So you found your soul mate, your true love, and you want to get hitched or perhaps just cohabitate. Sharing meals and a bed and bills…is it just too good to be true? You bet you ass it is.

Your sweet yet ballsy Undersider has cohabitated, as a lover and a wife, with several folks. It ain't playing house and all your nightmares about living with someone can come true in the most bizarre and heart breaking ways.

Yah, so I was married. Mr. Ulto was a quite a unique person. He had so many sexual and communication problems, it was amazing we even hooked up in the first place. The fact that his mommy still buys his BVDs for him should give you an idea of how tightly the apron strings are wrapped around his neck, and how they choked the shit out of our marriage. Premature ejaculation must have been all about his Italian Catholic shame or the lingering suspicion on my part that he might be gay. Hey, not a problem for me, but you know, go figure it out, I would tell him. Being bisexual myself, I could understand his confusion but he was so homophobic, the thought of sex with a man made him spout verbal hate in quotes from the Bible - catching phrases like "Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve". Of course, noticing how passionately he would deny it made me ultra suspicious.

Mr. Ulto was a quiet gent. Literally silent 90% of our marriage. It was like living with a corpse. He was cold in bed, dead from the neck down and mute. He claimed to be a gentleman, opening doors for me, buying me roses like clockwork every Friday evening. I would have preferred a match partner, someone to get down in the dirt and work shit out with. Mr. Ulto could barely utter a word to his overbearing family, so I was shut out cold most of the time. As his mother often said to me, "you can't change him, dear, just accept him the way he is". This advice was from a woman who removed all emotion in Mr. Ulto at an early age by tying him to a tree, because he was so "unruly". Despite my poking about in his cranium, he resisted all attempts to open him up, emotionally and sexually.

Living with Mr. Ulto was arduous - he was callous, passionless, forbidding, depressing and needy regarding his family. Nothing killed romance more than visiting his loud, boring family in Connecticut every weekend. The level of conversation never really went above what they were eating, who was sick and who bought what this week - about as intellectually stimulating as watching paint dry. His sister was a prudish, shrill harpy with big hair and nails, with the fashion sense and the accent of a Long Island ho', who basically looked like her father in drag. Her big claim to fame was getting married and divorced all in a one-year time-span, and getting breast implants at age 30. Her big goal in life is supposedly to have kids, but being unable to keep friends let alone boyfriends might delay that (thankfully) for a long time. She is the polar opposite of Mr. Ulto in every way except their sexual problems. This I found out after she cornered her brother one night on the subject and let loose the details of her lack of arousal. He told me, shuddering, as he if had been violated. I laughed my ass off, and realized no family is normal.

So did we try to work it out? Hell yeah! Your Undersider hates to be wrong, and once a commitment is made (I should have just been committed, period, for this marriage), a resolution needs to be found. Mr. Ulto went for all kinds of therapy - marriage, sexual, personal - and none of it made a dent. The sex therapist prescribed a sexual surrogate for him to have sex with. Okay, am I the best darn wife in the world or what? Who else but me would put with her man having "legal, therapeutic" sex with another woman besides me? And he hated it. She was this hot Russian woman, with long black hair and a body made for sex. He went to sessions to learn how to hold his erection long than the standard minute or so he was used to, and she would try to teach him how to get in touch with his body. By touching it. Hand jobs, massages, entering her, you name it. And did I mention he hated it?

Therapy for his communication problems didn't help much either. Mr. Ulto would sit in sessions mute or mumble, "I don't know" when asked about his feelings, his thoughts. The only thing he would want to talk about was money. Miserly would be a good word for it. Of course, I am on the other spectrum - I don't know much about it, am intimidated by it and overspend it from time to time. So there we were, not having sex or having very short, terse sex, fighting about money, his family and sex, not really talking that much and sort of clueless about how to fix it all. Well, I stopped caring so much and started pulling away. And then we broke up - after three failed attempts at leaving by me, each time giving him a year to do something about his problems. Moving out was therapeutic - talk about the happy divorcee!

The Bill was the most recent lover I've lived with. Okay, stupidity strikes again. He was a poor, slovenly artist wannabe from Chicago that I foolishly hooked up with online. Being fresh out of my marriage, he was my "rebound" relationship. I went to Chicago, he visited me, and the sex was good. I made the ridiculous equation that women sometimes make about sex and love - orgasms do not equal real feelings. Just because he makes you cum doesn't mean you should open your heart along with opening your legs. It's a friggen orgasm, not an ode to you, a glorious woman! Just enjoy it and save the emotions for real discussions, not in the midst of "fuck me harder" statements.

The Bill hinted harder and harder how much he wanted to move to New York. In fact, he coordinated one of his visits with his interview at a Manhattan print maker. Being ever so helpful and horny, I let him move in with me and my roommates, with the understanding that he was to pay his share of the bills, stay only for three months, find a job and not get in the way of my life. The first to go was my way of life - he hated my running coach and the idea of me working out so much, he would sulk or throw tantrums. My time on the computer was seen as an affront to his existence. He wouldn't go out much and demanded in a whiney voice that I stay in with him, because going out meant that I was fucking someone else.

My attraction to him quickly diminished. The Bill was a total slob, who wore his boxers for weeks in a row, barely washed his clothing and even his hair, which he liked to keep infused with "it's natural oils". The sex got weirder - he liked my lingerie so much, he dressed up in it, had a smoking fetish and was into piercing himself with bizarre instruments like lancets. He broke my expensive vibrator off in his ass. By the end of our relationship, he was so sexually lazy, all he wanted to do was jerk off to porn, smoke and have me hold his balls. Whoop dee doo!

The Bill was bad with money and finding/keeping jobs. By the end of our relationship, he racked up a $5000 plus debt to me for loans, bills and rent. He hated my friends and wanted to keep his friends "separate" from me. He was jealous of my art, career, computer and camera equipment. And he was a total pothead. Admittedly, I my intake of the herb with him was rather high, but since he got off on seeing me smoke, I felt it integral to our sex life. To get rid of him, I had to move. And now I receive monthly payments of a paltry $75 to pay back his debt. Late. And with my name misspelled.

My first clue that I shouldn't have let The Bill move in was his age - he was 39, still living on a futon in the cheap section of Chicago and was a glorified janitor for a museum. He only shows included an art moving company show that he got into because he worked there, and a show with his roommates out of his apartment in Chicago. His motivation and drive level was equal to that of a slug. He thought Marquis De Sade was cool because he wrote really "dirty" things in his books. And he dropped names about the art he moved like he had a personal relationship with the artist. Immaturity was his major issue. Honesty was another.

Transient stays of other lovers have been everything from weekend to a month. Another artist type guy dragged all his crappy vegetable crate assemblage work into my studio apartment in the early 90's and I got a small roach infestation. He was strange, and finally found a squat to live in. A sweet girl I fell for cleaned my apartment from top to bottom when staying with me for a week, on her way to another city. She also cleaned me out of some clothes and shoes - namely, underwear. Another lover ate me out of house and home after a month long stay, but did send me a check, unsolicited, and a fabulous bouquet of flowers a few months later. I had to put one guy out after a week of his loud guitar playing well into the night, when I was trying to sleep. Nothing major, but you know, boundaries were crossed.

Would I ever live with another lover? Probably not. I think roommates are the way to go - you have a built in (usually) respect level because there (usually) aren't deep emotions involved. You all have to pay your share, and if you don't, giving the past due party the boot isn't (usually) such a big deal. You have your own space to retreat to, if need be. You have a built in connection with people who know you well yet you don't bother them (usually) with mundane details of your life. House rules are common and acceptable behavior is outlined. If you live with the kind of very cool people I live with, this shouldn't be hard to do. Maturity, honesty and tolerance are key.

My advice - keep your space and life separate. It makes focusing on sex and fun so much easier. Nothing more sexually stultifying than a mundane conversation about bills and who's family to visit during the holidays.

By Melissa Ulto
multo.com 2002