Adultery for me...

is like having a drink, taking some drugs or engaging in a risky adrenaline-pumping sport. It's recreational. It's fun. The flirting is fun. The newness of it all is exhilarating. The sexual attraction is a great reminder that the girl I used to be is still the same as the woman I am now. Like most exciting recreational activities, there's an immediate *boost* that uplifts your spirits and just makes you feel good. Yes, that may very well be the adrenaline talking, but it exists in sports, in exercise, in anything that deals with the physical form. And, as with any of the aforementioned activities, extra-marital sex can toe the line of obsession and addiction. If pushed to the limit, all of that boosted energy can become a whirlwind of chaos, sap your spirit of any reserves you might have had and toss you into a pit of exhaustion. Widely known as The Crash, (aka the hangover) so too does adultery have its minor (and major) pitfalls.

The most dangerous pitfall of all is the emotional bond. In a comment on my previous post, Thomas Paine mentioned the danger of getting caught. I mulled on this for a while, and have decided that getting caught by my husband is not the immediate danger where I find my thrill. Simply because I seriously don't want or need him to ever find out, and I don't really think he wants to know either. I know that he has his suspicions, and it comes out in his speech. At the same time, we've talked about our limits briefly, and I know that he simply doesn't want to know. I think so long as my behavior changes only on normal, regular terms, that is -- our daily relationship maintains its stability -- and our emotional state of affairs is in good standing, he really has no need to question my commitment to our marriage. I also feel the same way, which is why the danger that provokes a prolonged adrenaline rush is that which comes with the possibility of falling in love with someone other than my H.

Which brings me to BeautyEyes. He has been the only man I have ever come close to having these sorts of feelings for. I think because of our history together, there was an immediate bond aside from the sexual attraction. That intimacy that we experienced exists in a realm of its own -- the friendship intimacy that's laced with sexual attraction that seems to cross lines, however arbitrary they may be, and in doing so creates this fuzzy space that's amorphic, mutable and at times, downright scary.

After having processed this odd connection I have with BeautyEyes, and having slept with another co-worker, I couldn't help but feel somewhat... dirty. And it's not a dirty feeling like "oh my, I've slept with too many men, so I'm a slut" kind of dirty, but it's more of a muddled feeling as though I didn't know who I was anymore. The kind of dirty that sticks to your skin and doesn't wash off in the shower. That feeling when you first wake up with morning stickiness clinging in the air, oppressive humidity that consumes all the space, pushing out any room for circulation of a fresh breath. That kind of dirty.

So my solution lately has been to avoid the situation entirely. That means avoiding all people aside from my H. It's been working temporarily, but I know that it's not a permanent solution. I'm just not callous enough to fuck and run. I know I have to talk to the last guy I slept with and process what happened between us. Why did I say it would surely happen again? Why didn't I just leave? This man, my friend, an ex-coworker, was a person I spent a lot of time with. We were close. We had a real relationship at work. That night that we hung out, I said to him in jest "it's not like I'm going to sleep with you or anything" (perhaps my fatal mistake). And after we had sex later on that evening, he opened up to me even more than before. That scared me. He reminded me of me. I didn't want him to get too close. Now I realize he was my rebound from BeautyEyes. I just wanted to fuck. I wanted to be reassured that I could participate in this recreational activity, and just have fun, with seriously NSA (no strings attached). And when he hit me with that whammy of emotion, caused in the wake of really great sex with someone you've known and been in close proximity for almost a year who you've barely even touched -- well, it was too much for me. And so my Anonyma self crawled back into her hole in order that my everyday person could scrub down her dirty little emotional welfare to at least a resuscitated state.

And here is where I am today. Freshly showered. I have a few new perspectives, and maybe they'll sneak out here soon enough. All in all, I feel good.

Food for thought: when you have a sex dream with someone totally unexpected, it often has nothing to do with sexual attraction, though sometimes it might. Usually however, it reveals a newly formed intimacy with that particular person. Twice now I've had this sort of sex dream with my immediate supervisor (two different men). In both instances I knew exactly what my subconscious was getting at. The first time, my dream was relatively innocent. We only kissed, but there was an energy there that struck me enough to remember it during my waking hours. And sure enough, my boss and I had developed a friendly rapport just about the same time. This time, today I had a dream about my new boss -- The Brit. The problem is, I do find him rather sexy, and I was attracted to him from day one. Now I have a sex dream about him and it's clear that we're getting closer at work. To boot, it was a damned good sex dream where he basically forced his face onto the crotch of my jeans, surprising me with the most incredible through-the-pants face fuck I've ever experienced in a dream. The thing that's quite okay with this unrequited sexual attraction is that I know for a fact that he's nowhere near dangerous for me. He's devoted to his wife and kids, lives out of state and has zero opportunity to get me into any kinds of trouble. Plus, I respect him, on multiple fronts which means I would never endanger that situation for him. I think I've got a check on this one.