Parasocial Paramour.

"Life is made up of desires that seem big and vital one minute, and little and absurd the next. I guess we get what's best for us in the end."

 — Alice Caldwell Rice

"Approach/Avoidance is psychology-speak for repeatedly seeking something out and then running away right before you get it, and it’s a common pattern of behavior around power exchange and kink in general."

— The Dominance Playbook, Anton Fulmer

Over the past five years, I've cycled through crushes which, at least for me and my emotional and mental investment, bordered on much more than just a silly schoolgirl crush. I would pour the cement foundation for a house I couldn't yet afford. I was ready to build a life with them all. Why not? If not for this pesky little marriage I found myself in, we could be together. They were what I wanted!

Through these one-way-road relationships, I would push up to the line of plausible deniability. If I was ever called out, I could claim it was just friendship. But assuredly, I tell you, I flirted openly on the Internet, relying on the safety of multiple state lines to protect me—miles and miles of space between us. I could blame all kinds of external forces for why I wasn't happy. It was all these external things holding me back. Distance. Marriage. Husbands. Boyfriends. Timing. Money.

And over the past few months, these crushes fell away. Fell to the sidelines. Fell apart. They seemed fucking stupid. I didn't love them. Actually, I wasn't even sure how much I really liked them. I liked the idea of being close to the edge but never crossing it.

You know, no one is actually stopping me from cheating but myself. No one is stopping me from leaving my husband for any one of these women but myself. At some point, surely, I was bound to look at myself. Hi! It's me! I'm the problem! It's me.

But is it really a problem? Am I actually a problem?

When I was very young, being the only child of a single mom in the '90s, I was allowed to free roam. Until fourth grade, the only rule was that I be home before dark and never go past where the sidewalk ended (just like the Shel Silverstein poem, you know?).

I remember walking to the end of the sidewalk, looking over my shoulder toward our apartment door, and hovering a single foot over the lush, manicured apartment grass. I touched the tip of my shoe down for barely a second, then lifted it up again. When my mother, through maternal psychic discipline, didn't immediately appear at the door to scold me, I planted one whole foot.

I continued to look back at the door. Nothing.

I made a choice then—to test the limits. If Mom came out, I would lie. I would say that I fell off the sidewalk into the grass.

I planted the second foot.

I was past where the sidewalk ended. I was out of bounds.

For five or ten wild seconds before I returned to the safe cement.

Now, almost forty years old, I realize no one would have stopped me. I could have run in that field. I could have run away. I could have run to Mexico.

But I didn't.

In hindsight, my mother trusted me. I knew it. This allowed me unsupervised freedom. It I was type to bolt, I would have played in a locked house.

Still, I felt wild and ungovernable and bad to the bone from those few seconds.

And I have lived my life like that ever since.

Doing what I have been told to do, but just up against the line. Toes over the line. Testing the hold of the rules. Thinking that I am like a prisoner shifting in handcuffs to see if the latch is really holding, secretly hoping there was a weak point.

But in reality, I am like a child who squirms and protests a hug to test the hold of love. Secretly grateful when the grip tightens.

My love to obey. Flirt with the line. Touch the line. Toe over the line.

But never run.

I read a short story about a man who liked to be tied up for sex. He pulled and tested his constraints to enhance the sensation of being bound. He wanted sex with men, but he didn't want to want it. Being bound freed him to enjoy sex because it freed him from the responsibility of it all. Accountability. Choice. Gone. No longer his. So he could relax into it with the notion that he couldn't run away even if he tried. Blame the ropes.

But ultimately, he was paying a male dom to tie him up and stroke him, so at what point did he start thinking he wasn't laying down the tracks toward his destination?

Deep denial.

The illusion of being trapped and stuck.

At what point do I admit what I want and quit acting like external factors hold me back? Nothing holds me back but myself. I am choosing this.

Years and years telling myself I am trapped, I am stuck, as if I didn't build this world brick by brick. Touching the wall I constructed myself. Labored to make. Ah! If only there wasn't this beautiful fence I commissioned.and paid for myself!

And it wasn't sudden—my seemingly sudden disinterest in these parasocial paramours. But when I finally realized I wasn't stopped by any tangible constraint but my own. Patterns built up evidence.

I probably only ever touched a toe to the grass because I wanted to know I could.

But I returned to the sidewalk because I didn't want to.

It wasn't fear.

It was love.

Even if there is a little fear. 

My want to stay is stronger than my want to run.

My desire to see it through is stronger than my desire for something new.

Fuck, I don't know if that's maturity.

Or fulfillment.

But it's something to think about.