a great , well written post. I’m glad it all came together for you and your wife . I’m not one to post many “<3" but I will here.
    <3 .

    Can you please write more about that last part? About not commenting on women's looks?
    I really didn't get that last part.

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