Some people make mistakes, then break up, hurt. Others separate before even making a mistake. This is the case for Catherine*. Story of a beneficial “break” that ends well.
The thirty-year-old recently wrote to us because she didn’t identify with the comments made in this column. Several accounts in fact report infidelities, injuries and attempts to patch things up afterwards. “But it’s not always like that! There are couples who break up before they even cheat on each other!” In doing so, there is no betrayal to overcome or painful wound to heal, she argues. This is indeed her case. And the secret of her success? In any case, she believes so.
She arranged to meet us in a café in DIX30 on a recent heatwave morning. Tall, exuberant, Catherine breathes air and she knows it. “I’ve always been the big girl who talks loudly and laughs loudly!” »
You should know that she has been with her boyfriend for 17 years. When they met, “I was 17!” No, she hasn’t had many flirtations before. A very first experience at 14 to know “what’s that?” (Answer: “That’s it? It’s so mechanical!” she bursts out laughing). Another more or less pleasant adventure, and that’s it. “Guys, they’re looking for the delicate girl who needs to be taken care of,” she says here. “You don’t need to take care of me…”
In bed, it takes a month before they get down to business. “Life is beautiful, we hang out,” she continues. “We cuddle, we caress each other, I discover someone who really wants to please me.” […] These are truly beautiful moments in the beginnings of my adult sexuality. »
When there is finally penetration, it is the “event!” ”, she laughed even more. “We spent our days making love, it was something! »
The months go by, then the years, “it works”. They find their “cruising speed”. They even have a child together, in their early twenties. “Except that I,” she slips in here, “I’ve always asked myself questions. ” Questions ? Catherine opens a parenthesis here: “Do I like girls or do I not like girls? » It was because when she was younger, in high school, she met a “cosmic twin”, a girl with whom nothing happened, but whom she never forgot. Hence the questions: “Over the years, I asked myself if I didn’t want to sleep with a girl…”
But I can’t do that to my boyfriend! For me, it’s morally unacceptable!
Catherine, mid-thirties
Still, the idea doesn’t leave her. Never. In fact, it takes up more and more space. And completely invades her. “I have a kind of feeling that it would do me good. It’s visceral. […] But I can’t tell my boyfriend that, […] let’s see! I can’t ! »
Why not? She ends up consulting, understands that she has the “right” to be as she is (“It’s not an illness!”), and finally opens up to him. Reaction? Unsurprisingly, the man is indeed hurt. He probably feels a bit “emasculated,” his therapist suggests. “But I have a hole inside me that needs filling!”
And then for all sorts of reasons, continues Catherine, who at the time was going through a strong postpartum period, while her boyfriend had crazy atypical hours, the young parents ended up “fighting” over the slightest thing. They rarely saw each other, we understand, and when they did, all they did was… “fuck!” “We continued to have sex almost every night, but it had become almost a duty,” she laments. “At a certain point, I had less of a desire! I was not into it!” […] I cry, I feel dirty, that’s just what we do. We don’t have any more moments of complicity. No more fun moments…
Dramatic twist: “It’s too much, we’re separating,” the lover finally declares. It was ten years ago. The separation will last 18 months.
And then? “The first thing I do: I’m going to sleep with this friend,” our interlocutor continues, without transition. Monsieur also goes off to have fun on his side. We see an immense relief in her face. “It’s like it’s lifted a huge weight,” she sums up suddenly. […] I know now what it is, without compromising my morality and my values. We were not mistaken, we were no longer together!
If you want to know everything: it’s actually “super pleasant”, she confides, in allusion to this “kind of delicacy”. “There is something about touch that is different…” But no, that’s not a “revelation”. More like “appeasement,” she adds.
The affair does not happen again, however. Neither with the friend, because she lives rather far away, nor with others, because there are not so many who please Catherine, in the end. On the other hand, the young single woman, who is then 25 years old, multiplies the meetings with men. “For the thrill ! I live dangerously.” She’s having a blast, you know, and in the process she’s meeting some great people, but also some less great ones. “I’ve tasted what I didn’t want.” Above all, she realizes everything she’s lost, we think.
Except that she hasn’t really lost anything, in fact, we end up understanding. A significant detail: Catherine, who regularly runs into her “ex” (they have a child, it should be remembered), also continues to sleep with him here and there. “And it’s still really fun! She’s the person who knows my body best after me!”
What was supposed to happen happens and they decide to come back together. It seems too good to be true, but no, it hasn’t been a challenge. “Because there was no break in the bond of trust! I didn’t cheat on him! », recalls Catherine. Better: “Seeing lots of people: I chose it!” » Better yet: him too.
“It’s funny, we’ve never been so close mentally!” » It must be said that in the meantime, the man changed jobs, the crazy hours were over, and they managed to get together physically as well. “When we make love, it’s really because we both want to do it. It’s important and really different! […] We have fun, we take the time! »
And his bisexual fantasies, in all this, do we dare? Several other children later, “I no longer have all these questions,” she answers. By living it, it calmed a boiling fire, it no longer takes up space. I don’t know if it’s maturity, but now I don’t think about anything else. I have so many other projects in my life! “.
Catherine knows it: she had to experience “these things.” She also confirmed it: “The grass is not always greener on the other side.” Moral? “To truly appreciate each other, sometimes, you have to separate…”
* Fictitious name, to protect anonymity.