Trust in Alex-Part 5

Part 5

A laugh came bursting out of him and his stories started to descend upon me one brick at a time. “Oh Rain….really you think by being with him every day he wont cheat on you, trust me he will find a way. He will cheat at work with someone willing to pull down her pants for a few minutes of ecstasy. Yes it takes a few minutes if you really wanna get it” he continues to laugh making me feel like a fool in more ways than one. I protest against his persistence of making me believe that there is no hope in a faithful relationship. “No, that is not true” I argue “It cant be true” but now I am a bit shaken by the thought of it and he continues “If your husband tells you he is late at work, how do you trust he is not screwing his colleague instead of the meeting he told you he has to attend? When he travels on those supposed business trips, spending so much time alone in a hotel room how do you know he is not getting laid on those lonely nights? You are gonna be there at work with him too? Will you travel on all his business trips? What if you cant? Your sick? Your pregnant? Your not in the mood? You have a deadline at work?. Then what? Can you trust that he is faithful? Never…..listen to me, I want you to face up to the reality of life, so that when you end up meeting your soul mate you are not traumatized by these facts that will undoubtedly happen to you.”

As my resistance starts getting weaker I voice out slowly and more to myself than to him “But we will be in love and he will be so sexually satisfied with only having me as a partner.” He naturally had a ready response to my unsaid words “I didn’t say anything about love, I said he will cheat and you have to accept it. I love my wife to death, but I cheat all the time. There are times where I call up one of my friends on my lunch break and we meet up in the hotel next door, have sex and we both go back to work. Its normal, everyone does it, no one talks about it though. No one will admit to you what I am admitting to you know, the truth.” He gets up to stretch and stays standing as he says “Another thing you should know, even if he doesn’t stay late at work or travel for work or goes out for his lunch breaks he can do it in the office. Under the stair case, in the bathroom, in the store room nothing stops men, it’s in their nature and they will always do it. So what are you gonna do now? Get shocked when your older and married to a man believing he doesn’t cheat or accept that he does and just live with it?”

Again I tired to fight his theory by saying “I am older today, I won’t go for someone who has not enjoyed their life to the extreme, I will be with someone who has done it all and is ready for a family and a clean decent life with me, a friend a partner” to my dismay Alex responds with “And then one day you turn fifty and find out he has been having sex the whole time but your already in your fifities too but the only difference is you’re a woman and what used to be perky is now sagging down to your knees and what used to be sexy is revolting and you want to have an affair just to hurt him but there is no one to sleep with cause you have lost all your elasticity and the opportunity to use your young body right.”

This was getting too far. I didn’t want to believe that I would want to adamantly cheat on my spouse, I didn’t want to know how old and disgusting I will look the day I find out how often my partner cheated on me. So I maneuvered the topic around by asking him “so you have only ever cheated on your wife? Right? Or have you cheated on all your girlfriends before?” Alex smiles and says “of course I had cheated on my girlfriends, some of them knew and some of them didn’t, but of course I did and as it so happens I would sometimes cheat on them while I was at work.”

I decided to shut my mouth and just pretend I had gone dumb. Alex had a determination unlike any I had ever known, he wanted to make me see the light, he wanted to wake me up to reality, he wanted to shock me into reality. “I don’t find what I do or done wrong since the whole world does it, actually I am a very nice guy inside and have great respect for women.” That is when a new tale came my way, a bomb of a tale.

“Let me tell you a few stories just to prove to you that I am really a good guy and not the horrible man you seem to think I am. As the thing you need to know, i never make the first move, they always do and i simply comply. So it is not me, it is the women”.

I have a best friend who is married to one of my friends, but she is more my friend than he is. Anyway they have two kids and don’t live here. We have been friends forever and never once did we sleep with one another, although I am sure there was some sort of attraction we never took it there. So one day I find out that her husband is cheating on her and I feel bad for her, I mean she is a mother and loves her husband but she still had no idea. Now somehow she ended up finding out and called me immediately after to tell me and cry over the phone. My wife at the time was out of town and so I invited her to come stay with me for a few days and get away from her husband and kids for a mental break. The plan went through and she actually came to visit and stayed with me for a few days. As you should know we were used to sleeping next to one another in the past but nothing ever happened between us we really were just great friends. So on her visit to me we naturally maintained the coziness of our friendship until one of those nights she was crying so much and completely devastated by her husband’s cheating, to console her we ended up sleeping together.” My mouth dropped at that point, I thought he was trying to show me that he is a good guy after all? What the hell happened there? So I sarcastically say “you cant even maintain a long friendship with a female without sleeping with her at some point in your life? Why the hell would you do something like that? She was still married and for God’s sake so were you. And in your house?????”

Alex had no inhibitions on that strange day, nothing made him stop not even shame of my constant shocked looking state. So he went on to explain what he meant by a good guy “We never did it again after that one time, she felt better after cheating on her husband and with all honesty I felt guilty after that cause as I got out of the shower I found her sitting on my lap top chatting with her kids with such love. I could not do that to her again. So we decided to maintain the friendship as it is.” So that was Alex being decent, God I laughed, I laughed and laughed at that. Was this guy for real?

I then explained to him that I don’t take sex so lightly that it is a special thing to give your body to someone in that way, that if you cant value your body then no one else would. And why should every other guy know exactly how my body looks and reacts to ecstasy? I believe that it is a very private special thing that only belongs to the one you love and choose to spend the rest of your life with, not every passing body is mine to have lustfully allowing for it to be touched by so many people with no regard to the sanctuary of it being my temple to care for and protect.

I looked at the little table that my arm was resting on and found that my pack of cigarettes had finished, surprised I took a look at the ashtray and realized it was filled to the brim, a whole pack worthy of smokes were piled up in a disgusting display of ashes and burned out paper. Since my trauma was so intense I called the office boy to go get me another pack of cigarettes ASAP.

What followed was heartfelt advice from Alex to me “Rain, you need to have sex all the time? Your young, your fit, your free, you should go around and enjoy every minute of it before it gets too late. Your gonna keep waiting for your soul mate to come, who will undoubtedly cheat on you and then you will regret everyday that passed of your youth not exploring sex with all different kinds of men. You will hate your life when the day comes and your too old to do anything about it. Believe me your future husband will cheat on you and you may find out when your sixty or seventy and feel like an idiot for having been faithful to him all those years when he was unfaithful all along.” I look at him shocked and say angrily to him “I would never cheat on my partner are you MAD!!” after knowing that he provoked he resolved to another solution for my lack of sex and my adamant belief that my future spouse would not cheat on me. Alex gave me a new plan “look, I know this amazing beach in Europe, it is a nudes beach. It is divided into section according to your status. There is a section for couples, one for singles and anther for gays and lesbians, I recommend you to go there into the singles area and see what happens around you. Everyone is naked and having sex with everyone at random, there is no shame in it and it expands your sexual horizon, no one will know. I went there with my wife when we were just dating at the time, but we went to the couples beach. At first it was strange to see so many naked people having sex all over the place, switching partners with not a care in the world. Later on we got into the groove of things and it felt like the most normal place to be in. I chose a partner for my wife(I made sure he was the ugliest one around) and she chose one for me, which also seemed to be the lesser attractive of the bunch. It opened our horizons to life and I would recommend it to anyone I know.”

I thought to myself “Did he hear nothing of what I said about my body being a temple???? Was he honestly advising me to go to a nude beach and have sex with a bunch of different men all in the span of a day?” I started to get up to walk away, my heart was aching and I felt sick inside I took a look at him and asked “So you have no problem if your wife is cheating on you too or that she is having sex with a whole bunch of different men in your presence?”

Alex then explained how he would have a problem with it naturally but at least when he was in charge of picking the guy and she was doing it in front of him it was not cheating. None of it made sense to me, yes I knew there were people who enjoyed sex with several people all at one time, and others that enjoyed switching partners, I knew a couple like that years ago, but I never understood it then and I was damned if I could understand it now. Then he explained to me that he was sure his wife was not cheating on him, but even if she was it was ok not a big deal, its human nature.

I thought to myself at that point, and wondered about the possibilities of his wife not really caring what her husband did. IF there came a point in her life while they were dating that they went on a sexual excursion on a beach that was their prerogative and in knowing that i started to wonder if maybe she was cheating on him too since they were both sexually open and experimental. Then i remembered the day i met her for the first time and the sadness i felt within her, and i realized that it was not because she knew anything about her husband or was busy cheating it was because she found out she was pregnant again for the second time a few months after giving birth to their first son and she couldnt handle it.

To be continued………

The Nudge of the Heart

When do we know when to take the next step forward?

A statement I hear on various occasions is “Follow you heart”. As people casually throw that statement around making it easier for the problem at hand to get resolved they have no true awareness of the magnitude of their words on the confused party. Following what your heart is saying is easier said than done, yet not following your heart is a harder path to maintain. When you maintain a path that your heart is not feeling content in, a constant persistent nudge keeps pestering your thoughts and actions until you face up to what changes you need to start making. The problem here is that the heart and mind are always in battle with one another; there is the mind putting in all the logical reasons for not making that change then there is the heart aching to follow that illogical instinct.

Its late at night, all the stars are out and the moon is large yet discretely showing itself behind the blackness of the sky. I am walking with my soul sister on a well paved street that permits only pedestrians to stroll on. My heart is elated with happiness enjoying every moment of this reunion that has a way of bringing me back to my core self, the self that keeps loosing track of its path when left to venture in the whims of my mind. We engage in long conversations about life and the beauty of understanding the wisdom behind all what we assume to be bad happenings. Our conversations move easily from one thought to the next, from one problem to a resolve, from one idea to a realization. After a few hours of mind stimulating exchanges we come to the moment where we start to share our confusions about future decisions and soulful fulfillments.

The air is getting colder and the night is starting to release its skimpy dressed women and open shirted men. We dodge the inevitable response to our confusions by commenting on the passerby’s dress codes, making fun of the most outrageous ones as we contemplate the ones who seem to be looking for a sexual partner for the night.  As we continue walking up and down the promenade we resolve to ending the evening as we stop in front of a bench and start to bid farewell to one another. Then it happens, what we were dodging to say the whole evening happens, my soul sister looks at me and tells me “Follow your heart, you know exactly what you need to do, so just do it”.

We hug one another and make plans to meet the next day for another casual outing, making sure to use every minute we have in her short stay in Dubai.

I walk towards my car, ignite the engine, the music blasts and my thoughts start to roll.

“Follow my heart” I said to myself “How do I follow my heart?” I asked myself and with that I found my long awaited answer. The fact that me and my soul sister talked for hours on end, filtering out all our thoughts and poured out all what our true desires were made things easy to understand once I had time to be in silence. I had realized that for the longest time my heart knew exactly what I should and should not be doing, all the right choices were there all the time but I was too logical to follow through what I always knew.

It seems that with every situation I got a voice that told me the truth, what I did was try to mentally understand that instinct and try to rationalize it, and once I did that, the instinct would make no sense and I would discard of it moving along the path of logic. Yet there has never been a time where my instincts had been wrong. I looked back at all the things I stuck to although my heart didn’t want to and realized that no matter how long I would stick to it, at some point my initial instinct would take over. All the time I spent forcing myself to do the things I thought were best for me, turned out to be a waste of my time. My whole life flashed across my thoughts, all the examples of following my heart took control and I realized that my whole entire life was spent logicalizing a situation and then finding out that my heart was right all along.

So many people I dated and I knew from the first few days they were not the ones for me, yet I would logicalize it and make my heart go into silence as I try to make it work. Outings that my heart would tell me not to go to simply cause it knew that I would be wasting my time, I would find all the logical reasons as to why I should go then realize, too late, that my heart was right all along. A  job I have wanted to quit for so long, knowing exactly how it made me feel to wake up every morning to go to, I would logicalize it and stick to it only to actually leave it months later after my system has collapsed with stress. Countries that I should move out of cause it has bought me nothing but misery, I logicalize and stick to it, only to realize years later that it drained the life out of me. I would meet a

new friend, my heart would send out alarm bells to watch out, and I would logicalize it and stick to the friendship only to find out months later that my heart was right all along.

My heart knew everything from the moment I would take a decision, yet I would not listen to it, for fear that it made no sense and was not the right thing to do. My heart was always right.

So in that car, driving back home, I got the courage to follow through with what my heart wanted, I decided to do exactly what I knew all along I should do. I had a smile on my face, I felt free and I knew that it is time to make that change.

I woke up the next morning with hope of a new life style, when my thoughts started to take control and I started to write a logical list as to why I should continue living in the country I am in.

For this evening i will wear This Mask.

I walk into my office and find all my things have been cleared out as my papers are stacked up in another room, bend awkwardly thrown in a box. I storm around trying to find out who had the audacity to do this. To my surprise a colleague of mine, who constantly had coffee with me as she also enjoyed taking my advice, and asking for work help, decided to clean out my office since she got a new position in the same company. She assumed she was to take my position on my holiday leave therefore deciding to move in, discard of my things and never even call me to ask me if it were true. The worst part was that after a confrontation she still persisted that she was respectful of my things and my personal space. As it turned out, she was only there for a day, which really makes things much worse (she obviously could not wait to take over my office while I was on leave) luckily she was asked to leave cause of her uncalled for behavior in previous encounters with work. Strangely I had defended her throughout all her troubles at work, providing support with nothing but good words that I spread to the angered work people.

 I find out that one of my girlfriend’s boyfriend receives a hate/ warning e-mail about her from a girl that has had a fall out with her in the past. Disappointingly she discovers that all the right methods of dealing with that situation were over looked by him as she was also not told about the hateful e-mail when it was time for her to know. She was told too late to be able to stand and defend herself, not knowing that there would ever come a time where she would have to actually defend herself  when she had trust in her boyfriend to do the right thing by her.

The maid calls me up on the phone to tell me that she left a whole bunch of her bags in my storage room and she wants to come and pick them up in five minutes. I am utterly surprised at this new knowledge, I had her things in my storage this whole entire time and she never told me? She has my keys when I travel, I trust her with my cats, she pays my bills and now she felt the need to hide vital information that have to do with the trust I have for her with my home? She had three weeks since my return to tell me that she needed to store her things, but she chose not to tell me and use the excuse that I was out of town.

An ex-friend talks dirt about her best friend making her out to be a dirty liar and a whore as she pretends to love her in her presence. I defend her best friend and explain that her actions are not of a whore but of a good person who is very happy to constantly declare her well kept virginity till the age of 34. To my surprise I find out that her best friend, whom I would constantly defended in her absence, decided to spread her own venom of warnings about me, also in the same dirty way my ex-friend used to do things. Not surprising that they are best friends.

A colleague at work expresses her deep desire to be closer to God, the need to find herself spiritually hoping that her fiancé would want to do the same. We sit for hours and months talking about her new changes and how to go about them, how good she is as a person how much she loves her fiancé. We get into deep discussions about marriage and the loyalties involved in it, how much she can’t imagine her life without her fiancé expressing her great bond with him. Only to discover months later that she was sleeping with her best friend’s husband all along.

When can you trust your back with people these days? There is a constant alertness that needs to be present, there is no one in the recent years that has the ability to stand up for anyone else but themselves. Is the solution to  keep your guards up at all times and defend no one in return? But this can’t be the right way to live your life, this cannot be what our generation has turned into. I look back at all the friends I have today since childhood and I know that I am taken care of regardless of where I am and what I have become. My back is taken care of whether I am there or I am not there. There is a loyalty that does not seem to exist anymore amongst the people of this society. Is it possible that the people outside of my handpicked international circle of friends have not been taught the simple basics of trust and loyalty? In this place where I call my temporary home, I have found the most international abundance of people, yet their international standards of loyalty falls on a different track than the one I have come to understand and live by all those years.

How many faces do people really have? And how comfortable are they with all those multiple masks they keep changing according to the environment they are in? Do they really know who they are when they go to bed at night as they contemplate their life? Are they able to trust all those around them when they too do the same thing that their dearest of friends do to them? Is it all about pleasing and following the herd? There is a loss of individualism in this specific place we live in today. Holding on to ethics, values and moral beliefs have become the old fashioned thing to do. When can we start trusting our neighbors to keep watch on our home in our absence and know without a doubt that our home is being well protected and taken care of?

Yes, we do all talk about our friends to other friends, let’s not get carried away here, but in reality those friends always end up finding out one way or another, and the intention is never to hurt them or talk dirty about them. It is always to vent out a situation that is bothersome prior to talking to the concerned friend about it. Or to figure out a way to approach the friend in need by asking another friend’s advice on the matter, or simply expressing your back biting desire in front of that person in complete openness making it a confrontation and NOT a back biting session with other friends. When you hear something about one of your friends that could hurt them, then you stand up for them and defend them with your life, their dignity is you’re dignity. A word to the wise, always tell your friend what you heard so that he/ she can defend themselves if they ever have to encounter that situation alone, do not leave them defenseless and clueless, trust me; that never helped anyone in the long run. And if you ever have bad mouthed your friend to others; then tell that friend openly about it, it is better to hear it from the horse’s mouth than from the outside world.

We are our home, and we need more than ourselves to take care of our home. Especially in our absence, specifically when the key has been given to someone else to care for your home the same way you have cared for their home.