How To Tell, Chapter III: Celeste
A story about opening up a relationship. Reality meeting fiction.
Chapter III — Celeste:
The story of Alex and Celeste had started years ago when his dad passed away after a terrible fight against cancer. His dad was a fit guy and getting ready to enjoy his golden years when the illness did away with him. The world changed for Alex. He had been so focused on his career, and not enjoying the little things in life. He was living the life that society expected him to live, not the life he wanted to live. After the death of his dad, Alex went into a deep soul searching mode. He started wondering if he had set the right priorities in his life. He felt that sometimes his life was defined by somebody else, and he was just following a plan that was not of his own making.
Alex rediscovered his long lost passion for reading about the mind and psychology. He read many popular science books on the subject that he could get his hands on. It had actually been a book about deception that prompted him to start his affair with Celeste. It had been through this book that he learned about the new world of online dating. And when experimenting with one account on one of these online dating sites he met Celeste.
Celeste was a couple of years older than him. She had divorced while her kids were teenagers, and had gone back to work to get the kids through college. She had joined the online dating site without knowing what to expect. When Alex contacted her, their written exchanges just took off. Alex started looking at the daily mails from Celeste, where they would exchange about the weather and the meaning of life. He learned of the things that Celeste liked and also shared his life moments with her. Chats followed the mails, and one day they just happened to meet for lunch at one of his favorite Italian restaurants.
The attraction was mutual. They both had been starving for attention and for physical contact. After lunch, they decided to go visit a nearby museum, and it was there in the middle of the exhibitions that they kissed the first time. It just happened naturally, holding hands seemed so natural, and the kiss was so exquisite. Alex felt at ease with Celeste, like being with a lost old friend. Being with Celeste also brought up these feelings of new youth. It was a nice and comfortable feeling to know that there was somebody in the world that found him attractive and wanted to be with him.
For almost two years they meet at a special place about once a month and shared long sessions of lovemaking. Sometimes they would go to the theater, or just for dinner at a nice place. Alex had kept all this secret from Claire. They managed to travel a couple of times, once during the summer while Claire was away with the kids to visit her mother. Their relationship was physical. They were good friends and cared for each other, but it had never been the kind of love that makes you lose weight and keeps you awake at night. Alex had his feelings for Celeste under control.
The truth is Alex never believed that he would feel the deep kind of love again in his life. He believed in the popular wisdom of the songwriters that wrote that you could only love so deeply once in a lifetime. This balanced attachment and detachment helped both of them keep their feet on the ground. Celeste understood that he was a married man, and also kept her relationship with him hidden from plain view. While her kids knew that she was seeing somebody, they never did anything else together. They only meet in that room and traveled outside of town together.
Alex had some feelings of guilt, for having to hide what he was living through. Sometimes he wished he could share the nice things he was living with Celeste with the rest of his world. But they were trapped in a cage of their own making. He had the feeling that coming clean with Claire could break their relationship. And somehow after starting hiding it somehow turned out easier to just keep it away from plain sight. He was also not sure how important it was for Celeste to involve him in her daily life.
The relationship between Celeste and Alex was based on physical attraction. Their lovemaking was the best that both had experienced in their lives. There were some feelings for each other, but somehow both knew that they were just walking a small path of their lives together. Before Alex, for Celeste the body of the men she had been with had been just another body. With Alex, this changed. They communicated extensively about their feelings when they were together. Alex shared his inner thoughts, and he had learned how things felt for his partner. It was a liberating relationship, protected by the secrecy that surrounded it. When they met it was like evading reality for a few hours. It helped her recharge her batteries, and go back to the daily grinding wheel with a smile on her face. She felt lucky to have found a way to explore her sexuality without having the burdens that came with a fixed relationship somehow. She sometimes thought about the risk that Alex was putting himself into. But she could somehow detach herself from these facts. She felt liberated from the need to have a long time commitment.
Having Celeste allowed Alex to mask the small issues mounting up in his marriage. He had a place where to flee, where there were no disagreements on how to raise the kids and other domestic quarrels. His thirst for lovemaking was also satiated and that relieved the pressure on Claire. Especially after the birth of their second kid their sexual life had taken a nosedive. Alex was a sensitive guy and understood that her wife was lacking the energies and mood for their encounters. But after years of unmet needs, he had started experiencing sexual fantasies that would just not go away. The relationship with Celeste balanced him. But it also allowed him to avoid confronting the small but mounting issues in his marriage. There was no need to do it if he was having his needs meet outside.
After two years Celeste started to feel trapped in a rut. Meeting Alex helped her get her sexual life restarted after that though divorce she had gone through. But after some time she started to look for more than just a sex buddy. She had moved to a new apartment in the little town where she lived. This had allowed her to get rid of many things that she had been carrying with herself for a long time. And she had started looking out for more in life. She wanted someone to come home to. Alex could not and would never be able to give that to her. And she would not have allowed it.
One afternoon, after yet another fantastic round of lovemaking Celeste’s feelings overtook her and she started sobbing and crying. Alex was really surprised about her reaction and felt that something was about to change. She started thinking about their situation and realized that her body was telling her that she could not go on like this. Sometimes feelings are better left unspoken, but every now and then they come and hunt you. Celeste realized that she was ready for a next step in her life. When she met Alex she was still living in the house she had moved in with the kids after the divorce. She had been focused on her work and her kids and had forgotten about her. Being with Alex had made her rediscover herself, pay attention to her needs. She had started to make new plans, had bought a nice little place, and now she felt she was ready for the next step in her life. And this next step was something that she knew she could not have with Alex.
Celeste was now back to looking at having someone to come home to. She felt she had gotten over having to sacrifice herself to get the kids going. She was soon to turn into an empty nester. Being with Alex had given her feminine side back. She enjoyed the great conversations and had also taken responsibility over her own sexuality. She had also gotten higher self-esteem by feeling attractive again. And she knew that that would allow her to be more assertive about the kind of partner she was looking towards having for her future. The next time she met Alex she had made up her mind that it would be their final date. He cooked her a fantastic dinner, and they had the most amazing sex in the bathtub surrounded by candles. The evening had been beautiful, and the lovemaking fantastic. But there had been this atmosphere of unspoken feelings. The next morning when saying goodbye even Alex knew that this was the end.
Next: Chapter IV — Making Love With Dan
