Just When I Thought I Was Going to Get Some!

Chronicle of an Open Marriage #20

So my tender suitor has failed me — twice. And just when I thought I was going to get outside sex for the first time in 40 years!

He says his wife has cold feet, and I suppose I believe him, but that doesn’t make the emotional turmoil any easier. I guess this is par for polyamory life.

There I was, happily sending Hubs off on his trysts, minding my own damn business, when Hungry Man showed up and started whispering sweet nothings into my ear. I climbed aboard the sex train with alacrity, ramping myself up to a powerful frenzy with steaming hot sext. I’m a writer after all, and the erotica I’m embarrassed to post here went straight to his inbox, making it difficult for him to focus at work. At the same time, I resisted an emotional connection for as long as I could.

But HM wanted that — the emotional. And so did I, it turned out. And so things developed over a month of sexting until I very much wanted him to be the one to “deflower” me, to be the first person I had sex with besides my husband of almost 40 years. And I still do want that…

So why haven’t we gotten together in person? Logistics, mostly. There are thousands of miles between us. It would take planning and money and significant commitment if we wanted to meet in real life. But we put New Orleans on the calendar, planning to meet at the Southern Decadence festival in September, booking rooms in a romantic hotel, and making do with hot sexting and nude photos and sexy French voice memos and video chat in new lingerie in the meantime. Which was still a lot.

But then?

The hunger got too great. September is a long time from now!!! So we decided to meet in another city, midway between us, and get the deflowering done a bit sooner. Because now that I’m all fired up, I’m looking at the UPS driver, the caterer, the Obama lookalike at a party with new, sexual eyes. I’m spending money on lacy and strappy and see-through teddies and panties, trying them on in front of the bedroom mirror, making my own self warm and wet with desire.

At the same time, Hubs is pushing me to put myself “out there.” We opened our marriage in December, and he’s been with four men since then, while I’ve been with zero. But if you’ve been following our story, you know the reason we opened the marriage was because Hubs wanted more sex than I did. I wasn’t trying to get outside action. Not at all. I was trying to get Hubs to stop incessantly asking me to spread my legs…

And why does my husband care if I put myself “out there” anyway? Honestly, it’s a little bit insulting! It is also an enigma.

Is he what the kink community calls a cuck — someone who enjoys the supposed humiliation of knowing his wife is with another man? Possibly. He has said he wants to suck my lover’s cum out of my lady parts. But he says no, that’s not the whole of what he wants.

He says it’s out of consideration for me. “Why should I be the one to have all the fun?” But that fails to recognize that I have my own definition of fun which is different than his, and I am capable of organizing my own fun at my own pace.

He says I’m difficult and volatile and need to get laid, which is patently ridiculous because we’ve been having sex 10x more often than we did before we opened our marriage — sometimes as often as three times a day! Also, that sounds disturbingly like all the evil misogynists on the Internet, who say the same to every feminist they encounter. You just need to get laid. Then you will calm down. For the benefit of our long-term marriage, I will have to forgive him. But that line of reasoning is just so much BS.

He also said, at least once, that he doesn’t want to be blamed if our experiment with ethical non-monogamy breaks up our marriage. He doesn’t want me to be able to say to our children, “Your father had to go out and fuck other people, so I divorced him.” That’s fair. But I won’t. I would never.

I suspect he considers it insurance that I won’t change my mind and decide I want to close the marriage back up.

Now let’s back up a little — back to Hungry Man. He’s been telling me all along that his wife approves of him seeking sex outside the marriage because she’s virtually asexual. He says that they’ve been talking about it for two years, but that he’s never gotten close to making anything happen — until now. So we make plans to meet in that intermediate city, to consummate the sext, and I pick out my hottest new lingerie and check flights and dream of his big hands on me, and then he says no, nevermind, his wife isn’t ready…

That pisses me off, and I get hot in an email. And he says he likes it when I get hot.

And then his wife sends him a message that she’s decided it’s okay for him to meet me. And then I pick out my hottest lingerie and check flights and dream of his big hands on me — again — and then I wake up this morning to an email in which he says don’t buy the tickets: she’s not ready, again.

Now his wife has agreed to go to couples counseling, and now NOLA may be off the table. Polyamory may be off. Future contact may be off. Nothing between us is certain. And I’ll go ahead and admit that I cried in frustration and upset and sadness today.

So that’s where I am this evening: recovering.

This last month has been full of extraordinary highs and significant lows for me, and it could be true what Hubs says — that I’ve been volatile and could benefit from getting myself an outside man. In fact, I’ve mentioned feeling like I’m “off the rails” in more than one of the updates I’ve given here. But still, it’s not appropriate for any man to say that to a woman. And it’s also not true. It’s not a random cock that I need or male domination. It’s just some tender concern for me as I venture out into unknown (and slightly scary) territory. And HM and I have spent the time it takes to build that kind of trust and concern. And I haven’t done that with anyone else — yet.

So what’s next? The jury is still out.

Just two days ago, at Hubs’ urging, I did a little browsing on a dating site. They required me to create an account in order to look at posts, so I did that, uploading two photos I had made for Hungry Man.

I’m an older woman and have a flawed body, and I’ve long imagined those details would make me unappealing on any dating site. But what I found was eye-opening. There are plenty of men and a few women who would gladly overlook my drawbacks on that site. More than I could ever want.

The site itself was a mishmash of the horrible and the sublime. There were annoying men and pathetic men and probably fake women and unsolicited dick pics, all things I would very much like to avoid. But there were also smart men and funny men and kind and humble men, and even a few musicians (my favorite), who reached out to me with messages in the two days I’ve been on.

So I’m very glad to get that validation — to realize that I’m still a sexually viable “date.” And I’m thinking about all that has transpired, considering my options. And I’m opening up a conversation with one person in particular who seems promising.

So the saga continues. Stay tuned…

What happens next? Read Chronicle of an Open Marriage #21. Find all of my stories about opening our marriage on the list below, or about sex in general on this one. Get an email whenever I publish. And have a provocative day.