There are other things I keep tucked away, even from the people who read everything I put out there. This is one of those things.
For National First Love Day, I thought it was finally time to talk openly about something I have been deliberately keeping rather quiet for quite a long time. Because, as it turns out, the woman I have repeatedly referred to as my "gay crush" isn't actually my gay crush at all.
She's my girlfriend. And she has been since May last year.
I've been deliberately vague about that because, although Emmy was in a marriage when we got together. A very open marriage in which she assured me her wife had other lovers, but a marriage all the same. I was always conscious of not wanting to ruffle feathers or jeopardise something important that existed long before I cam on the scene. I cared about her too much to risk causing problems in her life simply because I wanted to shout from the rooftops about how I felt.
But that also meant that, every time I wrote about my "gay crush", I was being somewhat dishonest.
I've always tried to be as open and truthful with the people who read my blog as I possibly can. So keeping this part of my life hidden has made me feel uncomfortable for quite some time. I had what I thought were good reasons for doing it, but that doesn't change the fact that I wasn't being completely honest.
It was even harder keep it from dear friends like Jess. I mean, I'm sure she figured it out but it still made me feel shitty to not be as honest as I could be. A small taint to something that brought me so much joy and happiness.
So, to Jess and everyone else who who is a friend or has followed my ramblings over the years, I'm sorry I couldn't be more honest. And I think it's finally time to tell the whole story...
Before Emmy
It's important to establish at the outset of this tale that, prior to Emmy, I had always identified as straight for my entire life.
I did experiment with women on a couple of occasions more than a decade ago, but it never really felt right to me. I didn't feel particularly comfortable with it and, after a while, I simply stopped pursuing that side of things. As far as I was concerned, that was that.
Women could be beautiful. I could appreciate them aesthetically. I could even occasionally find myself attracted to one. But actually being with a woman? That didn't feel like me.
Then there was Ember. Or Emmy to those close to her.
We actually met not took long after that period, although we barely knew each other. We were both involved with the Angels of Desire rock club, where I was vice president, and there had been various dramas surrounding the club that left me convinced Emmy didn't particularly like me.
Whenever she occasionally said hello, I tended to respond by being distant and stand-offish. In hindsight, I was probably being an idiot. But at the time I was convinced she thought I was a twat, so I kept my distance. It took years before that changed.
The accidental icebreaker
In April 2022, I was putting together a feature for National Lingerie Day and found myself one woman short. Jess came to the rescue and brought Emmy along. I'll admit, I was nervous.
I wasn't sure how things were going to go. Here was this woman I had spent years believing didn't particularly like me, suddenly joining us for a feature, and, to make things even worse, it then got off to a slightly rocky start.
Jess and I were teasing each other about our accents, because apparently Scouse (from Liverpool) and Brummie (grom Birmingham) accents are incapable of existing in the same room without somebody taking the piss. At some point Emmy made a disparaging comment about Brummies. It took Jess and me a moment to realise that Emmy wasn't actually insulting me. She was insulting herself.
And somehow that was the icebreaker I needed. Something clicked. Suddenly she felt like a kindred spirit due to our shared hometown.
From there, we started talking more. Then we started hanging out occasionally. And before long, Emmy became a much bigger part of my life. She would flirt with me because, well, Emmy is very much a lesbian (well bi- really cos she loves taking a big cock up the arse) and she made no secrets of being very attracted to me.
And I would tease her relentlessly about it. I was straight. I was unreachable. There was absolutely no chance she was getting me.
Except, of course, that increasingly became a joke that was as much about me as it was about her.
Becoming close
Our friendship grew. And grew. And grew. Eventually she became one of my dearest friends.
That closeness accelerated when she started opening her Bunnies & Bulls-themed Snowbunny Beach resort most days. We ended up spending an enormous amount of time together. And Emmy increasingly wanted my attention. She showed me more affection. She sought me out. She made me feel wanted. And that meant more to me than she probably realised.
At the time, I was lonely and struggling through one of my periods of depression. I wasn't in a particularly good place emotionally, and then here was this woman who seemed to genuinely care about me. She saw me, warts and all. She made me feel loved.
And somewhere along the way, something changed. The emotional connection I had developed with her began turning into physical attraction. That was new territory for me.
I've always been someone for whom emotional connection is a huge part of sexual attraction. The most beautiful person in the world could walk into a room and it wouldn't necessarily do anything for me. I need to feel something for someone. And for the first time in a very long time, I did.
Emmy's kindness and affection were getting through all of my defences. She made me feel safe. That became incredibly important.
Even while she was flirting with me, she respected the boundaries she knew I had. She teased me back and sometimes skirted the edges of what she knew I was comfortable with, but she never crossed those lines.
I could trust her. And that trust changed everything.
When the joke stopped being a joke
For a long time, I continued teasing Emmy about her crush on me. Except eventually I realised I was also teasing myself. Because I wanted her. Desperately.
There was a strange battle going on inside my head. I'd spent years thinking of myself as straight. I'd even had previous experiences with women and concluded that it wasn't for me. So what the hell was happening now?
Could I really go from being, as one would-be lesbian lover once memorably described me, "straight as an arrow", to actually allowing myself to be with another woman?
Apparently I could. Eventually, I stopped fighting it. We hooked up. And it was incredible.
By that point I was completely invested in her. I wanted to spend all of my time with her, whether we were talking complete and utter random shit, being intimate, laughing at something stupid or simply sitting together doing nothing.
And strangely enough, it was the latter that meant the most. The cuddling. The snuggling. Just having her there. Feeling her beside me.
That sense of safety I had discovered with her became something I craved. She wasn't simply someone I was attracted to. She had become my person.
Of course, getting a little handsy was always pleasurable as well. Groping her sexy bum. Fondling those amazing tits. Tickling her tummy. Nibbling on that sensitive spot on her neck that I know will make her putty in my hands. Always staying respectful though. Knowing each other's limits and what was and wasn't acceptable.
The night everything changed
For perhaps a year, we remained incredibly close and had occasional hook-ups, most (maybe all...) of which I naturally documented for my loyal readers without giving away the full story behind them.
Then came one particular night. My birthday.
I had invited Emmy over to help me produce some content for the Masturbation Month challenges I do every May. Obviously, because it was my birthday, this came with the entirely reasonable expectation that she had to treat me well.
And she did. Very well. And I her as well. Indeed, it was the first time I ever tasted between her legs. Until then, I had restrained myself to finger her. But on that night, I gave in to my desires. I licked and sucked and slurped on her sweet, sweet cunt for the first time. There was no going back after that.
We stayed up into the early hours, getting hot and sweaty. As we fucked each other's brains out, we matched each other orgasm for orgasm until we had no energy left to fuck any more with the scores tied at 4 orgasms a piece.
Afterwards, as we lay together in that quiet, comfortable space that had become so familiar to us, something finally came out of my mouth. I told her that she was more than just a friend with benefits and she asked me if I meant that I wanted to be her girlfriend. That wasn't quite what I had been trying to say. I had never even considered that was a possibility give us married status, even if it was an open marriage.
But the moment she put the possibility on the table, I realised that it was exactly what I wanted. More than anything.
So we agreed not to overthink it. We'd take things as they came and see where it led us. And somehow, that little conversation changed everything.
The happiest year
The year that followed was probably the happiest I can remember. Every moment with Emmy seemed to bring me joy. I felt loved in a way I hadn't experienced before, and there was something fundamentally different about intimacy with her now.
It wasn't just about physical attraction. For the first time, I felt like when we were intimate, I was actually making love to someone. Not simply sharing a physical experience. Not chasing a few moments of pleasure. Making love.
That distinction means an enormous amount to me. Because Emmy wasn't simply my first woman.
She was my first love. My first gay love. And I fell so fucking hard for her.
As cliched as it sounds, I finally felt complete when I finally had her and there is an empty void when we are apart. The classic yin and yang that perfectly compliment and complete each other. She is the extrovert and I am the introvert. She is the exhibitionist and I am the voyeur. She likes to go commando and I like to slip on some sexy undies to make me feel confident. You get the picture.
And the things I will do to make her happy...
Because when she is happy, I am happy. I've basically given up the idea of keeping my clothes on when around her, even when out in public. That totally goes against my every instinct of being more reserved and conservative about such things. Although, it is only in private with her that I truly bare myself. She is the one person in the world for whom my trademark collar will come off. Only she gets to place kisses on that most sacred area of my skin.
Then there is the sex to think about. There are no words for the things she makes want to do to and with her. Being able to pour both my love and lust into it at the same time elevates it to levels I have never experienced before. I would do almost anything for her. Emmy is best fucking sex I've ever had and its not even close. No-one else has ever made me cum like she can.
It's intoxicating but still not even the best part. The part that I savour most is the post-orgasm snuggles. Our naked and sweaty bodies inter-twinned as we come down for the massive high of cumming over and over. The safety I feel in her arms when in that vulnerable state. There is no where else I'd rather be.
There's that word again...safe.
Then life got complicated
Of course, relationships don't exist in a vacuum. Especially not ours.
Emmy has always been comfortable with having multiple lovers. I've tried my best to support that because I know it is an important part of who she is. I've encouraged her to spend time with people I know are genuinely important to her. I want her to be happy, even if sometimes that comes at my own expense.
But knowing intellectually that she needs multiple relationships doesn't make the insecure part of my brain disappear. Coming up to 6 months ago, both of our lives went through some pretty enormous upheavals.
I went through one of the most severe periods of depression I've experienced in a long time when my career suddenly looked under threat. It looked like I might completely lose my livelihood. As I've done before, I withdrew into myself. That withdrawal wasn't because I stopped loving Emmy. Quite the opposite.
Sometimes when I'm struggling that badly, I retreat because I'm terrified that my own problems are going to hurt the people I care about. I've tried many times to explain this to Emmy but I'm not sure she has ever really gotten it though.
Around the same time, Emmy got divorced and introduced several new serious lovers into her life.
It looked like those relationships filled spaces in her life that I'd vacated by withdrawing and I'm absolutely sure that I've never really managed to reclaim them. That has been difficult.
There are times when it feels like I'm standing outside her love, looking in through the window while other people are enjoying something that once made me the happiest I've ever been.
I know that's not necessarily fair. I know love doesn't work like that. But insecurity, especially when fuelled by depression, isn't particularly interested in fairness.
The insecurity of not knowing
Like I said, I've always tried to support Emmy's need for multiple lovers and respect the time that she needs to spend with them. What I struggle with is wondering whether those people would offer me the same generosity. Whereas I would try to give her space when she was with others, when the roles were reversed it felt like I would often see them hovering, waiting for a moment to snatch her away from me
There is a part of me that is terrified they'll eventually permanently whisk her away and leave me with whatever scraps of her time remain. Those fears are made harder by the fact that Emmy has a tendency to spread herself incredibly thin across all the people who want her attention. And, problematically for me, I have rarely known where I truly stand with her now.
There was a time when she showered me with affection, compliments and attention. These days, getting some of that affection can sometimes feel like trying to catch smoke. Conversations are often short and get cut off mind flow, or never mange to progress past occasional one word answer.
I try to convince myself that it is not a reflection of me falling out of favour and is simply because there is so much demand on her time. But there is always that voice in the back of my head trying to convince me that she resents me for trying to take her attention from people she would rather spend her time with. People that she more openly talks about her love for.
It hurts. Especially when I remember last summer, our rings and how magical it all felt.
We exchanged matching rings, worn on our right index fingers, as a symbol of our shared love after Emmy confessed that, in her own mind, she considered us married. There aren't really words for what that meant to me. I was fucking ecstatic. I had to play it down a little at the time, partly out of respect for her actual wife, but inside I was doing cartwheels.
For someone who had spent so long insisting that she was merely my "gay crush", suddenly having the woman I loved tell me she thought of us as married was enormous.
So where does that leave us?
That's the complicated bit. I love her with all of my heart. I don't know whether I mean as much to Emmy now as I once did though. That's a fear I carry.
Sometimes I wonder whether I'm still as important to her as she is to me. Sometimes I wonder whether I've slipped further down the list of people competing for her time and affection. And sometimes I simply miss the Emmy who used to make me feel like I was the most important person in the room.
But there is another thought that gives me some comfort.
I've watched people come into Emmy's life and burn incredibly brightly. Some of those relationships have been intense. Some have been passionate. Some have seemed, for a while, as though they might become permanent fixtures. And then, eventually, they've disappeared.
I'm still here.
Whatever else has changed, I'm still here. Maybe that's what I have to hold onto. Not the idea that I have some guaranteed place in her life. Not the assumption that things will always be exactly as they were. Just the fact that, through all the changes, through the highs and the lows, through my own periods of withdrawing and her own constantly expanding constellation of lovers, we're still here.
Still together. Still finding our way through it.
My first love
So, on National First Love Day, I wanted to finally stop hiding behind the phrase "gay crush". Because it doesn't really tell the truth. Emmy isn't my gay crush. She is my girlfriend.
She is the woman who made me question everything I thought I knew about my own sexuality.
She's the woman who showed me that attraction can grow from emotional connection, trust and feeling genuinely safe with another person.
She's the woman who was there when I was lonely and struggling.
She's the woman who made me feel seen.
She's the woman who taught me that I could fall in love with another woman.
And she's the first woman I've ever been in love with.
There are still things I don't know.
I don't know exactly what the future holds for us.
I don't know whether I'll ever stop feeling insecure about my place in her life, especially when she deflects by soft prods to get some sort of reassurance.
I don't know whether I'll ever be completely comfortable sharing the person I love with other people who perhaps have no interest in also sharing her.
But I do know this.
I love her.
I love her so fucking much.
She isn't just my first gay love.
She's my entire world.
Emmy Fatale, I love you <3
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