That winter of 2008-2009, when the love and lust between Eric and me was growing stronger every day, a couple of incidents happened that I think typify our experience.

On the lust side, a vivid dream that Eric had, which he described to me, I think sums-up our very mutual desires, our constant hunger for each other.

The dream opened with an endless Midwestern plain, a vast field of prairie grasses. Punctuated by a single, gently-rolling hill.

One day, a single cloud drifts in over the prairie, settling over the solitary hill. That cloud is fluffy and puffy, soft, and pink, like cotton candy.

The pink cloud descends toward the lone hill.

The prairie ground around the hill begins to tremble and shake. The hill begins to rise taller and taller, and the top of the hill, now a majestic mountain, forms an open cone. The hill transcends into a volcano, which begins to rumble and quake. The entire tall mountain, filling with lava, begins to glow with bright hues of red and purple.

The soft pink cloud descends lower, and completely surrounds the growing and glowing mountain now. The cloud begins to flash lightning, and to boom thunderously. The volcano reaches up higher into the cloud, and the mountain begins to hiss and roar, signifying an imminent eruption.

The thundering cloud grows louder, and it begins to drizzle onto the trembling and roaring volcanic mountain. The volcano begin to spew steam and hot ash, a precursor to the hot lava it will soon spew forth, high up into the pink cloud. The cloud flashes lightning and booms thunder, as the drizzle turns to a downpour onto the mountain.

The volcano booms and trembles, as it explodes a tremendous volume of hot lava upward into the puffy pink cloud. Blast after powerful blast of thick, hot lava shoots high up into the cloud, as the cloud continues to pour heavy rain all over the volcanic mountain.

The cloud eventually stops raining down onto the mountain, and the volcano stops exploding lava high up into the pink cloud. The pink cloud slowly drifts off of the mountain top, and settles into a fog on the plain, stretching itself next to the huge mountain.

The cloud/fog gradually transforms itself into a cat (or is that a Kat?), which stretches its front paws to caress the mountain. The happy feline grins, as the Cheshire breed is known to do, and she meows softly, contentedly, as the mountain continues to quake against her front paws. The cat (Kat?) now begins rubbing her thick, soft cat (Kat?) fur gently front to back, side to side, along the mighty volcanic mountain. Meow! Purrrrrr!

Nah, Eric, nothing in that dream reminds me of us at all! LOL.

Soon after that, I had a wonderful erotic dream about us, too. I was the Lady of the Lake from the King Arthur legend. A vast and very wet sea; that was me. At one end of my lake, was a stone, which all the moisture in me could not erode, and which I would allow nothing to penetrate. Then one fine summer day, along came handsome King Arthur, and he plunged a might sword into the Lady of the Lake’s impenetrable stone. The sword, as in the Arthurian legend, was called Excalibur.

The Lady of the Lake so enjoyed the feeling of Excalibur sheathed so deeply into her stone, that she resisted all efforts to pull it back out. Arthur always had to struggle mightily, every time he tried to free his sword from the depths of the stone and its surrounding lake of wetness.

I had long been calling Eric my “Cyrano” for his skilled swordsmanship, as well as for his huge “nose” (a medieval euphemism for the male organ – as in, Pinocchio’s nose frequently grew longer). From that time on, whenever Eric and I made love, I mixed legends and called Eric my Cyrano, but his sword was Excalibur. Eric would sometimes call me his Lady of the Lake and tell me how he delighted in sheathing Excalibur in the tightness of my stone, surrounded by so much dampness

We would also make jokes about me being a circus performer, the lady sword swallower.

So those typify the lust side of what we had between us that winter and spring.

The love between us might best be typified by what was happening to us both, career-wide, as winter melted into spring of 2009.

Recall that in early 2007, the stock market, the housing market, and the banking industry had all collapsed at the same time, wiping out millions of jobs. The suddenly unemployed could no longer pay their mortgages, and foreclosures were at a record high. As we rolled into early 2009, the economy is still in free-fall.

Eric had lost his job in that economic melt-down, and had started a new job shortly before we met, at less than half his former salary. Being very low paid, despite having a master’s degree and working on my doctorate, my salary had not really been a significant factor to the bottom line, for my employer to take the trouble to lay me off. Until now.

We were told that our whole operation was being shipped off to Asia, where everyone’s $10 an hour salary would become something like 50 cents a year. We had one month to wrap-up all of our projects now in process, and to find another job.

Eric loved me enough to introduce home to his friend Ken, who was a professional employment counselor and had helped Eric land his current job. Ken helped me write a resume that covered all of the essentials without being overly wordy. He helped me find good job openings, and drafted cover letters for me, tailored to each job ad.

Ken and I would meet about twice a week for breakfast or lunch and go over my job search efforts for the next few days. Sometimes I brought Eric along for encouragement and support, something I sure wasn’t getting at home from my husband. It bothered me a little when Ken figured out that Eric and I were lovers, but my husband, having apparently decided to become permanently unemployed, it was unlikely that Frank would ever encounter a career counselor like Ken anywhere, and learn about my secret lover, Eric.

Mornings where I didn’t meet with Ken, I would find comfort about my imminent job loss, by finding a secluded spot where I could joyously suck or ride (or both) my Eric. That always cheered me up, always made me feel much better.

Through it all, Eric was so supportive of me, that the love in my heart for him grew stronger every day. Which made the terrible things I would eventually have to do, even harder for me to do, when the time came that life forced me to totally wreck what we had between us.

Eric’s new employer, struggling through the free-falling economy, didn’t lay him off like my employer did with me. But they did cut his salary by 15% - in top of him having taking more than a 50% pay cut compared to his previous job. He could no longer afford his mortgage, and was being constantly harassed by phone with threats of foreclosure.

His employer was a union shop, and the union took the matter to court. The court dragged it out, but eventually declared the pay cut illegal, and ordered the salary level restored. But the court stopped short of ordering the money illegally cut from the paychecks, returned to the workers who had earned that pay, including Eric. In essence, it was like the court telling a bank robber, you can keep the $1 million you robbed from First National, as long as you never rob another bank again.

After the pay cuts were restored, Eric’s employer told him he was being transferred to another division. Eric was told what that division did, and he was told to write his own duty statement for his new job.

I helped Eric write and edit that duty statement, because a loving partner does things like that for the one you love. I mentioned Eric’s problems in my job-hunt meetings with Ken, and he gave me some helpful tips about writing duty statements - which I, of course, passed along to Eric.

Ken said I must love Eric very much to be so concerned about him, to help him like this. “No more than he loves me. I wouldn’t be here with you, getting so much wonderful job-search advice and help from you, had Eric not loved me enough to introduce me to you.”

I then looked at Ken very sternly. “This conversation NEVER happened. Eric and I have to be so careful.”

“I understand,” Ken nodded. “And I make no judgments. It’s none of my concern. I’m happy to help you both solidify your careers. And what goes on outside of that, really doesn’t matter to me one way or the other.”

I relaxed, safe in the knowledge that Ken would protect our dangerous secret. And as far as I know, seven years later, Ken has kept that trust, and has never mentioned any of this to another living being.

I spent a month winding-down my work projects and working with Ken to find my next job. I was out of work just two weeks, before I began my new job.

Eric’s duty statement for his new job was approved, so he pretty-much got to tailor his job to his wants, needs, and interests. In the middle of a 1930s-style economic depression. How cool is that? I know he wouldn’t have lucked into kind of a “write your own ticket” job (well, except for the low salary) without my love, encouragement, and support through his job-change process.

Eric and I celebrated his new job and mine, with another all-day fuck-fest at our favorite motel. Our fifth tryst there, and the motel clerk was starting to recognize us both by now.

We did it sitting in a chair, we did it face up and face down on the bed. Him on top. Me on top. In the shower - standing, doggy, and seated. Sucking, being sucked, and 69. On the floor. On the sink counter. On the table. If there was a sexual things to do, and a place to do it, we did it.

Our semi-public outdoor sex restricted what we could do. But when we could get a motel room like this, we could and did repeat all of our favorites, abandoning anything that hadn’t really worked for us before. And in a motel, we always tried to work at least one new thing into our sexual repertoire.

We were celebrating my new job, and his new job, and celebrating how we had each helped the other to get our new jobs because we love each other that much. Two things to celebrate, so we added two new things this time.

First, I had him sit naked on the motel-room arm chair, and I gave him a lap dance like a sexy stripper. Except, of course, in a strip club, neither the dancer nor the client is completely naked. And I don’t think the dancers eagerly ride up and down the client’s love-pole, as I was doing. Nor, I suspect, do the dancers get as wet and squishy as I was, nor come bucket-loads onto their clients, as I did onto my Eric.

I climbed off Eric, who had shot so much come up into me, and he was still dribbling. I knelt on the floor before him, my feet tucked under my ass. And I began to lick his balls and then lick his juices, and mine, off of his still-hard cock. I then sucked him until I had drained his balls completely.

I backed off of Eric and smiled up at him. “Look at my come-smeared mouth! I’ve been sssoooo naughty!” I cooed. “I think I deserved to be spanked!”

“You know I could never do that, Kat.”

“Why not?” I pouted.

“I love you, and I could never inflict pain on you.”

“It would be a pretend spanking, my love,” I smiled, stretching myself ass-up across his lap.

Eric gave me very gentle little love taps across my ass cheeks. He pretended the spanking stung my ass and left red streaks, so he would massage and kiss my ass to take away the pretend-pain.

I squirmed and wriggled across his lap. Every massage, every kiss, on my ass made me more and more cock-hungry!

I finally couldn’t take it anymore. Still stretched sideways across his lap, my hand encircled his cock and slowly began to work it deep into my hungry pussy. As I sideways rode his huge hard-on, he continued to gently and playfully spank my ass, punctuated by loving kisses on both of my ass-cheeks.

I slid deeper down over him, and I came. He pushed himself powerfully up into me and he came, too, while massaging my ass the whole time.

We both agreed that this kind of spanking would have to become a regular part of our love-play. It was a wonderful and powerful expression of how much we love each other.

I tried stretching Eric, butt side up, sideways across my ass, and gently, playfully spanking him. I enjoyed it, although not as much as the other way around, when I had been the one getting spanked. But I don’t think Eric enjoyed it much, and we never repeated that. I think he feared that, outweighing me, he might be too much weight on my legs. He wasn’t, but that concern probably made it hard for him to enjoy this. Besides, although this may seem unfair, there’s just inherently something way sexier about a man kissing a woman’s naked ass, than a woman kissing a man’s.

When I got home, I was terribly sore all over, and that soreness felt wonderful! Every ache was from Eric loving me so well, so deep, and so hard. As the song lyric says, the whole day had been “A trip to the moon on gossamer wings.”

Also during that winter of 2008-2009, we had repeatedly discussed my getting a “love nest” apartment, which we could use whenever our needs and urges overpowered us. Cheaper than motel rooms. But with our new jobs, my pay cut, and his threat of foreclosure on his home, that idea never panned out.

We would also talk about eventually marrying each other. But we couldn’t see any way out of my marriage, or his, without financial ruin for us both. Neither of us could really prove the verbal spousal abuse we both faced in our homes. What would we say in court? Please grant us both divorces, because we love each other very much and we fuck like crazed bunny rabbits several times a week? Maybe in our grandmother’s more enlightened Native society, but hardly in twenty first century America.

Then, too, there was my track record with marriages. All three of my husbands had started out great and gradually turned into total assholes. Well, actually my first husband had always been an asshole. A drop-dead gorgeous hunk of an asshole, true. An intensely passionate lover, too. Father to my two oldest children. But an asshole nonetheless.

Yes, what I had with Eric was in a whole different ballpark than any of my three husbands. Eric was (and I’m sure still is) a true gentleman, kind and loving and generous toward everyone and so loving, so caring, as well as so intensely sexual, toward me. I knew Eric could never turn into an asshole. But thrice burned, fourth time shy, or something like that.

In our daily-commute conversations, I began to bring up the idea that he and I couldn’t have everything together, like we both wanted, like we both deserved. Eric’s attitude was half a loaf is better than none. But I began to feel more and more that it wasn’t enough, for him or for me. What we had was wonderful and amazing, of course. But the much more that we both hungered for, was not possible then, and might never be possible for us.

Confused about what to do, how to move forward, how to resolve my mixed-up emotions, I sought the assistance of a psychiatrist. She wasn’t terribly helpful. Having been indoctrinated in western religion, not in what I considered the more naturally human Native American ways on which I had been raised, she was very judgmental. She couldn’t see herself advising me to strengthen my affair, or condoning the powerful love and lust I felt (and still feel) toward Eric.

I turned to the Internet. People had been having affairs for millions of years, how had they handled this? It turned out there had been about as many different results from affairs, good and bad, as there had been humans on the earth throughout history. I wound-up even more confused.

I loved what Eric and I had together. But I feared that if we couldn’t grow beyond what we had, if we stagnated where we were, everything we had would likely wither and rot and die an ugly, horrible death. If we couldn’t have it all, was this enough? For either of us? Didn’t we deserve the much more that we both hungered for but couldn’t have?

Eric listened to me, and like me, he wavered back and forth between “half a loaf is better than none” and “how do we find our way to the much more that we both want and both deserve?”

As we struggled with these issues, paradoxically, the love and lust we felt for each other grew stronger every day, yet the opportunities to fuck each other senseless seemed to grow less frequent! Between his new job, my new job, wrestling with the issues that an affair presents, his battles to stave-off the threat of mortgage foreclosure on his house, the ever increasing amount of time my doctoral thesis was taking up as my deadline for completing my studies grew closer, and of course the daily asshole behavior of our respective spouses, finding time to feed our mutual sexual hunger became increasingly difficult. Not that we weren’t fucking each other. Just down to once or twice a week instead of 3 or 4 times.

Every time was still wonderful, of course. But instead of having more between us, more love and more sex, as we both wanted, we seemed to be forced to settle for less and less.

I sought-out spiritual guidance. Not traditional western religion, of course, which would have prescribed stoning me to death. I did find a local spiritually oriented musical group, which seemed to align well with my Native upbringing. They encouraged me to strengthen and deepen my love for Eric, my spiritual soul mate, but they had no advice for how to do that within modern American society.

I began to drop hints to Eric that I couldn’t see us moving forward from where we were, and we might have to separate rather than stagnate.

He would always look so hurt when I talked like that, and I would back off and kiss him and tell him how very much I appreciate having him in my life. All of which were my true feelings. But I kept coming back to how I just couldn’t see life providing a path to the happiness we sought.

Eric often conceded that I was right, but he wanted to keep fighting for us, for our chance. But he didn’t know how to fight that battle and succeed, any more than I did.

By April of 2009, I think we both knew it was pretty-much over. Yet we would have lunches together a few times a week. I took to taking a different train to work than he did, avoiding him so neither of us would have to face the pain as our break-up slowly proceeded. Yet I would take the train with him once or twice a week, and snuggle comfortably in his arms, still loving him, still loved by him. We still talked on the phone a few times a week, no longer twice a day. And there were still those long, loving emails, full of double entendres and playfulness toward each other, every night. But the temperature in those emails had cooled down a little, not quite the intensely hot hunger of earlier messages.

In May we had one more all-day motel tryst. And another in June. We didn’t know it then, but that would be the last time we would ever make love.

The amount of time spent together decreased more in July, as my thesis began to eat up huge amounts of my time. My doctoral studies required money that I didn’t have, and I talked to my boss at work about that.

She proposed that if I would change my thesis, from a study of first-generation college education in low-income families, to environmental science (the area my new employer specialized in), they would fund my Ph.D.

I hated having to change my thesis from what I wanted to study, to what my employer was willing to fund. I was grateful to Eric for having helped me find a job after my layoff, and it was a good job. It was unfair, I know, but a voice in my head told me I wouldn’t be in this pickle about my doctoral thesis, had Eric not helped me get this job. I don’t think that the thought helped my jumble of emotions about life and about how much I love Eric and wanted to have it all with him… but couldn’t.

Then August came, and with it my forty-ninth birthday. Eric bought me this wonderful birthday card. On the front were a black cat like my Salt and a white cat like my Pepper. Inside the card, Eric had written wonderful things about how much he loves me, and funny comments about Kat fur (referring to my bush) and how much he loves my happy, kittenish purring in bed.

I loved the card. But I could hardly display it in my office at work. My coworkers knew that my husband’s name was Frank, so who the hell was this Eric whose bedroom manners made me meow?

And I could hardly take the card home, where my husband might find it in a drawer and file for divorce on grounds of infidelity, wiping me out financially, as my second husband had done when he learned of my affair at age 37. I knew that, in the eyes of western society, verbal abuse by my second and third husband did not excuse my affairs during those marriages. A cheating husband is a stud, a role model for other men, but a cheating wife is a slut.

It pained me to have to put Eric’s beautiful, loving, lustful birthday card into the office paper shredder, grinding it into a fine dust. But such is the nature of a secret love affair.

I knew this could not go on like this. We both deserved better than to have to destroy cards that expressed how we fell about each other. I knew what I had to do now.

I knew that one of my co-workers rode the same train as Eric did. I began to take that train daily again. Only this time, I would sit with my co-worker every time, not with Eric. My plan was to distance myself from the man I love, to end it before it could end us.

Eric would say hello to me when he saw me. It pained me to do it, but I would barely acknowledge Eric’s existence.

My co-worker asked me who Eric was. That’s when I began deliberately wrecking the sweet loving relationship between Eric and me.

I told my co-worker a great big lie. I said he was my ex-boyfriend. And I attributed to Eric, every verbal abuse that my husband Frank had ever hurled at me.

When Eric would say hello to me, I would try my best to give him a cold, blank look, even though inside I was burning up with love and lust for him. Having heard my lies about Eric, my co-worker would glare at Eric in deep hostility. My bulldozers were hard at work wrecking our relationship. If we couldn’t have it all, if we couldn’t have what we wanted and deserved, better to leave a dusty heap of rubble, than to watch what we had slowly stagnate and rot from within.

And yet, we still emailed each other every night. I wrote to him as much as he did to me. I love Eric too much, not to have continued that, at least for a while longer.

When I finally earned my Ph.D., I emailed Eric a photo of me in my cap and gown, and copy of my published doctoral thesis. He commiserated with me that I had been forced to change the topic of my thesis, from what I wanted to do, to what my employer wanted me to do. Eric also told me he was enormously proud of me, for accomplishing such a major educational milestone in my life. I think his pride in me, from the man I love and who loves me, meant as much or more to me, as actually getting my degree. Especially since my husband considered my degree an enormous waste of my time and energy.

Our relationship was still rocky, though, and I was still wrestling with how to either get everything we wanted (which seemed impossible), or to end our affair with as little pain as possible, for both of us.

I don’t know where the thought came to me from. Maybe after all of the verbal abuse from Frank, maybe at some level I really did wish him ill. But one night, I emailed Eric that Frank had been in a car accident, driving off the road onto a grassy embankment, and flipping my car on its side. I would need to tend to the man who was still legally my husband, and I wouldn’t be able to see Eric again for a very long time.

I hadn’t thought that lie through very well. I had forgotten that Eric was very familiar with my maroon pickup truck, having seen me drive it many times, having ridden in it with me a few times. And he had my license plate number memorized.

A few nights after I had lied about Frank being in a car accident, Eric emailed me, “Does your husband have a beard?”

I replied, “Yes, why?”

“Is Frank a little bit overweight?”

“Yes, a little. WHY?”

“Well, coming home from work tonight, I saw an overweight man with a beard, driving your pickup truck. He doesn’t look injured. And there are no dents in your pickup.”

I didn’t know what to say. Caught in a lie.

“Why did you lie to me, about something so horrible happening, when it didn’t?”

I started to type a reply, then to edit it, trying desperately to figure out how to recover from having told such an evil lie. A lie to the man I love. The man with whom I had an intense relationship, built on mutual respect and mutual trust, both of which were now destroyed by a powerful wrecking ball, of my own making.

Before I could compose a reply, another email arrived from Eric.

“And what the HELL did you tell your friend on the train about me. He always glares at me like I’m the most evil person on earth.”

I tried to back-peddle on that lie, at least. My reply was only a half-truth. “I told him about Frank’s verbal abuse of me. I guess he thought you are Frank? Sorry, my love.”

I couldn’t exactly tell Eric that I had deliberately attributed Franks’ abuse to Eric.

“Can’t you disabuse him of his error?”

The next day, I told my co-worker that I had lied to him about Eric, who as always so sweet and loving toward me. I told him those verbal abuses had come from another man, not from Eric.

I told my co-worker about how I feared that my lie to him had hurt Eric deeply, and I hated to cause pain to the man I love. My co-worker let me cry into the shoulder of his coat, and he hugged me to comfort me.

Of course, Eric walked past us at that very moment. Now it was his turned to glare at me in hostility, as my co-worker had glared at him.

That night, Eric emailed me, “Did I really see what I think I saw this morning? You in the arms of another man? Is this why you have been trying so hard to break us up?”

I replied, “No, my darling, no. Never! I love you, only you! He was just comforting me, as I process my jumble of emotions over wanting everything with you, but having no idea of how to get us there.”

“You cannot get there in the arms of another man. I am hurt, my love. I love you, and I always will. But lately, you keep hurting me, whether intentionally or not. I feel so lost.”

“I love you,” I replied. “The last thing I would ever want to do is to hurt you, my love. But I fear that if we can’t make our hopes and our dreams come true, if we can’t grow as a couple from where we are now, what we have will stagnate and wither and rot and die. All that I have done to end things between us, I think is preferable to letting our love rot on the vine.”

There were a few more email exchanges between us during September and October, and in one I stated that wishing and hoping is for teenagers. At our age, wishing and hoping and dreaming isn’t enough, not nearly enough. And that is all we have, and probably all we will ever have, wishes and dreams of what will never be, of what cannot be, of what life will not allow to be.

Eric replied “I love you, I will always love you. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to say. I wish you a wonderful life, and I will try to have a wonderful life too. Although I think that goal of a happy life is impossible for us both, when not in each other’s arms. Maybe this doesn’t have to be forever. Maybe someday, we will get to have those multiple lifetimes together that we have often talked about.”

The next morning, on the train, I told my co-worker about Eric’s message, and I broke down sobbing. My co-worker tried to kiss me!

“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded. “I may be vulnerable right now, but not vulnerable enough to want THAT!”

He mumbled something about me being a cold fish. Or maybe it was cold bitch.

The next weekend, I went to another concert of the local non-Christian spiritual musical group.

After the concert, I got talking to the drummer. We dated a few times, and yes I took him to a motel (not the one Eric and I had so often used – the memory would have been too painful). Mostly out of curiosity to see what it was like to ride a musician. He was a good lover. He was no Eric, for sure, but it did feel nice to have a big hard cock in me again. It had been too long.

That relationship didn’t last too long.

In August of 2010, I got a surprise email from Eric for my fiftieth birthday. The message had a photo of actor Jack Lord and the words “Happy Five-O.” (Fir those of you too young to remember, Jack Lord was the lead actor in a TV police series called Hawaii Five-O).

“Thank you,” I replied. "I still love you, and I miss you. I still see no way to our multiple lifetimes together, and I dare not hope any longer.”

In 2010, I met a man in a supermarket aisle, one thing led to another, and after a couple of dates, he was fucking me almost as wonderfully as Eric had. My new lover and I used to walk hand in hand through some of the same areas that Eric and I had once frequented. We would make googly eyes at each other, and we would not notice people around us. Much as Eric and I had once been.

I was surprised to get another email from Eric. “Do you know how much it hurts me to see you walking hand in hand with another man?”

From then on, my new boyfriend and I avoided areas where we thought Eric might see us. On Nov. 10, 2010, I got a very simple text message from Eric. It said simply “11/10/08.” Had it really been two whole years since the best sex of my life?

I was tempted to write back, “Yes, that date is still magical to me, too. I love you and I miss you.”

But I knew that our dreams and our hopes were all for naught. So I opted to send a semi-hostile reply instead. “What part of 'no' do you not understand? It’s over. Never contact me again.”

As we strove to avoid every place I might see Eric or he see me, my boyfriend (no idiot, he) sensed that I was still deeply in love with Eric. Which I was and always will be. Soon we, too, had broken up.

In 2012, I heard from Eric again. He emailed me that our breakup had broken his heart, and in his state of emotional wreckage, he had tried to console his grief by eating---and eating and eating. He had gained nearly forty pounds, stretching his abdominal wall until it caused his appendix to rupture in May of 2011.

After major surgery to repair the damage, Eric had gone on a weight-loss plan, lost back those extra 40 pounds. He was eating healthier, exercising daily, and was even more fit and toned than when we had been lovers. I tried to picture how hot he must look now, and I have to admit that did get me panting, sweaty, and very moist.

But that feeling quickly dissipated as I read on. “After thinking back on all your lies at the end of our relationship, I have come to realize, as you told me, that our hoped-for several lifetimes together will probably never be. My wife saw my through my recovery period, and we grew closer. In some ways I hope this hurts you as much as you hurt me, but in other ways I never want to hurt you, because I still love you, or rather, I still love who you originally presented yourself to me to be. I fear that person no longer exists.

“Anyway, for good or bad, I feel that you deserve to know this. On 11/10/2011, three years to the day after the amazing seven-hour sex marathon that you and I shared, Mary [Eric’s wife] and I broke that record. Mary doesn’t know it, and I will never tell her, but I picked that date so that 11/10 will be a special date for Mary and me, exorcising the demons of what that date once meant for you and me. My wife and I made love for a wonderful nine hours on 11/10/11, and I don’t think I’ve ever been happier or more in love. Not even with you.”

Ouch! Way to even the score between us, Eric!

I now know, more surely than ever before, that there is no hope left for us, for Eric and me as an “us”. No way to rebuild what my bulldozers and my wrecking ball so mercilessly and so thoroughly destroyed. The love will always be there, of course. But he has changed, and I have changed, and there is no turning back the hands of time.

And I also know that my deliberately wrecking us, ultimately saved us. Just as I knew it would.

In 2012, while attending a rock concert, I met a new boyfriend, Dave, and we are still seeing each other. (See my story, How I Met My Dave.) Dave is no Eric, nobody ever could be. But Dave was willing to learn all the sexual pleasures that Eric had shown me, and Dave has become nearly as good at these pleasures as Eric was. I can’t say I love Dave, but I enjoy his company in and out of bed, as he enjoys mine. And we admire and respect and cherish each other, very deeply.

In 2013, I met my first female lover, Justine—of all places, in a lingerie shop! I still date and make love with Justine, too. We love each other very deeply, every bit as strong a love as between Eric and me.

In 2014, Justine – who I now call Justy – met her current boyfriend, Vince, who we refer to, for a very good reason, as “Ten Inch Vince”. Under the name Katlover1975, Justy posted the story here, about how she and Vince met, at the wedding of one of Justy’s friends.

In 2015, I finally divorced my long-time husband, Frank. Since then, Justy has very generously shared her Ten Inch Vince with me, and I share my Dave with her. The sex between the four of us is very different from what Eric and I had. But in its own way, it’s just as wonderful, maybe even more so,

Also in 2015, I was selecting fruits at a local farmer’s market, when I saw Eric right in front of me. He was selecting fresh raw vegetables. He was in very tight jeans, and he was more slender, and way more muscular, than when we had been lovers in 2008-2009. I closed my eyes and remembered every detail of how totally gorgeous Eric’s cock is. And what an amazing lover he is.

I looked at him, and he looked at me, but we said nothing. There was really nothing more to say, nothing more we could say, that hadn’t already been expressed a very long time ago.

I watched this hot hunk from my past, my former very passionate lover - my then and now and forever love of my life - as he slowly walked out of the farmer’s market, and disappeared from view. He had an even cuter butt now, after his weight loss and toning up, than I remembered.

I felt happy that I had gotten to be his lover, and he my lover. Oddly, I no longer felt sad that I had lost him. I knew that I still have his love, and he still has mine, always and forever. And nobody, nothing, can take that away from either of us.

Our sadness and grief and sense of loss, is in the distant past now. And all that is left are joyful memories and an abiding love.

And I also felt, and feel, happy and grateful to have what I now have with Dave, Justy, and Vince. My life today may not be what Eric and I dreamed of, but it’s a pretty good life now.

I also hope that Eric and Mary are having a good life, and that they are making their once-wrecked and now renewed marriage work for them.