Late this evening, I got an e-mail from D. It seems all my worrying was for nothing; she had just been really slammed all day at work, and hadn't had a chance even to sit down at a keyboard long enough to drop me a quick note. No, I hadn't crossed any invisible lines; yes, everything was fine. All the passion and exuberance that I have been hearing in her e-mails for the past couple weeks was there in spades.
I had been pondering whether I should post some or all of this last exchange, but I don't think there's any special need. I've pretty much summed it up in the preceding paragraph. I just thought I should say something, since in my post earlier today I had expressed a measure of worry. There was one interesting point, however. In my e-mail to D last night, I had mentioned incidentally that I have a business trip coming up in a couple of weeks. It will be taking me for three days to a city that is a long ways away from where D lives, but that is at any rate in the same time zone (which my home city is not). It was a throw-away remark, in amongst a lot of other stuff, but D obviously spotted it.
And it appears that I have a date ....
Wish me well.
.
It's funny how an unanswered email can turn into worry of a perceived slight.
ReplyDeleteI'm wishing you luck on your date.
Here's to hoping you will have a pleasant interlude (talking, dinner, whatever) with her.
ReplyDeleteBest of luck!
xo
Christa
i wish you well
ReplyDeleteThanks very much, all of you.
ReplyDeleteI should add, Christa, that she'll be travelling some 700 miles; so I think this is more than dinner ....
I am going to ask a personal nosy question which you may feel free to ignore.
ReplyDeleteYour marriage has persisted despite your wife's affairs (and I think the word affair is appropriate since while you know you have made reasonably clear that you do not really want an open marriage). In embarking on an affair yourself (since it seems from your posts that your wife does not know about D, are you thinking of it in terms of ending the marriage?
Like I said, none of my business really, but it leaped immediately to mind.
Enjoy your trip in any case.
Chatelet -- No, I am not thinking of it in those terms. I'm not sure I can explain all my thoughts in the space of a comment ... in fact, I'm not sure I even know all my thoughts yet. I suspect I should figure out how to put them in order, and then make a post out of them. (Someone else asked me, in private e-mail, if I was really sure I was ready for this. They are all fair questions, and it will take a little while before I can give clear, coherent, meaningful answers to them.)
ReplyDeleteBut it is too simple to say that I "don't really want an open marriage." As an ideal to aspire towards, sure I would agree. But if I believed that an affair was automatically the end of the marriage, I would have been gone back in 1986. And what I "want" is so far removed from any practical reality these days that it is almost a moot point.
The thing is that D knows I'm not looking to end my marriage. She is also Wife's friend, so she doesn't want to injure Wife. And she herself is married. That being said, Wife and I have no sex life at all right now, and Wife has told D repeatedly that she just wishes I would go have an affair somewhere so that she wouldn't feel guilty about never fucking me. (I don't believe she knows anything about D and me; I think her remarks are more in the spirit of talking one friend to another.) By themselves, those remarks of mine sound a lot like excuses. Maybe they are, but I hope not.
I'm going to have to think about this some more and then post the results when I have figured it out.
That makes sense Hosea, thank you. Looking forward to your further reflections.
ReplyDeleteEnjoy the trip.