Inconsiderateness, trust, distance

Sofia and I have an interesting relationship. She’s far away, we’ve never met. She sends me tons. We tell each other everything about our various dates. But sometimes, I fuck up. Repeatedly, actually, I fuck up.

She has been clear that my dates, my activities with women other than my wife, fill her with a potent combination of envy and jealousy. And reading about them on my blog can be painful to her.

I’ve tried to manage this, to reduce her discomfort, by sending her accounts of my dates before I publish them here. When I’ve done this, it’s been helpful. When I haven’t, she has recoiled, bitter, angry, hurt. After watching this pattern, some months ago, I promised always to give her previews of my dates before writing about them.

And then, promptly, broke my promise.

Since then, I’ve broken that promise repeatedly. Over and over (three or four times now), I tell her I’ll give her an account of a date and then, honestly, forget to, and publish my account on my blog before I’ve given her the promised preview.

She recently called me on this, saying, “Do you think that maybe this isn’t something you want to do? To have pretty much the obligation of sharing this sort of thing with me?”

Somehow, I was sufficiently out of touch with my own feelings that I hadn’t realized she’s right. Or at least, she’s half right.

The truth is, I do want to preview my posts with her before they appear here. I do want her to know in advance. I like the way our relationship works, the ways we give one another privileged, intimate views of one another’s sex with others. It doesn’t exactly turn me on (our relationship turns me on tons, but this part of it isn’t a turn-on). But I like it, am grateful for it.

And then something happens in the moment. When I’m writing a post, when I’ve written a post, I grapple with a number of concerns and considerations. One of those – a prominent one, often – is a sort of intense, compulsive drive to publish. I don’t like sitting on posts. I don’t like the blog going un-updated when I have an update.

But there’s more. After a night out, with Angela, or Graziella, or the Historian, I find myself often hungover. Not with a headache and an intolerance for sound or light, but with a sort of post-Bacchanalian asexuality that often lingers for a day or three. (I should ponder this more – the why, the how of it.)

But in that space, in which I’m eager to publish, in which I’m not feeling sexual, Sofia recedes just a little from view. It’s telling that, after my night with Angela recently, the order in which things followed was this: first, I fucked Angela. (I had told Sofia of my plans. She had plans of her own. I imagined the two of us almost a couple, venturing forth on solo adventures to reconvene afterward.) I wrote a post. I sent it to Angela for her comment and approval. She had limited comments, about which I expect I’ll write soon enough. And I published. All in the asexual hangover described above.

Then, a few days later, I began to record my account for Sofia. Often, our accounts for one another are spoken, rather than written. At the tail end of this recording I realized: I had fucked up. Our deal was she would get this BEFORE I published. I deleted the recording. I wrote her an apology. And here we are.

So here I am wondering just what’s going on. Why can’t I keep my promise? Why do I repeatedly undermine any trust Sofia may have in me? Why am I being a dick?

I don’t know. But I have a hypothesis.

Obligation is a bit like kryptonite for my libido. What I love about the sex I write about here is just how free from obligation it is, how single-mindedly devoted to the pursuit of pleasure I can be.

When I start to feel a sense of obligation, I start to pull back, to resist, to chafe.

Sofia didn’t ask me to do this. I volunteered. I didn’t like the pain she evidently felt after reading about my trysts. I wanted to spare her, or at least, to help reduce the sting. And in so doing, I created, voluntarily, an obligation.

I don’t want to hurt Sofia. I like her, care about her, and value not just the photos, videos, and audio she sends me (which I really fucking love) but the relationship I have with her in its entirety. I hate the idea of hurting her.

Maybe this particular obligation is one I should shed. Maybe the pain of learning about my trysts on my blog is inevitable for her. I don’t know.

One other thought: my attitude toward her trysts is this: I hate imagining some guy, or girl, or couple, getting to do to her the things I want so badly to do to her. I hate imagining her mouth (which is really really hot) wrapped around some lucky (and often, in her telling, insufficiently appreciative) schmuck’s cock, particularly when it will likely never be wrapped around mine.

But.

I love that she gives me detailed, comprehensive reports on her sex with others. It makes me feel privileged to hear. And, over time, I’ve come to be able to imagine what she’s saying not so much as an account of what she has done with others as an account of what she’d like to do with me. POV porn has never really been my thing, but that’s how I consume her stories – as if they’re stories about me. And that works for me. It reduces my envy and jealousy and rage. And it makes my dick hard.

My self-involvement occasionally prevents me from seeing, from feeling, how and what people other than me feel when it’s different than what I feel. It’s not just that I can’t see it. It’s that when I do see it, I almost don’t believe it. This, surely, is a flaw, a deficit. But it’s also who I seem to be, at least for the time being.

So as Sofia was off fucking her friend, unplugged from me for a number of days, our deal receded. I forgot I’d promised her early notice. I forgot she felt different about this all than I do.

My bad.

So.

What to do?

I’m not sure. A commenter recently observed that there’s a bit of obligation in every relationship – we agree to treat one another decently generally, and that’s an obligation. But that’s not the kind of obligation against which I react. I react against an obligation to remember to think differently than I naturally do, to imagine a mental landscape that’s empathically unfamiliar to me.

Worth thinking more about…

6 comments

  1. Interesting thoughts in here. I do not have a LDR with anyone but whenever I write about sex encounters, I always wonder what people I really fancy would think about it, whether I will hurt them with what I write. Those thoughts are not as strong anymore as they were before, but they are still there…

    Rebel xox

  2. i can relate to some of the things you said here. I can relate on both sides of your relationship with Sofia. Both as her and you. Tough call. Deep soul searching required followed by honesty to self and to the other peeps involved. I feel for you..trust me..I do. Happy Wicked Wednesday

  3. Having spent a while in a LDR I have to say that the key to making them work is, like all relationships, communication and trust. Without those what do you have? Clearly things have gone a bit off course for you but knowing that is part of the battle and you clearly know it. So the real question in my opinion is not why but… what now? What do you to change this so that both of you feel happier.

    I suspect that this current situation also leads you to feel like you are writing a report rather than ‘telling a story’ and that it feels almost like keeping a journal or a diary as requested, rather than because it feels natural to do so. I know that for me, I would resent that and that would led me to ‘failing’ to deliver my side of the bargain.

    Sadly I don’t have a solution apart from be open and honest with her and find something more natural and spontaneous that works for you but still provides for her need for this too

    Mollyxxx

  4. Recognition of the issue is the important step. Next, I think, communication is the key here to find out what will work for both of you.

    I wish you well…

    ~Mia~ xx

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.