Posted by autumn_mom on November 2, 2009, 4:40 pm, in reply to "How Did You Meet Her? What Happened? "
My heart is tensing. I am not sure I can write it. [breathes] okay. Here goes.
We were both in an informal online fan group. She was kind of a star in the group for her critiques and humor, and I was a newbie, joining her community in spring of 2008. But I really seemed to "get" her, right from the start. She was publicly extroverted and irreverent, but personally never really opened to anyone. Once in a while, she would comment or write something that showed an opening--a gorgeous interior full of love and light and I wanted to bathe in it. One day I wrote something and it caused her to open like that. It dawned on me that I could try to, with each word I wrote, make that happen again. I soon realized I was good at it. It felt heady, powerful, and arousing to be able to invite her to shine like that and have her respond. One day, she confessed to me privately that she was asexual. My heart sank and my mind thought, "Wait--why are you feeling this way? You don't know this woman, you love H, what the hell..." (I'd loved women before and figured I was bisexual but had really been burying my same sex attraction for years since it threatened my marriage.)
But we became closer and closer. We joked that we were figments of each other's imagination, since we only knew each other online. One day I made that joke again and she responded with dead sincerity "You are better than my imagination" and I died.
That was the first of many moments where I illicited a kind of organic, unplanned, uncrafted romantic response from her. By November, I felt addicted to her. By December, I'd told her I had romantic feelings for her and thought I was loosing my mind. We tried and tried to just interact as friends but it was as though we operated at a romantic frequency or not at all.
Others in our informal community knew we'd gotten close. We went from publicly calling each other internet bff's to internet gf's to internet wife. Everyone else thought we were kidding. We weren't. She'd become my companion. I loved her completely. She admitted to loving me passionately but without sexual desire. She insisted I'd never desire her once we met--her theory was that since she was asexual, she never attracted others that way due to low sexual energy. I vehemently disagreed. What f-ing idiots never saw her light? Her inner lover? By February, I knew I was desperately in love with her and was feeling something I'd never felt with any other woman or with H. By March, we ended it. She began to appear less and less asexual to me, and I could see that she was reigning in her attraction so as to not become unsafe for me. We were both terrified of losing this thing we had. I'd have agreed to anything to keep her. I'd have agreed to never see her in real life. I'd have agreed to only write once a week. I'd have done anything to make it safe to love her. But it wasn't safe. I told her at the beginning that I was never leaving H, but I already had. in my heart.
She insisted we take a break and in that week of pure hell, I realized that I am gay. I might love H, and I might physiologically respond to men, but emotionally, romantically, it's always been women. We never spoke again. A few difficult emails and that was it. She dissappeared from our online community. I lurked a bit like the stalker I am and found over the summer that she'd returned under a new name, the title of a love poem she'd once sent me. I know. Not exactly the behavior of an asexual.
I told H in April about everything and began searching my heart and mind for how gay I really am. I told him I didn't know I could still respond to him or be a good lover to him right now. He said that was okay; he asked only for my loyalty and honesty. So b/c of that, and only b/c of that, I have not contacted her. We were supposed to have met, as friends, at a convention this summer, but of course neither of us went. That week came and went and I don't know how I beared it.
She fills my head all the time. I talk to her all day. I do the math of what time it is where she lives, imagining her at work, at home, with her friends. I run my fingers over the things she sent me way back when. I try to block her from my head when I make love to H but am only sometimes successful. One of the ways I know I am gay is that I discovered in our dynamic that I am a top. I am kind of granola-bohemian femme in style but in a relationshp with a woman, I am the "man." I wanted nothing more than to make her safe to be fully known, to bring out her beauty, to adorn her with compliments and kisses, and to dive deeply into her in everyway. I confessed to her that I felt like the guy with her, that if we were stereotypical, I'd want to buy her diamonds or something, and when she wore them, I'd feel amazing and aroused inside. I thought she'd think I was crazy, but she responded, "I know. It's like, I know I am a woman, obviously, but I am more aware of it with you. Like there might be a use for my womanly parts." Again, dead. Completely dead.
I know she is not available. A closet case. Our relationship forced me to look at my gayness and do the work of self-knowledge. I doubt she is doing the same. Our relationship probably just made her strengthen her defenses. She lives in a small town where everyone loves her but would literally spit on her if they knew she loved a woman.
If H and I get divorced, well, I want to be with a woman who is available to me. Who can respond to me. But I am pretty positive that I will need something from her before I could move on. Closure at the very least. I still, obviously, adore her. It's been 8 months and my heart still doesn't work right. H is always worried about me and my friends...that I will develop feelings for other moms I meet at D's school, etc. I won't. Not when my heart is still hers.
-autumn_mom
--Previous Message--
: Hey All -
: I'm pretty new here and I am really
: enjoying what people write. It blows me
: away. One of the things that interests me
: most is how this phenomenon of falling in
: love with a woman happened to you all. I'm
: still pretty disoriented and confused and
: fuzzy about the whole thing. But I'm
: interested, too. Intrigued. I would love
: to hear some stories about how you came to
: be on this website (which, I assume means
: that you are, or were, married to a man, and
: now are in love with a woman)
: How did you meet the woman you love? How
: did the relationship develop? Was she gay
: or straight (or both?) How long before you
: told her your feelings for her? How did she
: take it? I would love to hear some stories
: from people who are in the same phase of
: this process as I am... and I'd love even
: more to hear from some people who have made
: more "progress" than me, so to
: speak. I look forward to hearing some of
: your stories. I think it would really help.
:
:
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