Love don’t live here anymore

Someone who is having fun is Madonna; here with the Beastie Boys

Lauren has decided she needs a second lover, and the freedom to write about her experiences.
But she managed to miss the most important thing.

How long since I decided I needed a second lover?
One week? Two?
A year ago, two years?
It’s so easy to see why I talked myself out of it, every time Mr.Big’s scarce availability had seemed to leave me no other choice.
A big reason was that I was scared having two lovers would trigger my std phobia, the anxiety attacks.
I use condoms, that’s not the problem.
But even then, the thought that at least one of my lovers, and probably both of them – since I expected my second lover to be a secret one as well – were going home and have unprotected sex with their partner, freaked me out.
But this time I understood that this was a reason for me to push through: that you should never not fulfill a desire because of fear.
I learned that lesson well, having this phobia dictate my sex life for nearly two decades.
Another reason I had chickened out of searching for a second lover, was that I knew I was monogamous: I didn’t like the tension and excitement of having two lovers. I was way too much for me. But at this point too, I had already decided I would just have to find a way to deal with it.
Unless I was okay staying at the mercy of Mr.Big’s erratic, or better sporadic, desire to see me. After three and a half year I was far from okay with that.
I had gone through the decision making process countless times, and always with the same conclusion with regard to the second man.
Push through or perish.
And I wasn’t ready to perish.
Today I realized there were three – THREE! – major areas, on top of the phobia and monogamy objections, that had made me hesitant to pursue or allow, a second lover.
And that were still keeping me from pushing through.
1. I was still hoping for Big to change his mind
I knew he was a busy man, but I also knew he was jealous, and would prefer to have me to himself. Maybe he still thought he wasn’t allowed to claim me, because he was promiscuous himself?
Could that be it?
How many more times was I supposed to tell him, I liked him exactly the way he was, that the only thing I was asking for was more time to enjoy each other?
I simply couldn’t believe Mr.Big would let me go without putting up a fight.
That he’d really rather run the risk of me having sex with someone else, or even losing me permanently to someone else, than to prioritize seeing me.
But at my bleakest moments I did believe it…
And even concluded that this could be his way of breaking up. To just let me leave.
But that all changed that last night together, where we just melted together, making love without a real beginning or end.
Over three and a half years together and we had never been more insatiable.
After that night, all my reasoning that Mr.Big wanted me to leave vaporized and I was positive he would now make me a priority.
Until then of course he didn’t.
And I was left to my own sinister thoughts once again.
2. I could lose Big
If I would have a second lover, he might not want me anymore.
Or I might fluke at being a mistress to both.
I could even end up losing both, because of my inability to enjoy it.
So that’s part of it.
But another, more pressing emotion around this, is that getting a second lover basically in order to save my relationship with Mr.Big, reminds me of the final years within my long term relationship.
There too, I tried to get a lover, since sex didn’t really have a place within our relationship anymore.
And although we had spoken about what could happen, and what the risks were, the biggest risk turned out to be:
What if I can’t do it?
Because that’s what happened.
I simply couldn’t pull it off to get a second lover on the side. It didn’t happen AT ALL. I felt like an ogre; completely unattractive, a different species even.
And this infuriated me.
Here I was, trying to save our relationship, only to find out that apparently nobody wanted me.
This was a far more damaging experience for both of us, as well as to our relationship, than an affair could have ever been.
It’s one of the reason I applaud cheating: at least someone is able to do what I could not.
In the end of course, I understood that the reason me being the one with the affair didn’t work, was because I was monogamous. I wanted him to have an affair, do exciting things, and bring that energy back home to us.
But he didn’t do that.
At that time I didn’t know I was so monogamous by heart, and by nature; and neither did I realize that I needed a partner to be adventurous.
I was completely in the dark about my sexuality.
The only thing I got right about myself was that I was straight and had an std phobia.
Everything else I found out after we broke up, and I rebuilt my love life.
3. I need to be in love
I dated for eight years before I met Mr.Big.
And in those eight years I had sex with eleven men, usually in very short relationships. Sometimes we slept together only once or twice.
And it were painful years.
Either because I was deeply in love, so the sex was fabulous but I got hurt badly.
That happened four times:
With Nathan, the secret lover who broke my heart by dumping me the moment he became available.
Salvatore, who was the first man who had a clue what my sexual nature was. But he wasn’t in love with me, and basically left me hanging before I could attach myself.
Samuel, who had sex with me without telling me he had a girlfriend. He just got really angry saying it was all my fault, when I asked him for more than one night. It wasn’t until years later that I found out he had been cheating with me.
And the final one with Rutger.
With whom I was very much in love, but who didn’t want a long-distance relationship. He was not aggressive in ending it. He just let my attempts to stay in touch die out.
But it was painful none the less.
So those were the big dramas. The Big Four.
The others were the men with whom I wasn’t in love, or not that much in love.
But I had given up my long-term relationship in order to rebuild my sex-life, so I wasn’t going to limit myself.
It was as if I instinctively knew I had to stay in the game.
And I did, and those men were okay, some more than okay, and one was someone I still feel weird about.
Too bad.
In the end the eight years, were the eight years, and I came out wiser and more experienced. And that’s when I ran into Mr.Big.
But now I find myself wanting a second lover, and I realize those eight years held a lesson which impacts what I m about to do;
The lesson being that sex without being in love is simply no longer an option anymore.
I had already established that a big reason I was hesitant getting an affair, was because I am a monogamist. I was convinced it increased my pleasure to only share myself with one man, and that this explained why I was so slow getting this show on the road.
But I am seeing an entirely new pattern here.
That in my case being a monogamist, doesn’t root in only wanting to share myself with one man. My monogamy has been a side-effect from something else!
And it is the same reason I was so unsuccessful at getting my love life going, to save my relationship;
I only want sex with someone I am in love with.
That’s why I do not regret the four men who painfully broke my heart, and yet consider the other eight men “an experience”.
Something that happened in a certain phase of my life.
And although it was nice and special, and also challenging at times, I don’t want to repeat that. No more “experiences”!
I only want sex where my body and mind and soul are absolutely fricking begging for it.
No wonder I feel so much resistance getting a second lover.
No wonder I feel like warning, maybe even shaking up Mr.Big:
“Are you SURE this is your choice?”
And let’s say I’ve learned so much, that this time I can do, what I could not do within that final phase long term relationship;
Have another lover so that I become less demanding within my relationship.
Then obviously, we’re no longer talking about a hierarchy where I have a one and two.
And one is Mr.Big and I m in love with him.
And two is someone else, for whom I have less feelings.
That is not a thing.
I will never in my whole life have sex with somebody ever again, unless I am in love, AND – unlike those single years – I also need to know it’s not a one time thing.
I need to know this man wants an affair with me.
So if I pull all that off?
Then I will not “just” have a second lover, to keep me warm when Mr.Big is too busy too see me.
No.
We’re talking about a man with whom I would be crazy in love, have wonderful sex with, and share a deeply emotional connection.
In other words: we’re talking about a real threat to Mr.Big.
And ironically all that would still be the good scenario.
Because the worse that could happen to our relationship, is that just like all those years ago, I can’t pull it off.
And I don’t find him.
That I fuck it up now, just like I fucked it up twelve years ago.
By not even being capable, of getting another lover.

<3LSH
An unexamined life is not worth living

NEW connect on Linkedin

Love don’t live here anymore is the eighteenth chapter from Project M.
Want to know what happens next?
The subscribe button to this diary is somewhere on the right.
or follow Twitter ; or Facebook

tenth anniversary of the book that changed my life!

Summer 2008 I started writing in English.
Dutch American Diary
Just like now, I was in love with two men. And just like now, they were both taken.
And – yes, just like now – I had no idea where life would take me.
This 2008 diary became the only thing that offered stability during a time where I had just left my partner after fourteen years and the two new men were driving me crazy.
A book about starting over in your mid-thirties and reinventing yourself as a lover;
As a woman;
And as a vengeful fury from hell.