“God, I’m so horny…give me your hand.” It was a bright August morning. I’d woken horny. I needed to be touched.
“I’ll do the work.”
The bed shifted.
The door closed before I opened my eyes.
I was alone.
It didn’t open again until I left the room.
It was humiliating.
I didn’t need anything else, just a hand. It had been three years since I’d asked for sex. Any sort of sex. Sexual touching. A touch.
And I couldn’t even get a fucking hand.
I felt worthless.
“Are we ever going to have sex again?” I asked later, knowing the answer.
“Someday,” he said, quickly walking away.
Someday was never.
When we were young, we never spoke about sex; we just fucked. Neither of us was skilled, but we had enough passion to carry us through.
When we met in our early twenties, passion made up for anything missing, but when the infatuation wore off, there wasn’t much talent to fill the hole it left.
We never talked about sex, so things fell into a predictable routine. Sex every few weeks, and when the kids were small, less so, but I was happy.
As the kids got older, I realized why we weren’t talking about sex. He couldn’t, so we couldn’t.
I didn’t have trouble talking about sex with the kids when they asked or the moment seemed right.
I didn’t know it would be easy for me but it was. I was comfortable discussing sex.
He never was. When he got any hint of sex in a question he flushed and became flustered. He’d hand them off to me and disappear.
He ran. He would actually run away.
I thought it was cute. Funny, even, but didn’t think much else of it.
That was him.
So I don’t know why I was surprised when he refused me.
But I was.
And hurt.
We’d never discussed our fantasies beyond the stars we’d like to sleep with, but that was more of a joke than anything else. I told him Drew Barrymore was the only woman I wanted to sleep with, and we laughed it off. He wanted Dana Scully from X Files.
But we never moved on from there to explored other fantasies. I never told him how group sex intrigued me. Or how I wanted two men. I never asked him what his secrets were. What taboos turned him on. I never knew.
I’ll never know. His illness made it redundant.
I have a lover.
People ask,
“Why can’t you talk to your hub? Tell him how you feel, or ask for permission?”
I can’t, but they don’t get it.
They don’t understand he’ll run away, leaving me humiliated. They don’t understand we’ll never talk about again, or that it’ll hang there like a cloud, unresolved.
How I’ll cringe when cheating is mentioned in a show or movie, as I do now, during sex scenes, knowing he and I will never have another sex scene together.
They call me a coward. A whore. A slut. A liar. Cold.
Everything I’ve called myself. I am cold. I’m numb.
Men who’ve been betrayed attack me the hardest.
I understand their anger.
I’m the betrayer. They’re the betrayed. I’m everything they hate.
I engage them. I tell them I’m different. I try to explain why I can’t tell hub. I tell them I’m not their wife. I beg them to believe me.
One asked what I would do if hub flirted with me.
Drop my panties. I’d never have gone down this road if he would.
All I wanted was a hand. A sign of his willingness to satisfy me, even in the smallest way.
I always thank my readers for their comments, good and bad. My reasons for cheating aren’t fully formed or always justifiable to myself. They need testing. My reality needs checking.
I know cheating isn’t right, but it’s right for me. It’s right for us.
There’d be no us if I didn’t cheat.
There’d be no me.
I’ll never fully justify why I cheat. But I know why I do.
I cheat to stay.
And this when I knew it was time to find someone,
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© Teresa J. Conway, 2020