Sunday 30 September 2007

(Ain't No Cure For) THE SUMMERTIME BLUES

(Sorry! – this post is big on the emotional complexities of an affair, high on navel-gazing – and deplorably low on smut.)

Family vacations can be hell for married lovers. It’s a bitter-sweet time, as the holiday season approaches. The happy anticipation you should both be feeling at the prospect of a break from work and time with your family is clouded by sadness and loss; by sobering speculation on how long you may have to wait to see your lover again. In the run-up to the holidays, you frantically compare dates to see when you might next manage time together, arrange fevered last meetings, and exchange tender parting phone calls and texts – before consigning your dear one to the bosom of their family – and, of course, to your rival.
Our recent meetings had been so dirty and intense (another story for another time), that we both resented the interruption of our illicit activities this year, even more than usual:
This is all very hot and exciting for me at the moment– of course! And I am NOT HAPPY that summer holidays are going to interfere with my enjoyment.
B complained in an email, and I worried I won’t fully enjoy my holidays through missing her. And as long as our school-age children are at home, we find it difficult to talk as often as we’d like, too; even when we aren’t actually away. At least her time away with her partner was going to be diluted by the presence of friends in a shared villa, I pointed out, when she was fretting on the phone; she’s so gregarious I knew she’d have a good time with them, despite her protests. "Yes – but they try to give me and D time together, she whined; they say, why don’t you two go off and have a siesta, we’ll look after the kids. It’s horrible - I tell them we’d rather have a walk – I feel like I’m being pimped!"
"Funny you should say that," I responded; "because letting you go off with him feels to me like being in love with a gorgeous prostitute; if you don’t mind me saying that."
"Actually, I don’t mind," she laughed; "it’s not unflattering. And that is what it’s like with him, a job - but in reality of course, it’s not glamorous – nor well-paid. And I’m not very happy about the actual holiday - I feel like I’m being dragged off against my will….."
This is all very different to previous years…….
I realised, some time ago, that B invariably became more loving, more sexually intense, and even managed to see me more often, as holidays approached – and with them, an inevitable hiatus in our affair. This made it even more agonising to part and filled me with longing for her while I was away; as I assumed it was intended to do. As a result, I would come back from holiday, to the long-anticipated arms of my beloved, very eager to resume the passion we’d shared on parting, only a few weeks before. And yet, I’d always find things were oddly and inexplicably cooler between us. Emails and calls were rare, meetings proved impossible, or got cancelled at the last minute.
This was all very distressing. We’re talking about someone who’ll call me up to three or four times a day – let alone texts and emails – I’m going to notice if several days pass without contact! And any lover treated like this will naturally assume the other party is fickle, that out of sight really has meant out of mind; or even that there’s been some sort of rekindling of affection or passion between her and her spouse, effected by a relaxed break together. Deeply hurt, I’d bring this cooling of her affections to her attention; only to be reassured that, no, she didn’t care for me any less, and time together definitely hadn’t endeared her partner to her any more than previously. And she was very sorry, she knew she wasn’t behaving well, felt I deserved better, etc; but I did need to understand it was all she could manage. She’d always been honest about that, though; she’d never misled me. When pressed further, she’d go on to explain at great length, how she’d realised, over the holidays – absorbed as she’d been by her home, partner, friends, and children – that she’d foolishly been allowing things to reach an intolerable intensity with me. She loved me – perhaps that was the problem – but the relationship really could not be sustained at that pitch in the busy welter of our day-to-day lives; at least, not without sacrifices she just couldn’t make in her home or social life, etcetera.
Fair enough, I thought. She had a point – I probably can’t cope, long-term, with the intensity we shared in early summer, either – and I could be patient. But why jump from hot to chilly – wasn’t there some happy medium, in-between? I never did quite understand why ‘cooling it’ meant going from several intense, needy calls per day to none at all, from fucking me three times a week to one meeting a month. Nor, if she was such a very capable control freak, could I understand why she was unable to keep things on an even, manageable keel, to start with…. Almost envying her the ability to curb and contain her feelings, where I could not, I was bound to assume that hers were less intense than my own. But then, of course, after a while, she was ‘back’; giving me the full-on relationship I craved and which she, too, seemed to need after all. Ain’t women complicated?
No matter how much consultation we had, trying to ensure family holidays coincided, there was sometimes a discrepancy – if we were unlucky, the two fortnights might even be consecutive. So not only was I approaching the holiday season with apprehension at the prospect of being parted from her for up to four weeks at a time – I also had good cause to fear this horrible gap which would always seem to open between us after these enforced partings. It took me a long time to work out what was going on. When someone blows hot and cold, you don’t generally engage with them more, showering them with love and trust and understanding – instead, you’re resentful, you withdraw. I was puzzled and pained to find I had to renegotiate the whole relationship after every holiday. I felt I was being teased and toyed with: I began to feel B was controlling my desire……...
The thing is, I started to wonder if somehow, this control-freakery, this periodic brake applied to our relationship, really worked for her; was part of what she wanted; was perhaps even pleasurable to her. Why not? She definitely took great pride in running a tight ship at home and a very smooth operation at work - why not enjoy a tightly-reined love affair in your spare time? Manipulating sexual frustration had always been part of our sexual repertoire which she particularly enjoyed:
"You'd find me quite easy to train if we had more time," she wrote once. "You could not touch me, or not let me come, or not fuck me, or not allow me to lick your cock if I didn't do everything you needed. (Although actually, I quite like being denied and frustrated so, hmmmm, is that really a punishment...?" )
Perhaps she got off on emotional frustration, too? Conventional wisdom would echo her own protests – assuming the affair with me was bought at the price of her partnership, her home-life, her working life - even her peace of mind. When it intensified, they suffered; when it was necessary to prioritise them, I suffered. But ‘conventional wisdom’, like ‘common sense’, can be deceptive. I was listening to a convincing story of cause and effect, but it didn’t stand scrutiny, or chime with my experience at all: an experience almost entirely composed of ecstatic yet hurried meetings, curtailed by other commitments; of arrangements which were hard to make, yet frequently broken owing to contingencies at work or home, even by as little as one of her husband’s sulks; of long-anticipated getaways or days’ off work which rarely materialised. And all this at the very best of times - let alone during holidays, visiting friends/relatives, or a family crisis.
Like the proverbial mistress - always waiting in vain for the married man who invariably puts his family first – I’d never noticed my lover’s social or domestic arrangements compromised in any way by our romance; even at its most intense and absorbing. Our relationship had always fitted into the spaces in her life: not only did I know her routines and timetables, but those of her entire household, too. I’ve had to - because a big part of my emotional life revolves around them and the very fleeting opportunities they may provide to see or talk to her. From my perspective, the affair had never been conducted in spite of her commitments elsewhere, if anything, it had been expertly dovetailed with them. (I suspect there’s a real buzz for her, in being able to juggle the demands of adultery successfully - together with the rest of her busy life). And I’ve been tacked-on; or rather, carefully factored into (and over?) its gaps and fissures - essential to her, yet never permitted to put any aspect of the rest of it seriously at risk. To the existing roles of good partner, diligent parent, and successful boss, my driven little darling had simply added the additional role of also being a hot lay for a lover.
So this is how I began to realise that B might well find enjoyment, not only in my affections; but also in controlling them…. Firstly, in successfully managing the complexities and logistics such a love affair always entails: arranging trysts while the children were at Cubs or music practice, for example; or slipping me into the house for an evening’s fun while the rest of her family were off camping. Was there brinkswomanship involved, a frisson from risk? Were the difficulties she encountered actually exaggerated? She didn’t need to befriend my wife, after all: a lot of people might actually find it uncomfortable to socialise with someone whose partner you’ve been shagging only days before!
Despite her avowed caution and carefulness, her pleasure has often seemed to be one enjoyed on the very cusp of discovery and danger: a constant balancing act; a delicious but dizzying tight-rope walk between the twin disasters of losing my adoration and losing her partner’s respect and allegiance. And because these aspects must, surely, be part of the appeal, I suppose I then had to accept that the rewards of the thing might not entirely rely on me; or at least, not on physical meetings with me. She wasn’t a tease, exactly … She genuinely loved cock – and mine in particular – but it wasn’t always necessary for her hap-penis. What was necessary, was to be loved, adored and desired – and she could, and did, get that by phone and email; or from ‘innocent’ meetings over coffee or lunch.
Brief encounters with sympathetic, attractive and admiring company work for me, too – I loved our chats - but I’m a man. And men are simple creatures: to put it bluntly, we want some pussy and we want some attention for our cocks. Only if someone regularly gives that to a man, does he know she still loves him. (Sorry, girls, but otherwise, he just can’t tell. And if the pussy is cute enough and the attention pleasing enough, he’ll love them right back.) When that attention/pussy was withdrawn – as in our inevitable holiday partings – I would find it difficult. And when even the usual flow of calls and messages became severely attenuated, in those horrid post-holiday lulls, I’d find it very very distressing; since I looked almost entirely to her for the passion, romance, intensity and intimacy I’d realised were so essential for my happiness.
Apart from anything else, I’d had a mother who’d blown hot and cold: for whom I was endearingly special one minute and rather less important for long spells, when I’d get parked with grandparents. Amateur psychotherapists might suggest that in my partner of fifteen years, I’d obviously found someone who very acceptably embodied a representative aspect of this first love-object. So long, that is, as my wife alternated absence with brief spells of attentiveness: an only child who enjoyed time alone and didn’t crowd me, a career woman who pursued her own goals outside the home, yet one who focussed on me in her leisure. All fine and dandy: until events in her own inner life led her to withdraw into herself more; to become depressed and just too remote. Call it selfishness, or a mid-life crisis, if you like - or simply a very natural survival instinct - but in first trying contact sex and then starting an affair, I’d had to look beyond this partner, whose coolness, distance and self-absorption had become unbearable. And B had offered a more reliable alternation between the work/family which parted us and her attention while we were together – a more rewarding attentiveness, at that; which made me feel like the most special person on the planet.
No wonder, then, that it seemed like the last thing I needed, when it was no longer simply the routine demands of that ‘other’ life, which took her away from me; but also seemed to be her own pleasurable manipulation of availability and absence, fulfilment and frustration: causing entirely unnecessary separations. Unnecessary to me, that is; clearly they were needful to her. Again, any amateur therapists out there can speculate about her mother’s unreliable affections when very young; or her father’s frustrating absences away from her childhood home when she was a bit older: and how, perhaps, actively managing the availability/absence of the love-object is redemptive for her, an attempt to suture that early wound.
These patterns, these needs must always have been there, in each of us, seeking expression and indulgence as best they could; but we were like two locks, for which the other was the key. It doesn’t matter about the details of her early life, which are her business: whatever her fantasy, her desire, I was clearly its object. And while being the object of desire could be a hugely exciting experience, it carried with it a price I’d always dimly recognised; but never understood or articulated. Being the object, not only of someone’s superficial sexual longing; but also, let us say, of their needful pleasure, of someone else’s most profound and unconscious enjoyment of their repressed desire: well, that’s always going to be unnerving and potentially painful; making one feel very vulnerable indeed.
All this understanding I’d acquired didn’t make it hurt any less. My darling amorosa might have instinctively understood that her enjoyment would only remain pleasurable if she didn’t entirely obtain what she was after (or rather, her pleasure resides in never fully obtaining what she's supposedly after *); but where did that leave me? I think it came to a head a couple of years into our affair, when I rented a flat in another city for a weekend; on the basis that B, visiting nearby family on her own, would get away to join me; if only for the Saturday evening. She never made it: she was roped into drinks, a family meal, something came up, whatever. I paced that apartment for forty-eight hours, and on the journey home, swore to myself I’d never pine and stew like that again: spending my weekend with someone I didn’t love would be way better than finding myself agonisingly denied someone whom I did. No wonder meeting Karolina seemed like the answer to such a very painful predicament.……….
(*) hold onto your brain and try this link if you’re game: http://www.lacan.com/forced.htm