Epilogue

It’s been a while now since the incidents of the two posts of January. Mina and I have not said anything about it since, but it has been on my mind this week. And, as they say, at some point people should have the rest of the story.

It would turn out that, on the day we wrote those posts, we were still slowly sinking to rock bottom. C, the person she had had the phone sex with, stuck his foot so deep in his mouth you couldn’t see his knee. What unfolded was a classic example of the phrase, “digging your own grave,” where he was giving her some unsolicited diet advice in a remarkably tactless manner. I called him out, and Twitter Nation promptly jumped all over him.

Later, after considerable coaxing from a third party, he apologized. He sent me a direct message. I told him that he should be a little more careful these days. He didn’t know what was going on, so I directed him to the posts. He then came back, “I’m sorry I caused you pain.” These words would taunt me.

Saturday morning, we were talking about what had happened and how we felt. Mina told me, “I just don’t feel comfortable climbing on top of you and fucking you right now!” Instantly, the thought flashed in my head…like you did the first night we met?! The conversation dwindled and I went to take a shower. There, alone in the shower, the chain reaction ensued:

Great, now my relationship has fallen back below where it was when we met. I have nothing, nothing! And he is sorry he caused me pain?! Is that why he was so willing being her secret, never saying a word to her in public, never acknowledging their relationship?! Was that about not causing me pain? Was that what he was thinking when he stroked his cock for her? What about when she was coming for him?! Was he not wanting to cause me pain then? This TWAT who can’t even figure out how crude he is about her weight has broken my relationship in half and he is SORRY?!

I was losing it. I got out of the shower, naked, trembling from rage. I went into the living room. Mina looked up, expecting Dominant Sylvanus. Instead, I told her, I didn’t want her talking to him any more. I didn’t want him in my life. Why was he even in my life?! And the rage boiled over. For the first time in my life, rage was flying out of me, unchecked, uncontrolled. I was screaming as loud as I could, I was punching walls, I was slamming doors. Mina was terrified, wanting to bolt to the door, but too paralyzed to move. Thinking back now, it is hard for me not to cry at what that must have felt like for her. I still deplore that I got so worked up and detonated like that, and I cannot imagine the Sword of Damocles I hung over her with that. I finished, exhausted. We sat right there in silence.

I asked her what was going on. She was terrified. She didn’t want to say anything, it didn’t seem okay. I was still stark naked and heaving. I sat next to her, trying to hug her and she twisted away from me. I pulled her in closer, and she twisted away harder. I overwhelmed her and forced her to cry against my bare chest. So this is rock bottom.

We talked for a while longer. She said she had never dropped him because he was never the one she was mad at. She was mad at herself, the other blogger, and me, in that order. She asked me if I didn’t want her to talk to him again.

I told her that I did not want to be in the business of regulating who she talks to, but this time, I had to ask her never to speak to him again. She agreed. We both dropped him without another word. We slept each night in the same bed but apart, never making love, or having any other kind of sex, trying to figure out how to be together again. After a failed night trying to engage her, Mina wrote this post, and I saw that her state was exactly complimentary to mine. This was the very best of what blogging has been for us: a way to communicate, to reach out to each other.

Since then, Mina and I have drastically changed our approach to Twitter and the online world in general, and it has meant a lot. Slowly, we have been coming back together, re-discovering our relationship, and our love. And we both look back, grateful that we did not let each other get away.

—

Looking back, the thing that is hardest for me is how out-of-control I felt. I grew a massive vindictive streak, and an anger I couldn’t control. I consistently responded to every challenge in this relationship in the most destructive way possible. I knew, I knew what I was doing, and what the right way to respond was, and that it wasn’t what I was doing. Part of me sees that I was so frustrated by the fact that Mina didn’t seem, to me, to believe this was a problem. “It’s only Twitter.” I had to prove this was a problem! Of course, it wasn’t only Twitter, and even if it was, it was still a problem. I felt like I had to prove this was a problem.

I hate this phrasing, because it makes it sound like, “If she had just let him feel his complaints were legitimate, it wouldn’t have happened.” I don’t think that’s true. And, even if it were, it doesn’t excuse me.

Going on, it has taken a while for me to relax my paranoia about Twitter. I used to view every person on Twitter as a threat, desperate to get in her pants. It has taken time, but I have seen how Mina has responded. For my own part, I have continued with my vow never to have cybersex again. I view myself as an addict, like an alocholic, who can never drink again. My “sobriety,” as it were, is my chief priority. Mina is more important to me.

As far as Twitter goes, I have flirted, repeatedly, with dropping it altogether. But there are people on Twitter I regard as friends, that I would not talk to otherwise. However, my patience with people on Twitter is paper-thin, and I now need incredibly little cause to drop people. It takes very little for someone on Twitter not to be worth their shit.

I have never looked at any of Mina’s private messages since the incident, and I never will. I felt like my guts were being spooned out when I read them the first time, and it has only gotten marginally better since. It was devastating to see this side of her being given away to some other man, to say nothing of him seeming so deeply unworthy of her in my eyes.

D, another man who had figured in to her fantasy life unbeknownst to me, recently emerged, trying to say hello both of us. He had thought we were friends. I have a special contempt for him, introducing himself to me, and kissing my ass, trying to be my friend so he could cover what he was doing with Mina behind my back. Mina, on her own, had developed a dislike of him when he vanished for no reason. I had wished then I knew about it, so I could comfort her and his disappearance. I toyed, for a while, with the idea of writing him a flaming email, of torching him up one side and down the other, slamming on the table that I knew everything. I decided instead to say nothing. A couple days later he reached out to Mina again, and again I wrote that message in my mind. Again, I chose silence.

As far as C and D, I hold a particular contempt for them, because of what happened, and the extents that their liasons went to. I cannot help but carry some hate in my heart for them, and wanting them to hurt. I want them to suffer some of what I did, to know how much I hurt because of what they did. I want to make them suffer the loss of what they wanted. I know, now, that I will never do anything to them. That they can never share in it.

The posts we wrote generated a wealth of comments, which were incredibly thoughtful, and often supportive. it amazed us both how much everyone seemed to have to say. We were really taken by how much people cared about us, and how they opened their hearts in response. One person, whose IP address I traced, took that opportunity for a sarcastic swipe, and I do know who she is. I chose then to delete that comment, and I wish I hadn’t. It remains the only non-spam comment we have chosen to moderate.

For Mina, I have realized I have had to choose to keep fighting. And that, in the end, she is worth this to me, and then some. This week, I have felt the return of that “new relationship feeling” and that I spend my idle moments desiring her. Her actions have reflected her priorities, and they are the same as mine. We are looking for a new home together now, and planning for a long future together.

I love her, and I am happy every night I sleep next to her.

—

Postscript: I wrote this out of a desire to complete the story, and to own up to my own darkest hour, as a way of taking responsibility for what I had done, and as an apology to Mina. Before posting, I asked her to read it. On seeing her reaction, the first thing I wanted to do was delete this thing and send it down the memory hole, but Mina would not accede to this. However, as I should have predicted, this has opened a lot of old wounds for her. For this reason, I am closing this post to comments. Thank you for your understanding.