Well, some time to post finally.
Peak - I agree with your summary that Paul surely isn't a bull or even a dominant/aggressive kind of guy. But from what I've seen of them together and what I've "felt" from him when I've talked with him, he doesn't have any designs or long-term goals regarding Sue. Actually when I asked her about it, she said that they are both very non-commital and that she says "he just wants to have fun". I surely recognize that the more they are together, the more they are going to want to be and the more bonding that will occur between them. I do not have any answer yet on how we are going to balance this or what guidelines we should follow just yet.
Going back to the moving-into-his-place subject, I don't think there's any doubt that she is referring to just a night or two, I think her reference to what she'd want to leave there supports that so to me. I have gone back and re-read and remembered the conversation and I don't feel any concern about the extreme that Dana suggested but that's not to say that again, it's a concern about the overall pace of things.
She's calmed me down and has continued to say that we don't have to do things that we're not ready for and that if I wasn't ready for her to have spent the night with him last Wednesday, then I should have said something about it. And she was pretty pointed about that saying that I need to know that i can speak up and that not everything has to be positive and in agreement with her. I told her she was right and she asked me again what I wanted.
It is getting easier for me to talk to her openly about this. I mean it is just not uncomfortable talking about it any more even if it takes me a little bit to feel like I can open up. But she'd led me there and I looked at her and I just told her that it's not easy for me to accept what I want sometimes and I told her that I valued our sexual relationship and that at times I am concerned both about missing it as well as it's subsequent return. She asked me how i felt last Wednesday night and whether I enjoyed myself when I masturbated. I told her I did and she asked me if I "really did" and whether I felt good afterwards. I was honest and told her that I loved it and that the more I thought about her that the better it was and that yes in the end it was nicely satisfying. She told me she loved knowing what I was doing and knowing that she was turning me on by what she was doing and she told me that wouldn't change. And she turned to me and asked me "will that fulfill you the way you apparently want to be?".
It was the big question asked in her way, was that enough to keep me satisfied feeling the way we do about each other. Before I could answer her she kissed me and told me that it turned her on that I was really looking inward at what I wanted and again (I guess if you repeat it enough ....) she said that it was okay if this turned me on.
I know we seem to be going back and forth all the time on this - and the nearest i can explain how I feel is what I told her. That I'm in a way, scared to let go and let it happen. She was incredibly understanding and she said that she too was scared in her own way and that she said she understood how scary this might be for me. She kissed me and said that she loved me for giving her the okay to enjoy her time with Paul and she told me that she understood how I both want to and don't want to start using condoms at the same time. I looked at her and I complimented her on how well she seems to know me and she smiled and just said "it's because I love you".
At one point I turned the question back to her. What was she thinking and why did it seem like we were moving so fast. In the minutes that followed she told me that it only seems fast to me. What she said next surprised me but also elated me. She looked at me and said that she was "just talking" about staying over with him next summer and it was what she said next that made me realize things - she said that this is the first time she's enjoying thinking and fantasizing about the kinds of things she wants to see and do. She said that she's known now - for almost 8 years - of the things that I've been thinking and fantasizing about and that she's now feeling like she's enjoying the same. Just as she says she enjoyed sharing her fantasies of "what might have happened" in the past, this is some of the same. I was smiling as she said it and she hugged me and said "so it's just me thinking" but then she pulled away a bit and looked at me and said "but it's not to say it's only fantasy" and she said that in some ways her thoughts about what would have happened make her horny because she knows that they might or could have happened and so, the same applies elsewhere.
And that's when she came back to saying that I didn't object to last Wednesday and she looked at me and said "was it okay that it happened?" and a second later she added "were you ready for that?".
I had to stop for a moment because she made sense. She's asked I had said okay, so I guess I was ready for it. In a way it made me feel more at ease.
We kissed and held each other for a moment and she whispered again how she is enjoying what is going on and how she is trying to make it good for me and her at the same time. When our hug broke she looked at me and said "so, are you ready?". "For what?" and she answered "New Years Eve?". I nodded yes and she said "what about the rest?". I told her that I still wanted to do it and that I hoped it wasn't going to hurt us but that I did want to still continue to move to becoming the beta-man for her. She kissed me again and then said "then you need to stop resisting and let it happen". A second later she added "you can always talk to me if you need to if it's not good". She kissed me and then said to me "do you want me to tell Paul?". I asked her when she was seeing him next and she smiled coyly and said "well, I was thinking of getting out of work early on Tuesday". Then she looked at me and said "you could come over his place?". The implication was clear, that maybe tomorrow I'll be 'fessing up to Paul, still not sure about that.
What I will end with is the feeling I still have that while Paul may still not be Mr. Right for her, that she feels enough desire and comfort with him to let her desires play out. I again have continued to notice a lack of her professing to want to "fall for him". Instead her desires appear to be focusing more on more comfort and sexual interaction with him with no doubt that she definitely wants the increasing exclusivity as part of that. Which brings me to Squirming's post.
If I get the feelings I want out of the beta-role, then I will likely have no issues in letting it continue. I still find myself with a strange curiosity about what it will be like - in some ways, I think it may be very enlightening as even now, a lot of our relationship and interaction is very sexually oriented. Indeed, a lot of energy over the past 30 years has been geared around my wanting to get into her panties. To remove that from the equation and to re-center ourselves in the other closeness that we both clearly feel and recognize is very arousing to me despite what it means. Whether this is something that can be fulfilling from a relationship perspective and even replace our earlier sexual interaction - I'm not sure just yet. As it always has been, the thought and actual experience of denial has been incredibly fulfilling, I'm just not sure how long that fulfillment will last for. Can it last for all of 2015? A part of me is crazy turned on to think that Paul might be the only one to cum in her next year. I'm hard just typing this. Beyond that, that by the end of the year that he might be the only one doing anything sexual with her is one step beyond that. As Sue would say, it's a fantasy and desire and a turn-on to think about. I suppose the real answer is that if it works for us, fulfills both of us and doesn't leave us wanting more or more importantly, leave us lacking something - then the answer is that for as long as it works.
