To Tell or Not To Tell?

His latest sexual escapade was with a married woman. She picked him up in a bar by telling him how beautiful of a man he was. She told him there will be no names exchanged, no phone numbers. Naturally, this was exciting. Would you say no? Probably not. He didn’t either.

The next day he messages me. “I hooked up with a married woman! She picked me up, can you believe it? She didn’t want my name. What kind of woman does that? Poor husband…”

“No need for judgment,” I replied. “You have no right to judge since you participated in the affair. No right to judge her or her husband. You don’t know their story. For all you know, you saved their marriage. Or maybe you helped her leave hers. Who are you to judge since you benefited from the situation?”

Our conversation meandered from him feeling judged by me, to him thinking I’m an evolved goddess and then back to him feeling defensive for being called complicit. Double standards like this turn me off. How swiftly desire can be dampened.

I’m fond of lover A more than the others since we met. But maybe that is my mistake. To have favorites. We spent our first few endless summer nights together talking of divine love and sex as spiritual intimacy. He quoted me Rumi and Hafiz while we drank red wine surreptitiously at the park, our lust for each other mingling with the warm summer breeze. Intoxicating. These days he feels compelled to validate his virility. It's not enough to make me come 8 times in a row. He wants to know if other women would want him as much as I do. Hence the married woman episode.

Is it lack of sleep and too much partying that’s made him forget our vows to bring only loving sexual experiences to those we encounter? Who is he to judge her?

I watch his shining star fall from my imaginary pantheon of beloveds and cradle it gently in my arms. In a blink, a man turns into a child in my eyes. A man-child who does not bother to know what he does. Somedays I see clearly how we could bring peace on Earth through love. But on days like today, it feels like a task of Sisyphean proportions. On days like today, with thoughts like these, the limits of my love is revealed to me suddenly. Ooops. Sri Sri Ravishankar said,

“...divine love is devoid of any strings, any desire, any conditions...” People often fall in love and they say they got disillusioned. That is really no disillusionment it is really re-illusionment. If you break away from love and fall into a state of apathy or negativity or dullness, it is not disillusionment. Disillusionment is when you completely immerse yourself in love and you recognize there’s only one love in the universe. Then you are disillusioned. (Laughter). Real disillusionment is when you realize the sun belongs to you, when you realize this whole planet is your own and you own the air you breathe. That is disillusionment. Otherwise, you are an illusion. Small identity is what is your illusion. Me, mine, my thing. This experiential Divine love brings you the reality. But it is so strange that when people fall out of love, that is when they say, ‘I got disillusioned’. When they become indifferent, they say they are disillusioned. That is small mindedness, small love. Then they have not had a taste of what Divine love is.” —Sri Sri Ravishankar, The Aphorisms of Love

I must pick up his star and re-affix it in its heavenly place. "Come here," I tell him. "Take off your clothes. I'll show you why women do mysterious things."