Once Upon a Guy

 I suppose you could say it was a whirlwind romance. You could also say it was a long time coming. But since I don’t trust romance, whirlwind or otherwise, I’m pretty uncomfortable with all of it.

There is a term for these giddy feelings: NRE- New Relationship Energy. New relationship energy frightens me. I have always run from it. But here I am, at the ripe old age of forty-three and I decided to give it a shot for the first time.

Tyler was gone for work again. He had been gone for seven days so far and I needed some adult companionship. So I invited my friend, Ariel, over.

I met Ariel over a year ago at the Pride parade. Ariel had a kid who liked our kids. She had two partners, a guy and a non-binary partner. Poly people in the house!

Tyler and I became friends with her and her family. We didn’t see them a lot, because we lived an hour away, but they felt like family right away. I remember meeting Ariel’s husband, Charles, and how his voice and his energy felt like a warm hug. And then he asked if he could hug me, and we hugged for a long long time. A hug that would be inappropriate if we were both monogamously married.

I invited Ariel over for our kids to play while we chatted. (I was also hoping to seduce her.)

But Ariel invited Charles too. We had dinner. We put the kids to bed. Then the three of us sat on the couch together and Charles moved in behind me, touching my leg, rubbing my arm, finally he wrapped his arms around me and just left them there while I talked to Ariel. Those arms were comforting. His body was comforting. At one point Charles and Ariel were both hugging me and I kissed their hands and invited them both to come sleep with me when we went to bed (I sleep with lots of people without any expectation of anything more).

Charles ended up taking the invitation, Ariel did not. Charles came into the room and snuggled up to me in bed. I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised when he started kissing me. I knew where this was heading, but I didn't know what I wanted to do.

I sat up. I took a few deep breaths. Tyler would not object to me having a sexual relationship with another man, but it was very sudden. I wanted to call him and talk to him about it before anything happened, but that wasn’t possible at midnight. But it wasn’t about Tyler anyway, it was about whether I wanted to or not. I rubbed my eyes.

“We don’t have to do this,” Charles said.

I nodded.

“We could just snuggle if you want.”

I thought for a minute. My six and a half year marriage to Tyler had been tumultuous. I wanted to embrace polyamory but I couldn’t. I wanted to separate but I couldn’t let go. I was deeply depressed and didn’t know why. I knew having sex with Charles would be different than anything I had done and therefore it would break me out of the tumultuous cycle somehow.

“No,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

So we had sex that night. And it was wonderful. After that, we started texting each other and seeing each other once a week. And he asks about our future and I am smack dab in the middle of NRE. I keep considering running away; ending everything with Charles because NRE feels unsafe. It feels like a fantasy that will fizzle and leave me trapped in a bell jar. Suffocating again.

I like him too much. I don’t like feeling emotionally vulnerable like this. But I close my eyes and keep going with it. I’m taking a path I have never traveled before. A new path will hopefully take me to a new destination.