What a Year!

When I reflect back on 2010, I will always see it as a pivotal year. The beginning of the next chapter of my life. I don't have time right now to break down all the chapters thus far, so I'll leave it at just a new chapter.

This year began with me still very strong in my faith and very active in my church. I worked with the young women at church ages 12-17 in their spiritual journeys trying to impart knowledge and faith. No one could have possibly guessed where this year would end up leading me.

The end of March brought with it a spiritual meltdown. I began questioning my faith. I pulled away from the church, my friends, my family. I leaned more and more on Jasper. A few weeks after this meltdown I came to the realization that it had a lot to do with our inability for me to conceive. After more than four years of doing nothing to prevent it, we are still childless. My little meltdown, and other progressions throughout the year, have really helped me to come to grips with this, with the fact that I may never have the opportunity to be a MILF. Hehe.

Our relationship began changing around the same time. Sexually, and this is going to be hard to believe, I wasn't very responsive to my husband. I was always shooting him down. I would pull away from his touch. I often would say no to his advances. I was never in the mood. Please don't misunderstand. We still had a great sex life. Never were we in a sexless marriage. Perhaps the longest we'd ever gone without sex was maybe two weeks. Far from what I would consider sexless.

One day, he finally had the courage to bring this up. He told me how it made him feel to have me physically pull away whenever he'd reach out to touch me. I, of course, was somewhat oblivious to how my reactions were affecting him. You could say I was dealing with some issues. We talked everything out. It was great. It was actually really freeing to put everything out on the table - his feelings, my feelings.

After that, sex got very much more exciting!

We started talking about it more often. Sharing some of our fantasies. We began fantasizing about other couples at church - talking dirty about them, about things we'd like to do with them, while we were...um...getting busy. It was fantastic.

In July, we decided to give into temptation, and we ordered drinks one night when we were out to dinner. Neither of us had consumed any alcohol in over seven years. Mmm...they tasted so good. It was really nice to just relax together. The people watching was so fun, too. (We were outside on a patio.) We love people watching - especially downtown Minneapolis after a Twins game.

In July, I also started Sex Babble with this post. We were talking so much more about sex that I wanted to share some of my thoughts with others. I wanted to talk about sex, but I knew I couldn't do it on any of my current blogs. Sex Babble was pretty slow going the first couple of months. I was pretty unsure of my writing, and I wasn't really finding the time.

Throughout all this, Jasper and I continued trying to figure out our place spiritually as well. I still don't really know exactly where I stand with all that. He tends to give way more thought to God, religion, theology, spiritual matters than I do. I'm totally okay with this. It's just not something on which I choose to put a lot of my focus. At this time. Someday this may change again, but for now, my focus is more on pleasure and discovering who I am sensually, sexually. I'm focusing on developing a strong love of myself as well.

At the end of September, I was released from my responsiblities working with the young women at church. Not because of anything I was doing outside of church. No one stumbled upon this blog or anything. It was just time for me to move on and someone else to take over. It was actually very good timing for me.

After months of fantasizing about incorporating others into our sex life, we finally hooked up with another guy in October. You can read about that experience here. I remember how absolutely alive I felt the next day! Despite being sick and hung-over from drinking a little too much, and despite not remembering a lot of the fucking, the overall feeling was one of euphoria!

In October, I also participated for the first time in HNT. This has been just a wonderful experience for me. I've always had some self-image issues, but the comments I get on my HNT pictures have been so delightful. They've helped me to see my imperfect body as beautiful, so THANK YOU to everyone who has ever commented. You've done wonders for my ego. :">

In November, I took my very first picture of myself in the bathroom at work. I emailed said picture to an online friend, and shortly thereafter OPW was born. I've discovered how much I enjoy taking and sharing pictures of body, my panties.

November also brought with it many more followers, many more online friends. I started chatting and exchanging emails. I've enjoyed this so much. Everyone I've met is so different. Enticing and pushing me to explore myself, to open, to share.

December rolled in with our first swingers party and the realization that my sister has been in the lifestyle for ten years! You can read about that here. We also met F & S at that party and had such an amazing experience with them, as described here, here, and here. Yeah, so amazing it took 3 posts to describe it all! We're really looking forward to playing with them some more in 2011!

All-in-all, I couldn't have asked for a better year! So full of fun and exciting changes. I'm looking forward to 2011, to exploring and developing myself even more, to seeing where this blog will continue to take me.

Once again, thanks to everyone who reads (and comments or emails)! I hope you continue to journey with me in 2011.

Happy New Year!