About An Ex

I’ve mentioned in past posts that my ex J2 (here and here) was (and still is) a very dominant man, though we didn’t put a D/s label on our relationship. Most kinky people would find our sex life to be fairly vanilla (though we enjoyed a lot of kinky things by vanilla standards). We had an amazing emotional connection–like something I’ve never experienced in my past relationships–and I let him have tremendous control over me. Even today, more than five years after we split up, our connection to one another is strong.

It’s hardly worth getting into the details of our break up, particularly since we both knew that we’d eventually split up. I came into the relationship knowing that I wanted to get married and have kids; he came into the relationship knowing that he didn’t want to have children and saw no point in getting married if children weren’t part of the equation. But our attraction to one another was so strong that we wanted to be together, even if just temporarily. After all, the sparks between us had been obvious for years, but we’d been in relationships with other people at the time. When we were finally both single, we had to see where fate took us.

I think it’s safe to say that we never expected to fall for each other as hard as we did. But it happened, and it surprised us both. And for about 18 months, it was an incredible love affair. I’d never before dated anyone who loved, adored and cherished me like he did. I loved and adored him, too, and would do anything he asked, and more. It didn’t hurt that we had a long-distance relationship, but were able to spend significant time with one another each month–so from the start our time together was intense and usually for several days on end. (Our second date, for example, lasted three days, and we were together for all but about an hour of that time.)

(As an aside, I deliberately don’t mention cities to attempt to obscure the details. But J2 and I both travel a lot for work, and have control over our travel schedules, so it enabled us to spend a lot of time together. We’d just arrange to be in one another’s city at the beginning or end of the week, and stay for the weekend, or we’d head to the same city at the same time. Plus we loved to travel so we visited some wonderful countries together on vacation.)

In my head and my heart, I always knew it would end–we both told each other it would have to happen at some point. But I always thought I’d be the one to pull the trigger. So when he was the one to break off the relationship–and refuse to even talk about why he was ending the relationship–I was devastated. (I won’t get into his reasons for breaking up. As much as I’ve loved him, I don’t think he’s a perfect person. And even today I will tell him to his face that he has fucked up reasons–then and now–for having ended our relationship.)

We finally saw each other seven months later–at a business conference in my home town–and when we sat down late at night after the cocktail parties were over and the business dinners were finished, it was a messy conversation. There were tears, there was yelling, I even tried to punch him. And then I went home to my new boyfriend. Yes, I was a month into a new relationship and I had to explain to him (before the expected confrontation with J2) that I’d be home late because of a business conference and long-overdue knock-down, drag-out fight with my ex-boyfriend who broke my heart. The NB was a good guy. It wasn’t love, but he had a good soul and he understood.

After that night, things started to heal with J2. We’d see each other two or three times a year at business conferences. After the first one after the knock-down, drag-out, the next conference was out-of-town (for both of us) and one night we “ran into each other” (it was deliberate on both of our parts) after the evening’s entertaining was over. It was less than a year since our breakup, I was still dating the new boyfriend, but J2 still owned a piece of my heart. I berated him, I flirted with him, I verbally pushed him away, then I verbally tried to pull him back. We were both a little tipsy, and he tried to kiss me…I physically pushed him away. (In my mind, I was probably thinking, “He knows I’m dating someone else. He had his chance. If he wants me now, he’ll have to be dominant and make more of an effort than that. If he wants me, he’ll have to fight a little harder than that.”)

New boyfriend lasted a long time…about three years. J2 and I would see each other at trade shows, where we’d have coffee or cocktails, catch up and keep our hands off one another. Although I thought I loved NB, in the back of my mind, I was still tormented by the abrupt unfinished business of my breakup with J2.

Eventually, NB and I split up. J2 had nothing to do with it, and the breakup was for the best…we just weren’t in love. Although the timing was coincidental, it conveniently happened shortly before two trade shows that both J2 and I were scheduled to attend. It was at the first of these trade shows that we kissed for the first time in more than three years, and slept in the same bed together again. (Poor planning, neither of us had condoms with us and it was late at night.)

We’d been taking for hours while walking around the city, having drinks in the famous bar of another hotel, finally walking back to our hotel, going to his hotel room, talking for another hour or two…then, it was as if no time at all had passed…we were kissing, he was holding my face, we were staring into each others eyes (we’ve alway kissed and had sex with our eyes open), I was tasting his familiar taste on my tongue, I was smelling his colonge. Except for the fact that we were three years older and hadn’t previously been in this hotel together, nothing had changed. Except that I got home, called him a couple days later, asked what we were going to do next (since I was recently single) and he told me, “We can’t start dating each other again.” I didn’t want to hear it, but it was the best thing he could have told me.

That didn’t mean we were out of each other’s lives.

About a month later, he came to town for another trade show. We went out for dinner, we then had sex for the first time since before we broke up (three years later we had make-up sex!), and it started a new phase in our relationship that’s continued to this day. When I’m single, I may see him a few times a year when our schedules mesh. We periodically email or talk on the phone, but we primarily catch up in person. We don’t go out of our way to see each other, and if we happen to be in the same place at the same time and can’t get together–or only have coffee or dinner, but no sex–it’s not a big deal. I have a very prosaic, laid-back attitude toward our relationship/friendship. He still tries to be emotionally dominant over me when we’re together in person…these days, he only gets about 50% of what he wants. *g*

I’ve only been in one relationship since J2 and I got to this stage–and that relationship was lasted less than a year–but I won’t won’t emotionally or physically cheat on my partner with J2. J2 knows that he had his opportunity to have me completely, and he lost it. Now he fills a different role in my life. He’s like an old friend who I enjoy catching up with, but each time we say good-bye, we realize it may be for months, years or forever.

One more note: About a year ago I was sitting with a co-worker in a hotel lobby. We were sitting near the hotel’s exhibit hall, having a cup of coffee and relaxing for a few minutes when J2 walked out of the exhibit hall. He was talking on his cell phone, while reaching into his suit pocket for a pen to make some notes, and had no idea we were watching him. My co-worker knew our history, so we sat there silently, and just watched him for a minute. She finally turned to me, “He’s very masculine, isn’t he? And he just oozes confidence and sex appeal.” Now that I’ve known him so intimately for years, but only see him periodically, I’m able to sit back and observe him as an outsider might. I know his smile, I know that his eyes can make a woman weak at the knees. When he starts to flirt with a waitress, I know exactly what he’s going to say, and how she’s likely to react. I try to remember if he said any of these things to me when we first met. (I would have been about 25 and he would have been about 40.)

I can remember bits and pieces of those first few years of flirtions, before we became a couple, but most of it’s faded from memory. Did I laugh? Did I blush? If I’d known then how things were going to turn out, I would have captured those memories and filed them away.