Evolving Sex While Aging Together

Ok, we’re starting this post with a soundtrack; Kate this means you too. Grab headphones and throw on the Stones classic “Gimmie Shelter”. That’s your homework, and the official soundtrack for the next few paragraphs. I’ll wait a minute or two for everyone to get set before I start typing again.

I love Keith’s playing on this track. The main riff that has a steady hint of a tremolo, the overdubbed lead (also played by Keith) is perfect for the song, and the interplay with Mick is stellar.

Much as I’m convinced that the Stones are Keith’s band and he makes them what they are, he wasn’t the show stealer on “Gimmie Shelter”. A woman by the name of Merry Clayton is. Assuming you’re not familiar with the song and have done your homework and are indeed listening at this point, you’re probably pretty close to hearing why I feel this way.

Merry was a late edition after producer Jimmy Miller made the decision to add a female voice to the track. (Some question as to whether a guy named Jack Nitzsche was the producer) A call was made late that night to Clayton, then 4 months pregnant, to come to the studio. According to the story, she showed up, hair in rollers, in her pajamas.

Suffice to say she crushed it. Mick was in the studio with her, and if you listen closely you can hear him “whoop” a time or two in the background. He knew what he was hearing was epic.

There’s a melancholy post script to the story; Merry had a miscarriage the day after recording.

Music is inerexibly tied to my experience, Kate’s as well. We’re card carrying Gen-Xer’s and have the high honor and distinct privilege of growing up with the best music the good lord above has yet blessed this big blue marble of ours with. Zeppelin. The Stones. Aerosmith. The Who. Lynyrd Skynyrd. The Doors. Boston. The Eagles. Van Halen.

At times, a song from this era lands in my ears and mixes with what I’m feeling and thinking at the moment. Something coalesces, and the result can be a pretty powerful maybe not realization, but a seeing clearly perhaps?

I was listening to “Gimme Shelter” the other day and this line: “If I don’t get some shelter, ohh yeah I’m going to fade away” landed in a way it never did before. No real revelations, just clarity at depth.

Kate was and remains my shelter.

The connection that Kate and I have has developed and matured for lack of a better way to put it. We’ve always been really good together, but we’re decidedly out of the NRE stage. NRE, or New Relationship Energy, is that giddy puppy love phase; the stuff of Harry Potter love potions. We can share space at this point and not talk; we’re comfortable enough with each other that an awkward silence is a rare thing. We can babble like brooks for a half hour on a road trip, then be quiet for the next 10 minutes or so.

It hasn’t always been that way. Like most couples, our first call it 18 months neither of us were capable of shutting the fuck up for very long. That’s fair and seems to me that’s the way it should be. We were laying the groundwork and doing the getting to know you thing. That energy just isn’t sustainable. Eventually, if you’re paying attention, you get to know the other person. What would have been a question early on is now a barely formed thought; we each just know.

A new relationship is like getting sober. There’s a mountain to climb, and the first phases of it are hard. Very steep, not a lot of guard rails, super easy to screw up. Over time, you’re still climbing the mountain, but instead of a sheer rock face, it gradually turns into a footpath, in turn that opens into a wider path in a field that’s still going uphill, still needs work and effort but not near what ya needed in the beginning.

It’s the same way sexually.

In the beginning there’s all sorts of can’t keep your hands off each other energy. Lots of exploring, lots of shiny and new. Lots of awesome memories from that time. We both remember me playing air guitar on her to “Comfortably Numb” as we snuggled after our first proper love making session; an hour-long hello that to this day remains my favorite sexual experience. There was the time, not long after when she drove over to my place during her lunch for the express purpose of blowing me. The time she flew out to California to spend a weekend with me….oh my….

Of course, our sexual energy isn’t today what it was those first 18 months. It’s not what it was the second -ish 18 months when we were figuring out our ENM path.

Kate has had her struggles dealing with “The Change”. Thankfully, she’s not experienced some of the physical issues that can effectively kill a woman’s sex life.

Progressing from 50 to 60 has taken a toll on me. My libido isn’t what it used to be.

We have grandkids spend the night typically a couple nights a week.

Our dynamic has shifted away from swinging and more into the hotwife / cuckold world.

I think the shift away from swinging and it’s built in NRE has pulled my energy down a bit;

The influx of NRE is a potent thing in any relationship; I’d argue all the more so if you’re somewhere on the ENM spectrum. I think our entry into swinging probably doubled our NRE period with each other. There was that much going on, that much new stuff to experience with different people; that much headspace and relationship work that Kate and I had to do on ourselves. We didn’ t have an ease up on to a footpath at the 18 month point, we turned a corner and found a series of additional sheer rock faces.

We took the NRE from swinging and brought it into our relationship.

That’s what gave us the comfort we have with each other now. That’s how we know, much more than either of us have known before, that we’re good.

Of course there’s no guarantees of anything.

That said, we both know that we’re not going to find a better relationship than what we have now. We’ve processed the jealousy and confidence stuff that appears by default with being ENM; we’ve done the big heavy lifting. Our foundation is built on years of friendship in our recovery fellowship before we started dating. We can and do talk about spiritual things, we put conscious energy and effort into being decent human beings. We’re each who the other wants to sit on the porch with, sharing space and time with Clifford, Chow Hound, and (soon to be) Billie.

We’re different people, Kate and I and we have different energy. Kate is always moving, always doing something and struggles with quiet time. I have no trouble getting lost with a guitar, or something on the computer, writing. It’s easier for me to be still.

Our sexual energy is different as well. Some of the things Kate most gets off on I find rude if I’m the one doing them. I don’t have the bend her over the kitchen counter, spread her legs and fuck the hell out her energy. Kate does, she wants that. I totally get and understand that she would NOT consider that rude or whatever. I do. It’s not my comfort zone, not with Kate anyway. IDK if it would be different with other women, I don’t think so.

I don’t, on the other hand, take offense or find it rude when another of Kate’s lovers is that way with her. Quite the opposite.

I’ve never felt the inadequacy that some use to define cuckolding. I’m who I am, I’m fine with what God decided to bless me with biologically. Is my feeling rude and not comfortable with the “bend her over and fuck her” energy an inadequacy on my behalf? That may well be.

The degree to which I feel shame about my sexual / cuckold wiring, and there’s not much there there, I’m aware of from where it comes. It’s conditioning. The same garbage conditioning that preaches hetero and mono normativity.

The same conditioning that says monogamy is our hard wired default, and says the prevalence of cheating is a moral failing. Take it another step. We’re conditioned that women are naturally submissive. Why then the need for patriarchy to exist? Why does there need to be a system to force submission on the “naturally” submissive gender? We’ve lived a watered down version of “The Handmaids Tale” for millennia.

I’m turned on by my wife having sex with other men; women too. I’m turned on by her getting her sexual needs met in the way she needs them met. Much like when we first started this grand adventure, Kate in the States, me in Antarctica. I couldn’t be there, I couldn’t be a woman, but I could give her the space to be with a woman. I could give her what I couldn’t give her.

Maybe there is some sexual trauma buried waaaaaay down with me. Maybe there is a reason I find the “bend her over and fuck her” energy rude, at least when it’s from my side of the street. IDK. At almost 60, and content with life, I’m disinclined to pursue it.

As of right now, (Tuesday night, 9 Sep) Billie will be here in 3 days!!!! We have an official Billie now. The woman who was first in line made her choice, and as it happens, the pup both me and Kate put first among equals will indeed be our baby Billie.

Kate took advantage of the long weekend over the Labor Day holiday and was able to sneak away for a night with James. It worked out that we were able to get naked and horizontal under the covers for an hour or so when she returned. It’s surprising how infrequently life affords that opportunity, so we took good advantage of it.

Speaking of Kate and her chicanery, she’s going on a woman’s lifestyle retreat in October. Looks like there’s going to be 25 or so women spending a long weekend together in a cabin on a mountain focusing on how to ask for what you want. The mind wanders…..

Thanks for reading!!! Be kind to yourself and others,

Sam & Kate