Romance: The Art of my Love: a story of betrayal, desire, love, and marriage Read Online Free
Author: Tanya Altbridge
sophisticated when it came to sex. I, on the other hand, remained thoroughly unsophisticated and learned a lot from her.
Diana was not satisfied by her sex life with Pete. Sex with him was boring, uninteresting. Yes, he tried to please her, but he never took the initiative and he was not inventive. And when a furious Diana would banish him from their marital bed after another scandal (and she loved scandals, the kind with screaming, tears, swearing and threats of divorce), he would obediently totter off to sleep on the couch in his study, where he would quietly masturbate, alone.
Diana divulged all of this to me with no sign of embarrassment, never worried that I might say something to Pete. In that, she was correct – I never could have said a word to Pete, even if I had wanted to. I didn’t even know how to talk about such things. Soon I started to see him differently, with Diana’s eyes, rather than just with mine. That made it agonizingly uncomfortable for me to see him at all, and so I tried to avoid him at school.
Diana, meanwhile, started to take lovers, and she experimented with them. They were her route to uninhibited passion and drama lacking in her family life. During lunch, she would tell me everything, in detail. Those details were too much for my active imagination. Her stories and her approach to sex made me start thinking about my life with Paul. No, I certainly had no need for drama. Definitely not screaming, scandals and divorce. Since I had met Paul, I had never even looked at other men, and I hadn’t wanted anyone but him. It had never once occurred to me that Paul might cheat on me with another woman. But now, hearing Diana’s adventure stories, I started to think about it.
If Diana was right, men share one characteristic: an insatiable sexual appetite. They need sex pretty much constantly, 24 hours a day. At least that was the case for the men Diana dated.
I remembered how, when we first got together, Paul had also wanted to have sex all the time. And I remembered how later, bit by bit, we started doing it less and less frequently. I never took the initiative myself. Gradually we worked out a certain mechanical order of movements, which we could use to fairly quickly come to a conclusion beneficial to both parties. “Quickly” was the key word here. We both had to get up early, we went to bed late, and we never got enough sleep, so we were always tired.
By this point, Paul was writing a new screenplay, about an athlete and his coach. The athlete works hard and overcomes various obstacles in his life, while the coach helps him out and, in the end, guides him to victory. The interactions between the young, inexperienced athlete laboring through all the difficulties and the coach, who has learned through experience and been hardened by life, were the central intrigue in the story. Paul had me read parts of his script. Generally I like the way Paul writes. His characters always come across as very real, lifelike, but at the same time I could almost physically sense that some very important element was missing.
Sometimes I wanted to tell Paul about Diana and her lovers, to add a certain dramatic flair to Paul’s story, but I had no idea what role Diana could possibly play in the story of the athlete and his coach. I decided to keep Diana’s revelations to myself, to avoid giving Paul any dangerous ideas. Still, after a lot of thought, I decided for myself that if Paul ever betrayed me with some other woman, someone like Diana, not for love but simply out of curiosity, I would be able to forgive him – because I was too attached to him, and I could never live without him. And really, when I compared my relationship with my husband to Diana’s relationships with her lovers, I had to conclude that, in my life with Paul, sex was nowhere near the top priority. Something much more meaningful and important than sex connected us.
Chapter 4. Paul’s New Partner
One day Paul returned from the
Diana was not satisfied by her sex life with Pete. Sex with him was boring, uninteresting. Yes, he tried to please her, but he never took the initiative and he was not inventive. And when a furious Diana would banish him from their marital bed after another scandal (and she loved scandals, the kind with screaming, tears, swearing and threats of divorce), he would obediently totter off to sleep on the couch in his study, where he would quietly masturbate, alone.
Diana divulged all of this to me with no sign of embarrassment, never worried that I might say something to Pete. In that, she was correct – I never could have said a word to Pete, even if I had wanted to. I didn’t even know how to talk about such things. Soon I started to see him differently, with Diana’s eyes, rather than just with mine. That made it agonizingly uncomfortable for me to see him at all, and so I tried to avoid him at school.
Diana, meanwhile, started to take lovers, and she experimented with them. They were her route to uninhibited passion and drama lacking in her family life. During lunch, she would tell me everything, in detail. Those details were too much for my active imagination. Her stories and her approach to sex made me start thinking about my life with Paul. No, I certainly had no need for drama. Definitely not screaming, scandals and divorce. Since I had met Paul, I had never even looked at other men, and I hadn’t wanted anyone but him. It had never once occurred to me that Paul might cheat on me with another woman. But now, hearing Diana’s adventure stories, I started to think about it.
If Diana was right, men share one characteristic: an insatiable sexual appetite. They need sex pretty much constantly, 24 hours a day. At least that was the case for the men Diana dated.
I remembered how, when we first got together, Paul had also wanted to have sex all the time. And I remembered how later, bit by bit, we started doing it less and less frequently. I never took the initiative myself. Gradually we worked out a certain mechanical order of movements, which we could use to fairly quickly come to a conclusion beneficial to both parties. “Quickly” was the key word here. We both had to get up early, we went to bed late, and we never got enough sleep, so we were always tired.
By this point, Paul was writing a new screenplay, about an athlete and his coach. The athlete works hard and overcomes various obstacles in his life, while the coach helps him out and, in the end, guides him to victory. The interactions between the young, inexperienced athlete laboring through all the difficulties and the coach, who has learned through experience and been hardened by life, were the central intrigue in the story. Paul had me read parts of his script. Generally I like the way Paul writes. His characters always come across as very real, lifelike, but at the same time I could almost physically sense that some very important element was missing.
Sometimes I wanted to tell Paul about Diana and her lovers, to add a certain dramatic flair to Paul’s story, but I had no idea what role Diana could possibly play in the story of the athlete and his coach. I decided to keep Diana’s revelations to myself, to avoid giving Paul any dangerous ideas. Still, after a lot of thought, I decided for myself that if Paul ever betrayed me with some other woman, someone like Diana, not for love but simply out of curiosity, I would be able to forgive him – because I was too attached to him, and I could never live without him. And really, when I compared my relationship with my husband to Diana’s relationships with her lovers, I had to conclude that, in my life with Paul, sex was nowhere near the top priority. Something much more meaningful and important than sex connected us.
Chapter 4. Paul’s New Partner
One day Paul returned from the
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