Is it really "cheating"?

[wishihadacat]

You ask me how I came to this place -  a married man looking for love outside of his marriage - for the warmth and touch and taste of another woman. I will tell you how. I will tell you why.

I grew up not far from NYC, the youngest of two children of upper middle class, nominally jewish parents. Both of my parents were intelligent and liberal, yet always responsible, and never abusive. Nevertheless, they were not particularly conscious or communicative - at least not in the manner in which I experience existence and communicate with others - and for the first thirty years of my life I often felt lost and alone. I spent (or misspent) most of my twenties either trying to find some meaning to life or running away from it, and from roughly mid 1979 to the late spring of 1980, I sought refuge from the pain of my confusion by injecting myself with cocktails of cocaine and heroin, and for those ten months I shared that cheap tin shed with a young woman I knew who made her living by selling herself to other men.

When the money ran out, as it always does, so did the drugs, and so did she, and whether by design or chance, I woke up from my long dark dream. The year was 1980.

Still searching, but lacking direction, I tried writing for a while and I did manage to have at least one short piece published, but it very soon became very clear that I was not really meant to be a writer, so I finished college and then law school. It was a practical decision and it gave me a sense of purpose and meaning that I had never really known before. I followed that path, met my wife in 1985, and for the next two years lived a happy, if not boringly conventional life. We married in November of 1986, blissfully unaware of the silent but relentless destruction that I had unknowingly invited into our lives six or seven years earlier.

Like everyone else in those days I thought of HIV and AIDs as a strange new plague fueled by tainted semen and bottled blood that fed on the flesh of gay men and hemophiliac children. And then, in late 1987, as the epidemic continued to spread and the world learned that HIV also sought out intravenous drug users and that it could sometimes incubate hidden for years inside us, devouring our bodies from within, only to emerge years later, I began to wonder if I was also one of those who had been infected.  At that time my concern was mostly for myself; I had never had any signs or symptoms of the opportunistic illnesses that science and medicine grouped so neatly together as resulting from this new "acquired immune deficiency syndrome.” I hoped I was wrong, but somehow I knew I was part of it all.

I went to a clinic down on Ninth Avenue operated by the New York City Health Department and left a small sample of my blood, and on a cold clear day in January of 1988 I learned that I was one of those people whom the doctors grouped together to as "long-term slow progressors." Like all of us, it was a day I will never forget.

Back in those days the ways by which the virus could or could not be transmitted by heterosexual sex were still not well or widely understood, and my wife and I tried to maintain some semblance of physical intimacy while avoiding any risk of transmission; we held each other, we touched each other, always aware, always fearful, but we would never again make love.

For twenty years we toured together in secret shame the twists and turns of life with HIV, and most of you must be wondering why a man and a woman would remain together in such a state for so long in a relationship devoid of all sexual contact. I suppose that the simplest answer is that neither of us wanted to admit defeat, but there is also an element of complacency and convenience: this world can be a very lonely place.

And that, my friends and fellow travelers, is the way it is.

[Ann]

Wish,

There is no reason why you cannot safely have sex with your wife. Condoms have been proven to prevent hiv transmission. Read through all three condom and lube links in my signature line. Correctly used condoms won't fail.

My own partner and I have never had one break on us yet and I don't anticipate it happening either. We store them correctly and make sure they're still in date and we make sure we use them correctly too. It's not difficult to do, and reading about it will help.

My own opinion about "is it cheating" is yes, unless you are up-front about it with your partner and you have her blessings.

Ann

[Dragonette]

It would be an amazing happy end if you ended up making love to your wife...
So much happened in the last 20 years so on all levels it would be amazing: for you both personally and on a wider level, you made it through... from the death sentence of the 80's to being able to and wanting to have sex, and with your wife sticking by you all these years, so this is the whole HIV (hi)story in one lifetime. if this isn't true love what is. I'd say go for the wife .... you will have to use condoms anyway, and I am sure you will find that they improved in quailty and variety since the 70s...

[wishihadacat]

Wish,

There is no reason why you cannot safely have sex with your wife. Condoms have been proven to prevent hiv transmission. Read through all three condom and lube links in my signature line. Correctly used condoms won't fail.

My own partner and I have never had one break on us yet and I don't anticipate it happening either. We store them correctly and make sure they're still in date and we make sure we use them correctly too. It's not difficult to do, and reading about it will help.

My own opinion about "is it cheating" is yes, unless you are up-front about it with your partner and you have her blessings.

Ann

If it were only that simple. Unfortunately, she is unable or unwilling to take any risk at all, however slight.

[wishihadacat]

.... you will have to use condoms anyway, and I am sure you will find that they improved in quailty and variety since the 70s...

You can be sure that I haven't exactly been celibate these past twenty years, D, and in fact I've grown to enjoy using condoms.

[camille07]

Is she aware of your extra curricular activities?

[wishihadacat]

Is she aware of your extra curricular activities?

Although we never discuss it. she knows that I have sought comfort outside of the marriage, and we dance around the issue.

[Bucko]

Wish-

First off: Kudos on the powerful writing, great perspective and what appears to be a healthy attitude.

Second: It sounds as if your relationship with your wife has evolved in the twenty years since your diagnosis into something that essentially precludes sex. You do not mention any kind of physical contact beyond "we held each other, we touched each other, always aware, always fearful". You and I are roughly peers (I am 47), so we both know that by 1987 mutual masturbation was considered a no-risk activity (remember "On me, not in me?").

The fact that neither of you saw fit to explore alternatives to penetrative sex while attending to the sexual needs of the other speaks volumes to me. Either one or the other or both is uncomfortable with the sexual expression of the other. When you described your marriage prior to diagnosis as "for the next two years lived a happy, if not boringly conventional life" I recognized an unspoken dissatisfaction with sex. I've used almost the identical vocabulary to describe a relationship from my twenties that was emotionally fulfilling but sexually frustrating myself. He and I eventually agreed explicitly to open up the relationship because we recognized the stress lack of sexuality was causing in our lives and created an uncomfortable distance.

Of course for me opening up the relationship eventually caused rifts that tore everything apart. But we were young men in our early twenties and had no real mutual responsibilities or financial obligations beyond a lease. You are different in probably every particular and are bound by many obligations to each other. And after twenty-plus years together your emotional commitments must be a great source of comfort and mutual support beyond the material accumulation of stuff.

Is such support and love unconditional enough to allow openly discussing your mutual sexual needs (because she must have some herself, surely)? Anything is possible within the framework of mutually-agreed-upon rules, and these rules must change and be renegotiated as the relationship matures and evolves. By definition anything not living (growing, changing and evolving) must be either dying or dead.

Your marriage sounds (from what you state) to be founded on some deep roots, roots that are strong enough to support new growth. Give the woman who has stood by you for all these years some credit. She sounds capable of dealing with reality.

Brent
(Who encourages telling the truth and dealing with its consequences)