The conversation went a little something like this

I know I seem to have fallen off the grid.  But it's damn hard to write about sex when you aren't having any.  Finally, I had to address the glowing neon pink elephant in the room.

me: Is it me?  Are you not attracted to me anymore?

man: No.  We just have a lot going on right now.  Sex isn't on my mind.

me: *sigh*

man: I've gone as long as six or eight months without sex when I've been going through changes.

I must have looked really alarmed at this point.  I remember letting my head hit the door frame as I leaned against it.  And I'm pretty sure there was more sighing and my eyes may have even filled with tears.

man: I'm not saying we will go six or eight months.

me: I can't do it.  Two weeks is about my limit.

man: I know.  You were masturbating last night.

me: What would you like me to do?  I can't go that long.

Seriously, I can't.  That was about my breaking point.  And he loves when I masturbate in front of him, so I suppose I was secretly hoping that it would turn him on, spur him to action.  No such luck.  In fact, he was annoyed so I had to take it to the living room.

man: It will get better.  Give me time to adjust.

I'm giving him time.  All I ever do is give him time.  It's the story of my life.  Being with him has been this amazing practice in patience.  And I worry that one of these days I'm going to tire of it and move on.  And I suppose I also worry that I won't.  I worry that I'll stay longer than I should, that I'll hold on when I should let go.

But I'm here now.  And I'm making the best of it...even if I do run out of things to write about.

My dark past

In my first marriage, we lacked so much.  He wasn't faithful, for one thing.  The result was that I was a little more adventurous than I might have been.

We ended up finding a couple that we spent a great deal of time with.  The ex had a bit of a fixation on the wife.  And the husband had a thing for me.

Okay, the husband had such a huge thing for me that he considered, and even asked me, to leave our respective spouses and be together.  Ummm.  That wasn't exactly what I had in mind.  I'm not really a home wrecker.  And while I was unhappy, rightfully so, I didn't think he really was.

I was new and different.  I was a toy he'd never had before.  He had been with his wife since they were teenagers.  She was the only woman he'd ever been with.  And I didn't see us being something permanent.  And I didn't want us to be something permanent.  I was friends with both of them.

Why do I bring all of this up now?  Well, it's something that has been on my mind ever since we have discussed having threesomes, bringing in other couples.  I guess in the back of my mind, I can't help but remember that in my past, there have been times that I have tried similar experiences with disastrous results.

I'm no longer married.  That had less to do with those particular experiences and more to do with our incompatibilities finally catching up with us.  And we never swapped with this other couple.  The closest we came was sex in the same hot tub.

Still, I would be crazy not to consider the ramifications before I jumped into another potentially relationship damaging situation.  And so I wonder over all the ways to relationship proof our relationship.  I wonder over the steps to take to ensure that we are always happy and good together.

And I'm realizing that it should probably have started with me not cursing him out a few minutes ago for turning on the light when I was trying to sleep.  And I probably also shouldn't have matched him insult for insult after that.  And I know that I'm better than that, that we're better than that.  We are.  At the same time, his recovery days kill us.  That first day where he stops drinking cold turkey about kills me.  He's mean and distant.  And I know that it is simply a result of being hung over.  And I know that in a few days he'll be fine, mine all over again, but still, I have trouble accepting the distance.

I miss him.  And I want to make sure that the missing him is always a temporary condition.  And that's why I'm so excited about the woman who finally contacted us.

The genie is out!

Yes, once we decided to pursue this strange new lifestyle, our life improved in every way.  It was little things at first, like phone calls during the day and text messages.  It was us, coming together, sharing a secret.  Ah, the ties that bind.

There were other changes.  I would get home and he'd suddenly take an interest in what I was working on with the laptop on the couch.  He would snuggle in next to me and watch me work.  He would interact and comment. 

We spent some of that time looking at Craigslist ads.  We hadn't settled anything with our potential third, yet.  And so we continued to look.  We discussed what we liked, what I could handle, how he imagined things being during the experience. 

Inevitably, we would end up heading off to the bedroom to have passionate sex before dinner.  And we'd look at more ads, discover more web pages that would help us find willing women.  Next thing you know, we'd be going at it again before bed.

Oh, and once we made it to bed, often with the laptop, we were having more sex.  We would turn on a porn.  I would select one for its educational properties.  What did I know about being with a woman?  My experiences were limited to some fondling I had done with my best friend at a sleepover when we were twelve.  Yes, she was my first orgasm with someone.  I was twelve!

So, we'd watch porn and we'd have some sexy pillow talk and we'd have lots and lots and lots of sex.  It has been amazing.  Do I wonder how long we can maintain this?  Of course.  Do I worry how much more I'll have to up the ante to keep him happy?  Sometimes.  Do I worry that he'll break my trust and cheat?  Never.  Do I worry that he'll go against our rules in the threesome?  Not even a little.

He's happier than ever.

Know what he said just the other day?

man: I'm realizing that you are the woman of my dreams more and more.

I always knew I was.  I knew that no one else could make him happy in the long run, but it's nice that he finally sees it, too.  It's especially nice that we have so much to look forward to.  We've been ironing out the details of the threesome.  It's supposed to happen over the weekend.

Our story begins

We met a few years ago.  I was a reasonably sexy woman who was in my mid-thirties and in the middle of a divorce from my lying, cheating husband of fifteen years.  He was a reasonably muscular man in his late twenties.  He loved how intelligent I was, found that to be a huge turn on.  And I loved his passion for me and his honesty.

The two of us became fast friends and then lovers.  And while I wasn't sure what I saw in our future, I loved our sex life.  It was the passion.  It was being on fire together.

Only, like with most fires, the passion slowly died and we became one of those old married couples (even though we aren't married) who had sex anywhere from occasionally to barely at all.  I would complain.  He would explain that the pressure didn't help.  I would make a move.  He would turn me down.  All the rejection and feeling unloved and unwanted took its toll.

We broke up and got back together several times.  There were some unavoidable truths that he couldn't escape.  There were feelings that he couldn't recover from.  And in the end, we realized we had to make it work or suffer forever.  We love each other.  We want to be together.

And so we hoped that one day our sex life would come back.  We hoped that in the course of building a life together, we'd find that romantic spark, that the passion would once again ignite.  I figured it was a phase.  I expected that, like the tides, there would be ebbs and flows in our feelings and our sex drive. 

It's come back.  It's stronger than ever.  Follow along and see what has made all the difference.