asymetric relationships - she loves me but I not her

I mentioned that I suffered terrible guilt about my philandering earlier in my life and that it took a very special woman – a therapist to help me accept myself as I am. I now not only feel comfortable with myself, but I feel I am doing a good, wholesome and right thing. It is right and wholesome because inhibition, guilt and frustration are such destructive feelings that warp our personalities. If I have sex with a woman who is not my wife, I am not hurting my wife, but I am helping myself and the other woman to feel fulfilled and whole. This sounds like casuistry, but it is my strong belief.

Having said all that, I feel rightly guilty at times, not because of the ‘infidelity’ but because sometimes a woman grows to have greater expectations out of the relationship than I do. It all starts as an affair – it can be romantic, beautiful and very satisfying, sexually, but it is still an affair. If that woman is very unhappy in her own marriage or if she is single or separated, then I sometimes become an important part of her life, a part that she wants to grow and nurture.

It makes me feel dire when I realise that a damaged woman is now in love with me when I am not in love with her. I have sometimes fallen in love with my lovers, and in a sense that’s less of a problem because it’s mutual and together we have to work with it. However, when my lover is in a fragile state and falls in love with me, but I don’t fall in love with her, that does make me feel terrible. That’s one of the unfortunate spin-offs of my life style.

And on another matter, I fancy the pants off a woman who works in the same building. She is late 30s or early 40s and married. She has such a lovely, wonderful smile, beautifully dressed and so pleasant and very, very sexy. I want to bed her, but you know, experienced as I am, the fear of rejection is so big that I daren’t even flirt with her. I bet you never thought I’d say that, did you? The problem is that I want to be in her knickers so desperately that it’s distracting me from my work. I think I’ll send her an anonymous invitation to Illicit Encounters and then look out for new entries that could possibly be her: http://www.illicitencounters.com

Oh, yes – And Marie, women can join that site for free.