20 - A Heart Divided

This story contains characters over age 18

Chapter 20 A Heart Divided

I wish I could say that it ended here, with these things decided, with all that I know, but I really didn't try very hard. Feeling a little snubbed by my Dom who suddenly didn't seem to have much time for me and little desire to ever contact me, I found love in the most unlooked for place.

I have only known real love with my husband. I have also known infatuation and lust. This was something in between. I'm very quick to fall "in love." I think most people enjoy the beginning parts of relationships, where it's all sex and talking and that in-love feeling. Compartmentalized the way I was, it was very easy for me to have my long-term, successful, happy marriage on one hand and dish out other parts of my heart wherever I wished.

So I fell in love with someone I knew. So much like myself, very sweet and quiet, and I liked to make him smile. He had a voice that sang to my soul, a lover's touch, an artist's vision, and beautiful gray-green eyes. He was an introvert, but not a sociopath. He was something new to me.

I wanted to spend every moment with him. I wanted to do things with him that I had never wanted to do with my usual targets, like sleeping and hanging out, talking and making him laugh. I needed to see him every day. I thought about him all the time when we were apart. I knew my feelings were skirting a dangerous line, but that just meant I had to be more vigilant and not get caught.

We texted each other constantly, in communication almost all day, every day. I saw him just about every day after work, just hanging out. I watched sporting events with him, and even went to a few games. I enjoyed being with him, in bed and out. We shared several interests, among them sports, tattoos, and rock music. Some mornings, I would get up and go to his place just to sleep for a few more hours wrapped in his arms before going to work. I loved smelling his cologne on me throughout the day. I had enough time after work and a flexible enough schedule that I would just work later on those days.

I was hooked on him. I wanted to be a part of his life, meet his friends, but I wasn't sure if he was telling people about me, or what he was telling them about me. I assumed he had at least one confidant, someone who knew everything, as I had. Did he want that person to meet me, or did he want me as far from them as possible, ashamed of being with someone like me? I didn't know if he didn't want to be in public with me, or just assumed I didn't want to be in public with him. I had no way to find out these things except wait, and I am not a patient person.

I could see this being a wonderful thing, lasting a long time, but I worried that someday he would want more than I could give him. I didn't worry about losing myself — I knew where I was in my marriage — but I worried about him falling in love with me. Because I couldn't give him more, I would lose him. I knew it, and I knew it would hurt us both.

Even knowing it would break my heart a little when it ended, I threw myself into it, determined to get as much out of it as I could before it inevitably fell apart. Everything ends somehow. All love is beautiful, and I refuse to reject it just because it will hurt in the end.

I wondered if I should warn him. I'd seen it happen before, but he'd never been married; I doubted he'd known real love and might think this was it. And for him, it might even be, but that would only make it that much worse in the end. It might not have to end, at least not for a very long time. But you can't tell someone not to fall in love with you. Because I knew people and relationships, I could avoid the pitfalls, but I couldn't always help other people to do the same.

Even believing I was secure in my marriage, I did wonder whether this was someone I could see myself being with permanently. I would never leave my husband voluntarily — I still believed in "for better or worse" — and I would never engage in another exclusive relationship, but if my husband found out, I needed to decide if this was someone I could turn to. The answer had always been 'no' before. This time, I wasn't so sure.

As with all things, only time will tell. Eventually, I felt him distancing himself from me. He had inevitably figured out that he wanted more than I could give him. We continued to have fun, but the emotional connection was virtually gone.

It made me question a lot of things in my life. Chief among these questions was how could I truly love my husband and continue to do these things? I have asked this question many times throughout my life, and even this book, and as yet, I have no answer. I only know that I do. Love is something you know; you feel it in your bones.

I know I'm not the only individual who believes you can love more than one person. You can have different kinds of love for the different people in your family, all unconditional. Is this really so much different?

Monogamy is like saying there's only one flavor of ice cream for you. You get different things from different relationships. I can't even buy the same flavor or brand of coffee every month. It's not as simple as desire for the unknown; it's that I know there are other good things out there. And for me, although a sexual relationship is significantly more pleasurable than ice cream, I am generally attached to it with about the same emotional response.

It made me wish I was in a position to change society's view on relationship rules. My husband was opposed to multiple relationships because he'd never experienced loving more than one person in the same way, and society is structured to enforce the opinion that it is wrong to do so. Other people are hurt by it, and that influences a predisposition to feel like you should be hurt by it when it happens to you. Not everyone is a robot like me; some people are truly hurt by things like that, but I believe others on the emotional scale would not be, were they not influenced by this predisposition.

But these relationships must be entered into willingly on all parts. None of the parties should be married, for relationship equality and legality purposes. And there should be no children involved. I do not necessarily believe children should be sheltered from reality; they should be given the information with an open mind to help change this societally influenced predisposition, but I do believe young children cannot process the implications of polyamorous relationships.

I unfortunately was in direct contravention of these ideals, and could not change my particular set of circumstances, nor could I make my husband understand any of this.

I decided I could go about it in another way, at least partially. I have read my share of fantasy fiction novels. Many of them are set in different worlds, based on different societies, often extolling moral codes and traditions that would be considered taboo in real life. I decided I could write one such novel, or even a series of novels, delineating my particular desired world and exploring the implications safely in a written world.

It may not change anyone's mindset, but it might be good for people to read about things they didn't fully understand before, opening their minds and broadening their horizons. Of course, since I do not live a true, uninhibited polyamorous lifestyle, my opinion is influenced by my own unique set of challenges, but I decided I could appeal to a larger audience by simply describing my ideal society without all the pitfalls I've experienced in this modern American society.

Unfortunately, allowing myself that little bit of an emotional connection cracked a window in my mind that may have left me open to a different kind of danger. It is impossible to say how it impacted what happened next.

I fell in love. No, those words don't do it justice. I fell headfirst into an earth-shattering, soul-consuming, raging tempest of passionate love that burned with the fire of a million suns. I'd never known anything like it. He combined all the wonderful traits of my past loves with attributes I had dreamed of but never thought I'd find. He was my dream, the mysterious figure in the dark, lonely nights. He was my equal and opposite, my forever and always. He was the only one for me now, which put me in a very difficult position considering my previous commitments. Even though he lived on the other side of the earth, I would have forsaken everything I knew, given up everything I had, to be with him. With him, I could be who I truly was. I could be better than I was, and he made me want to be better. Then again, maybe one simple sentence has more meaning than an entire page: I love him.

My life would be amazing. All I had to do was sacrifice my commitments and the happiness of my entire family. I couldn't do it. I wondered how other people had done it. It felt wrong, more wrong than any of my other choices. It was a daily torture, and I am forced to admit that the emotionally masochistic part of me cherished that terrible cacophony of pain caused by my situation. It was like a constant self-flagellation. If I was such a terrible person, to willingly bring this potential for pain to my family, then the very least I could do was hurt for it.

My choices were clear: break one relationship or hide my desires. In hiding my desires, I could attempt to hide them from myself and be monogamous, or I could simply continue hiding them from my husband and continuing this path of fulfillment on the side. Either way, if I chose to hide my desires, I would likely go mad eventually. Would that be any healthier for my family?

I wondered if it would be kinder to let my husband go. I almost wanted to. It wasn't that I didn't love him, didn't want to be with him for the rest of my life. It was simply that I didn't desire it wholeheartedly. I didn't love him in the way he expected of me, the way he needed. But it would hurt. It would hurt him, me, and my daughter. I wasn't afraid of pain for myself, but I didn't want to damage anyone else. It would take so long for us all to heal from a break like this. I couldn't do it.