Hurts so good

Ok, so I've always "got" bondage - the mental power exchange of restraint, of control, of dominance and submission, but I was never a pain freak....or so I thought. The very first moment of the first time D & I got into bed together he confessed that he had a fetish for having his nipples bitten. And so I obliged, but I was worried that I was hurting him. Last night he admitted that it was never hard enough and demonstrated on me. Oh Christ, I'm a convert. Yes, I was imagining my wrists fastened behind my back to stop me pushing his teeth & nails away, but just a look from him froze me to the spot as his head went down and his lips pulled back. Who knew I could orgasm just from having my right nipple bitten? Not me - took me totally by surprise. I'm purring now!

Oh, and the best version was Susan Cadogan's.

Ooooh, you're my best friend

John Deacon's nauseating lyrics aside, a mate is....

• someone you are braying with laughter with, 2 minutes after meeting, despite not seeing them for six months,
  
• someone who has your best interests at heart,
  
• someone who challenges you intellectually,
  
• someone you can have a philosophical row with, without either of you taking it remotely personally,
  
• someone who strokes your ego....and punctures your pomposity
  
• someone who makes you feel good about yourself,
  
• someone who guesses all your secrets...but makes you confess them anyway,
  
• someone you trust with those secrets,
  
• someone you can share the good stuff, the sad stuff, the scary stuff and the scandalous stuff,
  
• someone who fancies you just enough to remind you that you are sexy
• someone I'm glad I know
  

:)

Respite Care

I have made the point, repeatedly and firmly and calmly....and then less calmly and with rising hysteria...that I need some space. So K is going to spend the week with a friend. Except that as I'm away a couple of nights this week, he's threatening to come back on those nights. I've said that as I won't be here, it's no skin off my nose. I could make the point that being somewhere different might allow him to think differently, but I haven't got the energy. I feel sorry for him. I look at him and remember why I fell in love with him, but know that it hasn't gone the way I hoped.

Tomorrow I have the first of a number of two day training courses at another site. Apparently, the woman running it specialises in emotional rape - she ferrets out your mental Achilles heel and sinks her teeth in. Everyone who has done this course has cried...or seen others cry. As many of them are software engineers, we're not talking touchy, feely, in-tune-with-their-feelings types, we are talking taciturn geeks with the depth of a puddle. They have all come back, mentally reprogrammed with mad-eyed zeal to save the world, and become great "leaders" and "communicators". So great timing - my plan is to indulge in a little passive-aggressive silence myself, while ferreting out her emotional weaknesses and exposing them to the harsh light of day. Wish me luck!

But more pleasantly, on the evening in-between, I hope to catch up with an old friend. Every girl needs a good, platonic, honest, male mate who tells it to you straight and he is mine, although we've drifted apart a bit the last six months. Nevertheless, he is someone that within 5 mins of being with, I'm spraying saliva over through laughing so hard. Could be just what the doctor ordered. And if that doesn't fix it, a session has been booked with D for Wednesday night. I sincerely hope that Z is right, and the emotional rollercoaster is on its way up.

Today, Hair Monster is...

This is turning into a bit of a Facebook style status dump, but after yesterday's optimism, today I feel flat, down and slightly tearful. I wasn't this morning; I continued with my enthusiastic desk-tidying fetish and went through the drawers. I got down as far as the Paleolithic period and filled 2 bins with tut, rubbish and old paperwork.

But the early cheerfulness and conscientiousness started to evaporate into edginess. K texted a few times, and I was explicitly forcing myself to expect it to be him each time. And then D rang. As I thought he might. Just to confirm who was where next week. As much as I want to see him, I don't know how to talk to him. My current private life is so big in my head that I worry that one hint of concern from him and I will burst into tears. I don't think that's really what he's bargained for.

Crap, everything is big and heavy and tragic at the moment, and some lighthearted fun could be a good antidote - I just don't know how to get it at the moment. I wonder if WtC is around?

Ch..ch..ch...ch...changes

This is turning into a good year. I've never been one to be afraid of changes, I just don't assume I can inflict or direct change on others. However, the sessions with D and the realisation afterwards that things in my life couldn't continue as before has shaken up my determination not to be unhappy. At the moment, I seem to be stoically bearing my unhappiness as the price of not making anyone else unhappy, specifically K. I told him that I had had enough of living in this atmosphere and refuse to continue to do so. That prompted begging and tears (which isn't great) but he accepts that he needs help, so I accompanied him to the doctors this morning. A short course of anti-depressants and a referral to a counsellor is the outcome. When the doctor asked what he might want to talk to a counsellor about, he mentioned grief and I mentioned his "Conflict Resolution Strategies", which is shorthand for his passive-aggressive 5 day sulks, his emotional manipulation, his juvenile attempts at controlling the behaviour of others around him and his occasional propensity to snap and turn physical.

He is facing up to his problems and I am hugely relieved that there will be a competent professional to help him. Its no longer my responsibility alone to "make" him happy - he's realised what I mean about taking responsibility for himself. I've told him that I can't guarantee that I will fall in love with him all over again, or even still be able to put up living with him, but I would feel less guilty about turfing out someone who could cope with life, as opposed to someone who plainly can't at the moment. And who knows? Perhaps we will get through this difficult period. I keep reminding him that we can't go back to the way things were when we first met, we need to go forward, as the people we are now.

Its a step forward, and I'm sure that there will be two steps back pretty soon, but at least I see where forward is now, whereas a few weeks ago, I could just see us frozen in this hell for ever. One day at a time.

What's more - unsticking this situation in my personal life has had a huge knock-on effect on me, which is showing up in a far more positive attitude to work, which is making my boss happy as I get all proactive on him. So all round, I've got a lot to thank D for. He should be back in the UK any point now, but we won't be in the same space til next Wednesday. A little bit of me fantasises that he'll find a reason to nip out and ring me tomorrow afternoon, but that's pretty unlikely. And if he does, I'll assume its for a "It was nice while it lasted" conversation. No, probably best we bump into each other in the office and see where we are..... This is a year when I get more selfish, on the basis that its probably better for everyone!

Blogging

Now I hate it when bloggers come over all introspective and precious about their blogs. They start singing to the gallery once they get plenty of regular readers - something I don't currently have to worry about. And like the Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, taking a measurement of your place in the world affects your output - its skews it to one definite position or another when the internal reality is too subtle to be committed to words.  

But one of the better posts I have read on this point is this one from the Naked Truth on Words of Lust. Her assertion that sex, despite its grunting, noisy, funny reality can sometimes be transcendental rings true to me - an escape into a moment of physical bliss beyond that which our nagging, analytical minds can follow is exactly what I seek to find, to describe, to fit into the jigsaw of my emotional life. Fat chance.

Thoughts

Today's behaviour - totally out of character? Can't really say that, can I. When I said that I first snogged Cider Man a couple of years ago, it was in reaction to the first time I caught K lying about keeping online relationships online. I was so angry that he'd lied. If there was nothing to it, why was he ringing her 8/9/10 times a day? Why was he sitting outside the house in the car to talk to her when he got home from work instead of coming in?

From his phone bills, I discovered that he'd rung her from the hospital the day his mother died. That hurt - I was right there. Was the emotional support I was providing not enough? All wrong?? I tried to hold it together for him through that time but it was difficult. My mother had died at the same hospital 4 years earlier. Except in her case, they didn't lay her out afterwards in a nice, large side room with a red rose in a vase. They shoved her in an oversized cupboard where I had to clamber over spare drip stands to get to her body. With his mother, the staff tried everything, with mine, they'd given up long before. K had the opportunity to be with his mother when when she died. Mine died alone, in the night, undiscovered til the following morning.

Whatever comfort I tried to offer never seemed enough. He was distant, brushed me off, but I didn't expect him to have an affair. Which to his mind, he wasn't as they had never met. But he was acting like he was, and that shook me. I knew the signs, having been his other woman. It made me question the emotional investment I had in him, which was why I ended up snogging CB- the only time since I started seeing K that I had done any such thing, or wanted to until this year.

I kid myself that I'm a one guy woman, so what was today about? Mentally I've moved on from K - I'm just too cowardly to tell him. But there's no point directing all that attention on D (yes, that's the code letter I've gone for), and I have to be careful that I don't do it simply through force of habit. I've had a series of long term relationships; which means that I unwittingly think along certain paths, without realising that I'm making certain assumptions. But then I think D does too - he has never made any noises about just wanting a quickie fling, he's not the type. He's been married forever, and he's doesn't seem to be wired for short-term assignations either. He's a rubbish liar - if he says anything that he feels remotely guilty or ashamed about, he looks straight at his feet. Although thinking about it, it's interesting the times he doesn't do that.

But today: partly I was innoculating myself against caring too much, but on the other hand, a blazing illustration that I can do meaningless sex. It also spells out unmissably to me that D isn't meaningless sex and I'm kidding myself if I try to pretend it is. Also I'm feeling randy and yes, the attention from D has made me realise that perhaps I am generally attractive. A bit. But what was I thinking of?

What was I thinking of?!

Well I put it down to Mercury retrograde in my house of love, making me act a little crazily. According to www.moonology.com, I can comfortingly allow for one last blast of mayhem. So its obviously not my fault. What's not my fault? Well the fact that in the pub on my usual lunchbreak, I met up with a chap that I had a bit of a snog with a couple of years ago. He does have an entrancing arse - that's my excuse, and lovely eyes, and a flirty manner that's not too scary and..... that and a retrograde Mercury, obviously. Last time, I gazed so deeply into his eyes when I was meant to be on an evening out with the girls that in the end, I had to ring K to come and get me before I did something stupid. This time, I wasn't in the mood to ring K, and well up for something stupid.

It's struck me that I have been to bed with someone in their teens, their 20s, their 40s and their 50s. What I haven't had is someone in their 30s. So when....Cider Man, shall we call him, mentioned that he was firmly in the middle of his 30s, it was green light for an extended lunchbreak. I was a good girl, I went to the bogs and bought condoms, because I've noticed that blokes don't. Not that I needed them, we stopped short. I indulged my other passion, after he'd been down on me, and I'm still licking my lips. But I can't keep doing this. This is how girls get a reputation. Mind you, I'm a woman not a girl, and do I really care? Frankly, my dear, I don't think I give a damn. I would like some extended sex though. A quick lunchtime bunk-up isn't that satisfying and to be honest? I'd rather have been in bed with...Terribly Addictive Stud? Instructive who I feel regretful about cheating on, isn't it...

Politics of Food

They say the personal is political, (they being 1st generation feminists) and these days, it seems there is little in the UK more political than food. From the junk that we feed our kids to  the sleeping arrangement of the chickens we consume, there's a celebrity figure or a government spokesman waggling their finger at us.

Now Delia has weighed in contraversially, saying that plenty of people can't afford organically reared chicken and you shouldn't make pensioners or the low-paid feel guilty about buying the food they can afford. I have to say, I see her point.

This morning I was whipping round Tescos, in my usual whirlwind of efficiency, when I ruefully grinned at how bleddy lower middle-class the contents of my trolley were. From the natural, fat-free, bio-yoghurt to the type of bagged salad that doesn't contain iceberg lettuce. From the wholemeal bread to the branflakes. From the imported raspberries I agonised over due to the airmiles and carbon footprint they represented to the processed meat products that I walk straight past without a second glance. Even slim-line tonic for splashing over the gin. You'd think I'd been brainwashed by some Whitehall numpty telling me what's good for me.

Of course, it wasn't always like this. It used to be Aldi & Iceland - cheap white bread, fishfingers & oven chips. Yes, I fed my daughters that sort of crap - is there a support group I can join where we beat our breasts in guilt? Back then, I bought what was on special, haunted the BOGOFs, and concentrated on what I knew they'd eat, as opposed to what was good for them and might get wasted. Organically reared, corn-fed chicken didn't come into it.

What's more, food inflation is shooting up, so thank goodness the government were sensible enough to move away from the nasty old target of RPI at its current rate of 4.2% and concentrate on the much more benign CPI. Its current rate of 2.2% is drifting further and further away from the old-fashioned RPI but that's because we spend lots of money each month on cheap Chinese dvd players. Not food, energy, petrol, council tax.... you know, those tempting extras of life. As wage inflation tends to follow CPI rather than RPI, we're all getting poorer, so pretty soon, it won't just be pensioners living on tins of dog-food or single mothers with 5 kids on the breadline who will treat themselves to the occasional intensively reared clucker - it'll be me too & those like me.

Perhaps the subtext of Delia's comments are, or should be that we could do something about human overcrowding before we bleed over chickens that we're going to kill and eat anyway. In the UK, babies under 1 do not count at all. Officially, they require zero space. Anyone who has a baby is patently aware of how much space they and their stuff require, but according to government statistics, its not even a square inch. Children between the ages of 1 and 10 count as half a human. This is a national disgrace, not the social lives of chickens.

VD - The Aftermath

Well, perhaps it would have been less trouble to have gone back out at 10:30pm for a card. It would have saved the (one-sided) conversation he was keen to pursue at 4:30am on his way out of the door to work, along the lines that he couldn't see a card for him, so I obviously hadn't bothered, so what was the point, and I had a go at him when he didn't buy me one last year, yadda, yadda, yadda.

I wasn't really awake enough to defend myself by pointing out that we were only 4.5 hours into VD. Give me a bloody chance. Anyway, I bought the cheapest, least foul one I could find that promised nothing about loving him forever on the way home and left it on his pillow.

Question: why did the text I received, sent from somewhere hot & glamourous, from someone holidaying with his wife, consisting of nothing more than "x x" make me so much happier than the card purchased by the man I live with, who tells me he loves me? That's pretty fucked up.

The horror of VD

Oh the torment - its Valentine's Day again. Earlier, I got home from my usual Wednesday evening amusement to find as expected, K was in bed. However, less expected, waiting on the sofa for me was a red envelope. I thought about turning round and going straight out to the 24 hour Tesco to see what they had left, but I couldn't be arsed. I might go tomorrow before work. Or after....

Honestly. He'll talk to me over the phone, but face to face he's back to the passive aggressive sulking, which it is my duty to break down and mollify him sufficiently until I am worthy of being spoken to again. I can't be arsed!!

Start at the End

So this affair (if it is that). When do you know when to finish it?

I kept reminding himself, (whom I'm going to have to designate with a code letter sooner or later) that there may not be another episode. I think he thinks that this is because I'm not necessarily enjoying it that much, or I feel too guilty. Whereas in fact it is purely because I know that life will go back to being grey and dreary and dull when this is over and part of me thinks, well if life is going to do that, I may as well get straight to that stage now. Do not pass Go, do not collect £200 and a clutch of orgasms, go straight to jail. How defeatist is that?

But its all so arse-achingly predictable. It starts off with you both claiming its just the sex and no chance of any feelings being involved, no siree. But you get sucked in, until the sun only shines on days when you see him, and you rearrange your life around snatched moments with him, and resign yourself to spending Christmas and New Years and holidays and birthdays alone. What's the point? I may be cheating but I'll still feel cheated. What I fundamentally want is a nice, normal relationship, where you have two people who talk to each other and make love. Is that so much to want? May be a bit of affection, tenderness & appreciation thrown in for luck? I could even see an affair holding together a shaky marriage by filling in some of the cracks, but I have no commitment to K - I just feel sorry for him.

Jesus, is this ever a textbook case of jumping ahead, making assumptions and general girly over-analysis! Lets face it, he may not even be interested when he gets back. I won't see him for another fortnight, I don't suppose we'll get a moment to even discuss getting a moment together til next month. Sheesh - what a load of crap I'll be posting here in the meantime!

High Days and Holidays

Hmm, that last post was a bit of a self-indulgent whine, but as my daughter says, "That's what the internet is for!" Of course, me and Trekkie Monster know the internet is for porn, but hey, I can multitask.

So holidays - what do I have against them? Well, its more a case of what they have against me. The fact that the current interest is off with his wife sunning himself in a tropical paradise has reminded me of a nasty trick that life has played on me. I just don't get to have holidays.

I can't really say my parents had a bad marriage. After all, they stuck together for 40 years and who am I to say it was all bad? A fair chunk at the beginning was probably good, and they were kind to each other at the end. It was probably only 10 years or so that they weren't on speaking terms. Its just a shame that ten years had to coincide with my childhood. Thanks, guys. So after my older sisters left home (which they did with unseemly haste the instant they could), there was just me left. Mum and dad used to take it in turns to drag me away on holiday, because they refused to go together. So there was one bored, sullen kid and one bored, resentful adult, stuck in a tent in a field in the middle of nowhere. So that was a riot.

Then there was the occasion after shitface left. Its okay, my daughters know I privately refer to their biological father as shitface. I kept it from them for many a year, but they probably have an equivalent name for him - not that they need a name for an individual who (at his own insistence) hasn't clapped eyes or ears on them in nigh on 20 years.

Shitface came home from work one Friday night, announced he had fallen madly in love with a woman in the office and was leaving with his stuff first thing in the morning. And yes, he was as good as his word. As the door slammed shut behind him, the phone rang. It was my mother. She said, without really pausing for breath:

"Hi, you know your dad's been ill for the last nine months? Well we hadn't really spelt out how bad it was cos we didn't want to worry you, 
but the specialists say he actually needs a heart transplant and he's been on the waiting list and a heart has just come up and they're just running the tests now to check his immune system is up to scratch as much as possible and he hasn't got cold or anything but hopefully they'll go ahead later today but we won't know anything for 24 hours so I'll ring you tomorrow. Bye."

As weekends go, it was a bit of a shocker.

Happily dad survived, and by about the Wednesday, I realised I had to get a bit of a grip. A quick tally up revealed that apart from £27.28 in the bank, I had: no money, no income, no assets, no job, no experience, no qualifications, no childcare, no friends (they were all away at uni), no family support (they were still quite busy at the hospital). What I did have was a brand new mortgage, only 4 weeks old, 3-year-old twins and less than 2 weeks to go before Christmas. Which meant that even if I managed to sob my way through a social security interview, I wasn't going to get any cash before the new year. So I rang shit-face, to ask for some money to feed the children with. I was told in no uncertain terms that he had no money for me as he and his new girlfriend were about to get on a plane. Apparently, "Lesley needs a holiday, she's had a really rough time of it recently." Wow, I can't imagine how bad it must have been for her.

Which brings me slap bang up to date. Why aren't K & I having loads of fabulous holidays? In the intervening 20 years, I've sorted the money issue and while I'm not rolling in it, between us we have enough to keep the wolves from the door. Well, we did have one very nice holiday, to Cyprus. Its a beautiful place and I couldn't believe my luck. I thought I'd broken my holiday jinx. Until the last night, when K got the hump and turned on the silent treatment. And on and on, despite all my efforts to jolly him out of it. Eventually I snapped and walked off by myself, determined that I wasn't going to have my last evening ruined by spending it in an atmosphere of tension, just like my childhood. Except when I got back after a not incredibly exciting meal in Pizza Hut, he refused to let me back into the room and an "incident" kicked off.  Its not the only time it has happened, and I'm not prepared to go abroad with him for any length of time because I have nowhere else to go. In the UK I can walk away, drive away, let things cool down. I'm not coming home from another holiday covered in bruises.

So no, I don't get to do holidays like other people. Wah. Life's snot fair.

Heart or Stomach

K and I haven't been getting along too well recently - probably no surprise there. However, one of the major souce of rows is around food. He gets home several hours before I do & prefers to eat early. He likes cooking, I don't - should be perfect, no? No.

Somehow this has transmogrified into a control issue. If he is cooking, then I must be at home at the time he decides. There is no option (without a row) of, "Oh I bumped into a friend - if you want to cook, leave mine in the microwave - if you don't, I'll ring a pizza when I get in or knock something up." This is allegedly totally acceptable, as long as I let him know in advance. The problem with spontaneity is that you can't always diarise it, and spontanteity that doesn't include him is apparently selfish.

Likewise, meeting friends for a walk on Sunday mornings, maybe ending up at a pub, maybe having something to eat, depending how we feel is selfish. He might have to sit at home waiting for me to come in and that's not right because he does too much of it. My view is that if he chooses to work unusual hours, that is not my problem and it is more than unreasonable to expect me to have no social life in the evenings, just because he's already been home for a few hours.

The problem is fundamentally that I told him that I no longer care about his behaviour - on or off line since the last little episode. He has realised that its perfectly true - I don't care, and is scared witless. Which is making him cling, which is pissing me off. He feels insecure, I feel smothered. The problem is, he just adds tension to my life. I can't go for a drink after work with my daughter without planning how I'm going to "manage" him when I get in. I'm rushing out of the pub because I know he will have the arse because he wants to cook and we must be in the house before he starts. The smell of frying onion must be mingled with the stench of burning martyr. He can't accept it's controlling. I can't be doing with it. It ain't good.

Four Seasons in one day

We were more low-key this time, no sexy texts, just a straightforward phonecall to confirm time and place, but yet again, the anticipation built during the day. 

When he reached my room, there was no discussion, just murmerings of appreciation. Again, an urgent need to strip each other and explore, touch, taste, lick, nip, bite. My room made me with laugh with anticipation - shagtastic, baby: 4 poster and well fitted out - just as well, as his room was damp, featured twin beds and mould in the bathroom. I grinned that the bedposts might come in useful after I confessed a mild prediliction for bondage. Regretfully, he seems entirely vanilla. Perhaps I should feel guilty that I feel no guilt, but the pleasure was overwhelming.

I had such a fabulous evening - sensual, fun, amusing, passionate, affectionate. But when he suddenly announced at 1:30am that he was going back to his room, I was crushed. Seconds before, I had been idly thinking that my face was starting ache slightly with the grin I'd mistakenly thought it would take a blowtorch to remove. But I couldn't work out why until today.

Obviously, its not the biggest crime of the century, to want a good night's sleep, and obviously a cold, single bed in a mouldy room is enticing compared to the alternative (!) He owes me nothing, he was knackered but my reaction was entirely out of kilter with the lack of crime. Today it hit me. Last time he'd reminded me what good sex felt like. This time, he'd unwittingly reminded me of how it felt to be simply, daftly, uncomplicatedly happy. Last time I lay awake wondering how I could go back to a life without sex. This time, I lay awake wondering when the last time had been that I'd been truly happy, and why I hadn't even noticed its passing. How sad is that - to have not noticed? Every day features a background radiation of dull, scratchy, low-level tension and vague, unspoken resentment.

It's a bit like the English weather; you accept grey skies as normality. Yet you jump on a plane and soar up through the clouds and realise the blue sky was there all along, just hidden. I know this episode is just a holiday from reality, but I'm 
starting to realise that this reality can't continue indefinitely. Can it?

Philosophy of Infidelity

I've been reading the Philosophy of Infidelity blog; I recommend it as well written & honest. I particularly find it interesting that he's not afraid to say that he fell deeply in love with his mistress S. However, as he now admits, married man & single lover is not a good combination, and they eventually separated. He emphasises that working on your marriage has always got to be a better bet & I concur - yet we're all human. Oh, and his number 1 rule is: Never have an affair with a co-worker; everyone in the office will know and its inescapable when it all goes wrong. Again, I concurr but I'm human...

I have always been quite highly sexed and spend a fair amount of time thinking, reading, looking at or actually having sex (even if its alone, in the work bogs cos I'm bored), but I'm aware that sex without the expression of affection and tenderness (backing away from the L word, because its not quite the same) is empty and pointless and simply unsatisfying for me.

I know that I have an obsession, an addiction to giving head. Its one of the few pastimes in which I can totally lose myself in the moment, and a fair part of the attraction is that its a "safe" way to give pleasure, to show that tenderness, to be almost nurturing, without giving anything of yourself away. Its like an emotional condom - I could give blowjobs for hours and have the emotional release without getting emotionally attached. And as for my own physical pleasure - well the delight of bringing someone to orgasm with my lips and tongue, feeling their body rise, tense, release as a gush, feeling their muscle tension, hearing their breath, perhaps even a muttered word, particularly when I did it all myself, well, its wonderful in itself but as part of a longer session, I've been known to come in unison.

Oh Christ I want more sex. But K cannot oblige with all I want, and I can't bring myself to pick up some chancer off AdultFriendFinder. So what choice do I have? At least I'm not emotionally involved. Yet. But part of me wants to be. Its like that urge to stick your hand in a bare flame - you know its going to hurt but some stupid bit of you is egging you on. Actually, all I want from this fling (its still a fling til tomorrow and I'll decide on the new label then) is appreciation & gratitude.

Breathing him in

So we walk around the office, pretending not to share a secret smile, but eventually we end up in the same space, with few observers. We close in, magnetically drawn, whispering confirmation of assignations, teasing shorthand, breast touching arm, thigh brushing arse, anything to stand near enough to breathe each other in. Smell is supposed to be the most ancient of senses, routed in the deepest, most primal part of the brain and it drags me instantly back to that hotel bedroom. Flashbacks firing, senses throbbing, breath speeds up as I am transported to moments of gasping, urgent wanting, disbelief that I am in the moment, desperation for the moment not to end. I want Wednesday to be now, the waiting is tortuous perfection.

Love and Marriage

A book has been written and reviewed by many of the UK dailies that postulates that sex and marriage are incompatible. It is possibly one of the saddest things I have ever read - a whining litany of complaints against the 23 men she has slept with (tart!) by a 45 year old publishing executive, married to Hal, some poor sap from the city.

Now it may be that he is too exhausted by being a master of the universe to fancy a bit of conjugals when he gets home, and to be fair, that's not a flattering photo of her (if it is, then God knows how she shagged 23 blokes), but to have effectively unilaterally decided that she will remain celibate within her marriage until the children are grown up is selfish in the extreme, not to mention breathtakingly hubristic. She also laughably maintains that she will then embark on a "sexual odyssey" to find a man who will reliably "give" her an orgasm. Well that had me rolling on the floor. Sister, if you've got to the age of 45, having tried 23 blokes and still reckon an orgasm is something that comes giftwrapped like an expensive bauble from Tiffanys, then a lifetime of disappointment awaits! I may only be a sexual lightweight with 5 knobs under my belt, but hey, I enjoyed screwing every one.

But this issue of women effectively thinking that because they no longer fancy their man, that's ok & he has to put up with it and carry on paying the bills and not seek satisfaction elsewhere otherwise they will divorce him, bankrupt him and sever his children from his life is as common as it is monstrous. Women in middle age no longer being bothered to swing from the ikea light fittings is not a modern phenomenon. However, in the past, it was tacitly accepted that the husband may make other arrangements on the side and as long as he was discreet and came home for his tea, little was said.

Now, am I wrong in thinking that modern men have become so emasculated that they no longer have any say in the ending of their sex lives? I don't actually subscribe to the cliche that men just want sex - there are plenty enough around that want physical affection. That certainly includes sex, but doesn't exclude a cuddle afterwards, a touch, a kiss, a caress, an acceptance of their physical existence. Does a man who's wife will no longer touch or acknowledge him physically feel loved, or believe that his wife still loves him? Does a man expect love to be expressed through sex in marriage? But conversely, assuming he comes to a discreet arrangement on the side, does he expect his mistress to have sex with him without love? Perhaps he's quite happy for the mistress to love him as long as it places no restraints or expectations upon him? I must admit a personal interest in the answer to the last point. Comments welcome - from men or women.