Remember?

For LL in the UK

Remember when we first met LL? Remember how things went then and later?

I do.

I thought it would be a salutary exercise to remind you.

Therefore, what follows is an attempt by me to recall how things were between us from the very first.

I was attracted to your photo and the way you had written your profile first of all...and also your smile and that touch of mischievousness in your eyes. I sent you a mail and to my surprise you replied. I didn't expect that in view of the distance between us. Some of the emails via that website came from my home in Florida as I am sure you will remember LL, but most from Norfolk.

You took a little persuasion and you were hesitant because of your dysfunctional family and husband from whom you had separated, but eventually you agreed to meet me. I often wondered what caused him to go the way he did with drink etc. I think I know after experiencing your behavior myself.

If you recall on that first visit I stayed at the Premier Travel place to the south of you just off the M6. We met just a little to the west of your parent's home toward the City. You asked me to drive on a little further as you didn't want to be spotted meeting me by them. All very surreptitious I thought at the time. We had lunch somewhere that first day and talked - we could both do that! Can't recall where that was but then it was sixteen years ago.

That first evening we ate at David's I seem to recall and managed to get through a lot of red wine! So much so that when we stopped in one road short  of your home my caresses had you come twice in the car! Remember....

The following morning, a Saturday as I recall, you phoned me and said you were feeling 'horny' and came to my hotel room south of the city. Then you asked me if I wanted you to undress. Looking back that was a damn silly question on your part. However, I said yes and we had our first full on sex on that hotel bed, leaving your juices on the bed cover. I'll skip forward a bit now but I will say that our sexual encounters, whilst enjoyable were also a bit frustrating in that you wanted me to withdraw just before I came. I complied, but it wasn't the best thing for me.

I know that I always ensured you came, either through the use of my tongue on your clit or via penetration.

I enjoyed your company and your sense of mischievousness and thought I had found someone that I could spend the rest of my life with, despite our quite different backgrounds and previous lives. We celebrated your divorce with our trip to Sorrento, a holiday that you said was the best you had ever had... at that time. I recall you complained that I couldn't spend Christmas with you in that year 2003. I felt I had to spend it with my children, having lost their mother less than a year before. You were rather unforgiving about that.

That sowed a small seed of doubt in my mind about your commitment even though we had become 'engaged' and I had bought you a ring, which incidentally I still have. Then I produced some of my late wife's jewellery that I gave you that Christmas.

On into the new year - a first trip to my home in Florida under our belt. I thought we were going along pretty well, although you wouldn't give me your full commitment (I now know why!) I was prepared to wait and I told you I wasn't going anywhere. I really meant that - I wasn't.

Come March of 2004 and I took you and the boys to Florida and up to Orlando. As usual you managed to get pretty drunk and it was during one of those episodes one evening after we had returned from Orlando through a good old Florida downpour, that you told me about the trip you took to see J in Oxford. You told me in 2005/2006 it was a mistake a slip of the tongue or memory. You were lying.

There was also the trip to Barcelona - I wasn't sure of you then, either.

The thing is, you were drunk when you told me and I was stone cold sober. There was no mistake. I asked you to confirm the date at the time. From then on you had lost my trust. I left it for a short while to see whether you would explain after we returned to the UK. You didn't. One of the reasons I left you there at Gatwick waiting for your flight home. I decided two things or rather three on that drive home from Gatwick to my home.

Firstly, that I would continue to see you, secondly to install something on your computer that enabled me to keep an eye on what you were up to with men, if at all, thirdly not to confine myself to your company alone.  I soon found that you were regularly in contact with other men, and I came to the conclusion that you were seeing a few as well. That was when I decided to take things a step further with the women I had started to meet. You were right, I was talking to others, totally precipitated by your actions.

All through 2004 I hoped and prayed that you would mend your ways...but you didn't. Along came the fat man in March 2005 and that was it for me. I downgraded my visits to you enormously because of him, you and all the other men that had crept into your life while still seeing me. Three reasons for not coming to see you all that summer. One, I had other irons in the fire with the women I was seeing, secondly I had started my photography in earnest and had decided to spend more time at my apartment in London and finally, I decided that if you really wanted me in your life that you would fight for me - you didn't.

I went off to Europe and over here to the States that summer, to start mapping out my future life...without you. In September of that year I whisked you off to Cyprus - it was a test. You may have thought that was my final chance with you, when in fact it was your final chance with me. I had made my mind up about you way back in January of 2005 and I was proved right.

I made the right decision about you, you made the wrong decision about me and the choice you had in life and for a life that you will never see or enjoy now. All because of two things - you couldn't commit and secondly because you couldn't keep your knickers on!

Sad really, I was very fond of you LL, but I wasn't going to be messed with and so I sacrificed you - not you, me. You sacrificed something you will never know.

Ciao

Some decisions change lives - yours did