Post by Deleted on May 24, 2018 11:44:39 GMT -5
It has been nearly a year since I began to post on ILIASM, but I never went into details of my deal. And a lot has changed in the past year, much of it because of ILIASM. So...here's my belated introduction and update.
31 years married, wife is an alpha female, I'm a relatively easygoing guy, she walks all over me. Officially "sexless" for many years, no sex at all for 2.5 years now, no touching of any sort since December. The last time I tried, she didn't even return a hug.
I came here in June, extremely depressed. I had been in a cyber-relationship with a woman on Similar Worlds who was also in an SM and she dumped me when an old boyfriend came in the picture. I couldn't compete with her weekly real trysts. While I am generally honest about my strengths and usually not prone to self-esteem issues, I was in the dumps and thought of myself as, in the words of an ILIASMer, an "unfuckable piece of garbage." And my feelings of self-worth were so low that the thought of leaving was literally inconceivable to me.
I came to ILIASM and defended my choice to remain married without realizing that I had no choice - I had no free will to make my own decisions. The SM had infected my brain that badly.
Almost miraculously, I met two women online here that were also in SMs - and we clicked. I certainly didn't intend to get emotionally and simultaneously involved with two wonderful (and quite different) women, one from the US and the other from overseas.
Let me tell you about them.
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I broke my own self-imposed rule not to chat with anyone more than 20 years younger than me, but I made an exception for "Charlene."
Like me, she was committed to staying in her sexless marriage, and like me she felt that her sexual frustration could be reduced by some long-distance fun.
But the more I learned about Charlene, the more I fell for her. She shared with me an online blog she had written about her struggle with infertility, and I was awestruck by her strength, her authenticity, and her humor when faced with the worst kind of adversity. I cried as I read of her struggles and her ability to always get up off the floor, dust herself off and fight another day to become a mom - a fight she eventually won but with continuing challenges. Her wisdom and her searing honesty changed me and challenged me to be a better person. And when talking with Charlene, many of my long-cherished beliefs about myself would fall apart as she gently pushed me to be more authentic as well.
I wrote my first and only sex story as a fantasy of meeting Charlene, here on ILIASM. She loved it and even wrote her own. (Yes, you can probably figure out who she is from this description, and the entire forum agrees that she is special. She has read this essay before I posted it.)
I have grown with Charlene this entire year. We "broke up" a number of times as she wanted to work on her marriage, something I encouraged her to do. I cheered when her husband broke their 3-year sex drought.
After many frustrating months, we finally figured out a way to meet for real and - well, it was fantastic to show each other how we felt. More importantly, it was great to know that we had the ability to show and receive love and affection the way it is meant to be shared with a partner. It was a step towards independence, towards the knowledge that we are the ones in control of our sex lives, not our refusing spouses.
We both knew from the start that we have no future, for many reasons but mostly because of my big dealbreaker - I cannot consider settling down with anyone outside my religion.
After our meeting Charlene has been moving ahead with her life, realizing that there is no solution with her husband and concentrating on her exit plan. And recently she told me that she has met another person on this forum, someone who she has a chance of being with when their divorces are finalized. Yes, I have pangs of jealousy (I have to be authentic, after all, right Charlene?) but I truly could not be happier for her - I want her to be happy and her new man is, from everything I can tell, a really great guy. I hope that things work out and that they have the rest of their lives to make each other feel special.
No one deserves a lifetime of joy more than Charlene does.
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I started chatting with "Adele", a British woman, on here shortly after I came on board. Also in a SM, she and I started talking sexy pretty quickly. Honestly, all I originally intended was to have some no-string-attached cyber fun.
As time went on, though, we moved on to chatting and videoing, and Adele became a friend. Even though a religious Jewish guy from the East Coast and a British housewife with an obsession with the royal family would seem to have nothing in common, we found that we could talk for hours about anything, besides the "sexy bits." We grew closer, although I was careful not to let myself get too close both because of Charlene and because the idea of going beyond electronic communication seemed impossible. (Adele left ILIASM soon after we started chatting in real time on Kik and Skype.)
One day, Adele confided in her sister about me, and her sister offered to take Adele to New York - ostensibly to celebrate a birthday but really for Adele to meet me (and for the sister to have her own adventures in the US.)
Suddenly, this became real, and the chance to meeting Adele in person was too much to pass up. I did tell Adele about Charlene and vice versa. I don't think of myself as a two-woman guy - and here I was, a person who was utterly alone only a few months earlier, contemplating not one but two affairs. I was worried whether I could meet Adele and be to give to her what she needed, meaning intimacy. Charlene, unbelievably, said I should feel free to go ahead - this was before she and I had met in person - but I still didn't know if I could do it without feeling guilty or without holding back.
I mentioned these concerns to Adele, and she came up with a brilliant solution for me: to place my few days with her in a bubble, a "time box" where the rest of the world simply doesn't exist, a place where we could let go and forget about anyone else - with the awareness that the box would close after a few days and things would go back to how they were beforehand.
It worked. Our chemistry was undeniable when we met, and the bubble allowed me to act completely out of character for me - making out with Adele in the hotel lobby only a few minutes after meeting in front of her sister as if I was Adele's boyfriend for months, taking them out to coffee and sightseeing in New York as Adele and I cuddled and kissed, essentially an entire courtship in a few hours, knowing that we'd be spending the next day and the following mornings in a hotel room together.
Even though I needed the "timebox" construct to allow me to let myself go, it also allowed me to be - me. It was an act in the sense that I needed to shed my accumulated social and other taboos in order to be all-in. One cannot be a method actor without being able to connect to the material, and those few days showed me that I have the ability to love and make love the way we are all meant to.
I soon after realized that the timebox is a bit leaky. Despite myself, over time I fell for Adele as well. She gives me truly unconditional feelings of love and is always there for me - always. Even if I text her at 3 AM GMT, she makes me feel like a king. (I admit - I do this nearly every night, and she has never shown anything but pure joy at waking up to speak to me.)
I have never, ever felt so cherished and loved.
We managed to meet again recently, and this time it was even better. I realized what it truly means to be intimate, and I realized that it was intimacy that I needed, far more than sex. It blew us away. It was in everything we did, walking hand in hand in Central Park, eating lunch together, taking a moonlit walk down 42nd Street and getting Ben and Jerry's and going to an exhibit at the New York Public Library, where I could explain the '60s to her... Everything that is missing in my marriage I was able to get in those few days.
I truly have fallen for her.
Again, for the reasons mentioned earlier I have no future with Adele. We fantasize but that is all it is. She is not planning on leaving her marriage. She is supporting me as I take my own tentative steps towards my freedom - steps that will unfortunately also separate us. Her selflessness for me is superhuman and humbling. I don't deserve her, and I don't know how I will live without her.
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A year ago I was convinced that my life was over. I was in a deep depression.
If I had only met one woman here, I would have thought that there is something wrong with her for liking me. Meeting two incredible, beautiful and smart women showed me that I am not the problem. I could never have reached that conclusion through therapy alone. I needed this for my own growth and mental health.
Now I have hope. Now I have control. I now know what I have been missing, and that is why I know I have to leave my marriage. I haven't firmed up my plans, and I am worried that I might backslide, but I don't see how I can possibly stay.
And it is all thanks to ILIASM - not only for being the way I met my lovers, but also for the advice and support that I see here every day.
I also have to say that while I have disagreed with Baza a number of times on here, in the end I have to admit - he is almost always right. Dammit.
Anyway, thanks to everyone here. Also the platonic friends I've made here, who have always been supportive. It's been the most incredible and emotional year of my life. I have never felt so alive. And I have never felt so hopeful about the future.