I’m going to open up here a bit. I broke up with my boyfriend a few weeks ago. I won’t go into details…ah, to hell with it, I will…he was serial cheating on me. I have to say that, in the past, I’ve been in open relationships where anything goes as far as ‘dating others’ is concerned. And that was OK with me because we -myself and one or two past lovers- went into it with eyes open and a verbal contract regarding it. And where either he -the guys I engaged in open relationships with- or I slept with someone else an essential part of the ‘contract’ was the use of condoms, to limit exposure to STI’s.

This time, the arrangement was that were exclusive to one another. Yes, I know affairs happen all the time in marriages where the couple are meant to be exclusive to one another, so I’m not being naive in that regard. Not only was my former BF serial cheating on me, but it would rather appear that he didn’t use condoms. At least part of the time. How do I know? One of his conquests has become pregnant, and he admitted the child-to-be is his. Not only was I betrayed on an emotional level, but I was equally betrayed in terms of my own health. How did he know that one of the women (he broke down and admitted serial womanising when he had to confess this other lady’s pregnancy) didn’t have some STI? Which he could have passed to me. For me, this was a greater betrayal than sleeping with others.

In an open relationship, there’s ground rules.  There’s always ground rules of all manner of areas. For me, ‘condoms’ for the purposes of limiting exposure to venereal diseases was the number one. I never, during my two open relationships, had sex without a condom being used. And I didn’t think it was up to me to pre-plan and supply said items. If a fella wanted to sleep with me, he needed to have made some planning. No condom? No sex, fella! Oh, I would freely make love without condoms with the main man, but when we stepped beyond that core relationships, condoms were essential.

The break up of any relationship is hard. Having had a check up to ensure I hadn’t had anything unpleasant passed on to me (all clear, thank goodness), I decided that in order to salve my soul, I would head off to the Mediterranean, to a naturist location, and work on myself. I’ve just returned after three weeks yoga, in a south facing apartment that guaranteed that naked yoga was possible most afternoons, even if the evenings were still chilly.

Hence my recent absence from the blog.

I’m back now. Not entirely healed from the emotional pain, but back, and ready to get some stuff written for SLN

Flo