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.