Coupling Two. More Filthy Erotica for Couples

Part I

I've been married twice. The first time I was very young and in the kind of dramatic sort of angsty teenage love people make fun of-think Twilight, minus the sparkly vampires. Amazingly, that marriage lasted eight years, probably because we had two children together, and it only ended because one of us grew up. (Guess which one?)

So I'm now on my second marriage, and twelve years, four houses, two living children and one tragic late-term stillbirth and a medical bankruptcy later, we are still going strong. We've obviously had our obstacles (the above, I'm afraid, is just a short list!) but we are very much in love and committed to our relationship.

Couples, when they come together, invariably create a "we," or an "us." This is a third thing in every relationship that must be honored, or it will collapse. Like a stool with two legs, without the third, nothing will balance. So while we think of couples as a twosome, there is really always an unseen third between them-the relationship itself. And of course, it’s no accident that each author here has included three stories of coupling to share!

The three tales I've chosen have one thing in common-no one is giving up on their commitment, on the "us," no matter the circumstances or desires or needs of the two. In Cat Lover, we have a brand new couple whose lives change in a sudden, drastic way, but neither of them are willing to give up on their love. In The Flintstone Experiment, a married pair discover that not paying attention to that “third,” their relationship, can have serious consequences-boredom, anger, and resentment, to name a just a few-but in the end, they come to know how easy it is to turn back toward it instead of away from it, and make it come alive again. And lastly, in The Dirty Show, those of you familiar with my Baumgartner series will recognize Janie and Josh, although now we are ten years into their marriage, and these two sexually experimental individuals have found a way to honor their desires while still maintaining their loving commitment to each other, giving a whole new meaning to the word monogamy.

In the end, the key to "Coupling," in whatever form it takes, no matter your age, culture, sexual orientation, or even your species-swans, wolves, eagles, and even the far-traveling albatross are known to mate for life-is honoring the “we” that is created on the day you say “yes” to the relationship. In a world where everything seems transient and disposable, we often treat human beings and our relationships that way, much to our species’ detriment.

If nothing else, the one thing we learn in relationship when we’re willing to open ourselves up to another and, in many ways, let our egos dissolve into a broader, expansive “we” instead of staying confined in the illusory safety of an “I,” is that life, circumstances, and pain are just temporary conditions, but love-love is forever.

And it really does conquer all.