Pain behind the happiness.
"I wanted Z to be with you, so that I can have you on my own terms." -- Wife.
I appreciated the sentiment she had expressed Friday night, and asked if she meant that day or in our lives, a question to which she danced around before sharing "I meant today, but that is fitting too." The conversation picked up again on Monday. I talked with Wife about my realization -- accepting that I had indeed grown to love Z. It was no surprise to wife, the conversations we'd been having weren't purely theoretical, they were about hypothetical futures, grounded in real possibility of everything she knew was happening. Truth be told, she knew before I knew, how I felt about Z. Things were calm, everyone felt fantastic, it was the calm before the storm.
We went on to have a great weekend, as I re-capped. Monday saw some steamy personal time in the evening. But things took a difficult turn when the conversation picked up afterward. In what was meant to be good news, wife revealed how she was finally letting go of much of the pain and anger of the past. She said something along the lines of "If I can continue to fake my way past it, I'll get past the pain," and it really doesn't matter what were the actual words. The problem was that this was the first time she was revealing a new depth of her pain. She had grown to resent me and had in the process focused on the negative, bundled it up and used it to define large swaths of our life together. I knew I had overwhelmed her and nearly lost her to my physical needs, but i didn't know the way in which that pain had spread from our lovelife to out love and life. After almost two decades together, with one sentence I can't even remember, she had flipped my world upside down. I was, am, disoriented.
I haven't discussed my sexual needs in much details. You all know I have a high sex drive, a bit of stamina, and am multiorgasmic. Well this is in my late 30s. In my 20s my sex drive was probably double. I could have sex two dozen times a week. It took me less time to orgasm, but I could easily go 3-5 times in a row with no refractory period whatsoever. I wasn't as skillful because wife and I had been each others firsts -- we were learning everything together -- and, worse, I had my quirks like being able to ejaculate 4 to 6 feet across a bed, or cum like a g-ddamn firehose. (In hindsight a career in porn would have probably helped a lot.) To make matters worse, in that time wife went from not orgasming, to externally stimulated orgasms, to cumming too easily. But she never became multiorgasmic (still isn't with men at all --women though whoa) I was cranky when I didn't get enough sex, and walked around with an erection 18 hours a day.
She went to therapy, where the doctor floated the usual suggestions -- perhaps I was the problem, perhaps I had a sexual addiction. Wife rejected the notion that I was broken. Later we tried supplementing her sex drive, using natural techniques to boost her drive through diet. I rejected the notion that she was broken. I thought about going to therapy, but fact was that I had control over my urges. Sure I'd have an erection at a few awkward times, but it wasn't like I couldn't tone it down, even turn it off if it was needed. I had also kept things completely faithful. If it was a problem I was in control of it, I was more like an olympic runner: I knew how to walk, I just enjoyed running. The issue was that she knew I was a runner, and felt she was slowing me down. Fast forward and here we are today. Open, then poly. I had offered her a grand compromise -- I can be responsible for my own sexual needs, if I had the freedom to meet them.
I did and freedom became responsibility. I had to find teammates or risk unwittingly opening old wounds. As she smiled, wife was hurting. Behind every joy the openness offered, was the crushing pain that societal expectations that she meet my needs was causing, and the callouses that formed in the space that was occupied by our passion. I knew she was jealous not of the times I ran with others, but of the times I walked with them, talked with them, and invested time she felt was due to her. Here is where the darkness grew. Even as she began to understand that I needed not only the physical from my partners, I needed them to be at the very least friends that can hold my attention. She also retreated deep inside a thread of voyeurism. Disconnected from me, she took on the pleasure of others vicariously. The hunger for the connection she imagined I had with others. And so, stuck between the expectation and embarrassment, her heart hardened. A callous here and there grew thick, scaled, and invulnerable.
As this happened I shared with her the good parts of our openness. The amazing people I met helped me grow, I brought that growth home, sharing the harvest, and invited her to tend to her garden with me, or without me. But inside we both knew she wasn't ready emotionally to date, afraid to take on the "responsibility" of pleasing another, and at times I was afraid that if she did, I would lose my lifeline.
There are parts of each of should harden to, places where we are sensitive but that don't or shouldn't matter. Sometimes we do so to get to the things that matter. The callouses harden, then give way to new skin more resilient and adapted to our tasks. Those callouses have indeed gone healing, but she's at times picked at them. Introduced infection. Behind the smiles and reassurances she suffered beyond the pressures of bedroom life.
I knew of my marriage's bedroom difficulties, but I felt powerless to help. The issues were her own. I could neither curtail nor control. I had dealt with my demons. Resolved the issues with my dad, my sexual energy, my needs -- was at peace with them -- inextricably linked to my intellectual hunger, and a powerful tool to meet amazing people. And Bee. Bee had introduced stability to that equation, catalyzing the balance and accepting me in a way that didn't judge my needs if they would extend even beyond her. Until Bee, my experiences had largely been prose, with the occasional short story. Bee wrote me into her serialized novel. Then came Z, who grew my character from guest to protagonist. I found balance, and I thought my marriage had too.
However, the resentment of my needs lingered on. No. It festered even as the causes drifted off into memory, rather than contemporary fact. By this time Bee had begun to find wife's only remaining rule -- sex with every date -- onerous. Some days she just wanted to enjoy being with me, without that pressure as well. I offered all along to "fix myself" that I was capable of monogamy and curtailing my needs -- wife only needed to ask. She didn't. Fixing myself would imply that I was broken. So instead she martyred herself to my cause. I had been playing the role of unwitting antagonist, let loose upon her life with nary a foil to offset my unwitting harm. Bison meet china shop.
Wife's healing had begun with our joint sexual adventures but really accelerated with Z. Even before we were intimate, Z's affection immediate rekindled my desire for soft touch. That light had long since died out for wife -- afraid each touch would lead to more sex, awake the bison. I called her out about it after the first date with Z, where had our intimate touch gone? I started to see what I was missing. I began to fight for it back. I brought her into my sexual world, brought her into the new experiences, and she began to say yes to the invitations.
The final piece has perhaps been opening her sexual agency. She is dating women exclusively so that she has a different experience than she could have with me. None of the baggage. No comparison. No habits. No triggers. There is some equipment I simply can't have.
I've spent the past two days trying to understand this all. I'm upset not at what Wife felt, but quite upset the extent to which she had kept it from me. I can't help but feel like I could have avoided years of her pain. Years. I need to accept that I couldn't. That this couldn't have happened until wife felt that the support team was complete, that my needs were met, and that my love for her was not conditional upon her meeting my sexual needs. Perhaps it also needed to know that even in the face of a budding love for another, I would continue to nurture our love, nurse it back to health, and push it to grow.
As I try to understand why wife waited so long and can only come up with one answer, she would have waited an eternity in pain because she loves me. She danced on the knife's edge with the hope that her callouses would guard her, her joys sustain her, until the knife's edge dulled. She'd have danced in pain forever for me. I don't know whether to be angry, grateful, or humbled by that sacrifice. Writing this makes me feel more of the latter.
