Fighting temptation

I took a couple entries down because something happened that made me think the person who was the subject of one of them might have found this blog. The details would have made it unmistakable that it was written by me, about him. It turned out to be a false alarm, but I hesitate to re-post either of those entries.

If, however, you happen to have read the entry called "dancing," about an old friend who was never really my boyfriend and never really not my boyfriend and some of the interactions we've had via e-mail recently, then you may recognize this blog as something of a continuation of that story.

The twist is that I'll be seeing him before this coming summer is over. And my husband won't be there. And it has become increasingly clear that our feelings regarding each other are complicated at best. If I had two lifetimes to live, I'd spend one with him, assuming he could overcome the cowardice regarding relationships to which he freely admits and be able to spend it with me. In a way, I am relieved that he remains a coward. That makes any serious questions about my future a moot point.

I love my husband. I am very glad to be sure that I won't be faced with a decision that I wouldn't want to find difficult but might. I only have one lifetime, after all, and I made my decision, but it's true, too, that the men concerned had something to say about that decision. I was wildly in love with the man I married--but it is also true that I married the man who wasn't afraid to be with me. How things would have been if neither man had been afraid, I don't know. I know I made the right decision. I know my husband and I are right for each other. I know this other man and I are not. I am sure I made the right decision.

Absolutely sure.

But I am not sure it's the decision I would have made had things been different.

I've been talking with my old friend on the phone and exchanging e-mails with him, as I do with all my friends, as we have for years (though we fell out of touch for a while). As I said, it's clear that his feelings regarding me are complicated. And realizing that has complicated the hell out of mine. It was simple: We were friends. Might-have-beens were irrelevant. I had no reason to think he regretted his decision, and I didn't regret mine.

And I still don't. But my husband has been sick for a very long time. I literally cannot remember the last time we had sex. It's been more than five years. And I've been faithful that whole time. His medical problems are, I hope, finally all diagnosed, and I see a substantial improvement for the first time in years. But he's not there yet, and we're not having sex yet, and over the years, he has been so tired and so unable to take care of things that our relationship has changed: Despite the fact that we both always wanted an equal partnership, I've been responsible for almost everything for what seems like decades (or perhaps centuries) now. I've ended up building a social life for myself which is more or less separate from him, because his health problems haven't really left him inclined to be social or up to doing so much. I make the decisions about the household, though we talk them over and, nominally, they're joint decisions. The awful truth is that he has been too tired to do more than agree with whatever I suggest. This has changed the whole dynamic of our relationship.

I feel more sexual than ever.

Our relationship has become completely desexualized. We both need to learn new ways - or perhaps relearn old ways - of being with one another, of relating. I do not want to be "the boss." I want to be his partner. I do not have sexual feelings toward someone who needs me to be the boss or the caretaker. Being a caretaker does not feel sexy. Being taken care of by a caretaker does not, I know, feel sexy, either.

My husband says that, since he's started on this new treatment, he wants to just "grab" me. While that is theoretically refreshing to hear, the fact is that it doesn't sound even a little appealing as something that might happen all of a sudden, out of the blue. I have felt too completely unattractive, too utterly rejected, too thoroughly undesirable for too many years to be ready to just fall into bed with the man whose treatment of me has led to my feeling that way.

And while he has been sick, with two diagnosed illnesses, he has flatly refused to consider the possibility that anything was physically or hormonally wrong with him when it came to sex, so he refused to be tested. Finally, I really pushed the issue, after doing quite a bit of research, and his testosterone level was shockingly low. A friend who is up on such things told me "That's like an 8-year-old girl's level" when I told him the number. So, for years, he's insisted that he is attracted to me and yet behaved as if I were not attractive at all, while suffering from a tremendously reduced libido. He once told me, when he was angry and upset and at his worst health-wise, that the problem was that I wasn't attractive enough. He has said other hurtful things over the years and been quite rejecting. I haven't felt attractive to men in years, until fairly recently.

I want to be able to have sex with my husband. I think about sex as often as teenage boys are reputed to. But we have a lot of work to do on our relationship before things will be okay sexually--and it will be at least another month before his testosterone levels are normal, and that's if the double dose works.

So this really wasn't the best time for me to learn that the only other man I ever thought for a moment about marrying has feelings for me.

I don't think I need to worry that he will fail to respect my marriage vows, unless he has reason to think that that would be okay with me. But he is not a fool, either, and he knows me as well as I know him. If I can tell, based on what he's said, that he has feelings for me, he can tell that I have feelings for him.

The fact that we both know those feelings are going to lead nowhere serious is a good thing. But it is an entirely different good thing than, say, knowing they won't lead to a brief affair.

The reason I will be seeing him is simple: In order to make the changes we need to make in how we treat each other, my husband and I need some time apart. We need to be in contact, but not over those quotidian things that clutter up relationships and bog things down and reinforce habits of mind and speech that need to be broken. My husband needs to learn how to take care of himself again. I need him to learn that, but for himself as much as for our relationship, he needs that. And that won't happen while I'm here.

I would like to be gone for longer, but we can't manage that. I will be gone for about three weeks, though, for two of which, I'll be visiting the city where we used to live, where I have many friends and where my husband's family lives. I went to college there and lived there for almost a decade of my adult life. It's where I met my husband. And it's where my old friend lives.

I really don't have anywhere else to go for that long, and I also really need to be with my old friends in general, with people to whom I'm just me, regarding whom I have no responsibilities, who don't want anything from me except just to be me.

But it's where my specific old friend lives. The one who will always be a loving friend but who is also a man with feelings for me who, despite everything (see above) has seen me within the past few years and still finds me attractive. And God help me, I'd find him attractive no matter how he looked (though I am assured by other friends that, except for being grey at the temples, he hasn't changed much and that he is "as handsome as ever").

I decided many years ago that I am not, under any circumstances, going to have an affair with anyone, ever. I also decided, then and again recently, that that includes not having an affair with him.

Oh, let's be honest. There was never anyone else in the running.

And I am determined not to have an affair. But I find myself thinking that I can't have a second life, but I could have two weeks outside of time, two weeks that no one need ever know about. I am ethical and honest all the time, but that is because that's what I choose, not because it's all I can be. I am truly the most honest, forthright person I know most of the time. I tell my husband everything--but I haven't told him about this blog. It's my place for working through my feelings (it being *my* place is one reason I am writing such a long entry; I need to work through these things whether anyone else sticks it out to the end or not). And I don't feel the slightest twinge of guilt about not telling him.

Normally, I would. Normally, I would feel guilty about not telling him I'd stopped at McDonald's without him, irrelvant as that is. Indeed, right now (not just normally, then, but always), I would feel guilty about not telling him I'd stopped at McDonald's without him.

But I do not feel guilty about this blog, because it's something I'm doing for me, something I need to do for me, and something that is really none of his business. I think he would be uneasy if he knew I had an anonymous blog that I used for working through issues like these. I think he would be very uneasy if he even knew I had some of these issues. And so I suppose that, in theory, it's my duty to tell him about this blog.

I am certainly not going to do that, though. Nor am I going to feel guilty about not doing it. I am not saying that I didn't have a stab of paralyzing fear the other night when I was on my way home and was suddenly unsure if I'd left this blog visible--but fear of getting caught is entirely different from guilt. The lesson I took away from that was to be more careful, not to get rid this blog.

He and I have been around and around about honesty, because he was raised in a family in which lying was the norm. And when he lies to me or even just keeps things from me, it changes his behavior in fundamental ways. I know that something is wrong. And things are never right between us until he tells me the truth. And he has learned that over time. He doesn't lie to me any more.

But I know that, unlike him, if I made the decision to lie, I would do so without letting affect anything in our relationship or in my thinking or behavior. I really very seldom do anything wrong, and when I do, it's almost never a conscious decision to do so. I feel lousy about any little thing that I do do wrong. But on the very rare, very few, occasions in my life that I've chosen to do something completely uncharacteristic and completely in opposition to my normal ideas about right and wrong, I have also made the decision that, having made an exception, it will be an exception, and it won't change the rest of my life. I very rarely compartmentalize, because I basically see everything as being connected, but when I do, I am very good at it.

I don't think it has ever occurred to my husband that someone who tells the truth more than anyone else he's ever known could also be a very good liar. I'm not a liar, because I'm not proud of that part of myself, because that's not who I want to be. I am scrupulously honest because I have seriosu scruples about being anything other than honest. I don't like who I am when I lie with ease or frequency, so I don't lie to people I care about. (I do not, however, count lying to phone solicitors, nosey strangers, idiots who ask how they look in "these jeans" and just want to be lied to, and people who think lying is the lubrication that keeps the social world going round--"I'm sorry we were late, but the traffic was awful" is preferred to "I'm sorry we're late, but we lost track of time and didn't get ready on time.")

So, yes, I've been having thoughts that I could have an affair without actually affecting my marriage, without getting caught, and without ever hurting my husband. And no, I don't like the fact that I've been having those thoughts.

I am reduced to reminding myself that it was my old friend's need to confide in "just one person" that resulted in anyone knowing we slept together even once. And then, of course, I remember that no one ever knew we slept together more than once, and it went on for years.

I also remind myself that, even if I could convince myself that "what my husband doesn't know won't hurt him," in complete contradiction to everything I believe, having this affair would break my heart. Of the three people involved, if my husband weren't hurt, he might be the only one.

And yet...

And yet.

We never really got any closure. I think we've finally said goodbye, more or less, or at least started to. But I think we need to finish that process, to really say goodbye--and naturally, the idea that this could be a way to say goodbye is awfully seductive.

But it's not true. This would be a way to become closer to this man, to strengthen the romantic bond between us and undermine our friendship. I know that. In the end, it would hurt tremendously. I know that, too. Part of the problem, of course, is that I want to be closer to him. I am fighting that temptation.

I want things to be right with my husband. I know they will never be right with my old friend as anything but an old friend. I value my marriage, and I value the friendship I have with my old friend. I don't want to ruin either.

But I am tempted.