My silver fox.
In today’s tech savvy world, we have at our fingertips the ability to access anyone instantly. We call, and they pick up. Perhaps we can’t call, so we text, and thus begins a silent conversation between two people.
Some people can multi task, and some can’t.
My married boyfriend of 7 years falls in the latter group.
Like an idiot, he accidentally sent me a text meant for some other woman he is intimate with. It’s not his wife, and it’s not me. I know it wasn’t meant for me just by the context of it in our conversation, and by the way it was worded. I knew it wasn’t meant for his wife, because he quickly tried to use her for his ill fated and impulsive cover up.
I say ill fated because without the cover up text, he MIGHT have been able to keep me in an ambiguous state of indecision, wondering if there could be the tiniest chance he was telling the truth.
I say impulsive because had he not panicked and sent the cover up text, he could have possibly squirmed and skirted his way around his epic fuck up. His impulsive decision sealed his destiny.
When I decided to supplement my miserable and failing marriage seven years ago, I did it via an internet dating site for married, cheating people. Flog me if you want to, I couldn’t get any more mangled.
I found my silver fox, a decade and a half older than me and a man that admitted to five affairs within the fifteen year span of his marriage. He was a beautiful physical specimen and for me, some kind of dominant Demi God. I fell in love with the attention he gave me and despite the fact that I promised I wouldn’t, I fell in love with him, too.
I knew his track record was not good, but I figured he would be faithful as long as I provided him all he needed. I was hungry for love and happy to oblige. Our relationship blossomed and the ratio of give to take was always on an even scale.
For over five years, I did take care of him. I lavished him with attention and affection. I sacrificed time away from home and time away from work to be with him whenever I could, and he did the same. We vacationed together and lied to our significant others until my husband changed his mind about the open marriage I had talked (coerced) him into and put the kabash on our weekends.
About 18 months into the relationship, we both started talking about leaving our spouses, but NOT TO BE TOGETHER! He had drilled THAT into my head OVER and OVER. We were not expected to have a future, but I was to be one hundred percent faithful to him and nobody else. He wanted it to be exclusive, as did I. I eventually left my spouse, but for reasons known only to him, my silver fox stayed with his wife.
I thought we were on the same page about eventually being together as a couple, even though my friends continued to spout the grim statistics in response to my undying devotion to him.
As the years rolled past, his wife was forced to retire and suddenly, I was hit in the face with the reality of the pecking order. I was the girlfriend, and maybe not even the ONLY girlfriend. I forgot to mention the distance between the silver fox and I is about 75 miles and as he was able to get away less and less, I felt every single one of the miles like a dagger through my chest.
A year into his wife’s retirement, the silver fox lost his job as well. Now, we barely EVER saw each other, and we went a year with no physical contact whatsoever, although we did talk on the phone several times a day. My love for him never waned, but the realist in me saw what everyone else said would come to fruition; he was disappearing right before my eyes.
And it was killing me.
I acted out. I grew indignant to cover the pain. I drank and I smoked and I even got thrown in jail for possession of marijuana. I rode on my friend Joe’s motorcycle behind him, in a sheer tank top and shorts with moccasins and bare legs. He was drunk and so was I. We went fast and I did not think about dying. I suffered a burn in a drunken state, my husband became impotent and I could not see my lover. I logged about a hundred overnighters in my barber shop chair surrounded by good friends, and I logged some drunk driving miles that I surely shouldn’t have. I was lucky to survive. I was on a roller coaster ride of self destruction and my puke bucket was full. It was time to jump off.
For a while, my friendship with Joe stroked my ego.
Until I realized that he was quite possibly a closet gay. I came to this conclusion after his confession of sexual molestation in a past boy scout scandal in our rural area, and his running homophobic commentary. His absolute hateful aversion towards homosexual men combined with his acute asexual and childlike behavior made it real clear that this guy wasn’t up to standards in the extramarital fuck partner category.
So the position remained unfilled and I reluctantly came to the conclusion that I still loved my silver fox, and that my heart wasn’t open to really letting go. Ignoring him because I lost faith did nothing to quell the still nagging love I had for him that made me answer his calls every other day to reconnect or at least keep hold on the tenuous thread of hope that was still inside of me.
I did not take care of his needs as I once had. But, he was tenacious and he refused to give up on me. He tried and eventually DID convince me that his love was genuine and that he did have feelings of commitment towards me.
Throughout the seven years, one thing has remained constant. That constant was the agreement of fidelity, because my lover had convinced me that he did not need all those other affairs. I was supposedly the “Total Package” and his past history of cheating was because he was in a bad marriage to a crazy woman and unable to find anyone else of her caliber, or anyone he loved enough to replace her.
He never outright promised me that we would be together in the future. As a matter of fact, he refused to promise me anything related to the future. The only thing he would promise me without reluctance was his FIDELITY.
What a crock of shit. When the going got tough, he got ta fuckin’. But, he kept ME on the side, relentless in his pursuit of me. Relentless in his devotion and the fact that he loved me and could not be happy without me.
That imagined fidelity had held it all together and had just recently caused me to open my heart and take what I could get of this man I loved, for I missed the part of my life where we were close and had a constant connection. I had finally begun to accept the fact that I loved him and needed him because he was my love, my partner, my best friend, despite the distance and the absence.
I decided to try anew.
We met in a motel recently to renew those feelings and silent vows. We met with what I thought was the agreement to get back to how it used to be, and because it never really went away. It was always there, our love, patiently standing the test of time. Yawning, as if to say, “You know you love each other, just get on with it.”
Then, the text comes.
And blows it all out of the water.
I don’t know how to feel. I only know that I’ve had three sleepless nights and some pretty tough days. I only know that a 47 year old heart shouldn’t break like it did when it was young.
Now, I need a place to sort it all out. This new site is my place.
I can’t take the time to catch anyone up, the story of my life will just unfold as everyone else’s does, day by day, with no real plan.
It’s BYOB.
I invite you along for the ride.
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