It was almost a year into our open relationship before I finally "slept" with another. Despite her coping reasonably with the event, I actually pressured her into "extra-curricular" activity to alleviate any feelings of guilt or blame. A few months later she revealed she had finally done the same. My experience had not been satisfying but hers was. Putting the poly theory into practice was proving difficult. A few weeks after she had met the guy, I learned over a long-distance phone line from her that the "repeat" affair resulted in a broken condom. When the mandatory three months passed, her AIDS test revealed she was OK. Again we enjoyed the intimacy of "unprotected" sex. For a week I felt special again. She returned yet again to her home city. It wasn't long before I received a phone call from her on year's eve. 1am and a hysterical teary voice confessed another "accident". So there were another three months of "artificial" sex. Well, almost three months. Our get-together a week before the scheduled AIDS test did not see me in good cheer. For half a year now the relationship had been in disrepair, every time the condom came on the other lover was "present". She chose not to smoke grass but noticed how I seemed relaxed under the influence and so chose this one morning to inform me over breakfast about yet another accident she had recently had. Being stoned did not affect the rage I felt as I listened to what sounded to me like lame excuses. I threw the bowl of porridge down onto the tiled floor. Crash! I felt like smashing the glass door too but opened it instead and ran out into the back-yard. She ran after me pleading for understanding but I just ran on down the side of the house, over the tall gate, out towards the street. So she went back through the house to catch me at the other end. I heard her cries of despair and in a moment of malice decided not to jump the gate but to climb up onto the verandah roof from it instead. Out on the street she looked around for me and called my name desperately. It felt good to see her in this state so I stayed on the roof while she jumped into her car and drove off in search of me. She laughed reassuringly when I explained how I had searched her room for evidence of her "infidelity". Evidence that she had chosen him over me. She asked if I had found her diary since there I would have seen how innocent she had been. From under a scarf-draped milk-crate that served as a deskside table she pulled out her writing which I had missed. "See..." she pointed to the pages that involved the incident. It was indeed as she had told me. I flicked back through the pages to earlier encounters where I read about how she liked him being rough with her and, to my horror, how she let him enter her without a condom, making him withdraw before climax. "But it isn't dangerous if he doesn't climax," she naively protested. Again I was enraged. So she liked it rough eh? ______________________________________________ Back to main article. Created for the Undesirable Propagation Unit.