This entry was originally intended for publication on January 29th, 2008. It was withheld out of respect for the feelings of the people involved. But as the situation changes, I am now able to present my feelings which I feel are important enough to express.

How do I end up in these situations?

I originally came out to DC to be with someone special.  We met online and really hit it off.  Things rapidly became more and more serious and before you know it, we’re looking for the first opportunity to meet in real life.  But once I got here, things just didn’t happen.  That connection between us wasn’t there, and we never progressed beyond good friends.  However, the relationship seemed to continue as I stayed with her through her transition on a very asexual level as if we were partners.  But we both knew what the score was.

And then insert my best friend.  She’s married.  And on one fateful weekend something happened, and I fell madly in love with her.  It took me a long time to get the courage to tell her my true feelings and I tortured myself trying to make them go away for a long time.  But as I did, she revealed she had feelings for me too, but couldn’t ever love me the way I wanted because she knew she needed a man, and that her marriage which was very much struggling would probably not survive this.

And then we slept together.

We still decided that we couldn’t be together for the same reasons, so where did that leave me?  Stuck between two relationships that I didn’t have.  Not only that, I had cheated on my girlfriend as I was still in a relationship with her, failed or no, and I had slept with a married woman, failing marriage or no.

Suddenly I feel sick to my stomach.

Things progressed until my indiscretions caught up with me so to speak.  Eventually my guilt forced me to confess to my failing partner and my love tryst had done the same to her wife under different circumstances.  It was still very tense and difficult, but felt great having everything aired out. 

However things progressed between me and the woman I loved to the point where it seemed like we might be able to have some kind of a relationship, and to be honest, despite all that had occurred, I wanted nothing more.  This of course just created further complications for everyone.  My former partner who I was still living with couldn’t help but be upset by it and of course my love’s wife became thoroughly upset over the impending breakup of their marriage and our affair.  How could she not be?

One day I received an email from the wife that was filled with hurt and sadness.  She painfully agreed to give the woman I loved up to me and it totally tore me up.  I could have handled a “fuck you bitch” letter.  I suppose I feel I deserved that.  But no, her true and unflinching sadness was far more crushing than any bile could have been.

The other night I had a frank conversation with my friend who I originally came out here to be with.  She is okay with the situation, but acknowledges that it hurts.  And she asked me something that made me feel very horrible:  If the roles had reversed and it was her that fell in love with my friend, how would I feel?   A simple question, and it cut deep.  In all honesty it would probably devastate me.

So I sit here and I wonder about myself.  This has been far from the most simple situation.  In fact I think I even dumbed the facts down here a bit.  You can’t write this shit, no one would believe it.  But I’ve always considered myself a moral person.  I think of myself as loyal and true and generally a good individual.  I value moral integrity and I try to lead my life accordingly.  But in one simple place, I listened to my heart and ignored everything else, and can’t help but feel that I caused a world of hurt for so many people.  And that destroys me.  It is not the person I see myself as.  It’s not who I think I really am.  It’s definitely not who I want to be.  I never thought for a moment that was a person capable of these things.  I do understand now that something like infidelity and indiscretion are a lot less black & white in reality than they appear on the page.  And in a moment of passion when you can have everything that your heart desires, what logic in the world is going to keep you from that and force you to regret what could have been.  I don’t regret the things that I’ve done.  But I do regret the way in which I went about them. I never wanted to be the other woman and I can only say that I’m sorry to the people I’ve wronged so many times.  I can only hope that I’ve learned some hard lessons from this experience.

Ashley