It wasn’t until the death of my mother on July 25, 2011, that my blindness died. After three more months, I was born again, as an awake, aware, and sober addict and co-dependent.
On October 10, 2011, I kicked my husband, Leonard out the door. It was a relatively minor infraction that sent him packing. It brought up all his lies, betrayals, and infidelities that I had recently discovered, after leaving my mother’s deathbed. Yes, throughout our kinky lifestyle, I had expected my husband to be honest with me. That was the only way I could justify it all.
I had entered my husband’s land of lust because he complained that he hadn’t experimented enough sexually before we met. I came up with a hare-brained compromise that would allow him to explore sexually yet still give me emotional security. With this deal ruling the heart and crotch, a couple of superhero swingers took flight!
The Agreement: No side relationships and we would only “play” together, never separately.
For me, the rule was modified, only to accommodate my sugar daddies. It was a type of job, after all, and had nothing to do with personal entanglements. So the personal boundaries did not fit here. Even as I write these words, I want to vomit. I had twisted myself into a pathetic pretzel to ensure that my “love” would stay with me and stay honest. Only to discover, after my mother’s death, that he never kept his end of the bargain. He had been cheating on me the entire five years of our relationship.
Hence, the night of October 10, 2011, was the beginning of my new life, without costumes, without sex parties, without constant porn, sex chats, threesomes, foursomes, sugar daddies, or the coordination of Leonard’s next fix, whatever it was. My abrupt decision to banish him enveloped me in total shock, quickly followed by intense rage, extreme fear, deep sorrow, and then relief, all within five minutes. Later, I would visit these various stages for weeks or months at a time. If being in love feels like sipping a cocktail of Dopamine, Serotonin, and Oxytocin, then falling out of love felt like drinking a straight shot of Cyanide. In the sex/love addict’s 12-step program, they call this detox phase “withdrawal”, just as it would be for an alcoholic or drug addict. I found it to be miserably painful.
When I originally began writing my memoirs, I thought it would be a titillating romp through my “sexcapades” as a legal secretary, when I was still single and wild. After a loveless and sexless seven-year marriage in the 90’s (I know the seven-year itch!), I was ready for a good dose of lust. That is what I thought anyway. Little did I know I was on a journey deep into my sex/love addiction, a journey fraught with painful consequences that ended with me married, yet being paid to have sex with wealthy men. Yes, I wanted to believe it was legal. They were merely helping a lady who found herself in a difficult situation.
Until recently, few people recognized that sex/love addictions even existed, especially not for women, and least of all for me. Although I knew I had tremendous difficulty being alone for more than a few hours at a time, I had an even more difficult time coping outside the cocoon of a romantic relationship. When I was in between relationships, I was miserable. Later on, I adopted the serial dating approach, so I wouldn’t have a moment to lament, while desperately hoping to find the next Mr. Right. But I just told myself this was a fun adventure and for the most part, I did have fun, as long as the addiction was fed. Albeit, I was never content with my need to be in love and in a relationship. However, I preferred that to being in lust. I accepted lust, only as a bad second to love, and I accepted it often.
