This is the first part of my own story. I have decided to tell it in two parts, which reflect the two different phases of my affair with my mother.
*
My sexual relationship with my mother began not long after my eighteenth birthday. From the beginning it was a consensual affair in which we were both willing participants, although I am sure we have been motivated by different needs and desires as time has passed. In that sense, it is difficult for me to fully describe what has happened between us as I can only relate my own experience. We have never really discussed the emotional intricacies of our affair but I am certain that we have both found the sensual aspect of it extremely powerful.
Whilst it is hard for me to separate the strands of how it all began, I can be very clear on 'why' it happened. My mother's divorce from her husband William was a watershed in our lives and had a profound effect on us as a family. It was then that I think that I began to piece together the complicated jigsaw of family relationships that, in a strange way, only revealed their meaning to me when my mother and William separated.
For my mother it was the end of a marriage that I don't think had ever really made her happy. She had my younger half-sister Alison from that marriage and all of us loved her without condition, but my mother's feeling for William as Alison's father was obviously not enough to give her the reason she needed to go on with her marriage.
William had been in my life since childhood but I had always known he was not my real father. The distance between us had always left me feeling slightly outside of the true nucleus of love within our family. So for me, there was no sense of loss when he left. That is selfish and immature I know, the perspective of a spoilt brat perhaps, but I cannot escape how I felt or the truth of the past.
That truth is that the emotional distance between William and myself didn't ever worry me, nor did it make me feel that Alison was any less of a true sister to me. But, without fully understanding it, I think that I was always unsettled by the way William's presence created a barrier in the relationship I had with my mother. It hurt me to feel that there was a part of her life in which I had no place. Growing up that was something that I had hidden away from everyone, even myself.
So when William left I welcomed the opportunity to become a more important part of my mother's world. I am sure that was the reason why I began to think of her differently. It was as if the emotional and physical force that drew me towards her was a consequence of what had gone before. Of course, this all coincided with my growing and chaotic feelings of sexual interest that any teenage boy would experience.
Sometimes I stirred that interest deliberately. The magazines and soft porn that I accessed made me increasingly aware of my rapidly developing appetite for a world that fascinated and terrified me in equal measures. I responded to it as any teenager would, whilst at the same time doing everything I could to hide my embarrassment from anyone that might suspect I had an interest in such things.
At other times, my awakening came in a tide of unprompted feeling that was completely out of my control. Sometimes, during the night, I would dream. These were vibrant and physical dreams that invaded my sleep. When I woke in the morning I would be amazed by the way my involuntary orgasm had soaked me, where the tension inside of me had released itself through some strange trick of my mind. As I drifted to sleep at night I would long for the wetness of these dreams to come.
That they did was a welcome experience, but the fact that my mother began to enter them took me by surprise and confused me. I couldn't understand why this was happening but nor did I want to block it out. The strange emotions and expression of these semi-conscious thoughts were exciting and hypnotic. Sometimes I would dream of her holding me and touching me as I drank in the attention that I imagined she had saved for me through the years that William had shared her bed.
Occasionally, when I was in that demi-world between wakefulness and sleep, I seemed locked for a few minutes in a place between imagination and reality. I held the image of her in my mind's eye as I masturbated myself, soaking my stomach with my sperm. Afterwards I felt ashamed, believing that my urge for her would disgust her if she knew. But my shame didn't stop me noticing her as something more than my mother. Being close to her as we went through the simple rituals of our newly formed family routine meant that I became more and more aware of her femininity.
She was thirty nine at this stage, with a calm gentleness that seemed to fit perfectly with her looks. Her blond shoulder length hair and soft features perfectly matched the kindness and gentleness that exuded from her as a person. The approach of middle age meant that she had gained a just little weight around her middle although, to me, this just added to the sense of loving warmth that she seemed to give off. There was something about the way that she squeezed the fullness of her thighs into jeans that gave her a motherly sexiness that I couldn't quite define. She was nervous about what she perceived as a slight decline in her figure and looks but, to me, the quiet vulnerability that she tried to hide simply made me want to be even closer to her and to protect her.
If ever I tried to make sense of things in my own mind I always arrived at the obvious conclusions that it was wrong to think of my mother in a sexual way. Yet it was this very knowledge that I seemed to find alluring. I loved her as my mother and I am sure she loved me as her son, but more and more I was drawn to the feeling of risk and taboo that my experimentation with thoughts about her carried. I struggled to find ways to express and satisfy my feelings about her.
When she was out I began to search through her private things. I don't really know why I did it but I wanted to see into the places that I knew I had no right to look. I read through old letters and cards written to her by others and I looked through old photographs stuffed in envelopes at the back of a cupboard in her room. Sometimes I would find something that would unnerve me. Perhaps a photograph of someone from the past that I didn't recognise or a message in an old birthday card marked with a kiss. These were all things from her life before me and probably meant little to her now, but I was fascinated by delving into the hidden corners of her life and bringing myself face to face with these ghosts from her past.
I also found a strange thrill in looking through the clothes and underwear that she kept neatly folded and stored in her bedroom. In my imaginings during masturbation she was always dressed in white, a motherly and virgin like white that seemed to entice me into a place of innocence and love. I felt the need to handle and touch the fabric and lace of these clothes that she would wear next to her skin and body.
I was also slightly shocked but excited when I found a box of unopened condoms amongst her things, feeling the indignation that a mother finding the same thing in her son or daughter's bedroom might experience. It bothered me to know that she had any sort of a connection with a sexual world that existed outside of my head, but I was enthralled by this peek into the part of her that might have need for physical satisfaction.
Alison would spend most weekends visiting William in his new home, leaving me completely alone with my mother for forty eight hours. From Friday until Sunday evening there was just the two of us. We would both go on with things as normal, although I knew that she felt lonely without Alison around. It was the first time in her life that she had been apart from her daughter and it must have been difficult for her to adapt. I did my best to take her mind off things and occasionally she would agree to us visiting the cinema or perhaps going out somewhere else to spend time together, which would help her to fill the hours of Alison's absence. But on most Saturday nights we would simply stay home together watching TV and quietly passing the time.
On these nights she would drink. Not to the point of drunkenness but perhaps a few glasses of wine to take the edge of whatever emotions or thoughts were nagging at her. We didn't talk about any of this, but I could tell that she was troubled by the fact that she had to share Alison with a man she no longer loved. For my part this was a double edged sword. I felt jealous that she missed something that I was not completely part of, but also welcomed the fact that she seemed to find solace in building a closer and more important relationship with me.
She would ask me to lie in her bed with her where we could watch TV together. I had no way of knowing, and she has never told me, whether she was motivated by any sexual urge towards me at this stage. It was simply a way for us to share time together and I gladly accepted it. We would stay like that for a while until one of us fell asleep and then spend the night cuddled together in the warmth of that special space. I understood that this was something important to her and that it helped her to stave off the loneliness she must have felt after the breakdown of her marriage. Her asking me to sleep in her bed meant that I was being granted a taste of intimacy that I craved more than anything. Not just the chance to sleep with her, although that excited me, but the sense that I was being taken into her emotional confidence.
The first few nights we spent together she would sleep in a cotton nightshirt and I would wear shorts and a tee shirt. I would lie with my back to her as she held me, one of her hands resting gently against the uncovered skin of my thigh. Her touch was precious to me. The feel of her flesh against mine gave me a flush of delicious warmth which, in my mind, was the fusing of motherly tenderness with something much deeper. Occasionally, we would lie face to face as we drifted towards sleep and, as she embraced me, I would feel a wonderful thrill each time the softness of her body stirred in just the smallest movement.
I could never tell if she was conscious of the way this closeness caused me to become slightly erect. I felt the fullness of her body as it brushed against mine in these moments and I would wait nervously until she rolled away in readiness to sleep. I loved nothing more than spending those nights next to her.
I wonder now whether that simple contact was a natural and inevitable precursor to what followed and therefore the place at which we began the journey towards our sexual life together. As we both grew more used to being together in that way, we seemed to gradually relax to a point where a more physical closeness became normalised.
Late in the evening she would tell me when she was tired and going up to bed, before kissing my cheek and reminding me not to be too long. I knew that was her code to tell me that she wanted me to sleep next to her and she would lie beneath the covers waiting for me to come. By now it seemed normal for her to sleep naked with me and she would tell me to do the same, explaining that it would be more comfortable.
At that stage I was still able to separate my fantasies about her from the loving comfort that we gave each other. There was an innocence to the situation, but I noticed as well how she would watch me undressing and how she would fleetingly touch her hands to my skin as I lay down with her. We would cuddle for a while just before sleep and it was then that I would be most aware of the feel of her body.
I didn't think too deeply about it at the time and I accepted all of this as the loving companionship between a mother and her son. Perhaps I was too naïve to realise that were edging towards a different kind of intimacy. It was in one of these naked embraces that the feel of her flesh pressed to me caused me to become aroused to the point at which she must have realised. Drifting towards sleep, she moved gently and the fullness of my erection against her thigh caused us both to feel the slight trace of wetness that oozed from me and spread across her skin. I moved away from her in embarrassment but she drew me back towards her by folding her arm across my back.
