by Victoria Tiegert

Created on: January 04, 2009

I will confess, I have had sex with one person while thinking of, even fantasizing about, another. That is not to say that I do this often, but I suppose that's relative. Let's just say that I have in the past couple of weeks. That doesn't necessarily mean that I actually want to have sex with that other person, only that they are on my mind in an intimate way. It also doesn't mean that I don't want to be with the person I am with, which happens to be my husband, or would even rather be with someone else. I can't explain why it happens every time, only that it does, sometimes with no trigger I can pinpoint at all and others with a specific reason that is easy to explain.

For example, I have recently learned of the death of a man that I was very much in love with years ago and he's been on my mind alot more than usual. Sometimes that happens to be when I'm making love. The thing that I do feel bad about is that I know that I am somewhat comparing the two of them and my current husband may be coming up on the short end. I shared an incredibly loving and passionate sexual relationship with that man in my past. There are good reasons why we aren't supposed to just go around having sex with anyone that we want to and that is one of them. In bed with another man, we can easily recall former partners and it may not be intentional, but it is natural to compare one with the other.

I also have times when I may get woken up in the middle of the night, while I am away in dreams, for lovemaking. If my dreams have been of another man and I am still half-asleep, it is easy to let my mind wander. The dream may not have been sexual in nature at all, but suddenly I find myself in an intimate moment and the last thing on my mind happened to be some other man.

Having reached middle-age, it seems that I find myself recalling former sexual encounters. This is not so much for the memory of the other man as it is for the memory of my own youthful energies and playfulness that is dwindling slightly as the years keep on marching by. I am also reminiscing about things such as flexibility and flat stomachs, a time of young bodies that glistened and never jiggled or cramped. Unfortunately, those days were prior to my marriage to the man who is now sharing my bed, but the fact is that they were and other men were in his place making those particular memories with me.

I have had some lovers who were exquisite and had romance dripping from them like honey from the comb. I have had lovers who had the bodies that would invoke the jealousy of Adonis himself. I have had lovers with whom I was very much in love. But, that is the past and I know that. If I allow, or even do it with no intention to, myself to linger a moment longer than I should in a memory once in a while, it changes nothing about my feelings for my husband. We have a different relationship than the ones I had in my twenties and it is only every so often that I have a moment of missing the me that I shared with others.

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