The benefits of blogging

I find writing this blog quite therapeutic at the moment. With all the turmoil in my life, committing one’s thoughts into words helps sort things out in my mind. Another benefit that I hadn’t anticipated is feedback that I get from people who read this blog. Like an e-mail I got from Escribo Cartas last week which asked

Could you have left your boyfriend #1 earlier in the relationship?
If not, why?

Very good questions. I think the answer goes something like this.

Although I enjoy sex, probably the biggest thing that I've got out of my relationship with boyfriend number 1 is companionship, and for me that's been a lot more precious than having a partner for sex. It would have been, or will be, very hard to let all the companionship go. But when it seemed last June that the companionship element had slipped, because boyfriend number 1 couldn't come on holiday with me, that's when everything started to unravel.

I've read that it's easier for men to have no-strings sex than women, which is what I've done for many years of course, so for me this lifestyle worked very well. A subsequent e-mail from Escribo Cartas proved however that this men versus women statement isn’t necessarily true. Something else I got from her is the quotation

"It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not..."

This turns out to be a quotation from the French novelist Andre Gide, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1947. I don’t think boyfriend number 1 hates me for what I’ve done, but I think he was loving me for something I wasn’t.