He Has Her Right Where He Wants Her

Ain't liberation great? LOVES MY NEIGHBOR wrote in to Dear Abby:

My neighbor "Marlon" and I have been "friends with benefits" for almost two years. We hang out every day and our kids are friends. We talk about everything. Really, we are best friends. We have attempted to hide our affair from our children (8 years old and under) and from our exes. Many of our friends know, but it is never discussed.

Chances are, your kids have heard or have figured it out.

My problem is, Marlon recently mentioned that he wants to find a "good woman." It upset me because I'm in love with him.

Whose fault is that? Why would he marry you, since he already gets what he wants from you?

At the same time, he makes no effort to meet anyone.

That you know about. That’s his business. But you’re taking it as a sign of hope. He may even be telling you that because it keeps you where he wants you.

He is always with me -- when you'd think he'd be out trying to meet women.

Guys can meet women 24/7 these days. Does he have a job? He could be having sex there.

Although we agreed to be "FWBs," I don't want to be Marlon's security blanket.

Your choices are to 1) Keep things as they are (although he may change things; 2) Drop him from your life; 3) Drop the benefits and see if he still wants to be "friends". Most likely, he won’t.

How do I let him know I want more?

You're not going to get it. But you can come right out and tell him that you want more. He will either 1) Tell you whatever he needs to in order to keep the "benefits" going, or 2) Drop you, fearing you'll try to get pregnant or are becoming TMW (too much work). He's not going to say, "Okay, since that is what you want, I will agree to it." He no doubt enjoys sex with you, but you do not have the one and only magic vagina.

It comes down to this, since morality doesn't seem to be a concern to you. Do you prefer things as they are now, or would you rather not have the "benefits" and quite possibly the "friendship"? Those are the real choices under your control, as long as he is willing to keep the current arrangement. If he isn't, then you won't have a choice.

I know this from personal experience. In my wayward days, women with whom I had friendships would make themselves available to me for sex and I would fornicate with them with no intention of it going beyond what was essentially a FWB situation. I never lied to them or made false promises. I didn't need to. Many women aren't down with that, but enough are. And I was not going to ever let the relationship become more serious than that, because I knew I couldn't marry those women and have a good, lasting marriage - some of that time I thought I might want to remain unmarried anyway - and so there was no point to increasing the social commitment. It wasn't a  matter of "I can't marry them because they're willing to have casual sex" - it was the age differences or other realities that precluded marriage. But they were willing to have sex, and so was I.

Relationships can certainly go from more commitment to less, such as when people break up but still hook up from time to time, but other than the initial "uphill" arc (dates, steady, couple, engagement, marriage) it can almost never go from something like a booty call or FWB to a sustained girlfriend/boyfriend or marital situation. Permit me a crude, crass analogy. If you're getting access to a recreational facility for $40 to $0 a session for months or years, and then suddenly the cost skyrockets to half of your earnings, are you going to pay that higher charge, or are you going to go to another recreational facility that is charging $40 or less? But if you were paying half of your salary for daily access, and that ends... but every once in a while you are invited back for a night at $40 or less, you might take that offer.

Dear Abby responded:

Revisit the subject with Marlon and ask him how many "good women" he thinks he can handle, because he already has one.

Doesn't that depend entirely on someone's definition of good? My guess is Marlon's definition is quite different than Dear Abby's. I would also say Marlon isn't beinga good man, just like I wasn't being a good man.

It couldn't hurt to mention that you are in love with him and have taken your relationship seriously.

Yes, it could, if she likes his company. If he wanted it to be more, he would tell her.

If one woman isn't enough for him, you will have to start looking for a good man -- one who won't monopolize your time and take you for granted.

BINGO!

Please understand that if Marlon is serious about looking elsewhere for someone to settle down with, you cannot invest any more time or emotion in him.

Maybe she shouldn’t anyway.

I would tell Marlon if all he wants is sex, he shouldn't be having sex with a mother of minor children. Also, I would tell him not to take away time he should be spending with his kids, who have a broken home already, and risk making half-siblings they'll have to deal with. I would say the same thing to the letter-writer about her seeing men.

The Past is Still Present

I was an adult for 13 years before I proposed to my wife, but mentioning anything that happened in most of that time frame is a potential minefield, because if it can be in any way connected to a girlfriend or fling (like a trip I took somewhere), my wife may shut down, making it very clear she is angry with me, or remind me how stupid I was to not stay a virgin like she did.

Virginity is big deal to her, even more than I realized before we married. She was adamant that it wasn't a problem that I wasn't a virgin, but she was in denial. She knew she wanted to be a virgin bride as long as she could remember - before she had her spiritual awakening - largely because she knew her mother had been one when she married. On the other side of the coin is her father's infidelity of many years ago. Mix these things together and push it together with my days of being a very bad boy, and you get a corrosive brew.

Although I would never say it to her, I have reason to be glad I had those experiences. Again, I'm not going to say that sex with someone other than a spouse is morally acceptable. But if I hadn't had those experiences, I would be quite bitter about the current lack of frequency, or some of the limitations my wife places on our lovemaking. Because I did have those experiences, the thought that "I'll never know what that is like unless I can pester her into changing her mind" is not there. I would be upset that I had waited all of those years, only to find out that I was going to miss out even though I married. That's not godly thinking, to be sure, but it is an honest confession about my feelings. It probably isn't godly to tell someone that things are okay and then continue to hold that sin over their heads, either.

This all came up again because we're going to a wedding this weekend. The bride has been a friend for almost a decade, and we've been looking forward to her wedding. I used to work with this friend. Someone who will be at this wedding is someone else I used to work with; a woman with whom I had a short fling. The fling was stupid on my part on many levels, including that we worked together, though in that aspect I had a written communication from her indicating that she had been the aggressor and that I had been well behaved.

There was one positive aspect to the relationship. I've noticed that about all of my relationships – that there was something positive that resulted even though the overall situation was wrong.

It was a very casual thing – so casual I didn't care when she dumped me. The fling was her way helping her to move on from a long-term dead-end relationship. She's now married, and I don't have feelings for her as I barely had them to begin with.

My wife has known all along that this woman, with whom she has never communicated, is going to be at the wedding. But yesterday, something reminded her about this reality. And the frost descended into the room. I could tell she was angry. My wife told me that I could go to the wedding by myself. It's not going to be a small wedding. We don't have to interact with this woman and her husband.

There were three things I thought about after that. 1) Is she going to be like this all week? What about after the wedding? 2) Everyone "in the know" would know exactly why my wife didn't show. They wouldn't know all of the details or the full extent, but based on past events they'd know it was because she was there. 3) I once had brunch at an exclusive restaurant with a girlfriend and some people who had invited us to the brunch. That's not unusual, but the people who invited us were my ex-fiancée, her husband, and his parents. My girlfriend was fully aware that I had had sex with my ex-fiancée. I'm sure the husband was aware of that fact, too. And yet there we were, enjoying brunch as a group, everyone having a nice time.

From an objective standpoint, my wife is much more attractive than this woman. That would be true even if the woman hadn't packed on the pounds after getting married. If we were invited to a wedding for one of my wife’s friends and an ex-boyfriend of hers was going to be there (and she crossed the line with at a couple guys, but didn’t have intercourse), and I knew I was much more attractive than him, I would show up standing tall and with a huge smile on my face and my wife on my arm. It is sad that my wife is fixating on my sin from many years ago and that it would diminish her enthusiasm for our friend's wedding to the point where she would consider not going.

What are your thoughts? Have you been through something like this? Is it therapy time?

My First MILF

Two disclaimers on this one.

1. I do not encourage sex with anyone other than one's spouse. You can read some of my reasons in a previous entry. You can read some other points worth considering here.

2. Yes, I'm writing about sex again. If this is a problem for you, skip this entry.

This is about my first real girlfriend – I wrote some about this relationship in this message, mostly talking about what was wrong with the situation. This entry, however, is more about why I was in that situation and what I got out of it.

If I had encountered her causally in my routine life, such as at the supermarket, simply having her walk by wouldn't have caused me to do a double-take and drool. She wasn't ugly by any means, and she did have a nice pair, but she was older and carrying some extra weight. The idea that an older woman would get involved with a 19-year-old guy was the stuff of the rare fictional TV show, like an episode of Soap I caught being rerun.

Not that I was a model. I was rather nerdish in my appearance, though I got of lot of aerobic exercise.

But between the e-mails, the phone calls, and the visits, I fell in love. She was a flirt and gave off this aura of sexuality.

I had a history of befriending people significantly older than me, including a female (with whom I have never and will never have that kind of relationship). A lot of it had to do with a shared hobby and that I was not the partying sort, and so I was not out partying with people my age.

So there I was with this flirty woman as a pen pal of mine, talking and writing back and forth, and me as a horny 19 year old who was thinking I was way behind when it came to my interaction with the opposite sex, and very shy when it came to those matters.

She started showing up in my fantasies. Eventually, I found an opening in our phone conversation and I told her I'd been having thoughts about her. In the context of our conversation, it was clear that they were sexual in nature.

There it was... on the table.

There was a pause on the other end of the phone.

That pause was killing me. I think I most expected dismissive laughter and a statement along the lines of "Me? Ha, that's funny. Cute. Say, did you see that fire on the news tonight?" Some form of rejection was coming – I was almost certain of that.

Instead she said, "I've been having thoughts about you, too."

WHAT?!? A dozen different substances must have flooded into my bloodstream at that moment. What did this mean? Would she dismiss the idea as a silly mutual crush that could never mean anything? At least she had some feelings for me.

Then she said "This means it is inevitable."

It was a lie, of course. I could have backed out. She could have backed out. Or, we could have met in public for a stroll and a serious talk about the issues we faced. Instead, she made plans to come to my place two nights later. Due to circumstances I won't bore you with, she ended up coming over the very next night instead – which was just as well, as one day of total distraction was more than enough.

And so it began, with me about as nervous as I could be.

I had had no idea this woman was attracted to me, and had been since the first time she'd caught a glimpse of me in person. In retrospect, one could ask how blind I could have been to miss the signs, including the time we were hanging out somewhere and she wanted to see where I lived. But I had very low self esteem when it came to women, and that evening when she wanted to see my place, we were with a couple of other people, one of whom sounded like she would come along - and my place looked like a disaster anyway. So I deferred to another time. There had been at least two occasions in the past – meaning my teens - when I was sure some girl was interested, but she wasn't. In one of those situations, I ended up getting punched in the side of my head by a dude I didn't realize was the boyfriend. (In retrospect, he was suffering more than me, being in a relationship with a girl who would flirt so much with other guys right in front of him.) So, I was overly cautious.

The feelings had been bubbling up. Just before the turning point, I had stayed over at her place, on the couch. I had thoughts about something happening, but with her daughter also in the apartment, I didn't dare try anything. She told me after everything started that she, too, had considered approaching me in the middle of that night.

On that one fateful night she came to my place. Her daughter, knowing her mother much better than I, questioned where she had been when she returned home later in the evening. When she told her daughter she had been at my place, her daughter, who had a boyfriend mere weeks younger than I, asked, "Were you good?" Her mother's expression gave her away. So her daughter was first to know.

I went to her place the next night, where her daughter was not happy to see me but was being taken out by her boyfriend... and it was constant after that.

At the time, I was a full-time student and I was working mostly Fridays through Sundays, holidays, and some short evening shifts. So I would usually go to her place Friday nights after my shift, leave from there for my shift the next day (or sometimes return home for a few hours), return to her place Saturday night, repeat the cycle, and then return home Sunday night – unless there was a Monday holiday.

I would also go over one night during the week, because the weekends were just too far apart.

She would often be out driving from client to client, and so there were times she would stop by my place during the school day, when I would be home between classes. Those were always pleasant surprises.

It didn't take me long to realize a few things about her:

1. She loved performing oral sex; she wanted me to ejaculate into her mouth and she enjoyed swallowing. Either that, or she was really good at faking it. I figured this out before I could even suggest or hint at it, let alone outright ask for oral sex. She went there on her own without any prompting on my part, and stayed there, persisting. I remarked, in a tone that was half asking and half surprise, that she wanted me to finish there, and she affirmed.

2. She truly liked sex. A lot. Love or no love. She didn't just like it as a way of bonding, or taking a relationship somewhere, or for use as a bargaining chip. She liked sex for sex. In fact, she said the often-used saying that "men use love to get sex and women use sex to get love didn't" apply to her – she would have a tough time having to choose between love and sex if there was such a dilemma.

However, she did, according to what she told me, go without sex for the previous five years, save for a single clumsy encounter months before we started up with a drunken guy I happened to know. From some of the other stuff she told me that she didn't have to, I have no reason to believe she was lying about her five years of celibacy, which roughly would have been from the period her daughter was 11. As her daughter was having sex by 15 or 16, this woman probably reasoned that setting a good example wasn't doing any good.

3. She was multi-orgasmic. This probably has something to do with point 2.

4. She had no hesitation about tasting herself anywhere on me.

As a result, it was common for me to enjoy the pleasure of cunnilingus until she had at least one orgasm, then engaging in intercourse and more kissing, and then finishing the session with her performing fellatio on me.

It was a good sex life – getting it at least three times a week, often more, even if it meant sacrificing an hour of sleep when I wasn't going to get nearly enough sleep as it was; the regular, enthusiastic fellatio with her swallowing at the end like it was the best thing she'd ever tasted; the things she would say.

Oh, the things she would say. Did she ever know how to lie to a man. Things like:

1. "You're so big."
2. "It is perfect; it's beautiful - I just want to stare at it."
3. "You're reaching me in just the right spot – we fit together so well."
4. "You are the best lover in the world."

That last one was definitely a lie. Even I wasn't naïve enough to believe that one. She was my first, after all, and by her own accounts, she had been with many guys. I'm sure she must have had a lot of better sex.

Still, all of this does wonders for a young guy's ego. He feels like he is a higher achiever of some sort, because he is able to keep the interest of an older, more experienced woman. In reality, it is usually a sign that something is wrong with the woman.

Her ex-husband and father of her child, who was totally out of the picture as far as I could tell, had been many years younger than her when they got pregnant and married – something like her in her later twenties and he maybe 19 or 20. She said they intentionally got pregnant first, because there was some question about his fertilization ability.

What was the deal with her and younger men? She linked it to her past.

She claimed to have been abused by her father, including sexually, though for years she had suppressed the memories. If it was true, it would certainly help explain some of her tendencies. She was actually married briefly as a teenager to get out of the house because her father almost killed her. She wasn't attracted to men who reminded her of her father – which, by that age, was men her age.

She called Dr. Laura to discuss the situation. I think Dr. Laura's show was still local back then, and the nature of the calls were somewhat different than they are now. I didn't hear the call, but she reported back that Dr. Laura told her that she was doing much the same thing to me that her father had done to her.

I can remember dismissing that with pointing out that I was a willing participant and I sure didn't feel like I was being abused.

I honestly thought it was about more than just sex. After all, we'd started out as friends. We struggled with the future. I was still of the mistaken belief that relationships like this were supposed to last as long as you didn't feel like murdering each other. I think she had originally figured she'd take my virginity, give me a makeover, have a short fling, and move on. But I (or the regular sex, or both) grew on her. That's why it lasted for a year and a half.

Not that the only alternative was doing the same thing with someone my own age, perhaps with a classmate, but I think I was better off going through this with some woman old enough to be my mother instead of some nice young college girl. It is for the best that I didn't knock up some girl who "accidentally" forgot to take the pill or poked holes in condoms, or take her virginity, or marry her because she was the first woman interested in me, or to lose her to some older guy who could legally buy alcohol or shower her with money. That was another good thing about the relationship – yeah, we bought gifts for each other, but she didn't expect me to otherwise spend money on her – which was good, because I didn't have any. She was practical in that regard.

Thankfully, although there were upsetting moments where it looked like we were going to break up, in the end I didn't experience a devastating break up with this relationship. It just kind of faded away when being grandma became her priority. We were still in contact daily, but she wasn't inviting me over, or coming to see me. When I finally moved on, and she figured it out, she was upset, but we hadn't seen each other in so long and we didn't have any actual commitment. I was surprised she was upset. A few months later, she called to apologize for her reaction and we were on friendly terms after that.

Some things I learned (and perhaps could have learned another way, or didn't need to know to have a good life):

I was not made of woman-repellant.
I was capable of sexually satisfying a woman.
A lot of women show attraction to a man if he is already seeing someone.
Some women do enjoy fellatio and swallowing.
I didn't have to spend loads of money to have a girlfriend.
Breakups aren't the end of the world.
Age differences seem to disappear in the playful throes of passion.
Dating older women can be a lot of fun.
Dating mothers means dealing with their child(ren), which can be a pain.

Speaking of dating mothers – although I subsequently dated some other older women over the years, only one was a mother. It was a brief fling and I didn't deal with her kids at all.

So now you may understand a little more about where I am coming from.

Although I had a lot of fun, my best advice now would be: Don't try this at home – or anywhere for that matter.

Going Intergenerational and Blending Families

Let’s check in on relationship problems via an advice column, shall we? "Non-Cougar in Calif." wrote in to Dear Margo:

I am 29. My love is 55.

Okay.

We were friends first, and then it turned into a real relationship.

Let me guess... you are an "old soul"? Of course you were friends first, but only because you were attracted to him and he was to you. If you hadn't been attracted to him in the first place, he would have ended up in the "only a friend" zone, never to get out.

When we met, it was supposed to be "Friends with Benefits," but as the years went by we developed feelings for each other, which led to a relationship.

Funny how that happens. See - "friends first" - right.

I have a 5-year-old and he has a 16-year-old.

Oh heck no. Wrong! You should both be focusing on raising your children.

I've said that maybe I want more children, and he has said he’s open to it.

As "guy" as my first language, let me translate what he means: "I don't want more children, but I want to keep fornicating with you, so I will not give you a definite 'no' because this way, you'll keep fornicating with me."

But with our huge age difference, I am questioning it. What are your thoughts?

Raise your child. You'll be 42 when you child is raised. If you want to adopt then, find a man closer to your age who always wanted to adopt, marry him, and adopt. It is a bad idea to get pregnant by a 55-year-old guy who has a 16-year-old and doesn't want more kids. When you also consider that you already have your own child to raise... forget it.

I speak from some experience when dealing with age differences and prior kids in dating, although in my case she was the only one with a kid (who was, like this case, 16), and was the older one in the relationship. Throughout my rebellious time, I had relationships and flings with a few older women. One of those pairings had the same age spread as the letter-writer's, though I was 19 and she was 45. It is even more problematic at those ages, and with the male being the younger partner.

Mind you, I didn't know this woman was 45 at first.

In the days before most people had their pictures online, there were these dial-up electronic bulletin board services – some of them for a hobby or interest, and others for socializing. This one was for socializing in my metropolitan area, and you'd see someone's first name, their age, their gender, and their sexual orientation. I started talking with, among other people and usually in a "group setting”, a woman I thought was 29. It was never dirty, mind you, even when it got flirty. Just joking around and talking about whatever. When I took a serious look at her stats again, she was listed as 39, and I wondered why I had started chatting up someone so much older than me, not remembering that the stat previously said 29. Why all of this happened this way and how I eventually found out she was 45 is rather a boring story and not important to this post. The two important things to remember is that when I got heavily involved with her, I thought she was 39, and she later told me she was 45 after some math didn't make sense to me.

Originally, she had thought maybe I would be good for her daughter. But her daughter was a troubled brat. And shewasn't interested in me anyway. So, the elder woman of the house began to flirt with me big time. Dysfunction much?

Me, I was wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. Wrong for getting involved with a much older woman, wrong for getting involved with a mother with a minor child, and wrong for fornicating. Not to excuse my sins, but rather explain a little bit... I was almost completely inexperienced with dating, naïve, felt affection-deprived, and had an inferiority complex. I was ill-equipped to resist the flirtations of a (very) experienced, available older woman, even if this was before the whole "MILF" thing made it to pop culture. I was also living on my own, away from my family, by myself. That makes messin' around really easy.

We carried on for a year and a half. We didn't keep it a secret. Our friends and family and even a lot of our coworkers at our respective workplaces knew. We struggled from time to time with the age difference and the morality of the whole thing. It fell apart after her daughter gave birth. Grandma did't want to deal with the drama of her new-mother daughter fighting with her, and ditching me gave them one less thing to fight about. About 7 or 8 months later, I stumbled cluelessly into another relationship with a woman who was only two years older than me. Grandma later found some new 18 or 19-year-old guy for a while, and we were on friendly but distant terms until we lost contact after moves.

It wasn't all bad. We didn't really fight with each other, as we were too busy defending our relationship to others. She fed me well – meaning home cooked meals that helped me to lose weight. Between those and the – ahem – regular exercise (minimum three times a week, every week), I didn't even have to try to lose weight – it just happened. I slimmed down to an ideal weight. She showed how to behave with more confidence, and she gave me a makeover so I wouldn't look so much like the nerd I am. I was certainly not as bad off as I would have been if I had "fallen in love" with her daughter instead.

But out of all the things wrong about that relationship, at least we didn't marry, as that would have been a mockery, and I didn't get her pregnant. That would have been horrible for the child. Also, I didn't have a child to expose to a situation that was really all about having sex without marriage or a realistic hope of getting married and having it work.

Thank God for His mercy and forgiveness.