Tanhā

A well-needed respite

…which, is really what it was—a break from the ever-indulgent world of high-intensity sexual arousal. 

In the months following our first encounter, we had a few more experiences—all of them enjoyable for everyone involved. 

During that tumultuous time, we grew more as a couple in that six months than at any time in our relationship. We smashed down barriers that normal couples reinforce as a daily practice. We, however, were learning more and more about what turned us on, together, as a couple, and it was the most exciting, and connected, time in our relationship. 

However, at the same time, I stopped developing my individual self. 

I stopped engaging in my self-care hobbies, such as learning how to play the guitar—something I have been trying to do for the better part of twenty years, albeit off and on. 

I stopped watching the television or playing video games.

I stopped caring about my career.

While I was falling ever-deeper into the world of cuckolding, I was struggling with one particular aspect of the lifestyle. 

The word relationship has so many different connotations. It could represent the connection between a teacher and a student, or that of a parent and a child, or perhaps two friends, or even two acquaintances. 

The word relationship, from my perspective, was about the connection between two lovers.

…but in Cuckolding, the wife has a relationship with the play-partner…and the husband. 

“How could my wife have a relationship with another man?”

This was difficult for me to process. 

When we were first getting into cuckolding, I thought it was just about the sex. After being in the lifestyle for six months, my view of the cuckolding lifestyle began to warp. All around me I saw so many different experiences within the cuckolding lifestyle. As I watched all these unique experiences unfolding around me, I pondered my own relationship with Mae. I thought about her love for me and my love for her. I realized then that, if she is to have a relationship with a play-partner, cuckolding was not for me and I wanted her all to myself. 

Then, as Mae said in her recent post, we decided to box up those experiences and place them on a shelf to look at when we wanted to relive our shared experiences. 

Our experience in non-monogamy, and more specifically cuckolding, dredged up past traumatic experiences for us—more specifically, our childhood and adolescent trauma that helped shape who we are today. 

Sometimes you need a fucking break. 

So, a fucking break is what we took. 

We packaged all that shit up and put it on our damn shelf to look at; smile at; scowl at; all of that shit. 

We worked through our trauma—together, as a couple. Every. Damn. Week. 

We learned new ways to analyze our trauma—with a little help from some otherworldly plant medicine. We learned what we needed to do to manage our mental health. We found Reggae. We found Saturday nights just staying up late and diving head-first into our earliest memories—the scary ones you keep deep-down, locked in a impenetrable vault that no one could ever access. Those memories; the important memories; the memories that had subliminally-shaped our adult-view of the world. We brought them out and exposed them for what they were, together. 

“Always a purveyor of pessimism is the mind that has yet to heal from its trauma.”

After working through our trauma together, I realized that the idea of a relationship has many meanings. It is just a word, after all; nothing to fear but fear itself. The idea of a relationship between me, her, and her play-partner, where we are all friends, sounds like a positive and uplifting experience and something I hope I can experience someday. Cheers to you guys, phunforties!

As I reflect on my own experiences in my first year of non-monogamy, I remember each and every one of those experiences positively—I regret none of them. However, I do look back on those experiences as a slightly older,  and a little more wiser, practitioner of cuckoldry.

As I reflect back on my written words, I do so with humility. Those words represented everything I was feeling at the time. Those words helped me process my feelings and emotions surrounding the whole non-monogamish experience. Without them, I would have certainly lost my cuckold-loving mind long ago. 

We’ve made some changes to our Twitter-verse names recently—and then did it again. We have now each settled on our own unique identifiers. For mine, I wanted something that represented the struggle I go through. Taṇhā is the sanskrit word for thirst/craving and represents the idea of the thirst for sense-pleasures, existence, and non-existence. I thought this was fitting, after all, this whole world we’ve created for ourselves is all due to our craving for those succulent sense-pleasures.