Been down so long it looks like up to me.

I don't know.   It's a largely hidden world so although I know of other mistresses and they know of me, we don't talk about it.   We are secret addicts.   That's how it feels.   So I don't know whether it's better to know you are always going to be part, but only ever part, of someones life; or to hope that one day you'll have it all and so challenge everything.    Not that I have a choice.   I couldn't accept.   For me that would be to love less.    I'm not making judgements on others but for me it would be the case.    The decision to be a mistress is to take the painful road and the decision never to accept that role is more painful still.    It can be exhausting.

I am also determined that we should talk about everything but this means that we both have to cope with a lot of pain.    I need top be able to bear hearing about the good parts of his marriage and his guilt and he needs to be able to cope with my pain.  Maybe we need to cope with one another's pain and we both find it difficult.   Of course the very fact that we both try to talk about everything and cope with one another's pain brings us continually closer to one another and makes the idea of not being together seem increasingly impossible.  

Earlier today my lover and I went to see Coriolanus so today we have another roman, Corinna, mistress of the poet Ovid who wrote a collection of poetry about her.  Corinna was a pseudonym but we know from Ovid's poetry that his mistress was demanding, passionate and stroppy.   They were unfaithful to one another yet he implored her not to sleep with her husband and she drove him wild with jealousy.

Of course famous mistresses of the past would not be famous if they were racked with doubt and insecurity although Saint Augustine spent fifteen years of his life with a woman he never named.  They lived together with his mum and their child until the mother persuaded her son to get married and eject his mistress from the house.  Augustine did as his mum said but it broke his heart and he became celibate;:never sleeping with his wife.  We do not know what happened to his mistress, the mother of his child and his love but anyone that has ever been there can imagine her agony and suffering; not to mention that of his poor wife.   But from 370ad to the present day women have defied convention, suffered and inspired love.   They aren't likely to stop anytime soon.

Catharsis

I took my daughter to see 'The Descendents'.   I really should research films before I see them as it turned out to be a mistress's nightmare.   There are times when the reality of what I am doing and the potential for devastating hurt overwhelm me and I can't believe that I could be doing such a thing.   I then block off as it's all too painful,

So, yesterday we went out for Valentine's Day and he bought me a card.   This is a weird, weird life.
I told him about this blog and we talked about him not talking about his marriage and he has promised to tell me about all the good things about it.   It will hurt like hell but also be a reality check and is something I feel needs to happen.   Experiences like going to see the film make me realise that I can't keep living in denial.    It might not change my choices but at least I'll have all the facts.

Whilst I still have denial I want to talk about Aspasia, a particularly impressive woman from 5BC Athens.   She was an immigrant and a woman so doubly disadvantaged in Athenian society and yet she was so intelligent that Socrates referred to her as his teacher.   She was also the mistress of Pericles, Athen's leading statesman.   His own laws forbade them to marry but he could not live without her and moved her into his house where she bore him a son.   She established a salon where the intellectual elite of the day gathered to debate politics and philosophy with her.    However she threatened the stability of Athenian society so was persecuted increasingly and blamed for everything including wars. No-one knows what happened to her in the end but her illegitimate son became Pericles heir.

The loneliness of a long-distance mistress

Anyone who has ever been a mistress will know what a lonely occupation it is.  You're friends feel morally comprimised, bored or worse, and the only person you can really talk openly to is your lover but your misery reminds him of his guilt.   And yet mistresses have been around as long as we  have and at various times in history we have weilded political power; been muses; trophies and the namesake of perhaps the greatest novel and love story.

Today, though, it is as though the sexual revolution never happened.   People's judgements have stunned me.  I consider myself a feminist though, so how do I live with my life choice and myself?   I want to look at the history of the mistress and the state of marriage today and love and guilt and obligation to see if I can find the answer.   Also, although I have titled this the long distance mistress, and this has, of course, been through choice it is certainly not my preferred option.

So, some background.  I have been married and divorced and have kids.    I have had various unsatisfactory relationships but for the past two and a half years have been in a relationship with the man I want to spend the rest of my life with; except I can't because he is married.    Although I cannot see how I could leave him I tell him pretty much daily that this is not the relationship that I want.  We talk about everything under the sun except for his marriage, which remains a half completed jigsaw.   I lie awake at night trying to put more pieces together to understand why he doesn't want to be with me and I formulate theories which I tell him.   I'm usually partially right so I guess I answer my own questions but that doesn't give any satisfaction.  It takes up alot of my time and energy and something has to give. 

I also think about marriage.    Although I loved my husband, I did not love him being my husband.  It oppressed me.  Marriage today is more secular than ever before and less necessary and yet people still attach enormous weight to it.   As Alexander Dumas said "The chains of marriage are so heavy that it often takes two people to carry them, and sometimes three."
Does my existence support my lover's marriage? Undoubtedly.  This is also an ancient tradition.

So, for my first blog, the first recorded mistress.  Hagar.   Hagar was an Eygyptian slave who is recorded in Genesis, no less, as being the mistress of Abraham.   Those who know their bibles will remember that Abraham ad Sarah were childless but kept trying until Abraham wss 86 and Sarah 76.  No doubt out of desperation Sarah suggests that Abraham sleeps with their slave Hagar.    Hagar gets pregnant and Sarah gets jealous.   Hagar has 13 more children with Abraham, including Ishmael, and then very surprisingly at the age of 100 Sarah gets pregnant and gives birth to Isaac.   At this point Sarah's jealousy re-surfaces and she chucks both Hagar and Ishmael out.    Poor Hagar.  Although both she and Ishmael survive and he goes on to found the tribe of Ishmaelites because God looks after them which is interesting as there is no sense of judgment from God or the bible for her status.   This makes sense if we consider Mary Magdalene who Jesus 'loved'.   Like with so many things it would seem that the judgement was a product of the church and society rather than the essence of Christianity.