I am a 41-year-old woman and have a rather long story to tell.

I’ll start at the beginning. I am married and in a failing marriage. I have four kids and have stayed as long as I have largely because of comfort and complacency and so as to not disrupt life for my kids. I met a man on Fetlife at the beginning of March. He was in the same boat. A marriage on the decline looking for something more. We exchanged a bunch of messages on Fet and then moved over to email and eventually an instant messaging app. To say we clicked is the understatement of the century. We are so compatible that it's insane. We got together once we had been talking for a couple of weeks and it was like a bolt of electricity hit us. We kissed and talked and had amazing sex. Hours flew by in what felt like seconds.

We fell in love. Real love. A goddamned fairy tail. Happily ever after stuff. Everything I could have ever hoped and dreamed for. He is my prince charming.

What could possibly go wrong? So, so much. You can keep reading—and reading and reading—after the jump. But abandon dinner plans all who click through here...

We’ve been together for almost eight months now. Been on trips together, gone on dates, had the absolute BEST sex of our lives—mindblowing, porn-star caliber, earth-shatteringly-amazing SEX. Sounds great, right? Why am I writing to you you might be asking. Well, here’s where the curtain is pulled back.

I’ve been married for eighteen years. When I was married three years, I found out that my husband had been cheating on me for a year with a woman that he worked with. Shortly thereafter, I found out that I was pregnant with my second child. All the while, he was telling her that he loved her and that if I wasn’t pregnant that he would’ve been with her. After that happened, I was understandably hurt, but I stayed. I felt at the time that I couldn’t be pregnant with a toddler and do it on my own.

Around six years into my marriage, I strayed. Our sex life had stalled after all of that, along with having three kids in relatively quick succession. Once my libido came back, he and I were on completely different wavelengths. We wanted completely different things. I looked elsewhere. For the next almost ten years, I saw a series of men. Some of of these men were ongoing, but there were also some one-and-duns.

When I met my love, I had been on Fet for a few years and was casually seeing a couple of other people. I didn’t stop seeing these other men when I started seeing the man I fell in love with. Not a problem yet, right? Well yeah, it is. He had asked me early on if I was seeing anyone and I said no even though I was. He had said that if I ever did want to, to just let him know. How great is this guy? So great. We agreed NOT to see other people. In fact, I had volunteered that I wouldn’t see anyone. It was my intention, Dan, but I couldn’t say goodbye to the extra attention. I was lacking it for so long in my life that I took it wherever I could get it, even if it was destructive and unhealthy.

I saw the two men that I had been seeing before him in the two months after we met. One man two times and another once. I kept in contact with both of them as well. I don’t know why I continued to talk to or see the two other men. I was getting everything I could possibly want from my love. I was wanting for nothing.

One of the men I had met on Ashley Madison—I know, I know—and had been seeing for a few years. We had become friends and saw each other around 1-2 times a month. We had non-sexual as well as sexual conversations. The other man I had met on Fetlife. He was into rope and I had always wanted to try it, so I jumped at the chance. We got together a few times before I met the man I’m in love with.

I was very concerned about how I was feeling. I was falling in love with The Love Of My Life (TLOMF) after such a short time and if I acted on it it would mean a major upheaval in my life. I needed two things that seemed to be in conflict with each other. First, I needed to gain some perspective. (Was I was in love with TLOMF or was I just infatuated with the attention and gentlemanly treatment he was giving me?) Second, I needed to not have to think about it for awhile. So the man from Fetlife came over, tied me up, and we had sex. The outcome was that I realized it wasn’t the treatment from TLOMF, it was TLOMF himself. I was in love with TLOMF. Like the leave-my-husband-to-be-with-him kind of love.

The next day, I told TLOMF that I was in love with him. He told me that he was in love with me.

Again, all good. One mistake. Nope.

While I was telling TLOMF that I was in love with him, I was literally starting a sexting session with the Ashley Madison guy involving exchanging of pictures of our genitalia. I had told my love that I was in love with him and sexted with another man. To compound things, the next night his wife left him for unrelated reasons. After I comforted him I went and sexted with Mr. Ashley Madison and also had phone sex with him. I have no excuse. It was a suck-ass thing to do and I’m so ashamed.

The next day, Mr. Ashley Madison and I had texted platonically and that wasn’t an issue. Should have told TLOMF that I was, but I didn’t. He had convinced me to see him that week. I dodged a bullet when one of my kids got sick.

After that was a period where there was no cheating. I texted pretty regularly with Mr. Ashley Madison during that time. Some of it platonic, some of it not. Texted here and there with rope boy, most of it was platonic.

Then came mid-April. I was working and Mr. Ashley Madison texted to let me know that he was working late and wanted to know if he could come by to say hi after I was done. I said ok but the minute I did I regretted it. The end of my shift rolled around and he was there. We talked for a couple of minutes, but decided to move to a less populated parking lot. After we had moved, we talked for a few minutes and again, I cheated. I gave him oral sex. I felt terrible after.

To backtrack for a minute, after I had experienced the rope, I really liked it. I added my like of it to my Fetlife profile and TLOMF and I discussed it in the course of getting to know one another. He offered to learn and had started to watch videos and read up on rope bondage. He wanted to get proficient enough that he could fill that desire in me. We had talked about it here and there and he was keeping me in the loop on how he was doing with it. At the last check in, he had said that he was getting more confident, but he wasn’t quite there yet. I told him that it was ok if he wasn’t ready and that I didn’t need to do it.

Shortly after that conversation, rope boy reached out to let me know that he was going to be in the area the next day. It had been awhile since I had been tied up and having been looking at pics of bindings, I was really wanting to be tied. I knew that my love wasn’t quite ready to practice with me and I should have A.) told him that rope boy had reached out and B.) given him the opportunity to do it with me himself. Instead, I told rope boy that I would be but that it would only be rope. Nothing more. I said "just rope," but given my history, it was a given that more would happen. As much as I would like to think that giving TLOMF the opportunity to use rope with me would have prevented me from inviting rope boy over, the reality is that I couldn’t say no. He had offered and I said “just rope” knowing that if something else was offered, I would take it. Deplorable and disgusting on my part. Here I am with my love, TLOMF, everything that anyone could hope and wish for, and I did that. I did that knowing full well what would happen. Rope boy came over the next day and rope turned into more than rope. I had cheated again. We had oral sex, PIV sex and he used an anal hook.

Holy fuck, am I stupid. Deplorable, disgusting, downright moronic.

Seven days later it all came crashing down. My love had been browsing on Fetlife and came across rope boy’s profile. Unbeknownst to me, as I had been off of Fetlife, rope boy had posted pictures from when we got together. My love confronted me. We got together to talk and it was heart wrenching. I was going to lose the love of my life because I couldn’t keep my mouth or legs shut. I had never felt the pain that I felt looking into his eyes. I literally felt my heart shattering. Why didn’t I practice more self control? What in God’s name is wrong with me?

I completely broke down to the point that TLOMF was afraid I was going to do something to harm myself. He stayed with me until I had calmed down enough to drive. We were both a complete mess in the days following. Tears, yelling, begging, pleading.

But my most egregious offenses are forthcoming.

What can be more egregious than cheating three times? Lying about it. At least in this relationship. My love places the highest value on honesty, truthfulness, and loyalty.

When I was originally found out, I did what any normal person would do and I tried to lie. To accomplish this, I reached out to rope boy several times to get him to help me to cover it up. I was scrambling to come up with anything to keep TLOMF. Stupid ridiculous things like scripting a text conversation and trying to find apps that could generate fake texts. Rope boy did what he could to help but my love is a smart guy and saw right through it. I stuck to the lies, swearing they were true, all the while knowing that he didn't believe me.

My genius strategy was to let the truth come out a little at a time so as to lessen the blow. All this served to do was make matters worse. Instead of getting it all out at once and dealing with it, every time a new piece of information came out, we were back to square one. All the while, TLOMF was imploring me to tell him the truth. To get it all out so we can be done with it. I was SO afraid to lose him that I couldn’t bring myself to let it all out at once. On top of that, I told some half truths about what happened, like saying it was just a blow job, when it was actually sex. Again, trying to lessen the blow. So it wouldn’t look THAT bad. Throughout the time I was letting things come out and drips and drabs, it was usually very little that I volunteered and most came out because my love pulled it out of me.

We went through a month this way and then I asked him what I could do to try to heal things so we could try to move forward together. We agreed that I would contact everyone from my past that I was still in communication with to tell them that I had met someone and couldn’t have any contact with them. We got together and crafted an email that we sent to them all. He also allowed me to write a more personalized one to Mr. Ashley Madison since he and I had been involved for a more extended period of time. After that was written and sent, he went to use the restroom. While he was in the rest room, I texted Mr. Ashley Madison and emailed another of my former partners, telling them both that I would explain the emails they received and would be in touch later. I reached out to Mr. Ashley Madison because I felt like I needed to say more of a goodbye since I really counted him as a close friend. I reached out to the other because he and I did some sexual things that were really out there and I was paranoid he would respond and mention some of those things and TLOMF would see them.

My love found out about those communications and it was devastating. What I had wanted to be a new start was a fucking disaster.

We did our best to move forward and spent two nights together as well as a weekend away. In between there were periods of quiet, but more times than not, there were hard discussions and the continuation of the trickle of information because he kept pulling it out of me, not because I was volunteering it.

We went away for the weekend three weeks ago and when we came back, it all came out. I told him everything about everything. The truth about what had happened. The whole truth. No half-truths, nothing left out. It was painful but, as TLOMF said, I owed him the truth. It was the least I could do. He had stuck around, stuck with me though all of the cheating and all of the lies. Had he not kept on top of me, if hadn't kept asking, the whole truth wouldn’t have come out. I was hoping he would stop asking questions so we could move on, leaving the remaining information hidden in the past. This says worlds about who I was and who I don’t want to be.

I squandered the love of my life and my-happily-ever after. He agreed to stay around as my best friend, companion, and fuck buddy. But he does not want to be my partner. I love him desperately. More and more with each day.

My love and I casually play in a D/s capacity, particularly a Daddy/baby dynamic. We have had fun with it and it worked well for us and decided to try to use it to get me straightened out. At my request and his agreement, we are in the process of working on a contract so I can get my life back on track. He has agreed to guide me and provide me with instruction and encouragement so that I can leave the past ten years behind and get back to the person I was before I became jaded and sexually out of control.

With all of that out, and I understand it’s a lot, what do you think? Is it foolish for us to keep this going? I’m in love with him. Heart and soul. I would go to the ends of the earth for him and truly can’t see a life without him. I know that he feels the same for me. Do we press on and try to move forward? How do we do that? Is it even a possibility given how destructive I was? Do you have any thoughts on my behavior and/or advice on how I can not act that way again?

What would your advice be for my love? For TLOMF? Should he stick around and risk being hurt again? (Which I have promised won’t happen again.) Or should my love cut his losses and move on before it becomes too difficult to do so? What advice would you give him on strategies he could use to deal with his anger about what I have done?

Sad And Desperate Dame Enquires Nervously

I'm gonna be brief, SADDEN, out of consideration for any reader who made it this far and who also might wanna squeeze something else in this evening.

You ask what I think. Well, I don't think people change easily. I also don't think monogamy is for you, SADDEN, and I think it would be foolish of you to make a monogamous commitment—yet another one—to your love, aka TLOMF, or to any other man. And this man didn't even ask you to make a monogamous commitment. If you read back over your own Book of Revelations, SADDEN, you'll find this in Chapter 9, Verse 6-7: "He had said that if I ever did want to [fuck another man], to just let him know. How great is this guy?" He does sound like a great guy—indeed, he sounds like the perfect guy for a woman who enjoys sucking, fucking, kinking, and god-knows-what'ing scores of men. Instead of swearing to fuck him and only him from here on out, why not take him up on his original and, for you, most likely much more workable offer: if you want to suck, fuck, or god-knows-what some other guy, you'll get his okay first. (Who knows? Maybe Rope Boy would be willing to show TLOMF the ropes?)

I also don't think it's wise to expect D/s role play to function like cognitive behavioral therapy—if there are changes you need to make for your health and/or sanity and/or relationships, SADDEN, you're gonna need to talk that shit over with your therapist, not your "Daddy."

As far as advice for your love goes, SADDEN, surprisingly enough I wouldn't advise him to run. If your connection is really as spectacular as you say, and if the love of your life has already indicated his willingness to stick around despite the eight dozen ways you found to shit the bed since March, well, let me not to the marriage of true minds—or the connections of dom Daddies and sub slut babies—admit impediments. He will eventually need to let go of his anger and truly forgive you—for the cheating, for the lies, for the idiotic stratagems—in order make this work. You'll wanna pull the plug yourself, SADDEN, if your love weaponizes his anger and uses it as a tool to control or manipulate you. If in a few months time you notice he insists on getting his way in all things because you cheated on him with Mr. Madison, Rope Boy, et al, then he hasn't let go of his anger and you'll need to cut your losses and move on.

Good luck, SADDEN.