Why Did I Fall the Way I Did?

It's imperative that I make sense of the last ten months of my life and learn the lessons that it holds.

I've made sense of him, at least, enough for now.

It's time to turn that laser-sharp insight in on myself.

Right now? I have to answer why I fell into this romance the way I did?

Passion.

I love my husband deeply. He's a very good man and he's my best friend, but as I've written before, there's never been a burning, romantic passion between us. That's just not on what we're built.

Believe me, when I say, I am so thankful for my husband. I will never leave him and I can't do without him. And, through this, I've learned a new appreciation for who he is: He is kind, patient, incredibly understanding, and, more, he's selfless. And, selfless is the quality that most stands in direct contrast to my experience of the Lover.

The journey with the Lover was really about me giving to him in his need while in his transformation. I had to learn a bit of selflessness, and while not perfect, when I review my part in his life, I'm proud of the overall selflessness of my response to his needs. However, he took a lot and while he gave me what he could, namely his love and appreciation, I can point to a number of beautiful trees of giving from him, but the overall forest was that of a man selfishly, because he had to be, because it was where he was at in his life when our paths crossed, walking through his own transformation.

My husband selflessly let me walk this path, let me do what I felt I needed to, and picked up the slack when doing so depleted me. And, I owe him a debt of gratitude for his great love.

The lover was not the only one who didn't realize he was subconsciously driven, in part, by a need for passion. I wasn't looking for it, but I found it with him and longed for it was I had. All fits and fevers, intensity and drama, it was, on the one hand, a deeply satisfying emotional experience but, on the other, made me appreciate even more the lack of it I have with my husband who is all peace and serenity, comfort and security.

The passion, as I've written before, was literally present at first sight due to our nature's response to the other's and it only grew from there. While our subconscious need and natural personalities' compatibility were the main culprits, there were a few things that contributed to the building of passion which I will take to heart and decide how to safeguard against this happening again for the foreseeable future.

I started on, primarily, a sexual journey. I wasn't looking for love, I have that already. While our connection was instantaneous, I came into the situation heavily focused on rationality and my intellectual pursuit in the journey.

Libras are air signs. It's said that air signs are intellectually ordered, thinkers, and that is certainly true of me. It's also said of Libras, in particular, that we're often not very in tune with our feelings and, consequently, can tend to handle intense and overwhelming emotions poorly. Correspondingly, my personality test result, ENTJ-A, says the same thing. It's been hard for me to acknowledge this, but this experience forced me to work out of a lot of emotion and I can see the ways in which I need more of a balance between the two.

It took some work for the Lover to get me to climb out of my head and into my heart, but once there, I gave it free rein. However, the emotionalism got out of balance too and that made me feel lost toward the end of the relationship. By the end, I found it nearly impossible to be rational about almost anything. Impulse and emotions had overridden my usual nature, and not being particularly strong over them, I felt weakened and like I was stumbling around in the dark, groping for something to lead me to the light.

A conversation today helped me to look back at the beginning and remember that I not only enjoy having multiple sexual partners but that there was a practical reason for it too. It kept me from sinking too deeply into feelings for any one of them, but the Lover wanted exclusivity with me and the circumstance of his needs and the natural passion which existed between us caused me to change my boundaries. I changed them in practice, but it took a while longer before I was willing to let go of that road for him at a heart level. Once I did, I went all in. I'm intense when I'm all in, we're naturally intense together, and his circumstances added intensity. The whole thing was intense.

I wasn't looking for polyamory. My husband and I started our journey as partnered nonmonogamy - my husband as my partner and love while having other sexual partners but not sharing love with them. I grew to seriously picture polyamory with the Lover and he grew into the same vision. And, once that was the expressed desire, our lack of freedom in his circumstance became a real problem. 

I don't know that I want to seek out another polyamorous experience anytime soon, but the partnered nonmonogamy is still an appealing road to travel for both my husband and me.

So, practical lesson number one: if a sexual partner needs exclusivity, my answer is a hard no for now.

Don't get me wrong, my heart aches, so much (for so many reasons), at the loss of the comfort and security we had in a longer-term, exclusive sexual relationship. I miss it and him terribly, but if I continue on in partnered nonmonogamy, I need to not be in this level of emotional intensity again. For a while, I need to focus my love, adoration, and attention in on the good man who loves me best because while I'd never have left him for the Lover, I gave the Lover a lot of my affection for too long a time.

My good man deserves it more and I will give it to him.