A personal question

A woman wrote me last week and I never got around to answering it in this blog, and I emailed he back and she asked me not to use any of her letter. I said, how about if I don't include you name? No. How about if I just quote parts of your letter? No. How about if I just take the general theme of your letter? No.

Right about then I realized, she wrote me, asking me some sexy time question, and I am negotiating with her? Silly.

So, I got this letter from this closet lesbian, at least that's what she is thinking about becoming. She, she is married, has a couple of kids and every day she walks them to the bus stop, where she often meets other friendly, mostly women, who stand and chat as the bus pulls away. The letter writer is finding one particular woman at the bus stop somewhat interesting in a sexy time kind of way and wrote to ask me, what's up with that?

My immediate answer to her was, honey, you married. If you want some on the side, boy or girl, you should explain to your husband that you want some on the side, etc. She wrote back and said that is not an option. I wrote back and said, sometimes it is, but we just have to talk about it to see if it really is an option. She said talking about it was not an option.

So a bunch of things at play here. First, do not get into relationships, long term, committed relationships and monogamous relationships, if at some point it changes and you still can not talk to your partner about it. Plus, if you can not talk to your partner about frustration in your relationship, then it is almost over anyway.

Now, I know, men have these fragile little egos that everyone has been taught to protect. I once met a woman who told me her husband had a tiny little penis. Not sure how that particular conversation started, but once the bird was out of that cage, we had a lot of funny exchanges. See, most men think they have radically larger penises than they actually have, which is fine, if they keep it to themselves, but neurotic men tend to know they have been gifted with less than impressive sexual things, and thus, they talk about it, as if mentioning may increase growth. This particular friend said it was not frustrating being with her husband, it was frustrating how neurotic he was about it. According to her, not a day went by that he did not mention something to do with his enormous penis. Sometimes it was a joke, sometimes it was not, always it was embarrassing. I told her to tell him, that somewhere inside of his head he knew we was of adequate size, but not porn size, but she refused, saying his ego could not handle the truth.

That brings us back to my lesbian writer. Your husband deserves some truth here. You want to dyke it up with a woman at your childrens bus stop (which by the way is completely normal, I have seen this year in and year out at bus stops all over the country). In relationships, partners deserve honesty, even if that honesty ends the relationship.

Many years ago I broke up with a woman I had been dating for about a year. When we broke up she said something pithy like, "I hope your year of monogamy did not bore you." To which I replied, who said anything about monogamy?

Which is hardly ever the right thing to say, but it was the truth. We had met, almost immediately jumped into bed, started basically living together soon after and had a sweet little romance going. Never did the conversation ever get to the monogamy issue and at the time, I was living under the don't ask, don't tell world view. It was a terrible way to live, and keep in mind, this was a long long time ago. See, my attitude then, which is still a way many men that I know live, was this: if you don't ask me, I don't have to tell you.

See, the brilliance of that deception is, you can be kind of scummy, and if no one asks, you have no reason to bring it up. I know at least one man in a long term relationship today, who has been boinking his co-worker for over a year. When I asked him about this arrangement and what his wife thought of it, he said, "what she don't know, won't hurt her." Yikes.

See, I tend to disagree. Now, if he had a deal with his wife, you know, I may sleep around on the road, or something, and as long as I do not bring you an STD as a gift, we just won't talk about it. I have always supported those sorts of understandings, but if you are just out finding willing partners and you have a monogamous leaning partner at home, you are really scummy.

The bottom line to the "she never asked" issue is simple, do you really want to have a list of questions you have to ask before you can date someone? Just to clear the air? How retarded is that? "Yes, I kind of like you, but I have this small book of questions you must answer, because at one point I dated this freak who did all these bad things under the guise of, I did not ask, so he did not tell."

Makes people cynical.

So, to answer the flourishing lesbionic question, explain to your husband that you are having sexual feelings for a woman. See what his response is. If I were your husband, I'd say, see where it goes. Then again, I have always believed that it is more important to be honest with a husband/wife/partner than it is to be monogamous.