S. E. X.

In the hellish aftermath of infidelity, my heart was breaking, but my body still sought some semblance of comfort and solace. 

I remember lying in bed next to him, in the dark, feeling so alone and desolate, wanting above everything just to feel like a part of something again.  But then, when he would reach out hesitantly in the dark to touch me in comfort in those first few days, I suddenly felt like I was coming apart, like I couldn’t breathe.  

I needed him to touch me, and I loathed him with every fiber of my being.  

After days of the most intense stress in my personal experience, I was tied up in knots, literally.  One night, late in that first week, he offered to ease my tension... a back rub, nothing more.  I grudgingly acquiesced. 

The touch of his hands on my aching muscles eased them for the first time in days.  I could breathe, even though he was touching me.  

The touching became more intimate, and I could feel that he was trying to tell me he was sorry, he was trying to apologize to me with his hands and his body.  

I needed him, and I wanted him, but I hated him, and I hated me.  

I cried.  The tears flowed silently but steadily from the corners of my eyes as I lay there trying not to love him. 

My whole body was shaking from the force of my conflicted emotions.  The shaking was involuntary and even a little scary. I can only remember the crying and the shaking from that first time.  

Some of my tears were tears of shame, too; I was ashamed at my need for him.  

I wrote this soon after: 

All of my adult life, I have taken a hard line on cheating.  One and done… You cheat, I’m gone.  I’m out.  I cannot handle it.  Women that can are weak and have no self-respect or self esteem.  They choose to turn a blind eye.  They choose to live life with their head buried in the sand.  Not me.  I’m better than that. 

So, here I am.  My husband, my love, the father of my children, the man I grew up with and wanted to grow old with, has devastated me.  I want to run away.  I want to burrow down in a deep dark corner and lick my wounds.

He wants to stay with me.  He wants me to stay with him.  He wants our family and our life.  This thing he did…he says it made him see how much he values our life together.  Sex with someone else made him understand what was so amazing about sex with me.  It made him realize that he can’t go out and get what we have just anywhere, that what we have isn’t just sex.  It has made him see the value in our life together more than anything else could have.  

The thing is…  my world has come undone.  I am untethered from everything I held as truth.  According to my own rules of engagement, I should be gone by now.  I found out a week ago, and we’re still living in the same house, sleeping in the same bed.  Much to my shame and confusion, we’ve been intimate.  It’s all so unreal.  The pain is the only thing that seems real, because I can feel it.