I only just recently realized that I never posted our story!! So I’m giving it a shot.
I’m going to go back to 2006 for a moment. I was just starting a long term relationship with my high school sweetheart. We had a lot in common, but we lived about 45 minutes away from eachother. It was one of those “weekend and special events” relationships. Semi-long distance, only because neither of us could drive. One of those things, was an enjoyment of roleplaying. (Whenever I say roleplaying I always feel that people come up with one of two images: sex role play, or LARPing….I’m talking about the forum/turn based writing kind. :P) So we opened our own forum together. Part of it for us was about playing house, but the website grew with our relationship. We dated for a solid 3 years, but things wouldn’t hold out forever…I’ll get back to him in a minute.
At the very end of 2008, we got a couple new members from the UK. I didn’t know too much about them, but I LOVED that they were actual writers, not 15 year olds wanting to write about vampire sex. (Thanks, Twilight.) His first character was a half-crazed assassin, who liked blood and gore for the funsies. One night, he’d gotten into a fight in the chat-box with two other members. I received a PM the next morning about how disrespectful the others were to him and how as Admin, I had to do something. I responded, being the good admin that I was…telling him that he was right and I had already taken action. We continued to talk from time to time through PM. Always business. He grabbed my YIM screen name from the website and we started chatting regularly when he wanted to create a new character. “I WANT TO BE YOUR SON!” (He never will live THAT one down.) After a lot of himming and hawing, I hashed it out with him. His new character would be a liaison for my character (who was a politician).
In January of 2009, I had my wisdom teeth out. He kept me company. I remember being doped up on drugs, and him saying something like “I’m going to bed, you should too.” I said that I couldn’t, because I had to wait up for my next pain pill. He said “Alright, I’ll stay until then.” I considered him a very good friend. A very good, very gay…friend…
Back to the high school sweetheart. He was trying to get on his feet. His family had moved to Indiana and he had stayed behind to keep us out of a long-distance relationship. He was trying to get his own place, and find a job. By trying, I mean that he was waiting for something to fall into his lap. His parents had been gone for only two months and I was calling him to remind him to pay his bills, finding job fairs for him and working very hard in my own life. My best friend from high school, who’d seen our relationship from the first year to this point in time, was very reserved when I started to talk about my boyfriend. She was hearing a lot of things that she didn’t like. Things like “If you got pregnant we’d qualify for food stamps.” Which at the time…didn’t phase me. It made my bestie go “WOAH RED FLAG.” Our relationship was going downhill fast, and I didn’t want to see it. He was my first love, and he’d stayed behind to be with me. I felt a sense of obligation to him. Guilt, like it was my fault he was struggling so much.
My bestie started playing up the idea of this “British boi” I’d met online. Meanwhile, he was flirting on his own. Our weekly lunch in the spring semester was about things he and I had discussed. Or the heavy flirting and so on. I always thought there was something behind the flirting, but my bestie reassured me “That’s just how gay boys are.” But then we had cyber sex. He's not gay...he's bi. To which my best friend still tells me I’m just a “Bad hag.” Our spring semester went along like school girls giggling about their crushes, as I would talk about him all the time…and she would talk about another guy that she was drooling over.
Audience: BUT…YOU HAD A BOYFRIEND!!
Me: I KNOW!!! But he’d given me permission….
Audience: WHAT?!?!?!!!!!!
Yes. Around February, I had talked to him about “Leon” (My SO’s character), who wanted to have an affair to spice things up on the website. My then boyfriend didn’t like him, because he didn’t trust him. (No kidding.) But, he didn’t have internet because he didn’t have a job to pay for it. He said to me “He is giving you something that I can’t right now, it’s okay.” (Permission to heavily flirt, cyber, and have an affair on the website with??? Red flag??? Bestie said yes. I said “awww he cares about my needs”)
It made it really hard to justify it being wrong, when the boyfriend had justified it being ok for me. But I still felt that guilt, and I kept telling myself “When you love someone, you go through the hard times with them.” Then I would get online, and my SO would be there…and I could fall into him and tell him anything. Even what was going on in my relationship.
So fast forward a bit. I stayed in this guilt ridden, heart string pulling, ego destroying love triangle until June, 2009. Emotions ran very high between my SO and I in this passionate love affair…while emotions ran dry with my boyfriend at the time, who couldn’t pull his life together without me playing “mom.” There were heartfelt, tearful nights where my SO and I would just cry because of the situation we were in (not to ruin his ego here…please let him keep his man card). I did try to love them both at the same time. My SO did try to support my relationship, and encouraged me to make it work…he even offered suggestions. All he cared bout was the fact that I was happy, and if he was in my life as a best friend or a boyfriend, it didn’t matter…because I was in his life. (DAWWWWWW). But…when he saw it failing he was a selfish bastard (he’s well aware) and there were times he didn’t stop me from needing him.
So. In June of 2010, I broke up with my high school sweetheart of 3 years and 11 months. (Right, again, I’m a jerk). But at that same time, I also really cut down my current SO. I told him I didn’t want to be the girl who left one guy for another, I didn’t want him to be a rebound, and if there was going to be anything between us, we needed to start fresh. We needed to back off while I got my head back on straight. He promised to be there in whatever capacity I needed. Some nights I faltered…but he was very respectful of my boundaries. He let me call the shots.
At the end of that summer he went to Disney with his family for two weeks, cutting our contact completely. FOR TWO WEEKS. We’d never gone that long without speaking and haven’t since. Within hours of getting home from that trip, he sat me down and told me that he never wanted to miss me that much again, that we could still go with our plans to meet as friends in the next year, but online, he wanted me to be his. I agreed. I guess somewhere in there we decided to just be completely exclusive. Neither of us dated anyone else. In fact, he stopped trying to date back in March, even though I was someone else’s.
After a year of an online relationship, we met in person. That first year was rough. We had plenty of our own drama. My family and bestie who had been so supportive of our affair (to get me out of relationship with my ex), were suddenly encouraging me to find someone locally. His family was encouraging him to do the same. He cheated on me by kissing another girl, and spent the second third of that year making up for his mistakes. But he manned up. And it was as good as before. I like to think we got all the kinks and drama out of our relationship early on to save us the energy later. After we met we’ve been even stronger.
The forum is still going. That other guy from the UK that joined…my SO’s best friend. We went on a double date with him and his girlfriend when I went out to Wales, last May. (I was PSYCHED!) The 3 of us are re-writing and polishing the site for a grand re-opening this year. Leon and Rozzy (My character is Rozzy...) still have a very complicated...weird relationship that we like to play with. But they are not romantic in any sense of the word xD. We have more fun that way. I'm done playing house.
My SO truly proved himself as a best friend before anything else. I have said many times before that he was either crazy or brilliant for putting himself in the position he did. There were so many times we both had inner voices telling us to stop. Imagine if we had listened just once…But even still now, when I go down on memory lane and bash myself, or bash my ex for the red flags and the things that happened…my SO reminds me that I was in love, and even if that last year fell apart, I had 3 good years with my ex. He doesn’t want me to forget that, because it helped make me who I am today. And today I’m the girl he loves.
I hope you don’t all think I’m a bit of a hussy now…>.> Sorry for the long read…
I’m going to go back to 2006 for a moment. I was just starting a long term relationship with my high school sweetheart. We had a lot in common, but we lived about 45 minutes away from eachother. It was one of those “weekend and special events” relationships. Semi-long distance, only because neither of us could drive. One of those things, was an enjoyment of roleplaying. (Whenever I say roleplaying I always feel that people come up with one of two images: sex role play, or LARPing….I’m talking about the forum/turn based writing kind. :P) So we opened our own forum together. Part of it for us was about playing house, but the website grew with our relationship. We dated for a solid 3 years, but things wouldn’t hold out forever…I’ll get back to him in a minute.
At the very end of 2008, we got a couple new members from the UK. I didn’t know too much about them, but I LOVED that they were actual writers, not 15 year olds wanting to write about vampire sex. (Thanks, Twilight.) His first character was a half-crazed assassin, who liked blood and gore for the funsies. One night, he’d gotten into a fight in the chat-box with two other members. I received a PM the next morning about how disrespectful the others were to him and how as Admin, I had to do something. I responded, being the good admin that I was…telling him that he was right and I had already taken action. We continued to talk from time to time through PM. Always business. He grabbed my YIM screen name from the website and we started chatting regularly when he wanted to create a new character. “I WANT TO BE YOUR SON!” (He never will live THAT one down.) After a lot of himming and hawing, I hashed it out with him. His new character would be a liaison for my character (who was a politician).
In January of 2009, I had my wisdom teeth out. He kept me company. I remember being doped up on drugs, and him saying something like “I’m going to bed, you should too.” I said that I couldn’t, because I had to wait up for my next pain pill. He said “Alright, I’ll stay until then.” I considered him a very good friend. A very good, very gay…friend…
Back to the high school sweetheart. He was trying to get on his feet. His family had moved to Indiana and he had stayed behind to keep us out of a long-distance relationship. He was trying to get his own place, and find a job. By trying, I mean that he was waiting for something to fall into his lap. His parents had been gone for only two months and I was calling him to remind him to pay his bills, finding job fairs for him and working very hard in my own life. My best friend from high school, who’d seen our relationship from the first year to this point in time, was very reserved when I started to talk about my boyfriend. She was hearing a lot of things that she didn’t like. Things like “If you got pregnant we’d qualify for food stamps.” Which at the time…didn’t phase me. It made my bestie go “WOAH RED FLAG.” Our relationship was going downhill fast, and I didn’t want to see it. He was my first love, and he’d stayed behind to be with me. I felt a sense of obligation to him. Guilt, like it was my fault he was struggling so much.
My bestie started playing up the idea of this “British boi” I’d met online. Meanwhile, he was flirting on his own. Our weekly lunch in the spring semester was about things he and I had discussed. Or the heavy flirting and so on. I always thought there was something behind the flirting, but my bestie reassured me “That’s just how gay boys are.” But then we had cyber sex. He's not gay...he's bi. To which my best friend still tells me I’m just a “Bad hag.” Our spring semester went along like school girls giggling about their crushes, as I would talk about him all the time…and she would talk about another guy that she was drooling over.
Audience: BUT…YOU HAD A BOYFRIEND!!
Me: I KNOW!!! But he’d given me permission….
Audience: WHAT?!?!?!!!!!!
Yes. Around February, I had talked to him about “Leon” (My SO’s character), who wanted to have an affair to spice things up on the website. My then boyfriend didn’t like him, because he didn’t trust him. (No kidding.) But, he didn’t have internet because he didn’t have a job to pay for it. He said to me “He is giving you something that I can’t right now, it’s okay.” (Permission to heavily flirt, cyber, and have an affair on the website with??? Red flag??? Bestie said yes. I said “awww he cares about my needs”)
It made it really hard to justify it being wrong, when the boyfriend had justified it being ok for me. But I still felt that guilt, and I kept telling myself “When you love someone, you go through the hard times with them.” Then I would get online, and my SO would be there…and I could fall into him and tell him anything. Even what was going on in my relationship.
So fast forward a bit. I stayed in this guilt ridden, heart string pulling, ego destroying love triangle until June, 2009. Emotions ran very high between my SO and I in this passionate love affair…while emotions ran dry with my boyfriend at the time, who couldn’t pull his life together without me playing “mom.” There were heartfelt, tearful nights where my SO and I would just cry because of the situation we were in (not to ruin his ego here…please let him keep his man card). I did try to love them both at the same time. My SO did try to support my relationship, and encouraged me to make it work…he even offered suggestions. All he cared bout was the fact that I was happy, and if he was in my life as a best friend or a boyfriend, it didn’t matter…because I was in his life. (DAWWWWWW). But…when he saw it failing he was a selfish bastard (he’s well aware) and there were times he didn’t stop me from needing him.
So. In June of 2010, I broke up with my high school sweetheart of 3 years and 11 months. (Right, again, I’m a jerk). But at that same time, I also really cut down my current SO. I told him I didn’t want to be the girl who left one guy for another, I didn’t want him to be a rebound, and if there was going to be anything between us, we needed to start fresh. We needed to back off while I got my head back on straight. He promised to be there in whatever capacity I needed. Some nights I faltered…but he was very respectful of my boundaries. He let me call the shots.
At the end of that summer he went to Disney with his family for two weeks, cutting our contact completely. FOR TWO WEEKS. We’d never gone that long without speaking and haven’t since. Within hours of getting home from that trip, he sat me down and told me that he never wanted to miss me that much again, that we could still go with our plans to meet as friends in the next year, but online, he wanted me to be his. I agreed. I guess somewhere in there we decided to just be completely exclusive. Neither of us dated anyone else. In fact, he stopped trying to date back in March, even though I was someone else’s.
After a year of an online relationship, we met in person. That first year was rough. We had plenty of our own drama. My family and bestie who had been so supportive of our affair (to get me out of relationship with my ex), were suddenly encouraging me to find someone locally. His family was encouraging him to do the same. He cheated on me by kissing another girl, and spent the second third of that year making up for his mistakes. But he manned up. And it was as good as before. I like to think we got all the kinks and drama out of our relationship early on to save us the energy later. After we met we’ve been even stronger.
The forum is still going. That other guy from the UK that joined…my SO’s best friend. We went on a double date with him and his girlfriend when I went out to Wales, last May. (I was PSYCHED!) The 3 of us are re-writing and polishing the site for a grand re-opening this year. Leon and Rozzy (My character is Rozzy...) still have a very complicated...weird relationship that we like to play with. But they are not romantic in any sense of the word xD. We have more fun that way. I'm done playing house.
My SO truly proved himself as a best friend before anything else. I have said many times before that he was either crazy or brilliant for putting himself in the position he did. There were so many times we both had inner voices telling us to stop. Imagine if we had listened just once…But even still now, when I go down on memory lane and bash myself, or bash my ex for the red flags and the things that happened…my SO reminds me that I was in love, and even if that last year fell apart, I had 3 good years with my ex. He doesn’t want me to forget that, because it helped make me who I am today. And today I’m the girl he loves.
I hope you don’t all think I’m a bit of a hussy now…>.> Sorry for the long read…
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