**Content Warning** – This story is not particularly erotic, so if you’re all hot and looking for release, then this isn’t the story for you :D. You can enjoy the pictures without the story and then move on to another page, perhaps the video gallery.

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A chill breeze wove through the flames as firelight danced into the salty night surrounding the three of us. My husband Luke was to my right. Our friend Kat was across the firepit from me, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. 

We met Kat at a beach house for the weekend to make sure we keep the balance between our extramarital dating and family life. Her son and ours are similar in age and always have fun together. When the kids were finally asleep, we sat out on the front patio to relax and catch up.

“When he told me he was going to propose, my immediate response was no,” Kat said in reference to her college boyfriend. “For a long time, I wondered why that was my response. I thought at first it was because he needed to find himself, but I think now it’s because I needed to find myself.” 

They broke up a few months after that, and now he’s married with a couple of kids.  Everyone back then thought they would end up married. 

Life is like that; unexpected things happen, things that change the trajectories of our lives in ways we could never have imagined. 

We chatted about our shared dislike of religion, which took us next to sex and the ways religion can turn something so natural and beautiful into a shameful secret. 

Kat told us about attending a private Christian college for grad school, not for any conviction but simply because they offered the program she wanted. She said when she enrolled she had to sign a pledge that she wouldn’t drink or have “premarital sex” during the time she was enrolled in their institution. 

“That’s ridiculous!” I said.

“It wasn’t a problem,” Kat said with a mischievous look on her face. “After undergrad, I needed a bit of a break from all the fucking.” At that, we all laughed. 

At some point, I mentioned how I like the term “first intercourse” as opposed to the loaded “losing your virginity.” 

“I’ve never heard that before,” Kat said. “I like it. Sex shouldn’t be a loss.” 

“Right,” I agreed with her as I shifted my legs closer to the fire. “The whole concept of virginity is shaky at best. Do we have such identity defining terms for someone who has never gone swimming, or ridden a bike, or gotten their first job?” I said. 

“And if we did, I bet we wouldn’t call it a loss,” Luke added. 

Kat agreed with us and then turned her blue eyes toward mine and asked, “How old were you?” In reference to my own first time. 

I leaned back into the wicker chair as my mind wandered back to that confused chapter in my life. “Man, I didn’t even kiss anyone until I was 20.” 

“Oh my god. I was 8 when I kissed someone,” Kat said laughing. “I can barely even remember it.” 

I thought about how I used to wear a “true love waits” ring and how I had planned to be a virgin when I got married, as if it were some grand feat to aspire to.

“I was also 20 when I ‘lost’ it,” I said with emphasis on the verb. “I guess I went from 0 to 60.” We all laughed at that. 

“I lost my virginity at 14,” Kat said before making some jokes about her own promiscuity. “I was a problem.” 

We all sipped on our steamy hot drinks as the night around us continued its descent toward cold. 

“How old were you?” Kat asked, turning to Luke who was reclined in his chair with his feet on the edge of the firepit. The drinks and flames were keeping us warm and our conversation flowing.

“Too young,” Luke responded. “Much younger than you were,” he added. His is a story of something that should never have happened to a child with someone who was well old enough to have known better. I watched as he told the rest of his story.   

“It was all hush hush and went on for a bit. Being secretive, hiding things is something I’ve struggled with,” he said. His voice echoed into the night sky as the distant sound of waves crashing and sea lions barking echoed through the night air. 

“I’m sorry,” Kat said. “I guess we all have our skeletons, don’t we?”  

I thought then about the rough patch we’ve been working through in our marriage, the result of truths he kept from me out of shame and fear. A few months ago, there was a moment with a lover where the condom didn’t get used, which was a breach of our open marriage contract. It was the second time with this lover that such a thing happened. The first time, he told me right away, and we worked through it. I was hurt, feeling that he had put his desire for her over my own safety. My pain was amplified by my own skeletons, but we talked through it and were fine. 

The second time, his fear told him that it would be a deal breaker, that I couldn’t possibly love him after a second mistake, and so he lied. However, as lies often do, it eventually found its way to the light, rupturing trust far more than any momentary mistake could have. 

Just as the dust was settling, there was an accidental revelation of a long ago night of passion in a car in the blurry beginnings of our relationship with a lover I had never been told had overlapped with us, a one night affair that became a secret. 

In these last few months, I had gone from a feeling of trust to one of vulnerability. It had been heavy, and it had been many nights spent talking late, but it hadn’t been impossible to mend the rupture. 

~

I reached out across the firelight and caressed Luke’s foot as the last bit of heartache from these betrayals melted into empathy for a kid who was told to hide his shameful secrets. I hadn’t before connected the dots from his story to our current situation until that moment with the firelight dancing across his skin and him telling our friend about the hush hush of it all. 

Kat shifted the focus of our conversation to me, “How was your first time?” I visualized it,  thinking back all those years ago. 

“Complete and utter shit,” I said. I saw a look of surprise come across Kat’s face. 

“Was it someone random?” She asked, and so I told her about that time in my life when I was starting to question my religion and of my first boyfriend who entered the scene amidst it all. Despite all the doubts creeping in to confuse me, I still held very strong beliefs about the importance of purity. It was a complex time. 

“He was just pushy with boundaries,” I said. “Not forcefully pushy,” I clarified because it wasn’t a trauma of that kind. It was never forceful. It was just the kind of dynamic that happens when boys are taught entitlement and girls are taught to be sweet.

“It’s just like he would have an attitude when I tried to stop things from progressing physically,” I said.

“He would lay guilt trips,” Luke added, knowing my story as well as I know his. 

I explained to her how my boyfriend would give me a kind of “uhhh fine,” reaction followed by a deep disappointed sigh when I tried to hold the boundaries I thought were important. 

“Things just progressively got more physical,” I told Kat. “The relationship wasn’t great. He was stuck on his ex-girlfriend and was lying about still being in touch with her.” I leaned back in my chair and contemplated for a moment. “I should have broken up with him, but I don’t think I knew how. I remember not wanting to hurt him.” 

Kat watched with a compassionate look on her face as my own story unfolded. 

“I was depressed and in the end I stopped caring and stopped resisting, and one unceremonious day we had sex.” I said. “It hurt; it didn’t feel good at all, and then a week or two after that, he broke up with me.” 

And that right there is my own skeleton, this feeling, this vulnerability around sex. When a new lover doesn’t end up being more than a couple of hookups or when Luke felt so much passion that he didn’t use a condom, my mind is tempted to go back to that place, to a girl who gave her virginity to a boy who wanted someone else more.

Kat is a pelvic floor therapist who works primarily with women and their vaginas, and so she responded from a place of her unique knowledge. 

“The body can get numbed out,” she said. “If there’s pain or you’re not aroused by something, you can unconsciously shut down feelings in certain areas.”

I knew she was right.  My own pelvic floor therapist had told me I needed to relax more than anything else. My vagina had been in a state of contraction, perhaps as some unconscious protection mechanism.

“Before I dated him,” I told Kat, “pleasure was so easy and felt so good, but after him it became so much harder.” 

I went on to tell her about the one day when it all changed. I can still see it in my mind, the day some switch in my head got flipped and getting off moved from easy to hard. The path to climax had been a smooth trail through a sunny meadow speckled with sweet smelling flowers and all I had to do was walk along with a smile on my face until I got to where I was going. 

But on that day, the trail became a foggy maze through a shadowy forest. If I’m being honest, although I’m finally on the edge of that forest and can see the sun shining and hear the birds singing happily, I still haven’t taken that final step out of it. The haunted branches of the last few trees still reach their boney fingers out to pull at me. 

The day I’m referring to wasn’t anything grand or violent. It was simply my boyfriend pushing once again for something I wasn’t yet truly comfortable with, and me unable to put my own needs over the programming to not to make someone else feel bad. 

It was before we ever had sex. It was just him trying to get me off with his fingers and me lying there uncomfortable and numb, trying to feel pleasure for him and his own ego instead of for myself and for the first in my life not being able to feel anything. 

In that moment, a script — a thought loop — got stuck in my head: “I want to, but I can’t,” was an idea that before him didn’t exist. I was left that day not with pleasure but with a feeling of inadequacy, with an idea that I was somehow broken. 

~

The firelight danced and our conversation eventually moved on to other topics, but my mind kept pondering those old wounds. I could see it clearly then, the dance Luke and I have been in the last few months. It was a dance of skeletons. 

The Skeleton’s Dance 

The dancers take the floor, — and a five, six, seven, eight — the tango begins. 

Luke: Would she still love me if she knew all of my shameful mistakes.  If I tell her, it could be the end, and I don’t want this to end. I love her.   

Lila: He wanted her more than what I have given him. I feel so small, so insignificant right now. 

The music plays as the skeletons, arm in arm, attempt to find their rhythm.

Luke: You don’t deserve her forgiveness or her love. She’s your world and you fucked it up. 

Lila: She climaxes so damn easily, and she squirts, less work and more reward… Of course he wanted her more. I feel broken.  

Bones clack as the two fleshless bodies step together, pushing and pulling at the melody. 

Luke: Why didn’t I just tell her the truth? I’ve fucked everything up. She didn’t deserve this. 10 minutes of stupidity wasn’t worth any of this. None of it compares to her.

Lila: I feel so vulnerable…so inadequate.

White blurs momentarily as one skeleton is led in a spin and then a dip. 

Luke: This is the end. I wouldn’t forgive me if I were her. She’s better off without me. 

Lila: I just want to fold into myself and hide from the world. 

The dance continues, in a tense display of emotions. But then, the blinds open and sunbeams, bright and warm, flood through the window. The bones melt into dust and are blown away on a gentle breeze of compassion and truth. 

~

These mental scripts — these skeletons — aren’t reality; they’re fear amplifying small mistakes and imagined inadequacies. They’re our vulnerabilities. 

I had never once not trusted Luke before until one revelation after another made the foundation of our relationship tremble and shake, but as the dust of the earthquake settled and we talked through it all, I didn’t find a villain. Instead, I saw my husband through a more complete lens; I saw a good man with his own human mistakes, fears, and insecurities, a man who loved me and needed some reassurance of my own love for him. And we both became more aware of my own wounds and the ways in which they amplified my feelings of hurt, and together we’ve carved a path forward. 

~

When the cold and the exhaustion of the busy day became too much, we all called it a night and went inside. Standing in the dark bathroom of the master suite, Luke and I held each other and kissed for long, slow moments as our beautiful son slept soundly on the bed in the room next to us. 

“I love you,” Luke said. “You know nobody else makes me as hard  and so easily turned on as you do. I want you, Lila.” 

“I love you, too.” I said as his strong arms squeezed me. “I’m not going anywhere.” 

And as we stood there holding each other in the dark, I could feel the foundation of our union settling back into the place where it has always been and where it belongs. 

~

Postscript:

When we opened our relationship, we were thinking more of the fun and erotic experiences we thought we would have. We didn’t know just how deep this journey would take us into our own relationship. We didn’t know the many things in both of us that needed release, that needed to see the light to finally be laid to rest. 

Relationships are complex, and unlike media portrayals of love, happily ever after isn’t a walk in the park; it’s a full day’s work and then some.

If we can recognize that we’re all human and mistakes are a part of that and that at least some of our feelings may come from the inside rather than as direct results of someone else’s actions, perhaps we can relate with those in our lives with more compassion and love.