A while back, you may recall, my blog went dark for a while. I hid it behind a password. I alluded obliquely to there having been reasons for this, but never really explained. I’m not going to explain right now, but I am going to tell you about a recent loss I suffered that is not unrelated.
Recently, a beautiful woman, a bona fide adult, contacted me out of the blue. Her approach was subtle, tentative. I don’t think she even imagined I would respond. I did, though, and in a matter of hours, she and I were headed off to the races. We were trading photos and voice memos, beginning to get to know one another, to know one another’s desires. It all felt very promising.
Unfortunately, as I learned about her, I learned something that scared me. She told me she has a history of compartmentalization. All her life, she said, secrets have abounded. Already, I was one such secret. And this beautiful, successful, talented, grown-ass woman informed me that off in the wings, there stood a strong, powerful, jealous man. A man in the dark.
Now, I don’t have any judgment. Not of her, not of him. My view is, people do what they need to do. They choose the relationships that are right for them. And sometimes that means, whether consciously or unconsciously, they sign up to betray, or to be betrayed.
In fact, I would go a step further and say that often we miss the real betrayal when we look at a couple with a cheating partner. To my mind, more often than not, the real betrayal is that of the cuckold who changes the rules in the middle of the game. Who objects to behavior they’ve previously tolerated.
So, in this instance, this beautiful, hot, sexy woman is married to a person who, on some level, must have known all along. “I’ve compartmentalized since I was a child,” she told me. Why? Does he not know this? And if he doesn’t, what does that mean about his curiosity? About his needs? What does it mean even about his own capacity for compartmentalization?
I don’t know the answers to any of these questions, and as I said, I don’t judge. I suspect that it is necessary to their marriage that she have the occasional fling. I suspect it’s necessary for her, and on some level, necessary for him.
The thing is, though, that while all of this may well be how I see the world, it’s not how most people see the world. And it’s certainly not how most “betrayed” spouses see the world. I don’t have a hard and fast policy of never being involved with a woman who’s involved with someone else who’s proceeding secretly. But I do have a hard and fast rule of trusting my gut. And in this particular instance, as the digital evidence of our interactions was mounting and as this lovely lady’s relatively cavalier attitude toward the compartmentalization of which she boasted revealed itself, I grew more and more concerned.
It just was feeling like every time I opened a hot picture, my first thought wasn’t, “Wow, that’s hot!” It was, “Shit, I hope he doesn’t see this.”
I wanted to be turned on. I wanted my experience to be a sexual one. It wasn’t, though.
I was afraid.