About one year ago, I became reaquainted with a girl I went to High School with. I have become fascinated with her and I have deep feelings for her. She and I are in our late 50's. I believed that we had become more that friends and indeed intimate lovers. I have been very open and honest with her. She is aware that I am married and although neither my spouse or adult kids know, they have met. We stopped meeting at my business as we were afraid we would draw attention. My spouse and I have not had a sexual relations since her diagnosis and successful treatment of breast cancer ( not my choice ).G has been married twice and has one grown daughter who I have met and who in fact is very pleasant with me. She belives that I am separated. For the first eight months of our relationship we were very sexually active and I was thrilled to be with G. She would really turn me on with her kissing. It was common for us to have sex twice  in one day. G would top off the day with a fantastic oral sex that made me explode. I cannot end my marital position for some years and I made it clear. G accepted that and stated that we would marry even if she had to wait until we were 95. We were instumental in ptting together a High School Reunion. Since that event in June, our sexual relations have stopped.G has experienced a number of personal and stressful events and I have been very supportive and helpful with her problems. She however gets too deep and moody dealing with these problems. She had refused any sexual advances stating that she simply needed to have a friend and to be good company. Of late she has told me that she masde it clear we would not always have sex. And she is now reminding me that I am married and feels lonely after I left after sex. I have pleaded to no avail asking for her to find her way to her bedroom. I have become frustrated and disillusioned with our relationship. I have problems also and for me I get relief sexually and enjoying someone physically. I looked beyond my spouse because of the coldness, now I am being shut out again. I really care for this lady, but I need intimacy sometimes.

Aren't you on TER for a reason?

-- Modified on 11/2/2009 1:45:06 PM

Maybe you will realize it when you put some distance between now and some time in the future.

Till then, follow LG's advice and enjoy life.

Jake,
You began by letting her mistakenly believe you were separated or otherwise available.  She probably fell in love with you.  The sex was great.
Forget the reunion mumbo-jumbo.  She found out you were still married & planning to continue being so for the foreseeable future.  You have hurt her & probably broken her heart...  and you wonder why the sex is shut off!
She is willing to remain "just friends" but you do not get it.  She wants the emotional intimacy along with the physical intimacy.
I suggest you break it off & write it off to "wrong place, wrong time."  We don't always get to be with the one we want.  We can really screw things up when we try to force the square peg in the round hole.  
I know what I'm talking about.  I've had to walk away from someone I loved because she would never have been mine.  It was crushing but in my heart I knew ending the affair was the right thing.  
I think the others are correct...  you are not free.  Until you are, best to have NSA (No Strings Attached) sex.
Best Wishes.
skb

Wow, JakeLuvsIt2,

Memememememe, that's all I'm reading out of this posting. Quite frankly, you're one craven guy who really wants your cake and eat it too - for free, no strings attached. For some NSA, I'd suggest getting together with one of the fine ladies of TER. It's pay for play and get a lay. Or man up and get divorced and fuck around to your hearts content. Your mistress' daughter "believes you're separated?" Wow. G owes you NOTHING. Nor does your wife.

Open your wallet, you'll feel better,
The Love Goddess

I agree 100%.

Aren't you on TER for a reason?

I do not think its' that many me's.Seriously, I was very upfront when we first reconnected. G had remarked that being the " other woman was acceptable". It was G who told her daughter I was separated. Certainly, I want the cake, but there have been strings and that is great. I cannot get a divorce in the immediate future for financial and emotional reasons. I never suggested that anyone owes me anything and they do not. What has troubled me with my wife and now G is that sex was important, but no longer is with my wife and is put off by G.Yes, I can pursue other ladies, but I am more interested in establishing a long lasting relationship of mutual recognition of one's desires, physically, spiritually and emotionally. G is a very good friend and I am to her as well, but we were more than friends. Why are extramarital relationships acceptable in other parts of the world? I sincerely appreciate the feedback from you and other readers. Perhaps you will reevaluate my request and again respond. I would like to retain a relationship with G.

Unfortunately for you, JakeLuvsIt2,

It is no longer about you - it's about HER and HER decision. For whatever reason, this seems to have eluded you completely. Once the sexual passion cools down for women - from stress, from aging, from hormonal levels normalizing, from realizing that their guy is not a dream prince by any stretch - other factors come into play. You named them as reasons for not divorcing, e.g. financial and emotional reasons. Those are called TIES, and those are what keep women in relationships with men, not sexcapades that go on for years.

Since you don't have anything to offer to G beyond your sexual ardor, what is there for her to profit from? What can you give her that she can't get from someone else - someone who ISN'T married or refusing to get divorced, again from SELFISH reasons? OF COURSE sex isn't important to a woman if she can't have what she wants. After a while in a relationship, sex is secondary with every woman - you should know that, or else your own wife would have been out the door a long time ago.

And excuse me, where are official "extramarital" relationships "acceptable" in other parts of the world??! You need to distinguish between TOLERATED and ACCEPTABLE. I don't know a single modern culture where extramarital relationships FOR WOMEN are THE NORM, my apologies to the fringe element of polyamorous folks notwithstanding. Show me one culture where women profit from playing the second fiddle in the long run, and I'll show you a bridge in my back yard that I want to sell you. Even in polygamous cultures, wife number one always has the most toys. So if you want to bring in sociocultural factors, you need to bring up some better evidence than your own perceptions of "other parts of the world."

If you come away from this thread with only one single understanding, then it has to be that unless you offer G an incentive to have sex with you that goes beyond just the simple orgasm, she will actually be in control of the frequency with which you will engage in sex acts. Period. And that is because you don't have anything to offer her. You want "a long lasting relationship of mutual recognition of one's desires, physically, spiritually and emotionally? With G? You can't be serious. For that to happen, you'll need to take an existential inventory of your life, stop lying to yourself and your WIFE and start taking a serious moral inventory of your situation. And that's not sexual, that's purely cerebral.

Forget about YOU deciding to retain a relationship with G - it's up to her, as long as you're being completely inauthentic with cakes, strings and women.

Existential nausea,
The Love Goddess

LG,

I do respect your comments and I am taking a closer look at my life. The reasons for not divorcing are not mine alone. I wonder if I could share privately with you a message I received from G? Can I forward it on as a PM?

Thank you

Jake

Thank you JakeLuvsIt2,

Concerning questions/comments to this board - I do not accept PM's, nor do I work privately with posters on issues through TER unless they come to me for therapy in Los Angeles or sex/life coaching over Skype (worldwide). This board is for the benefit of everyone and my duties on it are pro bono, hence the public arena.

If you want to, you can cut and paste the message here and delete all private details.

Take care,
The Love Goddess

LG,

Below is the message I am referring to. Your advice is appeciated.

Thank you!

Jake


It's is so frustrating that we can't call each other up when we need to....sometimes I feel so depressed & want to talk to you, but I can't call U.
S was asking me if I have seen you & I had to tell her that you were thinking of going back with your wife.....she still thinks that you are separated....& I don't want to tell her the truth.......I've never dated a married man & I don't know how to handle it...I hate this lying & sneaking.........It's depressing me even more!!!!
My boss is going to on Monday...maybe you can call me at work during the day, & we can talk for a while.....I want to see you & be with you......but then I feel like you just need to have sex & I get turned of.....sometimes I just want to be with someone just to talk, but it seems like that's so hard to do with you....cuz you get mad!
Sometimes I feel like you don't want to be my friend the way I need you to be.
I'm not mad at you....it's just that I don't know how to handle our relashionship.!!!
I still love Ya!!!!....so don't be mad at me!!!

What is there to say, JakeLuvsIt2?

She wants to have a relationship and not just sex. You apparently don't. So make a choice. Either leave your wife and be with G or tell G you can't leave your marriage and break it off. Simple as that.

The fact that you don't understand this is baffling to me,
The Love Goddess

Every guy who has ever had a woman on the side gets that letter eventually.  It's remarkably similar to the letters I got from a lover I became involved with during a particularly dark chapter in my life (of which I'm not proud) 30 years ago.  In fact, I had to laugh as I read it because the similarities were so great- and I got more than enough of these letters to remember them well.  Fortunately, I CAN laugh at this point, because it led to my divorce and other unpleasant events which regular readers of this board may recall.

I would say the vast majority of women that get involved with a married man do so because they think they will eventually prevail.  Maybe it's true that all the good ones are taken, so they're willing to take the chance and invest some time in a worthy married candidate with potential.  Think of it as they're fucking you on spec.

But LG is absolutely correct in her assessment of your situation.  These things run a natural course.  For you it was about the sex, but for her, the sex was the means to a serious relationship.  You've reached the point in your involvement with this woman that she needs to know whether there will be a return on her investment of time or not.

She's not going to resume your sexual relationship until she knows it will lead to the outcome she wants.  You've gotten all the free samples you're going to get, now she needs to know if you're a serious customer, or just window shopping. And believe me, women can move on with remarkable ease once they know your relationship isn't going anywhere.

The reality is unless you're going to get a divorce, it's over with this woman.  For you it was always about sex, for her it was always about the possibility of a future serious relationship.  Now that the possibility of a relationship is over, so is the sex.  Keep your dignity and just move on.  Sooner or later, this day always comes.

-- Modified on 11/9/2009 1:31:02 AM

move on before it becomes more painful

G2 and LG and others,

Thanks for your comments and advice. I am not certain yet what I wll do, but I do have a different pespective now. G2 please explain what you mean " fucking you on spec ".

Jake

that women don't just fuck for the sake of sexual satisfaction. They fuck with a goal in mind - in this case, a permanent and EXCLUSIVE relationship with the male, where the woman has access to his resources and exclusive protection.

May I suggest reading David Buss' The evolution of desire? It will help you understand human mating at the core,

The Love Goddess

it's commonly used in the construction business when a builder will build a house or an office on speculation, meaning he doesn't already have a buyer, but he builds it in the hopes that a buyer will appear about the same time the house or building is completed.  He's speculating on the desired outcome in the future, no different than the woman you described.

Of course, LG nailed it exactly right with her explanation, so I won't elaborate except to say that it's easy to feel that this sort of female behavior is duplicitous, but is it really any different than what we men are doing to get laid?  Just two sides of the same coin.

Each party brings something to the table.  Nature has seen fit to give woman great physical beauty and make them desirable for the purpose of us wanting them.  But it's on short-term loan and women only have a limited number of years to secure their future, and that's exactly what they do.

It's always helpful to remember that men wanting sex, women wanting relationships and security is all just about making babies and having them survive.  Women are programmed to use their sex (and sexuality) for the purpose of finding the most desirable mate and getting him into a secure long-term relationship.  Mates are evaluated for genetic health (appearance) and their ability to provide a steady stream of resources to ensure the survival of both themselves and their offspring.  Without first ensuring that, females not only risk their eggs (genetic future), but also the tremendous amount of time they invest in carrying and raising a baby.  Since women don't drop a litter, this is a deadly serious undertaking to ensure survival and it's why women are more serious about the dating game than men.

So while we men are programmed to spread our seed far and wide (don't worry, we'll make more), a female only gets a few chances to get it right, and the consequences for getting it wrong are severe.  In our not too distant genetic past, the consequence of a few bad choices and the tribe goes extinct.  

It's easy to forget in this modern age that humans were almost extinct around 50,000 years ago (if I'm recalling correctly).  Studies of mitochondrial DNA indicate that the fate of all of humankind came down to just several hundred or several thousand mating couples and we're all descended from them.

Casual sex just didn't exist for 99.9999% of human existence, but survival sex did.  Both men and women are the products of this legacy and still display these behaviors, even if there's much less need for them in modern society.  

And just like the introduction of the pill in the 1960's didn't help ugly guys suddenly get laid any more, don't expect this behavior to change any time soon either- it's in the genes.