Real Sex Lives: Nola, "I had an affair. Now what?"

This is the latest "True Wife's Tale," an IBWMW series about real people (doesn't have to be a wife despite "wife" being right there in the name) telling the truth about their sex lives. As I've tiresomely overstated, the idea is that knowledge=power, the truth will set us free and any other number of slogans I learned watching Saturday morning cartoons in the 1970s. In that spirit, don't be a Judgey Judgerson and be criticizing dear Nola's choices. You haven't walked in her moccasins (see above: life philosophy gleaned from 70s children's TV), so even if you think her moccasins are slutty, amoral moccasins, keep that $%$% to yourself.  Here then, is Miss Nola, or Ms. Nola, I suppose, since she's married:

I hadn't had sex with my husband for a year.  Which in a way was fine. Not the no sex part, which was soul-killing, but the "with my husband" part. We had been together a very very long time and sex, which had never been the focus of our relationship, had dwindled down over the years until our sex life was only definable by its absence.

When we used to have sex, it was...fine. Orgasms were had, equipment worked, words of love were exchanged. But it was never hot. Or creative. Or after a time, something that either of us seemed to want. At first this was okay--I had kids to raise, a job to do, books to read. But after I turned 40, I experienced some sort of rebirth and, for the first time in my life, felt my own sexuality. I felt free and sexual and full of life.  I tried to turn it back on with my husband. I'd ask him to have sex and though he seemed perfectly happy doing it, he'd never instigate. Whenever I tried to explore things a little further, I got the feeling I was making him uncomfortable.

Eventually I resigned myself to a sex life with my own hand. 

But still... I felt so ripe and ready. I looked at my body in the mirror and it was still good.  Maybe better than it had ever been. I wanted someone to appreciate the particular curve of my hip and the way my nipples poked out through my shirt. I wanted to be kissed well and hotly desired. I felt like my body and sexuality were going to waste.

This is the point where the old lover appears via Facebook. Mine did and he was just as hot and dangerous as ever. We exchanged insanely sexy texts, emails and pictures and had phone sex in which I came so loudly I was afraid the neighbors could hear. Back in college, Old Lover very blunt and very sexual. He would say things to me like "Your pussy is so wet" which, to me, accustomed to the earnestly fumbling boys I'd been with, felt so dirty and scandalous. I was so prissy then and the way he talked about sex and so relished it was incredibly freeing. 

Talking to him 20 or so years later, I felt the same freeing feeling about sex which--depressingly--I hadn't experienced since him. My body still reacted instantly and violently to him. To this day, he is the only person who can make me go wet just from the sound of his voice. I concocted elaborate fantasies to tell him on the phone, and as I whispered the details to him, I relished the way his breath would quicken, the way he would gasp out "You have me so turned on right now" and his moans as he came. Once I sent him a picture of my boobs while he was at work and he had to go into the backroom to jerk off. I loved how sexy and beautiful he made me feel.

So yes, not only was he making me feel hot and gorgeous and letting me see my body in a whole new light, but in talking about sex and sharing these fantasies, I was--finally!--getting to share my sex life with someone who was not me. Which I was, and for the rest of my life will be, incredibly grateful.

When we finally met in person, the sex was amazing. But not in the way I'd pictured. I thought it would be all dirty and elaborate, perhaps ending with me crawling around the floor or something. Instead it was pretty basic, some very sweet kisses, a lift of my skirt and in.

As he kissed me and slid slowly inside of me, I felt something that was beyond sex. I felt the most sublime squishy glowing pleasure I've ever felt. I don't know if he was shaped differently than my husband or was just bigger (yes), but his cock was touching me in some deep deep place, both metaphorically and literally. It was fucking profound.  Which I guess is the same thing as profound fucking, which it also was.  For me, it wasn't a tensing thing that would lead to orgasm (and in fact it didn't), but something that was beyond orgasm.  It didn't need to go anywhere because it was already there--in this amazing spot of squishy grand fuckiness and oh-god his scruffy cheek and sweet lips and floating in a sublime space that was like somehow existing inside an orgasm.

I couldn't do anything but clutch onto his big hairy shoulder and cling to him and feel just...gratitude.  Gratitude for him and for this incredible feeling he gave to me. It was the best moment of my life.

"I contain multitudes"--Song of Myself, Walt Whitman.

*****
Of course it ended badly. (Who could've seen that coming?) And I've done a lot of furtive weeping. But I don't regret any of it. I'm glad I'm jumped into the fire and got to feel that feeling. I got to live in passion and threw myself into life, fully and with an open heart.

*****
A few days after it ended and the weeping continued, my friend recommended I have a toss with my husband. We did and it was...decent. It did stop the weeping. And I realized that one of the things I'd been crying about was the idea of going back to a sex life alone. I saw that I could have pretty good sex, in home, with none of the emotional b.s. 

I'm still not sure if that's gonna be enough for me.

I have a little bag of sexy lingerie and some sex toys I bought when I thought I'd be going to see Old Lover again. Right now it's sitting unused under my bed. I'm thinking of it as my sexual Hope Chest.

Thank you to dear Nola and the rest of you who have been so honest and brave to share. If one of the rest of y'all has a tale to tell, rip your little heart out and send your story to: jillhamilton001@gmail.com.

xoxox
jill

(photo: Lady Cheeky)