My first monogamous girlfriend relationship of this millennium, in June of the year we met...was in the throes of an 18 month-long and somewhat bitter divorce from a man who had repeatedly cheated on her...for all of the twenty-two years of their marriage-of-convenience. It was not supposed to be an open marriage, however.
She and he lived apart and she gradually told me most all of her side of the story...She and I saw one another once every few weekends at first...there was a 90 mile distance between us and it was a little like a mini-vacation when either one of us would drive to the other, to spend time together. It was light, passionate, fun, interesting, mutually respectful and highly sexual/sensual and very erotic.
We became fast friends, possibly somewhat artificially, due to our being involved during the September eleventh incident in the USA.
Our mutual shock was alleviated by our mutual goodwill towards one another. I think she wanted to love me, and I suppose I did love her. But, after ten months of our seeing one another, which escalated to every weekend, after 9/11...her divorce was finalized. She had also met a few weeks earlier...her high school lover (who was also the father of their 24 year old daughter). The man she'd married was the second man in her life who scooped in to either pick up the pieces for her - or, as I later felt, was merely trying to take advantage of a broken-hearted and vulnerable young girl, years earlier...
That's the backdrop of this story.
She told me, on the afternoon of my birthday - that she felt that she and I were becoming too serious, that her divorce would soon be over with...that she wanted to see other men, perhaps. Definitely did not want to settle down again with only the third man she'd ever had sex with. She didn't want to grow into love with the next fellow who seemed to be nice, and not experience all that her girlfriends had.
Three weekends later, when we last saw one another...she let it be known, gently over the Saturday dinner - that she had a Sunday afternoon date with the father of her daughter, himself recently divorced...and she thought it best that we not see one another, for awhile, but as it has turned out - ever again.
I drove away from her home that next morning, after a wonderful evening with her...with more respect for her than any woman I had ever known. I was sad that it was over, but I think I knew from the start...it was only a short-term deal. She definitely restored my, at the time, tattered world-view of the female gender. Prior to her, I was pretty damned well certain...that all the good girls were taken off the market, so-to-speak...by the time 'they' had reached their 26th or 27th year on this planet...mostly because of their own encounters with the various miscreants posing as men...who had mistreated their feelings.
My question to you, who might consider replying to this, is: Would you rather know, or would you rather continue on, in ignorance of the true situation? And why?