Where have I gone?

Wondering where this blog went? See www.yourerrantwife.blogspot.com

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they are not out to get you...

I confess to having let my internet-sex correspondence lapse. Partially because of a lack of time and partially because of a lack of interest. There is also an unsettling creepiness about picking up online. It seems so mercenary, there is such a lack of personality involved. At least in a bar you can feign a personal interest in me. Which, given that I don't have overly high standards, is more than enough attention.

In an unsettling turn of events, I think the husband may be on to me. Mr Ashley Madison # 3 is sending me emails that are eerily familiar. It is cheesy like the husband, it has appalling spelling like the husband, and there is just something there. When I read them and the things he is saying and the questions he is asking - it is exactly what the husband would say to draw me out. I checked the profile and he also identifies as the same height and weight - although the age is different. I wonder if I am being snaked?

I have no answers...

I am now corresponding with four random men off of Ashley Madison...and here is the kicker: I don't think I have any interest in meeting any of them for coffee or anything else.
Now, you might think that a married woman not wanting to meet Internet-predators for drinkies might not be the oddest thing that you have ever heard, but I am finding the whole situation a bit perplexing.

Has the urge passed? Was the one experience of infidelity like an immunization, now I do not need another shot for ten years? Was it enough to give myself permission?

On any level: I think it is distinctly bizarre that not wanting to be unfaithful is causing a level of introspection that infidelity did not.

Shallow AND Whorish

Ashley Madison guy has now sent me a picture and he is not as hot as the imaginary guy in my head. I am thinking that he is an old looking 34, or maybe a 40 year old liar.
It occurs to me, however, that perhaps this makes me both shallow and whorish. It also occurs to me that it is perhaps not a problem. After all, this is my fantasy life and emotional vacation and if I say no fatties, no baldies, no oldies then that is certainly my prerogative.

Interesting side issue: now that I have agreed to meet for a drink how do I get out of it...I refuse to wind up in a situation where I am meeting other people's needs to avoid hurting feelings. That would be an old pattern - one I am not interested in repeating.
I have to value myself enough to operate on my own terms and only for myself.
It is not like this is real life anyway, it is pretend life and I get to both make and break the rules...

Gentlemen, idle those engines!

I signed into AshleyMadison.com today for the first time since logging on over the weekend and I had SIXTY messages in my inbox. Sixty messages from a wide variety of men, all of whom are married, and ten of which had the audacity to send me pictures (by the way: FYI - dicks in West Virginia are apparently smaller than those in other places and yet people will still send you unsolicited, proud pictures of them. Intriguing.)
The incredible thing is that several of the men who sent pictures are from my city. I have never talked to them online: I COULD BE THEIR WIFE. Or their sister. Or their kid's teacher.
I find it incredible that they are assuming that no one they know, or that knows their wife, could have possibly discovered this cite. It is not like it is advertised on TV or anything...oh wait, it is?
There is also a certain arrogance to whoring-it up on the Internet and assuming that your wife couldn't possibly be out there looking herself.

I have been emailing with the nice man I chatted with over the weekend. He seems...nice. Or, he has an email address and seems like he puts out. Just as pink is the new black, email and putting out are the new nice. Additionally, he has not expressed any intentions of killing me and burying me in a shallow grave, which seems like a promising sign.

The bottom of the infidelity barrel!

Tonight, accompanied by a solid sense of self-judgement, I went on AshleyMadison.com. It is uber-creepy. No less than eight different men messaged me, some with a simple hello and some with...well, substantially more. My surprise at this might inspire one to ask, "well, what did YOU THINK was going to happen. Which is, I suppose, a valid point.

AshleyMadison.com is not particularly interesting or intriguing. The bottom line is: these men have no idea who I am, what I look like, what I think, or who I might be. It is not as though they are looking at me from across a room and thinking "she has a nice smile" or "she is a pretty girl" or "she looks smart." They are trolling, online for hours, looking for anyone. The fact that they are not interested in me, even in that incredibly superficial first glance kind of way, is a huge turnoff.

That being said, I did have a brief chat with one very nice gentleman (the only one I even responded to, actually), which had a promising, interesting nature to it. I did not give him my real name (although he gave me his, or so he says...) but I did give him my anonymous, just for naughty-business, email address. We will see, we will see.

The funniest thing I found on AshleyMadison.com: I was reading the profile of one gentleman and under interests he listed "classical music" and "spanking". Classical music and spanking. Classical Music. And. Spanking. I am still giggling a little...

Careful what you wish for...

I feel a little raw tonight. Not raw as in Britney Spear's dancing on a stripper pole *RAW*. But raw as in introspective and uncomfortable.
I am feeling very down and antsy and restless. I am lonely, disconnected. I think that I want someone who is crazy about me in my life. Someone who wants to talk to me, email me, see me, text me, can't get enough of me! I would adore to be adored. Or, maybe even I would adore to be thought of: a text, a brief email, just something to let me know someone is thinking of me and that I matter to them.
So, if this is the case, what am I really looking for? An exit strategy? Hmmm.

Recognition

After my last post it probably took me less then my hour long walk to fully digest and recover from the been-goodbyed feeling in my chest. Frankly, it took me longer to recover from having to say goodbye to the West Wing after the series finale. Which is an indication of how invested I was in that relationship. However, I have realized how profoundly invested I was in the idea of the relationship: the aspect of fantasy, the seeking of time/space outside of my everyday life, the emotional vacation.

The five minute chat and the occasional text definitely provided that escape. And having that escape, knowing that I could have that bubble outside myself and my life, has really made me happier within the confines of my existence and my marriage. But what now? Do I look for a new escape? Do I need to seek something out? Is it possible that giving myself permission is enough? Well, maybe for now - while I wait and see what the universe might throw my way.

I have a very powerful, confident energy right now. I feel as though I have been underwater for the better part of a decade and that I am surfacing to myself again. I feel a real sense of recognition: I remember this girl and I like her as much now as I did when I used to know her.

It's is over. Called it.

Did I call that one! Just IMed with the adorable younger boyfriend and he is with someone now. A family friend. I hear wedding bells.

And I am utterly happy for him and not attached to him in any way, but man oh man, do I have that feeling in my chest. Short of breath, kicked. Wow.

I was going to repeat the personal ad from below here but I am somehow not feeling that sassy anymore...

Wanted: darling man for discreet affair...

I was waiting for a line in the sand and now one has definitely been drawn. I have been offline for a week or more, tonight I am on messenger and the adorable younger boyfriend signs on, sits for half an hour without contacting me, and then signs off. So, that is it then - a pretty clear message in younger boyfriend-speak: we are done. I realize that this might seem like a drastic interpretation of the evening BUT I have that feeling in my stomach. The it's over feeling. And I have been it's overed enough times that I do not think I am reading it wrong. He probably met someone lovely in his city and that is the way it should be. Godspeed.

But that begs the question: what now?

I have been investing a certain amount of emotional energy in having this vague relationship with him...I like the idea of the affair in my life. I certainly think about it more then I actually do it. It is in my head far more then he is in my pants, so to speak. But I do have this need. Not the need for an orgasm, but for the behaviour, for the transgressing, the acting out. The invisible protest as to the state of my life.

So what do I do to find an outlet? I met him in a bar in another city and that has provided distance that I need. I am certainly not interested in making a connection in the local school yard and I think making a connection at my school would be a mistake. I have deliberately chosen this relationship because I know that I could never love the adorable younger boyfriend. I want to act out, but I do not want to risk wanting out of my marriage. I am not looking for love.

I can see the personal ad:
Wanted: adorable man for affair. Should be lovely but not too lovely. Interesting but not too interesting. Should think I am fabulous but not pressure me for more then I am willing to give. Should be wonderful, but not so wonderful that I would want to fall in love with you. Must like oral sex, be able to tell me what you want in bed, appreciate that I do not have the abs of an 18 year old, and enjoy pillow talk. Please send photo and a brief feminist analysis of monogamy and fidelity.

I was sitting here doing busy work on my computer with messenger open, hoping the adorable younger boyfriend will sign on and chat with me. He signs on, spends a few minutes online, doesn't approach me, and then signs off. So, immediately I am thinking: he doesn't like me, he has tired of me, he is into someone else. Am I not interesting enough? Not sexy enough? Too sexy? Is my verbal sluttiness a turn off? My actual sluttiness?

OK, full stop: reality check. I mean I like him in a not-loving him kind of way. He is nice. That is the grand sum of my feelings about him: he is nice. Yet, here I am, obsessing and reading into everything and I seem to have made such a profound emotional investment in not even specifically him, but in the idea of him, the idea of this relationship. Which begs the question: why? Why does it matter if he is enthralled by me given that I could substitute another fuck-friend in his place. And why do I question myself in relation to the views I project onto him? Why do I not appreciate my inherent fabulousness and understand that it is his to take or leave?

I am not sure why I am this way about men, but it is a consistent theme in my life. I have a lot of trouble relating to men in a non-sexual way and a profound shortage of male friends that I have not had sex with. Actually, up until a year of so ago, of my good male friends that were my friends first (as in, not the husband's friends) I have ONE with whom I have not had sex. ONE - and to be utterly honest, he was the best friend of my high school boyfriend. I guess that is really another way of saying that I do not particularly have any male friends.

Bottom line: I, apparently, cannot relate to men in any way except sexually. Intriguingly, even men with whom I see no future relationship, men that I like but don't really like, charmingly enough, I am capable of being obsessive in an obnoxious way about them. Fuck.

Entertain me!

So, the adorable younger boyfriend - although we chat on messenger and he always says hi as soon as I sign in, (is this how they define a relationship in the new millennium?) - has not been in town in a while. Not that I don't like this whole talking thing BUT I want a visit. I want to get fucked like mad. I am looking for trouble. Do you have any trouble for me?

So, I question whether this whole - I will stay in the relationship even if I am not crazy in love because it is ok and seems better then the alternative - thing is really denying myself a real and perhaps better shot at my life. Or maybe all men that we love turn into bullshit babies as soon as they get married and then you have spent lots of money on a divorce and a second wedding...

I want to put on a pretty skirt and have it lifted up...I want to do something, anything...I want a cocktail out of the house and with flirting...I want my pretty panties pulled down my legs...I want to run down the street at 4a.m. laughing with girlfriends...I want to kiss and remember that I like it still...I want to be naked and sweaty and crazy.

I am restless, utterly beyond restless, tonight.

Sexual Fidelity is Absurd

Should I look in the mirror and feel self-loathing over the betrayal in which I engage? Because I don't. I simply no longer see the value in monogamy. As I see it we have a very short life, we are dead for a long time, and therefore I no longer have any interest in restraining myself to actions that are within the confining box of allowable behaviour.

So why am I in a place where I can keep these secrets and not feel bad about it? I don't want out of the marriage and I don't feel the need to confess my sins. I don't, in fact, see this as a "sin", for lack of a better term. Sexual fidelity seems profoundly ridiculous as a concept. It seems an outdated means of social control, a means of promoting a morality with which I do not agree. I recognize that this is perhaps a ridiculous justification, but I don't think my idea is wrong at the root.
After all, what is the purpose of sexual monogamy? If I am holding up my end of the relationship: helping in the house, being good to the kids, having dinner with the in-laws, spending time as a couple - what does a good toss in some sweaty sheets matter? If I am home at the end of the day when I am needed what harm does it do? Why is sole access to my sexuality considered a neccessary part of a relationship?

I don't think that I could go back at this point. Things are actually feeling better with the husband lately and I haven't even seen the adorable younger boyfriend in two months. He doesn't live here and we only get together when he is in town for work. But I love the idea of the whole thing. I love that I have a little something outside my life. And I think that when this ends, which I am confident it will - he is young and he will meet someone about whom he will become serious, at which point we will be over - of this I have no doubt. But when it ends - I think I will be on the lookout for someone else. In fact, I don't even know that I am opposed to someone else in the interim for that matter. I understand that this may indicate a pathology of some kind. I definitely now have an itch that requires a scratch - and even though things seem to be improving in my relationship - I still want to continue with the affair.

I am not going to buy his patience with my vagina.

I spent a lot of time in high school having sex I did not really want to have. I had sex to create something - a feeling, a relationship, an image of myself, an attitude, a perception, an emotional space. Now when my husband wants to have sex with me - and he constantly badgers me - I feel liberated to say no. Liberated to say no in a way that I did not when I was younger. When I was younger I would get into situations where I felt bad saying no, where it was easier to say yes, where it would just seem like I might as well. But now I don't want to have sex that I don't want to have - and I am sorry if my husband is not happy with that - truly I am - but I am not going to force myself. Forcing myself: closing my eyes and thinking of England, spreading to keep him happy, makes me feel like a prostitute. It makes me feel dirty. Fucking my adorable younger boyfriend does not make me feel guilty, or dirty or anything other than free.
I refuse to have sex to humour anyone other than myself - I will not use it to purchase peace, to hope that the husband will stop badgering me briefly, to create an illusion of some kind of contentment, or to make him happy. My vagina is not available on the open market to be bartered.

It is not the getting off that is getting me off...

It is not, in fact, the fucking or the orgasm that intrigues me about the adorable younger boyfriend. Don't get me wrong, that is definitely a perk.
But, it is definitely the act of stepping out, acting out that gets me off. As Michael put it in his comment, transgressing. The transgressing is better then an orgasm.
The need is not the physical act but the way the act allows me to conceptualize myself. It allows me a piece of freedom, a piece of the world that is mine and just for me. It does not belong to my husband or my children - they have no claim on those moments. It is utterly freeing to have an emotional and physical space in which I answer to noone.
In those moments I can be truly me - not the housebound me - me in my own skin. I am responsible for only me. I own myself. No orgasm can compare to that.

WTF?

This morning we went to get in the van and it was parked facing the wrong way on the street where it had been all night. He knows this bothers me - so why does he do it? Why on earth would you continue to do things that you know annoy the hell out of your partner?

This is what I mean about the adult thing. He is not an adult. Adults do not behave like that.

Dinner with friends...

The five of us went over to another families house for dinner last night....
Sitting in their lovely living room I realized that their house was beautifully warm, happy and peaceful and that my house lacks those qualities. I do not look in my living room and feel the sence of contentment and peace that their living room contains.

Driving home made me feel empty- I wish I could sit in my house and feel the warmth that exists in other places. We simply do not have that here and I find it very sad. I think it is not really about the house but about the energy in our family. Child number one is so destructive and unpleasant to be around, and husband's stubborn refusal to pull his weight around here makes for an unhappy living situation. Friends always says "oh, your husband is so nice" - but the reality is that nice will only take you so far. If I am the only adult, the only one on the "team" as it were - it is not a relationship. After 10 years of begging for help and fighting about it I can't do it anymore. My resolution has been that I have to live my life and make myself happy - and that I am not going to do that within anyone's confines but my own. I don't want out of the relationship, out of the family or out of the house. However, the idea my husband seems to have that the relationship exists independent of any stress, any mess he won't help me clean up, any strife in the family, any unhappiness of mine - is utterly absurd.

After 10 years of ignoring me and my needs, what does he really expect?

Is everybody doing it?

Shopping trip today with two married girlfriends. Interesting discussion of infidelity ensued. I admitted nothing, wanting to keep the information totally out of the schoolyard. I was very surprised that of the three of us two are actively considering affairs (I am actively considering one in that I let another man put his dick in me) and the third had been involved in one. Interesting also was our thinking about the morality of it: there was no judgment of the type that I think you would find among newly married women. I think years ago we all thought that an affair was a statement that the relationship was over. We agreed today however that sometimes you just need a little more in your life and that it does not mean you want out.
I also shared that the reason that I am not overly fond of my marriage is that my husband is frankly, like a child in a lot of ways. Basically, if you are not willing to be a grown up and pick up after yourself and put your shoes away and pull your weight - why do you expect that I would find you sexy? If I had a full partner I do not think I would need anything on the side.

My Rationale for Infidelity

Is this the worst kind of self-justification? Probably. But, I cannot tell you how freeing it is to have something outside my daily life just for me. It is frankly not about sex, not about orgasms, not in any way about love. It is about freedom, feeling free, feeling me. (That sounds like a 70's self help book.) Ifeel as though I have been underwater and slogging through an unsatisfying life for years - I feel like I have utterly lost who and what I am in a haze of laundry and bickering. I feel like being the dirty girl I used to be is a reclaimation of a piece of myself. I cyber stalked one of my old high school boyfriends on facebook recently and he said to me "are you still drawing, you used to love it so much" and I was dumbstruck because I had almost forgotten that I used to do that and that I loved it. How sad is that.
I do not want to love my younger mistress, I do not want to leave my family, but frankly getting fucked in a hotel room once in a while is improving my daily life in ways that are hard to entirely describe.
Is it possible that infidelity has the ability to keep me happy within the confines of my life?

The beginning?

So, where to begin? The background, as is always the case, is huge and undramatic. Normal and profoundly unsatisfying life. Three beautiful children and a husband who pays the bills and ignores everything and anything I say to him. 10 years of marriage during which I guarantee my opinion has never mattered - I try and try to tell him what I need from the relationship, he agrees and sees my side of EVERYTHING, and yet, there are no changes. I am talking to the wall. He will not budge - and it is not out of any kind of unkindness, or any lack of love - he is who he is: the question of course, is can I live with it?
Sometimes you wonder: is this really my life? Where is the optimistic, fun loving woman I used to be? How can I be so utterly trapped.
So, in the midst of a ridiculously self-indulgent birthday crisis on the occasion of an early 30s birthday party (the exact year of which shall remain a mystery) - I met an adorable young man in a bar. He picked me up with friendly comment and a shared laugh. He invited my friends and I back to his table, he talked to me and he kissed me and propostioned me in the hottest way possible. I did not think it was possible to be that turned on. Seriously. Not in years.
I did not go home with him that night but instead commenced a IMing relationship with him. Dirty talk. Friendly talk. Utter Escapism.
And then we met. In his apartment. For an evening of the kind of sex that you remember. The kind of sex where you each have a sheen of sweat. Fantastic. (Fucktastic?)
He tastes good. He is good in bed. AND I have no guilt. None. I have realized that I have the one life and I refuse to limit it within other people's moral structures and I refuse also to be unhappy anymore. If my life as it stands does not make me happy then I will do what it takes to create happiness for myself.