How the big day went for me

Tonight was expected to be R.'s first night of making love to S -- the woman he met and spent the weekend with while I was in India visiting my sick mother in law. It's impossible for me to know if they actually did make love ... except for the feelings that swept over me in the night. It's hard to say if they were feelings of him or a release from pain sent from God. During the times we were away from one another -- both before he came to F. to live and when he was only five minutes away, I often literally felt his pain, his sadness, his loneliness and I would feel a lightness when he was at peace.

It will be hard to describe the feelings ... but they began with my own pain, throughout the day. I was sitting in McDonald's and thought of the beauty of what they would share, imagined it. I also truly felt the hurt that I had toward R. for pursuing this relationship before we had ended ours and started to cry. I went to Sam's Club after that and just felt almost dead. I was walking around in a daze, with voices roaring in my head -- I can't do this -- it wasn't that I couldn't think of them together, more that I just didn't feel like I could do anything but curl up and die. I felt miserable. I came home and posted a note to my online support group -- a big pity party -- but it offered no relief. I tried to pray in the car on the way home, but I couldn't seem to connect much. So then I went for the next best form of relief ... my sexual addiction. I found a website I love to chat on and wasted the afternoon talking to horny men and women. It was amazing how much lighter I felt ... just releasing something from myself.

After that I was able to get up and wash the dishes, take a shower, cook dinner and be productive. I noticed at one point though my body felt a surge of something good, but hard to explain other than it felt like the feeling of being embraced and kissed and happy. I wasn't near a clock at that time ... but a bit later I looked at one and realized that most likely I had felt that about the time R&S began their evening together. It didn't make me cry or feel sad. I just went on about my business. In fact, now that I think of it, I remember a time in the afternoon when I thought of S., a woman I don't know, and thought how excited she must be ... thinking of the weekend and the evening with this kind and loving man. So there were feelings of lightness.

In fact, when my husband came home, I was there to greet him, opening the door and welcoming him home. I have been so irritated with him, irritable to the point of unmanageability and controlling, so it felt good to at least to actually want to open the door. We had a few moments in the night, where I was snappy -- but I would say that overall I was able to feel, for the first time, some affection for him. We enjoyed a long talk in the evening. Our lives are a bit chaotic right now ... and we talked through things without me trying to direct, control or feel judged and fearful. In other words, we had a person to person conversation.

I had asked him if he wanted to see a movie, but we had dinner to late to go ... so we talked instead. That was fine with me ... I just wanted to push away any thoughts of what might be happening with R&S -- and do it with things I enjoyed. As it got later, but not really even late enough to go to bed, I began to desire sleep. I slept lightly on the couch for a while before going to bed around 10. I remember taking my meds and thinking ... please just knock me out cold.

But they didn't.

Instead I lay in the bed, next to my husband, scooting my body close to his like I used to do with R. -- just needing to feel the touch. Even though I didn't get the same response from him that I would get from R. ... the touch felt good, the skin to skin connection. But then I rolled over, and the thoughts of them flooded my mind. I wondered if she cried the first time he entered her, the way that I had, because it was the first time I ever felt that a man truly was making love to me as a person. I could imagine -- no, more like feel -- the rhythm of their bodies, not in a naughty way of imagining two people having sex -- just relishing in the experience of a beautiful scene. And at some point my body began to tingle all over and it was as if a flock of butterflies or birds were flittering all over my body, covering my body with feelings of the tips of their wings all over me. I felt engulfed by the experience. It lasted for what felt like a long time ... and the emotions surrounding it were both elating and relieving. Again, it's hard to describe, and hard to know what it all meant, but once it was over I felt comfort, and soon fell asleep.

Now I am awake again. I woke up and my first thought was of them laying together in the night ... feeling the feelings I had felt, his body close, so close. I felt a mixture of sadness and sweetness. I thought of how I had told R. I didn't want to hear the details of their sexual encounters and realizing I didn't need to hear them, I could imagine them and feel them just fine without his descriptions. I wondered again if she had cried. Making love to R. is a beautiful experience ... I couldn't help but wonder how she must have felt, and I felt a kinship with her, an affection of sorts. I turned over and looked at my sleeping husband, touched him and felt an affection for him as well, something I haven't felt in ages.

And now I sit here in the night, writing these thoughts ... wondering what I'll think of them as the days pass by. At least I will remember them.