I couldn’t wait to see Sammy again. Having settled into bed, and into texting with her, I made a move to solidify a plan she had suggested earlier.
“I’d like to see you again Friday!” I typed onto a bright screen in a dark room.
“!!!”
Good. She was happy. Of course she was. How could I wonder otherwise, after the blissful night we’d just had together? We hadn’t wanted it to end.
“How do you want to work it? Superbloom will be home around 10/11 pm, I’m guessing. I’m free all day.”
I held myself in place. This was normal. This was normal in the new, sublime not-normal paradise I found myself in. My lover has a wife. No reason to be alarmed. We’ve just had sex but they’ve had plans for a couple decades now. I work around them–not the other way around. Paradigm shift. I questioned whether or not I felt a little insecure. I pushed the question aside. Insecurity is just a matter of perspective.
It took Sammy and I both by surprise to realize that Friday was actually…tomorrow. It was so late tonight that it was already the next day.
“One of my favorite moments tonight was you breathing on the side of my face on the couch…and you sleeping over me. Such lusciousness! Also, how did you get to be such a good lover? Seriously.”
“I’m just feeding off of you.”
“What was one of your favorite moments?”
“There were way too many of them! All of your laughs. Eating with you (standing up, of course). Just talking in bed and lying next to you. The whole night was delicious to me. Even seeing you with your dogs. I’m just loving each new piece of you.”
Of course, the sex was amazing. Passionate. Intense. Satiating and hunger-inducing at the same time. I didn’t know what to say about that part. It was like asking someone how they feel about bone marrow…. How do you talk about something that runs through your entire being…something that’s as important as that, and also not accessible?
“Likewise. I get the sense that you stretch far, far back…linking the self that presents as you to the great beyond …where everything is love. Wondering how you got to be like that.”
“You have a poet’s heart, through and through.”
“No one has ever said that before….thank you. I will hold onto that one.”
Sammy added, “My body is feeling warm and tingly. Shall we tuck in for the night?”
“Yes, let’s get some sleep! Happy one-month-since-we-met day!”
“Happy one-month-since-I-fell-in-love-with-you day.”
“Goodnight, Love.”
Five hours later:
“Good morning!” Sammy chirped by text.
“Good morning!” I called back.
“I just woke from a dream where you and Anthony and I had a newborn. Anthony was a giant and had to stoop super low to kiss you. It felt so sweet.”
I pondered again this newly-forming relationship and Anthony’s role in it. The dream seemed appropriate. Somehow, I felt such a sense of community by adding Sammy to our “family” and yet, she and Anthony hadn’t even met. He did seem almost like God (blasphemous, I know)…kind of on the outside (blasphemous, I know) but knowing everything and watching from above, approving on a minute-by-minute basis. I was wondering if he felt this sense of “loving community” too….
“I was more like your lover than co-parent,” Sammy continued, “but it felt like you and I were tending to the baby somehow. In the last part, we were looking out of a giant picture window at an incredible scene of the ocean. The feeling around it was so gentle and uncomplicated and full of love. The baby had fallen off the table onto her face while the three of us somehow fell asleep. But she was fine. Except for the fact that she was so hungry she had swallowed many pieces of cloth, which I had to fish out of her throat. But she was resilient and happy as a clam once all that was taken care of. You and Anthony had a totally calm approach to the fact that she fell on her face…quick to respond but not freaking out. I remember being really impressed by that, and happy to be by your side.”
Gotta love the brain. Always coming up with inventive ways to tell you in your sleep what the subconscious has been up to all day while you were working away at life.
Sammy’s dream was interesting. I did feel, in real life, that the “baby” was going to be okay whatever happened, even if she fell flat on her face. Ironically, the version of the dream without Sammy in it would have looked very different. It would have looked like me finding Anthony asleep after doing the sinkful of dishes, and then being pissed to realize that although the baby was going to be just fine, she had almost choked to death while I cooked for his giant stomach and he sat by idly gazing at the ocean.
But now in real life, strangely, I felt very supported. Anthony could gaze; no big deal. He didn’t need to do anything more than he was already doing; he was perfect. I realized that I was grateful for his low-key presence in a way that I hadn’t been before. This way–with Sammy–we fit.
“Did I inadvertently break any capillaries on your neck/shoulder?”
“Ha! Funny you should ask. Yes, you did!”
“Shoot. I’m sorry, Love.”
Sammy knew I was careful around that. I didn’t know what anyone would have thought, but I didn’t want to flaunt my sexuality. I didn’t want anyone to know that side of me unless I was naked with them. I didn’t want to give anyone any reason to even think about that side of me.
“Was everything we did in bed good, in terms of your agreement with Anthony?”
“All good….”
In fact, Anthony and I didn’t have much of an agreement there. He only didn’t want me to be stretched out too much down there…stretched out bigger than him. I didn’t want that, either.
I considered Sammy’s needing to moderate her passion in the midst of our love-making, for my requirements…. A little less kissing here…don’t want to leave a mark. A little less kissing there…don’t want to offend the husband…. Was that stifling for her? How was it for me?
“Do you often find yourself adjusting (lowering) your intensity for other people?”
“Yes…and I’ve been really enjoying your receptivity to my intensity on an emotional/connective level. It’s so special to me,” she answered.
“Are you kidding? I feel like I’m in Disneyland! I could play in your emotions all day long….”
And it was true. Disneyland was my quirky way of saying that this new delight (being so intimately intimate with another human being) had me feeling like…I was getting to know God.
Later in the evening:
“K, if you haven’t talked with Anthony about Friday, we have options. I’ve got all day and I’m flexible. We can do as early as possible. Superbloom will sleep elsewhere tomorrow night and be gone through whatever time in the afternoon that you can be here and have breakfast and time at the lake and and and…. Or we can do afternoon/evening until 10pm and do dinner and stars and and and…. I’m so happy with either plan. Let me know if anything works easier for you two. XO.”
I read the message and let Sammy know that I had not had time to talk to Anthony about our Friday date. I was assuming that it would work out but was also a bit reticent to discuss the plans with him, knowing that it would mean him staying with Leetl so I could play. And also, I felt bashful about asking so soon to see Sammy again, on his watch. Not that he and I would be having connective time anyway. I didn’t want to need permission from him. I wish I didn’t need anything from him at all, that I could just give it to myself. There was a little sneaking guilt as well…feeling like I might not deserve the permission I was asking for.
I decided to go for it. Friday was coming up.
I chose a good moment–a moment as good as any other–and interrupted his show. “Anthony, would you be okay to watch Leetl at some point on Friday so that I can have a date with Sammy?”
He pushed the pause button on the controller and looked nowhere, making a low groaning noise. And then–a big sigh. “I mean, it’s fine if you need to do that…but it would be nice to get to know her a little bit. It feels like you’re really getting wrapped up in each other, and I haven’t even met her yet.”
“Hmmm…are you feeling lonely?” I posited.
Anthony shrugged. “I don’t know about lonely. It just feels weird. It makes me uneasy.”
“Gotcha. Thanks for telling me….” I went over to him and wrapped my arms around him. He pushed a button on his controller, looking at the screen and choosing from a list of options. “I’ll see what she says.”
I got back on my phone. “How would you feel about coming over here?” was my straight-and-to-the-point question to Sammy, feeling her out.
“I love the idea of going there and seeing you in your context, meeting your beautiful family. You didn’t specify what you were thinking that would look like, but I should speak to Anthony’s offer for us to be together at the house. Such a sweet, generous spirit. I have had the experience of being the ‘Anthony’ part of the equation, and while I am aware that he and I are very different, I can tell you that I don’t think it’s a good idea, at least for awhile. It’s one of those things that our cognitive brain thinks should be fine but our limbic system has a harder time with. I don’t think this is what you were thinking or suggesting, but I just wanted to put that out there. Regarding the day in general, it’s going to be absolutely gorgeous from a weather standpoint, and I would be super excited to be able to share an experience outside together (morning or evening). I wonder, if it is important that I come to your place, maybe we can do a little of both–a couple hours on our own, a couple of hours with family? Let me know if there are specific factors at play. I am just as happy to abort my fantasies and go with what you feel fits best with the flow and harmony on the home front. And…have I mentioned that I adore you?!”
I waited for Anthony to return from his downstairs run on the treadmill, and then I conveyed Sammy’s words. “What do you think? A couple hours with family here, a couple hours alone at her place?”
His face twisted to reveal mild irritation that this wasn’t the answer he was looking for. “Why would you need to go off somewhere else? It feels weird that you’d be somewhere doing these things and I couldn’t have access to you if I wanted to. If you were over here, at least I could poke my head in and say hey.”
The conversation was short. He didn’t feel comfortable, and I didn’t want that. Discomfort did not bode well for the arrangement, and we wanted this to work for everyone, not just me.
Back to Sammy: “He really just wants to talk this all out with you because he wants to accept what’s going on but it’s so difficult with all the…emotions.”
“I think some connection would be great. What’s the best time from a Leetl standpoint? And what were the difficult emotions around?”
“We can entertain Leetl and find some distraction for her while we talk. The emotions…. The situation of us, when hypothetical, was ‘hot’ and now mostly he’s just seeing how complicated it is and could get. He’s feeling left out, while everyone else is running around having fun being in love. And he is stressing out about what the ‘end game’ looks like…can’t imagine it ‘ending’ (which he says is inevitable) in a way that’s not really destructive to our marriage. But he says he really wants it to work out. He goes through alternating periods of seeming totally fine/excited/curious, and then seeming like he was just punched in the gut and needs time to recover.”
“With ‘ending,’ is he just saying that it’s inevitable that one of our relationships will have to survive so there is only one?…so the other will terminate? and he’s worried that it’ll be yours and his? Or that if you and I decide to escalate, it would be devastating to your marriage because you wouldn’t have what he thinks you want? Or that he would find someone and is worried that he’d fall in love and leave the marriage?” she asked for clarification.
“He’s worried that ‘you and I’ will have to end at some point, either because someone moved away or because someone’s partner is unhappy and that causes things to need to change (or…fill in anything in this blank), and that it would be devastating to you and/or me…that it would cause bitterness and resentment maybe on all fronts…. I’m finding it difficult to reassure him on because I don’t know how it will turn out, and I’m fine with there being no template. I have a pretty solid faith that I will be okay, that he and I will be ok, and that you will be ok, that you and I will be ok–no matter what happens. He prefers the hard facts though.”
“Like you said, life is unknowable,” Sammy responded, “and I am confident that you and I will find the form of connection that works…. What effect on your marriage do you think burying your bisexuality would have, if not expressed with me or any other woman?”
“I don’t think it’s about the bisexuality…it’s about having another partner in general. He sees that it can’t be just physical/sexual for me. There are other emotions, too, and I suppose these are emotions that have previously (in our marriage) been only for him. Now I’m in love with him and in love with you…that’s scary.”
“Ok…. I’ll try and come up with some good structural suggestions. Would you be prepared to do the same work if the tables were turned? I mean, the same work as Anthony?”
“Of course.”
“Also,” I added, “You know that there will be resistance around anything that makes Anthony feel like he’s being ‘educated.’ It’s one thing to have a genuine conversation…but he will have difficult questions, and I expect some tension. Are you ok with that?”
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