Just when I thought I knew

I spoke with Justice about my Herpes diagnosis and he was actually very supportive. I believe I was expecting him to be angry and throw around accusations but he wasn’t that way at all. Instead he asked me several questions and seemed very interested and concerned. I advised him to get tested and he agreed to do so.

Yesterday, Justice had a previously scheduled doctor’s appointment. While he was there he informed the doctor of my diagnosis and requested a blood test to see if he also has herpes. Surprisingly, the doctor decided to delay the lab work for a month. Therefore, Justice won’t be tested until May. This kind of throws a wrench into my plans. I had hoped to know if Justice tested positive before my talk with Nation. I was hoping it would help me to determine if my conversation with Nation would be more of a “did you give me herpes” vs “I exposed you to herpes” type of conversation. But, I guess it doesn’t really matter now that I think about it.  Either way, I have to tell Nation and advise him to get tested and I have to tell him BEFORE we have sex again.

I do believe that if Nation passed herpes onto me, then he does NOT know he has herpes. Nation has been nothing but honest with me from the very beginning. He prides himself on his honesty and he has told me some very personal and uncomfortable things that he could have easily lied about instead of sharing. When Nation and I first met he was actually communicating back and forth with a friend of mine. When I learned that she and I were pursuing the same guy, I simply asked Nation about her and he was very honest & up front about everything. He didn’t take the easy road out and he didn’t lie. Therefore, I believe he was telling me what he believed to be the truth when he said he had no STD’s/STI’s. I am supposed to see Nation tonight and I plan on telling him about my newly diagnosed herpes. I hope it goes as well as my herpes conversation with Justice went. Wish me luck!

On another note: It’s odd, but Justice has slowly become more of a friend to me again. I can’t recall the last time he got upset or angry with me. Not even via text. I don’t remember the last time he appeared to be acting irrationally or without logical thinking. Instead, he really seems to be putting great effort into making a friendship work between the two of us. It’s really nice to have my friend back.

Over the past couple of days Justice has kept in near constant communication with me. We chat about everything from herpes, to the kids, to our days events. He texts me when he wakes up in the mornings and again when he returns home from work in the evenings. It honestly makes me miss the old “him” even more. The “him” that used to be head over heels in love with me. The “him” that was 50% of my fairy-tale love life. The “him” that I believed was sent to me by God and was my forever soul-mate. That “him”.  The one I NEVER would have given up on or walked away from. The him that I loved for 20 years.

On Tuesday, Justice sent me a text of some lines from a song I used to sing to our girls when they were babies. The next line of the song would have been “I love you”.

“Are you saying that you love me?” I asked him.

“That song made me want to shoot myself in the head,” he replied

“When?” I asked.

“Last night,” he responded.

“Who was singing it?” I questioned.

“You were. In my head,” Justice explained.

“LOL, that’s funny,” I giggled.

“No. It isn’t. I saw you doing it while holding one of our babies. It brought me to tears,” he shared. “It kept popping up in my head last night. It made me feel depressed and I wanted to shoot myself,” Justice confessed.

“I’m so sorry if I’ve made you feel that way,” I expressed.

“It’s not you. It’s the memory and the cruel reality that time passes on,” He explained.

What does this conversation mean? What is Justice telling me or trying to say? Is he saying he misses our life together? Is he saying he misses the girls being babies? I tried asking him but received no response, only a subject change.

Today, Justice called me while I was work; which is very strange behavior for him. He HATES talking on the phone and avoids it at all costs. Still, he willingly and of his own volition called me. Justice asked me if I thought he was depressed and going through a mid-life crisis. He said he missed me and he invited me to go to the zoo with him and the girls this weekend. I’m pretty sure he was even crying at one point during the conversation.

The weird thing is that I thought that my herpes diagnosis would send Justice away forever. He has such a paranoia about those kind of things that I thought he’d never want to touch me again. Now, before he even knows if he has herpes he is telling me he misses me? Maybe he feels guilty that I’ve got herpes. Perhaps he thinks he passed it onto me or that if he’d stayed then I wouldn’t have slept with anyone else and contracted the virus.

Now, I couldn’t be more confused. Do I still love Justice? Do I still want our life back? I do want our life back. I know I do. I know I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to find what I’ve lost. But…I’m afraid. I can’t go through the heartbreak again. What about the trust that has been shattered? It took us 2 decades to build the trust we had and it was destroyed in a matter of minutes. What if I take him back and he leaves again? The last time I spent nearly a week in the hospital having been on the cusp of suicide. I just don’t think I have it in me to handle that kind of rejection from him again. Not from Justice. Not from the one person that I gave everything to but still wasn’t enough for.

My life altering screw up

I screwed up.

I mean, I REALLY screwed up.

Maybe I finally allowed myself to feel the freedom of being single. Perhaps I was a little naive about sex and dating (after all I was only 14 when I met my husband and had never actually dated anyone before). It’s possible I just threw caution to the wind and granted myself permission to be careless. In any event…with very few sexual partners, the end of a nearly 20 year (mostly monogamous) relationship and having lost touch with my romantic feelings for Justice…I became very promiscuous.

I’m sure my promiscuity was partially because Justice kept urging me to sleep with other people and partially because I’ve never been good at telling men no. The fact that I felt alone probably played a factor as well as the fact that I love sex and might actually have a sex addiction.

Whatever the reasons, I know that I alone made the decision to sleep with each individual person; and I alone am the one responsible for the repercussions of those decisions. I did not use protection with any of the men I slept with, though I was on the pill. While I don’t regret my decisions, they will cost me.

I guess the best place to start would be on Wednesday, April 16th. I went to my life long friends house to hang out for the evening. After a while someone broke out the booze and we began drinking. I hadn’t drank in several months and decided a couple of beers wouldn’t hurt.

After a while it became apparent that I couldn’t drive and needed a lift home. Who do I call? Justice of course! I’ve always called Justice when in need of anything. I’ve always reached for him whenever in trouble and this was no exception. However, I also know how much Justice loves “drunk Liberty”. Drunk me has always been a complete slut that will do just about anything I’m asked to do. That behavior always appealed to Justice’s sex drive and even before he arrived to pick me up, we were sending dirty texts back and forth to one another. Even drunk, it was very clear where things were headed.

Once we arrived back at my place, things continued in the same direction they had been going. Why I couldn’t see he was just using me for sex is a complete mystery. Maybe I didn’t care just as long as I could be with him again…in any way he’d let me. As if that wasn’t bad enough…once Justice left, I called someone else over to my place. Not just any someone but a complete stranger.  I let him in my home, where my kids were asleep and allowed him to do whatever he wanted with me. Then, over the next couple of days I slept with 2 more men.

Perhaps your thinking about how incredibly dangerous my actions were. Maybe your concerned about my emotional and mental state. It’s possible your as disgusted with my actions as I was the following Monday morning. But don’t start hating me yet…this story isn’t over.

I felt horrible about my actions. How could I betray Nation? No, we weren’t committed to one another, but he was a nice guy and I was potentially messing things up with him. He did, after all, ask me to be exclusive with him the very same day that I ended up becoming a drunken mess.

What about Justice? I had worked so hard to move on. Why had I decided to throw all of that away in one night? Justice was actually already seeing someone too and I knew it. So, why did I allow myself to be with him? Why would I want “her” to feel the pain I did when I learned he was seeing someone else? Why would I want to be the same monster that hurt me?

The day after my drunken screw up I began to notice some vaginal pain. At first, I believed I was just sore from all the action I’d seen over the past few days. Then the pain to get worse and worse over the next week. I finally made an appointment with my gynecologist and waited for the day to arrive to get an exam.

I believed the doctor was going to tell me I had some kind of infection or explain that someone had been too rough with a very tender part of the female body. I even imagined she might say one of the men was too big for my small frame. But, I did not anticipate hearing the words that came out of her mouth. I hadn’t prepared myself to hear her say them. I never entertained the thought that I might have actually “caught something”, but I did.

“Herpes sore” I heard her say. Herpes?! Herpes!? Did I hear her wrong??? She didn’t say “herpes”, did she?! But she did. She said I had a text-book herpes sore. I was instantly furious with myself. How could I have been so stupid? What was I thinking? Everyone I know had sexual education in school. We all know the risks of unprotected sex. Why? Why had I not listened? Why did I think it wouldn’t happen to me? I thought of Nation and the last time we had been together. I wondered how I’d tell him there was a good chance I transmitted herpes to him on Easter Sunday. I thought of Justice and how I would tell him. How would he tell his new girlfriend?

The doctor took a culture swab of the sore area and I waited for the test results. I took the anti-viral medication she had prescribed me and I used the soothing gel she had recommended. I researched herpes on the internet and I convinced myself the doctor was wrong. I let myself believe I had a Group B Strep infection instead. To me, it just made more sense…or maybe it allowed me to pretend for a little while longer.

In any case, this morning I received the call. The call from the nurse in my doctor’s office. The call confirming that I do indeed have herpes. After speaking with the nurse I learned that I had to have been infected prior to 2 weeks before the soreness began. While this narrows the number of people who could have passed the virus onto me, two of them I don’t want to confront. Nation & Justice are both possibilities, along with the one guy I dated & slept with prior to meeting Nation. However, the other men from my promiscuous screw up aren’t off the hook either, as I may have passed the virus along to each one of them.

Now, I need to have some very serious and very uncomfortable conversations with some people who I deeply care about. The only thing worse than me getting herpes is the fact that I may have hurt one of them in the process. How will Nation ever forgive me? Who would want me now?

Wish me luck & send good thoughts my way. I have a feeling I’m going to need them.

 

 

The Mistakes Began

Shortly after entering into the lifestyle and learning more about it my official title became “submissive” and my husband became my “Dominate”. This is how we labeled ourselves and how we wanted the community to see us.

Soon it became apparent to us that most “Doms” in the community had more than one submissive & “played” with others, while the submissive people seemed to stay committed to one Dominate. With that in mind, my husband began non-sexual play with other women at parties and events. Eventually this lead into him taking on another “submissive”.

I liked his new submissive, she was kind and vibrant. While I do admit that I did have some apprehensions and was slightly jealous from time to time,  I was comforted by the fact that my husband told her I would always come first and that there was nothing sexual about their relationship. Even though sometimes she would be naked, he always remained completely clothed. I was also able to personally witness most of their “scenes” together and I never saw anything that gave me cause for concern. Furthermore, my husband always tried to include me, check in with me and keep me happy even while he was with her. However, after some time the two of them grew bored with each other and the relationship eventually dissipated.

It was a short time later that my husband wanted to bring in someone else, another woman. This time he wasn’t aiming for just a submissive but instead for a submissive and a girlfriend. He wanted to explore a poly relationship that would include an intimate relationship between the three of us. I had heard a lot about the poly lifestyle since entering into the local kink community but was never interested in it. The idea of him being with another woman was hard for me to accept, especially a prettier, younger and thinner woman, but I wanted to be a good submissive and a good wife. I wanted my husband to have the best sex life possible and I felt I could trust him enough to be with her, and not lose sight of “us” and our profound love for one another. After all, he had never done ANYTHING in the past 20 years to break my trust. He promised me that if I ever wanted things to end, then they would. That was enough for me and I agreed to give the relationship a try.

The relationship seemed fun at first because my husband worked hard to always keep me included and to prove that my feelings, insecurities and comfort level came first. However, things slowly began change and the relationship began eating away at me. While I always vocalized my thoughts and feelings to the both of them, after a while it just seemed to fall on deaf ears. There were many times I asked my husband to end things with her but as soon as he would agree to end it, I would feel better. I felt comforted, reassured and loved. So, I would then agree to continue on in the relationship.

After some time I began to feel like I was being kept in the dark about things going on between them but when I would ask they would just brush it off as an insecurity. It was then that the true sadness I was feeling began to take its toll on me. I began hurting myself to distract from the pain I was feeling. I started by doing small things like pulling strands of my hair out and then moved onto punching myself and pounding my head on walls then to putting clothespins on my vagina and eventually onto cutting and mutilating my own body with blades. I began to carve nasty words onto my body and then be horrified and repulsed when I would catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I started lashing out at the other woman and began to be really mean to her via text but very loving to her in person. After a few months my behavior ran her off and she ended things with both my husband and I. At first, I thought my husband would be upset with me but he wasn’t. I asked him several times if he was okay with the way things went and he said that he was.

Needless to say, I was relieved. I felt the whole ordeal was finally over. I thought we could get back to being deeply in love and I could get back to being who I had always been…his faithful, loyal and loving wife. I was excited to stop my self-injurious behaviors. I was happy and elated to finally have him all to myself again…just like I had for the past two decades. I was sure he would now see that all he needed was me and that I would be enough for him. I was finally able to take a deep breath of fresh air and let the heavy load slide off my shoulders. I felt like me again.

Things didn’t stay that way for long…instead, they got worse.