Every once in a while, I like to put the shoe on the other foot so to speak. Last night I was thinking about Rebecca's perspective in all of this. How would I see it if she had been the one to suggest to me that I could start pursuing relationships with other women, while she remained "faithful"? My first reaction of course would be that she must already be cheating on me, and this would be her way of balancing things. My second thought would be that she wanted to cheat, and that she had someone in mind already. It would be difficult, if not impossible to understand what she would get out of this.
If I could satisfy my suspicions as to her motivations enough to accept that this was what she wanted me to do, I would probably question her love for me. Why would she want to "give me away", even temporarily to another woman? It would make no sense.
Now suppose for a moment that I could finally accept that she really did love me, and she wanted me to do this. At some point or another, my mind would start evaluating candidates, whether or not I had any intention of moving forward with it. For the sake of this "thought experiment", pretend there was a woman who recently left the company where I worked whom I had a good relationship with. This woman would be one that I had worked with over the last couple of years, and had always made time to chat. With my new-found freedom, I would subtly step up my interaction with her. We would meet for coffee, and start texting each other more and more. Things would start to take on a more sexual tone, and then one night, she would "drunk" email me stating her interest in something physical.
I would be conflicted to say the least. Without even trying, I suddenly had another woman interested in sleeping with me. I would decide to go extremely slow, and keep things to a "flirting" level. We would text and email every day. Then, one night a couple of days before meeting for a relatively innocent lunch, Rebecca would confront me with her knowledge of the emails/chatting, saying she wanted to be included in this, and that she was concerned I was hiding things from her.
I would be thoroughly confused at this point, and probably ask her, "wasn't this what she wanted?" She would reply, saying she was okay with the physical part and not with the emotional attachment. I would have to break it to her that you can't have one without the other. There would always be an emotional connection on some level if there's a physical relationship. I would say that's just the way I am. It's why you love me.
She would respond with a set of "rules" that she wanted us to follow as we embarked on this. Now at this point, the fun would be gone for me. I would now be in the awkward position of having another woman wanting a relationship with me, and my wife asking me to instigate a bunch of rules on the relationship.
Not that it should need to be reiterated, but I'll always chose my wife over another woman, so I decide to break it off before things go too far. I've now ruined a perfectly good friendship with a former co-worker because my wife pushed me in a direction, then pulled me back. I would be a little resentful towards my wife, but I would be happy we had each other.
Let's go one step further and suppose she wanted to set me up with another woman of her chosing, but this time only online, that is, via email or chatting. My thought at this point would be, "Can't I do anything myself? I'm a big boy." She either trusts me or she doesn't. Love and trust go hand in hand. I would tell her, again quoting my dad, "to take a long walk on a short pier." If it EVER comes down to is, I'll choose my own lover.
The thoughts she had planted would still be stuck in the back of my mind, but I wouldn't know how to proceed, or even want to because I would worry my control freak wife would lose it. I think I would do my best to just forget about things and try to get back to normal.
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Back to reality... my little thought experiment has shed some much needed light on how irrational my path has been. To that end, I'm going to take a step back. Rebecca needs some room to let things settle in her mind, and I really need to re-prove to her that I'm not crazy, and that I trust her. She can resume civil conversation (or not, it's up to her )with G, V, or any other letter of the alphabet for that matter. (Including a "C" who has been contacting her lately.) I'll leave it up to her. She can tell me or not, it's up to her. She has my blessing to do whatever makes her happy and I'll leave it at that.
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