Mr.Big

I know what Mr.Big hates most about being my secret lover;
That I deserve more and that he cannot give it to me.
From his point of view that makes him an accomplice.

I never saw it like that, aside from the first weeks or months at most. I was still convinced what we had was
A. him initially shutting himself off from my post-sex neediness but also
B. him seeing that his marriage didn’t work, and choosing a new life.

What I didn’t understand back then, and I doubt if Mr.Big would ever confirm it (I know he would plead innocent to it being deliberate) was that;
Yes. It was him shutting himself off for my post-sex neediness.
Yes, it was seeing his marriage didn’t work, and also choosing a new life.

But it was the life of someone who could make his marriage work, if only he allowed himself to have a that little something extra….
And that little something extra?
Was me.

Just like so many mistresses before me (I mean in history, I don’t think Mr.Big had a regular mistress before me) our affair was a key ingredient to let his marriage survive.
It wasn’t a reason to divorce.

And here we are, over three years into our affair, and I could not be happier with what we have. I m not going to lie, there are a million downsides to being a mistress. On my most gloomiest I will think things like;
Will I be there at his funeral?
But on a “day-to-day basis” (the irony is of course that we do not see each other every day) I happily choose this.

A relationship in which you have been in love for way over three years?
And you don’t see any decline or rough edges?
Your feelings for him are as strong as ever?
As is your longing for him?
Your willingness to try anything, be anything, as limited or as profound he wants it to be?
That’s worth something.

And it’s worth A LOT to a woman who left her long-term relationship age 34 to start dating again, because she missed that feeling of butterflies and first times. She missed it so much she was willing to sacrifice the relationship with the love of her life.
To meet new men.
Fall in love.
Have first time sex.

A woman who over the course of eight years tried and tested every flavor in the book, including men half her age, and those much older than her.
I can’t say I was promiscuous.
My top year was 2009 and I had three partners then.
But there were also years when I didn’t have sex at all.

Because it was so straining for me.
It took so much effort to smooth out communication fails, ignore character traits I didn’t like, and let him get away with things that showed so little respect for what we had.
And so much shame to be seen with me.
All those things to have sex?

I didn’t understand how people could stay horny given the countless flaws of imperfect sex. Where imperfect basically stands for any sex where two people are not mutually in love or infatuated.
By the time I took my pants off, I had invested an amount of tolerance and negotiation skills that could have brought peace to the entire Middle-East.
All that to get laid.

So no, I wasn’t promiscuous, but I did have enough partners to immediately recognize that sex with Mr.Big was something else.
That I wasn’t the one doing all the work;
He was.

He was the one who initiated our first kiss; perfect timing, no waiting until our goodbyes. But not too soon either, and he had announced it. In a way.
He had done the risk taking way before the first kiss. He had given me the opportunity to reject him, over Whatsapp. Which may sound unromantic, but I can’t tell you how wonderful that was, to have a man saying:
“I wanted to kiss you tonight.”
When you’re already back home alone, safe.

That is a guy giving a lady an opportunity to think about things. He’s giving her time (in our case, it would turn out to be a whole week) to figure out if she wants this. Him. A married man.
Or if she doesn’t.

This is not a man pressing her, or groping her on a time when she could feel awkward rejecting him. It’s a courteous gesture… one I had not seen in all those eight years before. He was a man who didn’t press for a “Yes”. He was someone who would only accept me as a lover, if I had thought it through.
If it was a “Hell yes!”

So the first kiss which he initiated, was unexpected. And then again it wasn’t. Because I had agreed to see him again, and I had confessed that I had been taken aback as well.
By my desire to kiss him.
That night when nothing happened.

Me feeling nostalgic is not because we’re having an anniversary. We’re in over three years, but no milestone. And either way; neither one of us are really into that sort of thing.
Maybe because the strong point of what we have is that it always feels new.
And never a given.

I still feel those butterflies in my belly, the uncertainty about what to text back. I still feel new and unsure every time we have sex.

In the end, I really got all those exciting first times I looked forward to, when I ended my long-term relationship. I just never expected, that those perfect first times, where you don’t have to first allow the annoying and the draining (on both sides, no doubt); that all those super arousing first time sex encounters would be with the same man.
I never thought that.
But I do now.

On a quiet Friday night in April 2018, writing my post, no one kissed me, it’s all memories and looking back but I can see;
Damn this is all worth it.

I remember what Mr.Big said, after that first kiss;
“You’re a great kisser.”
Immediately labeling our experience as something positive and memorable. He was doing the work. And ever since then, he has made sure we only had good times.

I know Mr.Big feels guilty for not being the single man “I deserve”.
But all the men I dated before him?
Those men were single!

It’s so much better to have the right man, for whatever fraction of his time is available, then having the wrong one completely to yourself.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living