Is It The Wedding Ring?

NOTE: I realized that this was an incoherent mess, so here is the revision.

Don asked "Is it the wedding ring?" in his comment, and the short answer, for me is, "no."

It's not the wedding ring. A wedding ring is not some magical red toreador's cape that signals to me, "I must have that!" I don't set out to "steal" people's husbands or boyfriends.

And I don't steal anyone. It's more like, um, borrowing. Besides, the word "steal" implies a one-sidedness that is absolutely impossible in the situation. No man has come to me who hasn't wanted to be there.

So what is it?

I can only speak to my own experience.

As in any relationship, I have to like the person enormously. I have to trust him. And I have to want to have sex with him.

It's really that simple. The liking and respect are really no different than they are in your more traditional relationship. They just come without all that extra freight of me demanding anything more from someone than he can give.

You know, maybe in a few years or yesterday I'll meet someone with whom most of the pieces fit, and he'll say, I want to give you everything, and I'll ride next to him into battle, flying his colors and we'll take on all comers, together.

But it just hasn't happened for me. I don't know why. Maybe because it isn't in my nature to demand that someone step up to some line I've scratched in the dirt, no one has done it.

And why does a married guy do it? I don't know. Who is anyone to question anyone else's motives? You just can't know.

Maybe the married man's wife has lost all interest in sex and her husband still has a roaring sex drive (in my opinion, these guys don't need a reason, they need a permission slip. How can you just cut off one of the things that supposedly comes with a marriage vow and expect your partner to nod meekly and say, "Well, uh, okay, I'll just jerk off for the rest of my sorry life?")

Maybe his wife is sick (like, probably-going-to-die and too-ill-to-have-sex sick) and they have an arrangement of some sort, whether explicit or DADT. I know of what I speak here.

Maybe he looks at his wife and doesn't see himself in her eyes anymore. Maybe she has replaced him with their children, or her job, or a social calendar, or whatever. Whatever it is, maybe in the grand scheme of their life together, he is feeling like the last kid to get picked for dodgeball, and what he's seeking a loving connection with someone.

Michael Chabon's wife (her name escapes me at the moment) took a raft of shit in mommy-blogland when she wrote a column daring -- DARING -- to say that she was more in love with her husband than she was with their children. The NERVE of her, right? To declare such a thing, out loud, and in public!

Well, I thought it was kind of nice. Wouldn't it be nice to have someone who looks at you all the time and says, "I choose you?"

Believe me, when my friend is with me, he knows that I have chosen him.

And who knows? Maybe somewhere down the road, it may still happen to me. Just because it hasn't happened so far doesn't mean that I consider it a complete impossibility. Someone may just come along, who looks at me, sees me, thinks I'm fantastic, and says, "I choose you."

And if the timing is right, and the person has just the right tools to tinker with my heart and brain, maybe I'll say exactly the same thing.