Nora - Embracing an Erotic Life Ch. 00 - Intro

Nora and I have recently celebrated our fifth anniversary. More than a year ago we began to speak frankly about how our sexual energy and satisfaction had diminished and about potential ways to revive it. The chapters in "Nora's Journey: Embracing an Erotic Life"" describe our experiences in doing so. More of the emphasis is on Nora than on myself, though I have been a partner in most of this since our marriage.

The first six chapters describe what Nora refers to as "significant episodes and relationships" in the evolution of her sexual life up to our meeting six years ago when she was 24 and I was 29. To recall them she drew heavily on diaries she has kept since she was eighteen and on other notes describing some particularly "meaningful" (her word) sexual experiences before we met.

Chapters seven to thirteen describe our erotic life together as a married couple, including Nora's sexual experiences, all but one in the past year, with other men with my approval and sometime with my participation.

Nora began to reveal her "before we met" experiences to me only recently though I had long asked her to tell me about her erotic life before we met. She told me she had been reserved until now for several reasons.

"James, I have been reluctant to describe my prior sexual experiences because our relationship has been so close and so untroubled; I could not see what would be gained by revealing earlier passions with other partners. Plus, some of my earlier experiences I find embarrassing, even frightening. I have felt this is an area of my life I own and really isn't any of your business, James. I have not asked you to reveal your earlier sexual life to me."

Then, one evening only a few days later, as we sat over drinks after dinner, Nora surprised me by saying she was prepared to respond to my request. "James, I have decided I will share with you what I recall about at least a few of my sexual experiences before we met. After thinking hard about this I believe I need to do this now and it will be helpful to both of us if I do. I hope both of us will find this arousing, the telling and the listening. I hope you will record what I tell you."

She told me later the main catalyst for her finally sharing "selected significant" events from her sexual history was our mutual need to better understand our sexual attitudes and hopes and needs as we were consider our future together, sexual and otherwise. She decided her past might indicate to me more about what the future might bring.

The particular timing, I am sure, had much to do with deciding whether she wanted to begin a sexual relationship with Adrian Benton (see chapter eight and beyond) and, if so, would I approve her decision and what this would mean to our marriage. I believe she wanted me to understand she had engaged in highly erotic, sometimes extreme, sexual activities before we met and for me not to be surprised if she wanted something like that again.

Following the chapters based on her "before we met" revelations, I have included my perspective on the first time, so far as I am aware, Nora had sex with another man since she became my wife. This coupling (chapter seven) came about largely through my own instigation and my miscalculation of the latent desires of Nora and my best friend, Andrew.

Most of the recent chapters describe our sexual lives as a successful young Chicago husband and wife and our relationship, especially Nora's, with an older man, Adrian Benton, with whom she is having an affair--with my support. Some of these episodes involve Adrian directly with Nora, often with me present; others he suggests to us and sometimes arranges them for us.

A final chapter in this series describes Nora's new relationship with a Denver lawyer, a man I introduced her to and recommended as a sexual partner.

Gradually Nora and I have become more confident and creative as we have begun to seize opportunities to satisfy our, and particularly Nora's, growing hunger for new erotic excitement.

If readers enjoy this series, more Nora stories will be forthcoming.

A PREVIEW OF WHAT WAS TO COME

One evening a few months ago while we were having an after dinner drink Nora looked at me and said she had something on her mind she felt she needed to tell me about even if it might upset both of us. This was before we met with Adrian Benton for the first time and before she began to tell me about her sexual experiences before we met. I told Nora I would listen closely to whatever she wanted to share. And so she began to talk, and she kept talking and for a while I did not interrupt her.

"James, I have been noticing, more and more frequently, men looking at me, looking hard; sometimes they can't seem to take their eyes off me. This happens during my work at the firm and in other places: in shops, at gallery openings, walking down the street. James, what I need to tell you is I find myself liking these looks and wanting more of them. And I want to look back and sometimes I do. This is new to me. Somehow I don't fully understand, or maybe can't admit to myself, I am provoking these looks or encouraging them. I don't know. Several times a man who has noticed me looking back at him has come up to me to start a conversation. Usually I have not turned away, James. I even told one of them I knew he was undressing me with his eyes. He admitted it was so and he said he had liked what he saw. He asked me if I enjoyed him seeing me naked in his mind.

"James, I did like like that and I wanted to tell him so--but I did not. It frightened me that I wanted to say to him I welcomed his looks and was excited to know what he imagined. I have wondered what might have happened if I had told him I liked him picturing me. James, I have fantasized about flirting with him, teasing him, and then leaving with him, a man I had just met. This shocks me--and it must surprise you even more."

"Nora, what do you imagine happening if you had left with that man, or maybe with some other man who you realized has watched you with hunger? That's what you have seen in their eyes, isn't it?"

"I have imagined all sorts of things. I won't be specific but I don't want to keep my feelings a secret from you James. During several of my fantasies about these situations I have touched myself and given myself a nice orgasm with my fingers. And one of the reasons I tell you this is because you know several of the men who I have noticed watching me and I have brought myself off by imagining letting several of them fuck me. I have enjoyed thinking about being with several of those men you know, James. And I have fantasized you knowing about my desires for them and encouraging me to seduce them and have sex with them while you watch, James. I don't want to keep this from you. We need to talk about it and what it means for both of us."

Nora shared these revelations with me only days before our first meeting with Adrian Benton; when he mad plain during that meeting made his desire for an affair with her, I concluded immediately he almost certainly was one of the men Nora had seen watching her intently; perhaps he was already a man she had responded to and flirted with. Maybe she had fucked him in her imagination, even before he proposed such a relationship in our meeting with him. It seemed that her recent fantasies about sexual desire, both her own and men who lusted for her, were about to become part of our new reality.