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.