What Did I Do that was Wrong? 01

"And then I went into the living room, flopped down on the couch and turned on the TV. I have no idea what was on, but it didn't much matter. Leanne brought us coffee, and she tentatively sat down next to me, probably afraid I'd push her away.

"But I didn't, I just put my arm around her, and she sighed and put her head on my shoulder, and we sat there for a couple of hours watching inane TV, not talking at all.

"When we went up to bed it was the same. We snuggled up together the way we always do. Leanne started to kiss me, and slide her hand down my front towards my cock, as she sometimes does when she wants sex--but I just held her arm and shook my head. She looked into my eyes anxiously, but I managed to smile at her.

"So she turned over and spooned back into me, and amazingly enough we fell asleep. I was afraid I'd never sleep again, but I was out within minutes."

As Mark continued his story, I became more and more amazed at how strong his instinct for denial was. It seemed obvious to me, and presumably would have been obvious to anyone listening, that the next step would have been a long talk between him and Leanne--addressing both their feelings about what had happened, and trying to work out how to move forward.

But he resisted all of Leanne's attempts to start such a conversation, and behaved as though all he wanted was to "get back to normal". Starting the day after his return, Mark did everything he could to act as though nothing had happened. He was cheerful and affectionate, which must have been an enormous relief to Leanne, but he deflected every reference she made to the events of the previous day.

After a couple of days, it seems, she understood that "pretend it never happened" was what he wanted to do, and she went along with him. The trouble, of course, is that it didn't work. And the place that it most obviously didn't work was the bedroom.

Mark and Leanne had previously made reservations for the following weekend at a little inn in a lakeside town about an hour north of Chicago. They'd gone there several times before for romantic getaways, and always had a terrific time. They took walks along the lake, sunned themselves by the pool, and made love--a lot. Mark told me that their previous weekends there had been wall-to-wall sex, maybe six times or more in a 48-hour period.

But this time things didn't go according to plan. When Leanne approached Mark in bed the first night, he was initially reluctant, but then began to respond to her loving foreplay. But they hadn't been having intercourse for more than a few seconds before he lost his erection.

"I could feel it starting to happen, but there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. We were in the missionary position, and my mind was filled with images of Leanne and that guy in our back yard--how loving and affectionate it was. All I could think was, 'is she that loving with all her other men? How many guys does she make love with? Do I even make the Top Ten?'

"I knew it was ridiculous--I knew that Leanne loved and cherished me--but it didn't make any difference. My cock took a nose-dive. I could see Leanne was worried, because this had literally never happened to me before, but I didn't want to talk about it. Without a word, I slid down and started eating her out.

"It wasn't much fun for me, because of the pictures running through my head. And it maybe wasn't much fun for her, either, but she came after a few minutes--or pretended she did. And then we just cuddled, and went to sleep. She kept stroking my cheek with her hand, and kissing me, and saying 'I love you, baby'.

"And I knew she was really saying, 'don't worry, it's all right'. But it wasn't all right with me, needless to say."

They tried three more times during the weekend. Mark made sure they avoided the missionary position, and he did manage once to keep it up long enough, with Leanne on top in the cowgirl position, for them to reach orgasm, though it was a struggle for both of them. As the weekend went on Mark became more and more unhappy and withdrawn, and Leanne more and more alarmed. But he still wouldn't talk to her about what he was feeling.

Mark stopped speaking, and I waited, but it seemed as though he didn't want to say any more.

Finally I asked, "and what has been going on since then?"

He sighed. "More of the same. We pretend during the day that everything's normal--I know Leanne wants to talk to me about...that day, but I just can't face it.

"So we smile and give each other a good-bye kiss in the morning, and then at dinner we chat about this and that, summer plans, or how work is going.

"In bed is the worst. I keep having, you know, the same problem. Leanne is always really patient, loving--she'll use her mouth, which sometimes works for a while, but when we get to...to actually screwing, I almost always lose my erection. More and more often she doesn't even approach me--we just snuggle, and go to sleep.

"One night two weeks ago I had drifted off to sleep, and then in the middle of the night I woke up because I could hear Leanne sobbing. She'd turned away and buried her face in the pillow, but I could still hear her. I felt awful!

"Since then I've been sleeping in the guest room a lot. I'll stay up late, watching TV or something until she's gone to bed, and then just go into the guest room rather than our room. I hate doing it, but it's...it's too humiliating to be with Leanne and feel like such a complete failure."

"Do you think," I asked carefully, "that it might make sense to go ahead and have the conversation that Leanne wants? To talk about...that day?"

"And say what?" Mark's eyes were haunted. "That I saw her making love so tenderly, so affectionately with another man? That I couldn't believe she could be so loving with him? That it wasn't fucking at all--it was giving to him what she should only be giving to me?

"That I'm totally destroyed by it? That I don't know if I'll ever be able to trust her again, to believe her when she tells me our love is special, that I'm the only man she really loves?

"That I can't imagine ever having my self-confidence back--that I wonder if I'll EVER be able to make love to her the way I used to?

"Jesus, Tom, what's the point of getting into all that? How could saying those things possibly make anything better?" By now Mark was nearly shouting, and his hands tightly clenched the arms of his chair.

"At least she would know what you were feeling. And she would have the chance to respond to those feelings--to reassure you."

He snorted. "Right! 'Oh honey, it wasn't love-making, it just LOOKED that way! Never mind that I gave him deep, loving kisses and smiled at him and murmured in his ear just like I do with you--I didn't really mean it with him!' Do you think that would do any good?

"All it would do is confirm to her what a fucking wimp I am--that I'm not the man she thought she married."

"No," I said, "I think it would force her to understand that the arrangement she insisted on before you got married, which you told her you could accept, is no longer an arrangement you can live with."

He stared at me, his angry expression slowly turning to a more thoughtful one.

I continued, "have you thought about what you want for the future, Mark? For yourself, for your relationship with Leanne? Do you know what you want me to help you and Leanne work towards?"

"No, I don't know," he said, shaking his head slowly. "I've tried to think about it--God, I've spent hours trying to think about it, but my thoughts just go around and around without getting anywhere. I can't get past the pictures in my head....

"I know I love Leanne. That hasn't changed. I've never been as happy in my life as I've been with her. I don't want to give that up.

"But I also know I can't stand the situation we're in. I simply can't handle being one of her stable of fuck-buddies. Even if I'm the #1 fuck-buddy, whatever that means.

"And I don't know if I can.... For Christ's sakes, I don't know if I'll ever be able to be the man I used to be with her! How can I, with that image in my mind of her and that asshole in my back yard?

"And if I can't...."

He was silent for a full minute. Then he looked up at me. "If I can't, you know, be a man with her again--have a real sex life--then I just can't see us staying together. It would be a lifetime of hell, for both of us."

****************

The next time Mark came into my office there was a striking difference in his attitude. He walked in loose-jointedly, looking relaxed and at ease. Sitting in the chair, he let a kind of sheepish grin appear on his face. When I asked about it, he chuckled.

"Sorry, Tom, I was thinking about what happened to me at lunch today. I was in a diner on the South Side, just having a burger and a cup of coffee, on the way here from a job site, and the waitress tried to pick me up."

I looked interested and he continued.

"She couldn't have been more than 22 or so! A cute blonde, kind of slim but with a nice figure. She was very attentive, you know? 'How's that hamburger? Can I get you anything else? More coffee? The cherry pie is great today, would you like a piece?'

"And she had a way of bending over just a little further than necessary, letting me see down the top of her blouse.

"I just kept smiling, enjoying the treatment. Then when she brought the check, she gave me an extra-big smile and a wink. When I picked it up there was a business card from the restaurant underneath--on the back she had written, 'I get off at 6 pm and I'm free most nights--Love, Liz,' and left a phone number."

"Are you tempted to do something about it?"

He shook his head. "Not seriously. I mean, she was cute and I'm sure it would be fun to hop in bed with her, but...certainly not while I'm still married to Leanne." He looked sober and thoughtful.

"Okay, but can you imagine doing it? What do you think would happen?"

His response, interestingly, was a very confident one. He described calling Liz, taking her to dinner, then to bed. "From the way she acted in the restaurant she'd be really eager, very into the sex. I imagine we'd do it 3-4 times, spending most of the night at it. I can just see her, squealing and grabbing onto me as she comes. Jesus, thinking about it is getting me going a little!"

"Does this happen to you a lot?" I asked. "I mean, women trying to pick you up like that."

"Actually, it does," he said, looking a little embarrassed. "Not when I'm with Leanne, of course, but quite a bit when I'm by myself, or even occasionally with some of the guys from work."

With a mixture of pride and embarrassment, Mark went on to tell me a number of similar stories. From the sound of it, he was the recipient of female attention nearly every place he went--grocery stores, bars, restaurants, occasionally in the subway.

"Back in my single days, I was more than ready to take some of these women up on it. I remember a time when two girls from Northwestern started chatting me up on the "L". We ended up going back to their apartment and fucking pretty much nonstop from Friday night until Sunday afternoon.

"Turned out they did this from time to time--they were bi, and they really enjoyed sharing a guy. When they'd worn me out temporarily, they'd do a 69 on each other for a while, and that got me hard again in a hurry."

As Mark shared a number of his adventures with me, his tone of voice and his body language conveyed a relaxed, confident side of him that I hadn't seen much of before. Toward the end of the session he started to slow down and I said, "what comes to mind, Mark, when you think about the stories you've been telling me today?"

After a moment he said, "I guess I feel embarrassed now--like I was being some big show-off, trying to impress you with all the babes I've fucked. Trying to convince you I was some kind of stud."

"Convince me, or remind yourself?" I asked.

"I don't...well, maybe some of both."

"The thing that strikes me, Mark, is that you told those stories without bragging, in a rather matter-of-fact way. I think you were remembering that for an awful lot of your adult life, you've not only been attractive to women but a good lover of women, someone who satisfied them and gave them a lot of pleasure.

"Now--why might you be feeling the need to remind yourself of that right now?"

"Pretty obvious question, doc!" he replied sarcastically. "Because since I saw Leanne with...that guy, I've been feeling like a sexual failure."

"But your stories paint quite a convincing picture that you're not a failure at all, don't they?"

He nodded, slowly. "Yes, I guess they do. I guess...in a way I was kind of giving myself a pep talk, wasn't I?"

I nodded. "And it's quite understandable that you would be feeling the need for one, in light of what you're struggling with.

"But the facts are clear, Mark. You are a very attractive guy--one who has no trouble getting together with women, and one who makes them happy in bed. Including Leanne, from everything you've told me.

"Now we have to stop in a minute. But I want you to think about the point we've just arrived at. What you saw that day in your back yard was a blow to your sense of manhood--it would be hard for virtually any husband to take.

"But it wasn't a fatal blow. The story you told me earlier, imagining a night with Liz from the restaurant, was one in which you were a confident, successful lover, one who excited and pleased your partner.

"That is who you still are, Mark, who you still know yourself to be."

He looked at me intently, nodding his head slightly. "I believe that, actually--to my surprise I believe it.

"The only question is, can I still be that guy with Leanne? Or am I going to have to find someone else to rediscover that confidence with?"

And before I could respond he had risen and headed for the door, saying only, "thanks, Tom," as he left.