Guilt

So a week or ten days back while I’m in bed with Jingjing, I get a barrage of messages and then calls on my mobile, all of which I perforce must ignore, as one cannot answer a call mid making-love.

But also I knew who was on the other end of those messages, those calls. A woman I’ve been seeing for many months, a woman I’ve spent more time with than any other; a woman who loves me more than I love her.

Angered by these interruptions, after I had finished with Jingjing I replied to tell her I had been with a woman. A testy exchange followed. In the following days our online conversations, which had been close, became cool, strained.

I met her for lunch yesterday.

She told me how hurt she was.

She told me she’d read this blog. Unwisely, some months back I’d mentioned I’d begun writing it but had not given her the address, due to its frank content. Honorable woman that she is, she’d not sought it out, leaving me my anonymity. But, after that night, angry, she tracked it down (which she had a perfect right to do all along) and read it, start to end.

Before this she had no idea of this part of my life. Yes, she had some suspicions, and indeed once told me ‘I am sure there have been many other women at the same time as me.’ But I deflected the question and she, fearing the answer, did not look any more closely.

But now she has read this. How much it must have lacerated her!

I want to write about her more. But that is not really possible. Firstly, she asked me not to write about her, and so beyond this, I will not write.

Secondly, knowing she will read this, I cannot be objective. Whatever I write would be an appeal to her, an attempt to exculpate myself, even though such exculpation is not really possible. I would like to try to explain my feelings for her, to write about how truly unique she is among all the thousands of people I have met here. To say how with her I was more my real self than with anyone else. To talk of my admiration and respect for her.

But how can I do that without coming off, to her, as insincere, trite? How could she believe it, knowing I wrote it knowing she would read it? How could she believe it after reading all the crude, basic pages below?

So I feel pretty rotten. Guilty, to have hurt her so badly. Ashamed, even.

And is even that true, after all? If I really felt guilty surely I would begin to behave in a more socially acceptable way?

Unlikely.

Partly, the chase is just too much fun. Partly, I do not, deep down, really view it as betrayal at all. Most of the women I’m involved with are willing partners and, really, compared to the depth of my relationship with this woman, all the philandering is just surface trivia. And partly (and perhaps the biggest part) I am just a selfish scumbag.

Hah, these matters with myself which I too much discuss.