A Bit About My Story

I met C. in 2005 through the now defunct Yahoo Personals.  I was a student at New York University.  She was a theater manager in Manhattan while performing as an actress and singer from time to time.  I was late to our first date due to a train delay on the subway on an icy and cold February afternoon.  C. is a big girl, overweight, and when I didn't show up on time, she thought I had taken a peek at her and decided to leave.  That would have been very much out of character for me, for I can very much be attracted to women who may no necessarily fit mainstream ideas of sexyness or beauty.  I am always more interested in the person at heart than mere outside looks.  Writing about this, now, 11 years after the fact,  it is interesting that C.'s way of feelings about herself and her doubts about my attraction towards her were there from the beginning: these are the issues at the core of our relationship problems, having all sorts of ramifications in our intimacy.

While we had a wonderful time on our first date, we didn't hook up right away.  I was too scared to get too attached to a new woman at the time due to the previous long-term relationship I had been in.  So, although I liked C., I was slow to move past the friendship point with her.  We did become really good friends and did many things together.

Then, about a year after we had met, she was performing a woman show she had asked me to film for her.  As I looked through my lens and heard her moving voice, I realized my feelings for her had evolved beyond those of a friend.  A night or two after that we were watching a movie at her place and I made my move.  The first time I kissed her, she jumped from the couch and exclaimed: "What the fuck is going on?"  We laugh about it often, now.  Back then, I recoiled and apologized and told her we didn't have to anything she didn't want to.  She was just surprised I liked her in that way.  Shortly she surrendered and it all fell into place very easily.  We've been together ever since.

During the first year together, our intimacy was wonderful.  I am a very warm, affectionate and physically expressive guy and I drew so much joy out of showing her how much I loved and desired her day in and day out.  She would come home from work and I'd be at the door, showering her with kisses and attention.  Over time, she began to push me away and rejecting me more and more, physically.  I remember she even started putting me down, ridiculing me for the way I kissed her or my seductive ways... Though this was done jokingly at first, it was done with enough regularity that it began to hurt my ego and putting dents on my self-esteem.  I also started initiating sex less and less, for the taste of rejection got more bitter and more bitter... I would just wait for her to want sex to express myself to her.  I began masturbating more and more.  Watching more and more porn.  C. would start using sex to control me: "If you do the dishes, maybe you'll get lucky tonight..." was one of the lines I remember made my blood boil...

Sex aside, I loved being with C.  We had a wonderful friendship and would always have fun in each others' company.  We never fought.  But...I don't remember how, I started thinking of the idea of finding someone in a similar situation--sex deprived and horny as hell--who needed some form of release, a way to express physical affection.  I signed up to the infamous website, Ashley Madison and met a few women.

I was scared of myself, at first, and what I was doing.  How could I be CHEATING? How could I be doing something SOOOO WRONG?  My own father cheated on my mother after 20 years of marraige with several women, causing a lot of hurt in our family.  How could I, of ALL PEOPLE, having been through the dissolution of my family due to my dad's infidelities, be doing THIS?! I had always held my dad as the guilty party, the one who did wrong.  But now, having lived with C. who, like my mother, is rather controlling, I understood my dad better and came to realize that a relationship or a marriage does not fail because of one person but because of two people involved.  I can see how my mother made my dad miserable and made him feel trapped and sucked out his power in the relationship.  Having affairs was his way of escaping what to him probably felt like a prison.  Granted, he probably should have tried to address these issues with my mom rather than cheating.  But, as they say, nobody's perfect.

So I met a few women.  At first, I only made out with them.  Then I met A.  She invited me over to her place, while her husband and children were away.  We had a fantastic afternoon and mind-blowing sex.  I remember her husband calling her on the way home and how that was my cue to go.  As I rushed out of that apartment building, I thought my heart would pound its way out of my chest.  But I lived and got away with it.  And it was the beginning of a series of secret affairs that filled the hole I felt in my relationship at home.

To be continued...