‘It’s freezing in our bed and that’s why I have a lover now’
Loue (36): “’Turn around,’ said Joris when we had known each other for three months. We had just gone to bed, hadn’t seen each other for a week and a half, and I was dying to make love. I pressed my buttocks against his lower body, he put his arms around me, whispered how fond he was of me and fell into a deep sleep.
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Contents
Draw on the wall
I was stunned. If you’ve just fallen in love, you’re stiff with hormones, you want to make love if you haven’t seen each other for so long. At least, me. I had never experienced this. Not that I doubted his feelings. Joris made that abundantly clear with countless apps, songs and photos and telephone conversations before going to sleep.
In retrospect that night was a writing on the wall. Joris just doesn’t have a high libido. We have two beautiful children, ages eight and six, who were born out of love, but he can’t handle my desire for erotic adventures and a grand and compelling life. To him, sex is like sneezing or scratching when you’re itching. For me it’s a way of connecting and expressing your feelings. I’m just much more intense in everything than Joris, no matter how much he loves me.
Match
After a year, the first real cracks appeared in our sexual relationship. If I bought sensual lingerie, Joris said he wanted to see a football match. If we had a romantic dinner, he wanted to go home before dessert. ‘Let’s watch TV in bed,’ he would say. Then I just hoped it would be an exciting movie and he chose Die hard with a vengeance. I prefer to sleep naked, he in boxers and a T-shirt. Nice and practical when the children wake up, he says, but he also did it when we first met. A spontaneous lovemaking in the bathroom, in broad daylight while the children watch TV: unthinkable for Joris.
Obviously not a match, you would say, but there is a lot that we do share. The education of the children, for example, about which we think exactly the same. We both work full time, but I never feel like I’m the one who has to take care of everything at home, we are completely equal. Joris is very caring, can talk about feelings well, tries to understand what moves me, and listens to me when I want things different in our relationship or if I’m struggling with something. He has a wide range of interests and we can laugh together: he is my best friend and soul mate.
Only the sex, so it doesn’t match. Even cuddling is not easy for him, not even with the children. He can only sleep when he lies on his own half of the bed, and it does not occur to him to spontaneously pull one of our children onto the lap. He was not raised that way himself, nor does he naturally have that urge.
Friendship or love
My friends don’t understand. “Don’t you confuse friendship with love?” they ask when I express my frustration. But what I have with Joris is so much more than friendship. The sexual desire is also there, it’s just much greater with me than with him. A purely physical matter, emotionally we are more closely connected than most couples I know.
Fortunately, Joris and I can talk about it. It doesn’t feel right for him to make love when he doesn’t feel like it, and I respect that. It’s not nice for me to always have to ask for it and to be rejected so often. “I understand if you seek refuge in someone else,” he once said. “I just don’t want to know.”
Marc
That’s why I don’t tell him about Marc, whom I met a year ago on the dating site Second Love. He is in a relationship with a woman who never wants to make love again. I find him sweet and attractive, but our relationship is purely sexual. It’s not that Marc and I are alone in bed, we sometimes go out for dinner or to an exhibition. We call it a friendship plus, and we see each other about twice a month. We give each other something our partners cannot give us, but remain emotionally tied to our own families.
It is quite easy to cheat Joris. Two girlfriends know about my affair, and cover for me when I have a date with Marc. Sometimes we take a hotel, and I say I’m staying with a friend. We don’t call, we keep texting within limits. Everything to avoid arousing suspicion among our partners. Also, I don’t really need it. I don’t miss Marc if I don’t see him. A date is like an appointment with the hairdresser or the beautician: a service for my body. Because I look at it that way, I don’t really feel guilty.
Joris and I only make love once every two months, and never on the day I saw Marc. Making love one day with two men is a rather unsavory thought to me. Marc and I don’t have safe sex; we’ve both been together with our partners for years and don’t have sex with others. So there is no real risk that we will pass on an STI, and pregnancy is not an issue thanks to my IUD.
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Slippery ice
I am aware that I am on thin ice. Not when it comes to my marriage; Joris would eventually forgive me for an affair. But there is a risk that Marc and I will eventually develop deeper feelings for each other. I’m not really afraid of it, but sex is a strong thing. All those substances that are released during sex. I feel wonderful in my lover’s arms. Warm, coveted and safe. I also feel safe with my own husband, but in our bed it is ice and freezing cold.
I worry about the future. Now I am still young and it is not difficult to find someone who gives me physical warmth. But the relationship with Marc does not last forever. I don’t want to let it get that far – a relationship with two men at the same time feels wrong. Hypocritical, I know, but I think it makes quite a difference whether you cheat on your husband for one year or twenty years. Hopping from guy to guy isn’t my thing.
The question is also how long I can keep this up, a marriage with a man I love dearly but with whom I hardly have a sexual connection. Maybe by the time I’m fifty I don’t think that matters anymore, but now it sometimes wakes me up. Also because I don’t want to cheat on my husband, even if he has more or less consented to it. Maybe there’s a woman walking around with whom he can be just as comfortable as me and who also has modest sexual desires herself. Conversely, nothing would make me happier than a man like Joris who also physically gives me the warmth I long for. Only: I love Joris, and he loves me. A relationship always means making concessions. The question is whether I can maintain this concession for the rest of my life.
Marc doesn’t struggle with this. Our relationship has nothing to do with his marriage, he says. He doesn’t understand why I’m making such a big deal of it. Why would it be wrong what we do? When he says that, I cuddle up extra close to him. After that I have to do it again for weeks without sex and actually he is a bit right.”
This article was previously published in Kek Mama.
