Really Opening Up The Vein in The Secret Writings of Eros: Book 3- Fallout, Pain, Acceptance, and Perseverance

I will admit, when I originally started THIS journal, it was a supplemental place for the journal I had been keeping for YEARS. I had originally returned to Open Diary to crowd source a single question: Is it ever okay to get a divorce if your needs are being ignored or put down? Looking back on it, that seems pathetic and small but welcome to brainwashing! I had attended 9 “How To Be A Christian Husband” Seminars (Each no less than 3 days and 2 nights) by the time I hit fucking puberty… I had “Never get divorced, wanting a physical relationship is a sin, if sacrificing everything for your spouse isn’t leading to a happy marriage- you aren’t working hard enough!” swimming in my head on God Damned repeat!
Well, Open Diary collapsed in on itself and we migrated here. I didn’t do a great job of keeping my OD stats straight. The OD stuff I wrote in High School and College is all gone. And my primary Prosebox journal dates back to 2014… but that is the year I got my Juris Doctorate, so I know I wrote prior to that. But this space didn’t exist until 2019 or 2020.

This space was intended to be the place where I wrote my sexy entries, my kinky entries, my more explicit entries. Whether I was living la vida loca post divorce or just wrestling with finally being able to explore some kink and sexually repressed desires… I wanted a place to express it that wasn’t as directly connected with the place of the years of “Am I evil if I leave my marriage because my wife hasn’t touched me in 4 years? Am I a terrible person to leave a woman that doesn’t say ‘I love you?’” So I created this space.
BECAUSE my life has gone the way it has… this space has not enjoyed the academic musings of someone investigating and exploring the Kink Community. Nor has it been a place to revel in the world of the flesh after so long without.
Ultimately, it has been a place for emotions, confessions, and entries I feel are either too “evil” or I am too “ashamed of” to put in my primary location.

In some respects, consider this the Two Face Diary to my regular Harvey Dent space.

And that is why I come here tonight. To write somethings that I consider evil, or shameful, or the worst of me.

It’s funny. I had a therapist of one kind of another from 2017 through early/mid 2022. Granted, I had SEVERAL as so damned many quit on me. But I had consistent therapy for five years. Originally, the therapists were saying, “Okay. You’ve done 100% of the heavy lifting in this marriage which has created some resentment. Your wife has reacted to every request for reciprocity by responding with explosive defensiveness, blaming you for the marriage failing, and the silent treatment. Thus making you feel worse and trying even harder to do more than 100% of the heavy lifting in this marriage. What happens if we say you’re not allowed to do ANY of the heavy lifting? What if we just see how much she’s willing to do when you’re not there to fill in the gaps?” And within 1 year, we were separated. With her explicitly saying, “I don’t see any reason to change anything.” Yeah. After a decade of your husband asking for attention, some matched energy, some return affection… after months of multiple therapists saying, “Your marriage and way of life is on the line”… still - seeing no reason why things needed to be any different than they’d been the last decade. So… I think it is pretty clear that the divorce was necessary.

And I thought I’d grieved it. I thought the full YEAR before the separation where my then-wife refused to even engage with the reading or homework or watching the videos regarding improving our marriage? I thought I’d grieved it then. After the separation, when she hadn’t moved out, but was still having Over Nights with strange men? I thought I’d grieved it. After she got into a fully committed long term relationship before moving out? I thought I’d grieved it. Then COVID hit and I was in lockdown in the house we’d shared. All of my “healing plans” to see friends, family, and foreign countries were cancelled. Instead, I had to sit by myself, alone, suffering the separation. And even when my ex-wife asked me to expedite the divorce proceedings because she was going to move in with her new boyfriend… I thought I’d grieved fully.

Hell, that was about the same time as I had gotten a FWB. And it was the perfect concept of the word. It was a beautiful friend. Someone whom upon seeing, I honestly could hardly believe someone so sexually appealing could exist in such a small town! And we were friends. And she introduced sex into the friendship. And not only was it my first of VERY FEW kink explorations… it was my first time receiving oral in over a decade and a half. It was my first time giving oral. It was the first time that I had penetrated a woman that was not my wife (in most respects). It was… important and needed, if confusing and very outside of my comfort zone. And I thought… this is an important step in my grieving and getting past the divorce. Hell, there are still three specific moments that live within me and may well live within me forever.
(1) We were shopping. Her feet hurt. She didn’t make me feel like a piece of shit for the fact that her feet hurt. I didn’t know that was how things could work. Going anywhere with my ex-wife… her stomach would hurt because she took too much Anacin and it would be my fault because I was supposed to fix things. Learning and living that I am not responsible for fixing someone else’s self-inflicted problem was important.
(2) We were watching Television. An activity my ex-wife and I did quite often. But, I now feel I can say, my ex-wife and I never watched TV appropriately. We were always two people sitting on opposite ends of the couch. The FWB literally TAUGHT ME how to cuddle with someone while watching the television. And it was nice. It was good. It made everything better. Learning that I could receive and give physical affection as part of an every day activity was important.
(3) We actually slept in the same bed together once. The only activity my ex-wife wanted every night. But even this was powerfully different. My ex-wife would sleep completely topless. One of the few times I would actually ever see her disrobed. But we would sleep with our backs facing each other. Periodically, I would attempt to actually put my arm around her but it seemed to be something that only her unconscious self enjoyed. My FWB was very different and helped educate me in actual cuddling and physical touch while laying in bed getting ready to sleep. Learning that I could have physical touch as a part of my life, even when preparing to rest, was important.

So… I felt that the FWB thing helped me grieve and move on.

Then I met someone that… hoo boy. My old journal is sure an interesting read! As soon as I met her I was taken with her, but I knew that it wouldn’t be in either of our best interests to actually be together. So despite feeling deeply physically and emotionally drawn to her, I tried my best to keep it strictly a friendship. AND I succeeded for a while. A few months, at least. But when I caught feelings, I caught feelings hard. And I don’t believe in covering or lying about something like that, so I admitted it. And I suppose it is an example of my own weakness or my own selfishness that, when I admitted my feelings and she suggested a casual sexual relationship, I agreed. Foolish on my part. I was coming from 10 years of a deeply physically withholding relationship. Engaging in some of the only explorative, kinky sexual activities of my life… with someone I deeply cared for? I should have known it would have been too much for me. Certainly not something I could be okay with keeping as “meaningless and casual.” Especially after what could only be considered the most meaningful sexual experience of my life.

So when those two relationships imploded, exploded, dissolved… (all of the above)… I wanted my therapists to focus on those. How a friendship that then added sex could then become… barely acquaintances. How a friendship that against my active will turned into me being over the moon and then included the best sex of my life… became “she doesn’t want to see me anymore.” But each therapist I talked to about these issues kept saying, “I don’t think we should talk about that. We should talk about your marriage. Because these other relationships are responses to what happened in your marriage.” AND I kept thinking… but… these other “relationships” helped me grieve and move on from my marriage. Right?

Earlier this summer, my therapist released me from her care. She said a few things.
(1) Rural Midwest is bad for me because I already tend to feel alone, misunderstood, and rejected. A lifetime of bullying and the abusive marriage will do that to you. So since I was moving to one of the biggest cities in the State, maybe I didn’t need therapy anymore.
(2) Doing nothing but my job is exceptionally bad for me. I never seemed healthier than when I was involved with Theater; and outside of that, I seemed truly worse for wear. So, engaging in creative, productive, and social activities was the best way to maintain my mental health. If I just kept that up, I’d be fine.
(3) MUCH like the four therapists before her, she was getting out of the industry. She had enjoyed me as a client and found my self-awareness and psychological research to be… more than she got out of other patients…actually, was more in line with what they would see from fellow mental health professionals… but they were moving out of State and would have to discontinue sessions.

So without therapy, I struck out on a new adventure. But then came a wrench in the works I never expected. And THIS, THIS is why I write this here. Because my feelings regarding this topic, the specific topic itself, everything I am about to write? I feel only the evil version of me is permitted to share. Because it is so dishonorable, inappropriate, rude, and mean to share these facts otherwise. But what I have learned most of all in these last many years? When I skirt an issue, discuss in metaphor, or talk about 1/2 an issue? I’ve not resolved the problem in my heart. Only when speaking it fully do I feel like I’ve actually addressed the issue. So I come here to do so.

My ex-wife. The woman who literally spent YEARS telling me it wasn’t worth touching me if I didn’t look like I did when I was 20… the woman who spent YEARS telling me I wasn’t worth her time or effort, but she’d sure like to stay married for the financial benefits? The woman who expertly, almost professionally disintegrated my self-esteem. The one who expressly told therapists that she didn’t see the point in a physical relationship or saying “I love you” if it meant saving the marriage. That lady? Well… post-divorce, she had those 3 or 4 experiences, then the LTR but that only lasted a year; then she decided to just start sleeping around. And I wouldn’t slut shame the poor girl if it wasn’t such an ICEBERG issue from our fucking marriage. But here’s what I’ve really been sitting on that eats at me on nights like tonight.

I really had feelings for someone special… and that was the LAST physical contact I got. I haven’t had so much as a kiss on the cheek since February 2021. After breaking my back in a sexless marriage trying to make it work. Meanwhile, that specific sexless wife? Started sleeping with randos from dating apps all over the place and picked up HSV-2. And sometimes, nights like tonight especially… I have some significant emotional responses to that! You’re telling me that a life of literally “Anything you want” was meaningless. Being married to someone who truly loved you and went out of his way every day to show you that… that was a mere annoyance. Literally having a life where “If you want to sit and watch TV all day, we have the $$ to allow that; if you want to start your own business, we can do that; if you want to go back to school, you can do that”… that was pointless. But more to the heart of it… you would rather systemically tear down a man who stayed with you for FIFTEEN YEARS rather than touch him… but you’re willing to sleep around so much after him that you contract an STI? There are SO MANY reasons that bothers me.
On one level: It says, “I wanted anyone but you so badly that as soon as the divorce went through, I actually tried to do that.”
On another level: it says, “Hey. Someone spent 15 years of their life actively trying to make you hate yourself and feel like shit. As soon as you said ‘No more’; they found a literal BEVY of men who would have them… and the rest of the world agreed with her.... you’re NOT deserving of kind or affectionate physical touch.”
But mostly what it says to me is… the woman you poured so much time, love, and investment into… the woman that said 20 times a year sex with you wasn’t something she was willing to engage in… THAT woman decided random men she didn’t know as well and didn’t love her as much were worthy of what she refused you. THAT is the ultimate in “I spent 15 years eviscerating your self-esteem. Here’s the nuclear bomb version!”

So yeah. This space was intended to be all sexy and fun. But… of any sexual encounters in my life?
(1) My first sexually involved girlfriend tried to rape me and tried to kill me
(2) My second sexually involved friend told me I was genetic trash and not worthy of being a boyfriend
(3) My own fucking wife said I wasn’t even deserving of sex once a year
(3) The “encounters” post wife? Ultimately just reinforced that I’m not worth any actual investment of time, emotion, or experience.
As I once suggested in Germany- I should just chop it off entirely; it isn’t like it holds anyone’s interest.