I'm 31, a Mother, a Woman, with a Husband and a Lover – A Phoenix in Armour of Ice

I have known my husband for almost ten years, and we have been a couple for practically every hour of that time.

It truly was love at first sight.

I don't know what that cliché means to other people, but for me he is “the one”.

He has everything I value and look for in a relationship.

So after university it felt natural that we moved in together, then married, and now we have a wonderful child.

Along with enormous happiness, our child's birth naturally brought countless new situations and challenges into our lives.

I do not know whether it is exhaustion, isolation, hormones, the intimacy of breastfeeding, or some diabolical combination of all of them that causes a woman's mind — and I assume I am not unique here — to switch into “mother mode”.

For months, I had practically no erotic fantasies or sensual thoughts at all.

And when I finally collapsed into bed late at night, the last thing I wanted was my husband's gentle touch.

Of course, I also felt that I could not be such a selfish, frigid monster and simply neglect him.

After all, beside him lay the woman he loved and desired — a wife whose body carried the traces of motherhood but who was still very attractive.

The problem was that she would happily have exchanged almost any intimate encounter for a few hours of peaceful sleep or even a hot bath lasting more than five minutes.

I was exhausted.

Not primarily physically.

Mentally.

Even so, most of the time I tried to pull myself together.

Out of love and a sense of responsibility, I did my part.

And once I had managed to tune into the moment, the experience was usually genuinely pleasant.

Still, I was only a pale shadow of my former self.

My husband truly tried.

But touch and caressing have never affected me as strongly as a deliberately planted naughty thought, my own fantasy world or the magic of novelty.

And those parts of me had become almost completely dormant during the child-centred, not boring at all, but very repetitive months and years.

Then, after two years, I returned to work.

I had been waiting for it almost like salvation.

However much I love my child and enjoy caring for and spending time with them, as my first day back at work approached I could literally see light at the end of the tunnel.

The grey fog slowly began lifting from areas of my brain I had barely needed — or been able — to use.

Everyone kept asking whether I had managed to get used to work again.

Honestly?

It took about five minutes.

I cannot express how much I enjoy being surrounded every day by adults again — and not only by “playground mothers” with whom the main shared subject is usually the child.

I love my present situation so much that our original plan of slowly beginning to think about another baby currently feels almost like a suffocating weight.

Too early?

Or already too late?

Having rediscovered the sweet taste of “freedom”, I feel even less desire to volunteer immediately for another period of self-imposed captivity.

Where does a story actually end?

Did we already reach the happy ending?

They lived happily ever after…

I am the kind of woman who, when life is peaceful and there is no serious problem, somehow manages to turn everything upside down.

In principle I respect marriage.

I also consider fidelity an admirable virtue.

And yet I have an almost bottomless hunger for love.

I adore falling in love.

I have always been a romantic dreamer.

One of the best feelings in the world, for me, is beginning to know somebody more deeply.

Gradually letting them close.

Feeling mutual trust emerge.

And at the same time still carrying that delicious early uncertainty:

Do they desire me too?

It feels good and safe to belong to another person and to form a family.

It is genuine happiness to live beside someone we honestly love, respect as a partner and still find attractive and sexy.

But why should that make it impossible to fall in love with somebody else?

And perhaps sometimes it is not love at all.

Perhaps it is simply hot physical desire that burns only until it is fulfilled.

I know this may sound childish.

But I cannot put into words how intensely I sometimes long for that fresh, budding adventure filled with uncertainty and novelty.

Those are the moments when I feel most certain that I am alive.

Even if I know from the beginning that the adventure is doomed and will eventually end painfully.

I carry so much sexuality and sensual energy that I have hidden for so long that sometimes it frightens me.

A kind smile.

A double meaning in a sentence.

That can already awaken dark, forbidden desires strongly enough for my whole body to burn simply from imagining what might follow.

Hands touching accidentally.

The thought of a small stolen kiss.

Each of them suggests a honey-sweet continuation that I know could take hold of me so strongly that resisting the temptation to surrender would become almost impossible.

As a foolish university student, I thought I had discovered the solution that worked for me:

Separate the two lives.

Keep them isolated inside me.

One life when I was with my partner.

Another when I was with my lover.

At those times, it felt almost as though I lived two different lives and became two slightly different people.

I tried not to think about one while I was with the other.

That way, I felt little or no guilt.

Now, however, I already occupy so many roles and consciously try to meet so many expectations that constantly changing identities no longer feels sustainable.

I am responsible not only for myself anymore.

If I climbed into another man's bed now, I would not be taking only my own life with me.

So what is the answer now that I am a wife and mother?

I have never believed that somewhere in the universe there is one missing half of me whom, once found, will guarantee eternal happiness.

For some people, perhaps one relationship is enough.

My husband makes me happy every single day too.

I am grateful for our healthy, wonderful, intelligent child.

I find joy in loving them both.

But is that enough?

Will it always be enough for me?

I do not think so.

How honest or fair is it to make love with my husband when he is not the only person capable of awakening desire in me?

Do I have the right to tell him?

To place such a weight on him and on our marriage?

Whichever way I turn, it feels as though I either deceive myself or fail to be honest with somebody else.

Everyone has demons they may never completely escape.

Mine is that I am too strongly ruled by instinct.

I managed to suppress this deeply coded impulse for years.

But when it returned, it came back much stronger.

Suppression is not a solution.

Now I have to understand this part of myself.

Learn how to guide it in the right direction.

And find a place where I can safely release the sexual energy that feels ready to explode.

Sometimes I dream that I am free.

Around me lies an endless snow-covered field among untouched mountains.

Glittering snowflakes and particles begin a wild dance in the wind.

Then I realise they are not particles.

They are ash.

The ash swirls faster and faster into a vortex.

The snow around it begins to melt.

The centre glows.

Then catches fire.

The armour of ice cracks.

And from it, a phoenix slowly takes shape.

A bird of fire.

It had been resting.

Now it stretches enormous wings because it wants to fly again.

I climb onto its back.

Its burning feathers scorch me, but there is no pain because I know we are one.

It submits to me gently.

It is not a demonic beast.

It is the queen of birds.

As we rise higher, I feel something clearly:

Its power belongs in my hands.

---

Only I can direct it.

At last it is alive.

At last it can fly.

No.

I will not allow it to burn to ash again.

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