Graph Paper

I’m sitting on the couch, surrounded by piles of taken-down but not put-away Christmas decorations. The kids are fed and in their rooms for the night. The dishes are done, and so is the dog’s training for the day. I’m not usually this productive at night, but tonight is different. I had some spare time because my husband is out on his first, official date.

When we met each other we were still both eyeballs deep in terrible marriages to expert-level narcissists who’d done a great job of convincing us both we were worthless and unworthy of love. Sex was something they both used as a weapon and after enough years of that, it’s easy to just shut that part of yourself off - take their weapon away, as it were. I truly believed I was going to live the rest of my life alone - untouched, unseen, unloved. So did he.

And then one day - on the internet, way before social media even existed - our paths crossed.

We fought what we felt for a really long time under the guise of “doing the right thing” but that ended up being impossible. And when we finally gave in to it, something completely new and transformative happened to both of us.

Don’t get me wrong, before our terrible marriage partners, we both had our share of relationships and sexcapades. We each had one tumultuous, steamy romance that gave us a taste of the thrill of lust. We each had a few longer-term, more stable relationships that let us learn how to be partners with another person. But on our first night together, after years of build up, under the stars and in front of the ocean (and probably a tourist or two, sorry about that) we realized that neither of us had ever really had a lover.

And what a thing having a lover is.

When he filled my body with his, we both felt what we have only been able to describe as literal sparks of electricity zinging deep inside of me and all around him. Hours later, when the last of him would drip out of me, it would feel like my blood sugar dropped - I needed another fix of him. We couldn’t define any of it and we sure couldn’t explain it, so we decided to analyze it. Graph paper it. We’d lay in bed for hours, dissecting everything that we had done and everything that happened while we did it. It kept those short moments alive and charged in the time we spent apart.

In all these many years since then, I can say with confidence that neither of us has lost an iota of the passion or wonder or intrigue we entered this life together with. We fought so hard to get where we are - staring down the second half of our lives arm-in-arm with our lover, confidant, and friend.

Together we’ve re-learned who we are and how we perceive ourselves and our self-worth. Our sexual selfs have been central to that rediscovery. Over the years we’ve tried and tested as much as one can with kids still at home. We’ve shared fantasies and desires, all the while making note of which ones come up more, or illicit a bigger response from the other.

Sharing each other has always taken up the biggest spot on the paper.

And so here we are, a year after we decided to dip our toes into the pool of the lifestyle swinging consenual, ethical non-monogamy. Boy did it take us a long time to find the right word for us and as soon as we had THAT - we could define it and really start to graph out what that term means for us - we knew it was time to take the next step in our journey.

So he’s on a date, doing this without me present for the first time ever, and I’m sitting here starting a blog and pretending that I’m not stalking his location on his phone (they’re still at the bar).

This is new. It’s exciting, it’s exhilarating, and it’s exactly right for now.