As usual, I started with the roundup of the past two weeks. I felt his delight as I shared my adventures with him – there were a few laugh out loud moments when he turned a fabulous shade of red as he threw his head back and guffawed at my tales – particularly as I described the sexploit with the little Philippino with the tiny cock and my observation that size doesn’t matter as much as I thought …. because with the smaller gentleman, one needn’t be as fastidious in one’s cleanliness down there as there’s no risk of him “touching the baby’s head” so to speak!

I covered the wondrous world of Shibari and how my experiences with Funiculosus and Cicero have taught me the kind and quality of sexual relationships that I need. Patricius has taught me the kinds of non-sexual friendships that I need.

In contrast, the recent communication difficulties with Ambrosius highlighted where things can easily go wrong.

This section of the session also highlighted the place my husband now has in my life, and the gulf between what I hoped for with him and what might actually be achievable: it is seeming increasingly likely that he will end up in that familial zone of reduced authenticity and edited existence, which isn’t what I hope for from friends or lovers, but I have to tolerate for family’s sake.

After spending more than half the session examining the very full fortnight since we’d last met, we moved back to the timeline of my relationship with my husband.

As before, we weaved backwards and forwards filling in events and discovering new areas to explore. Horrible events like when my husband’s middle two children stopped talking to him (which accelerated his decline into illness), or when he fell out with my mum and wouldn’t talk to her for a couple of years. What a hideous time that was, not really understanding what had happened, torn with a lifetime of loyalty to my mum and the love of my husband.

We talked about the failure of our couple’s counselling – it focussed on my communication difficulties without understanding that they were simply part of me. And I was forbidden to bring up his drinking and abusive behaviour because “we’d already talked about it”. It left me feeling that the sessions lacked balance and context. It left me feeling silenced and unheard.

Richard asked what happened during COVID. That was an interesting time – and a fairly happy time, despite the fear, illness, and death all around us, and my mum’s recent passing, because it was just the two of us and somehow we were happy together for a while. My husband spent a lot of time in the garden that gloriously sunny summer, while I was lucky enough to work from home.

But during that time, my need to explore my kink side grew – as did my dysphoria. I tried to share some of my kind desires with my husband, and (bless him!), he tried to accommodate (and tried very hard), but it just wasn’t in him – it only works when the people involved’s interest complements each other. And the only way I could start to understand what kink actually meant to me was to really do it, think about, talk about, and be it.

For every bad thing that I talked about, Richard (the counsellor) would ask me about something good, such as my graduation, when I started blogging, my understanding of myself as being on the autistic spectrum, and my sexual liberation.