See, when I say that I lost my libido I mean it. It wasn’t just that I wasn’t interested in and was bored with sex with Mr. Scarlet. I literally had no interest in sex at all. With anyone. For years. Oh, we’d have it sometimes. Basically I’d put up with it as a wifely duty or something. (I know, what a turn on to Mr. Scarlet.) And sometimes I would cum but really I didn’t care one way or another. Orgasm wasn’t the problem. Arousal, the beginning part where one gets turned on basically had a broken switch that was permanently stuck in the OFF position.
Then Mr. Scarlet got a job that shipped him overseas almost constantly. You know what? It only took a few weeks of him being gone before I actually started noticing other men. Men at work, men at the gym, men at community organizations I’m in, and even a few women here and there. A few men who were hot. Or not. Honestly, it’s like the sex fantasy part of my brain had to make up for the previous fourteen years in the course of a few months.
Anyway, the point is that I started getting aroused a lot. And that I could handle. We have our stash of porn and erotica. My vibrators got more use than they had in years. And then Mr. Scarlet would come back for brief visits and whoosh my libido was gone again. Until his next trip. WTF was going on???? This repeated several times.
In retrospect, I now understand that it was not Mr. Scarlet that was the problem. Monogamy was the problem. I am convinced that because I bought into society’s BS about monogamy that I subconsciously knew that the only way to go from my promiscuous single girl days to monogamous “happily ever after” married was to turn off interest in other people. The unhappy side effect of this is that it also turned off my interest in Mr. Scarlet.
Anyway, eventually Mr. Scarlet goes back overseas for a few months. And then I discovered the sexual uses of Facebook. And texting. I started talking to an old friend on Facebook who I had dated briefly at the end of high school. He told me he had had a crush on me since middle school and blah, blah, blah all of this ego stroking stuff. Most people would go back to their mundane life. And some people probably at this point would go down a path that leads to an affair. I, out of curiousity, wanted to know about the woman who had married this old flame. So I did a little cyberstalking on Facebook. Lo and behold, her relationship status indicated “in an Open Marriage”.
I thought to myself, “What the Fuck does that mean?” And after some research, I realized that some people could have their cake and eat it too. I really had never considered the fact that one might legitimately be able to have sex with other people and not be cheating. I had bought into society’s definition that while single you could be slutty and though subject to a certain amount of judgement, I could still do what I wanted. But once married your option was to be monogamous or to cheat. That is what you were signing onto, right? I mean that was the goal, the point, right? And since I actually love my husband and don’t want to hurt him, cheating is off the table which means there is no choice but to be monogamous.
So my generally response to the initial foray into researching open/polyamory/etc was pretty much along the lines of: WTF??!? You mean there are people who actually have permission to have sex with other people?!?!?!? There are married people who date others?!?!??!?!? There are people with multiple relationships going on while married?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!!
So I started reading a lot online about Open Relationships and Polyamory. And texting, Old Flame, to get a better understanding of all this. Oh, and to flirt a little. Ok, a lot really. Eventually it became clear that I needed to fish or cut bait. Since I was unwilling to have an affair, this meant, I needed to get Mr. Scarlet on board. Or find out if that wasn’t going to happen and deal with those ramifications.
To Be Continued: Why? Part 3 – How Mr. and Ms. Scarlet Become Swingers.
