Twenty five years on, one can easily see the mistakes made in their youth. But, as the saying goes, hindsight is 20/20. There is little to be gained by rehashing past mistakes in your head again and again, losing sleep over it, and making yourself mental in the process. And yet this is exactly what I did on a regular basis. It's said that without closure, no relationship is ever truly over. It's also been written that sometimes closure can come from writing a letter to your ex that you never intend to send. But sometimes closure can come in the form of a dream...

The first time I ever experienced what I would define as a "lucid wet dream" I was certain that I was somehow "quantum leaping" into my past self from the present. I had prepared for bed that night, a middle-aged man in my forties, snuggled in beside my wife. She was pregnant with our fourth child, and sex was something I dimly seemed to recall from nearly a year ago. My wife and I loved one another deeply, but with three kids and one on the way, making time for intimacy and passion is not often possible.

This night, I was horny, and my wife was understandably tired and eight months along, and not in any mood for sex. Although I was excited about becoming a father again in less than a month, I was frustrated. I was horny and riled up with too much sexual energy to just fall asleep. As I lay there, eyes closed, I started to fantasize about my earlier days, back in my late teens, when I was almost as frustrated sexually as I was this evening.

I had a "girlfriend" at that time, and she was insatiable - except when it came to having actual sex. She thought about it constantly, but never acted on it with me or any other living person besides herself. I swear that every minute we spent together in person, I could smell her potent pheromones even over her perfume, and the scent drove me wild with unrequited passion. Every move I'd make to bring my body close enough to hers to make a move, she'd wriggle away from like I had the plague. She was terrified of sexual contact, yet fascinated in the extreme by the idea.

It wasn't that Ruth was unattracted to me, as we'd talked about sex more times than I could count, but never in a way that lead to physical intimacy. Ruth's problem, as I saw it, was that she'd learned early on to seek other outlets for her sexual needs. In a nutshell, she was addicted to masturbation. In particular, shared masturbation through fantasy. You can venture a guess as to who was her lucky (or was it unlucky) partner in carnal chit-chat.

Ruth was not one to masturbate alone, at least not entirely. Her way was to call me up at all hours (or I her, it was mutual) and we'd pretend that we were "collaborating" on a writing project. She'd create these characters in her mind that were avatars for herself. Through these virtual personae, Ruth would fantasize about real sexual adventures that she was too terrified to attempt as her real self. And let me tell you, she had a torrid imagination! Many were the nights, and many times per night, that she lit me on fire from my loins to my cerebrum.

When I say we would pretend, that was exactly what we were doing. Never once did we discuss what we were actually doing during these ten and twelve hour marathon phone sessions, and any effort I made to "break down the wall" between the reality of what we were doing and fantasy was quickly side-stepped by her. I'd hint that I was stroking my cock while we talked but she'd act like she didn't hear me until I said "(insert character name) is stroking his cock." Somehow she couldn't commit to the fact that I was a real, live, horny guy her own age who had real needs of my own. And neither could Ruth admit that she was just as horny and just as excited as I was. She could only interact with me sexually when we were both in character.

Often, after several marathon orgasmic escapades, Ruth and I would be so exhausted we'd fall asleep in our beds with the phone still glued to our ears. It was somehow comforting for me to wake up and hear Ruth's regular, rhythmic breathing over the earpiece. We were sleeping together, in truest fashion – or at least, as true as any virtual relationship could ever be.

It was at times when I would awake, early in the wee hours, and hear Ruth soundly sleeping safe in her bed, that I would tell her just how I felt. I'd whisper softly into her ear that I loved her, had loved her from the moment we first met, and how much I wanted to see our relationship evolve from this – whatever this was – into something real. I know she heard me. I know because her best girlfriend, Lori, confronted me about it one day. She said, "Ruth told me that you said some things last night to her in her sleep" and then go on to say that these things were "very confusing" to her and that I should stop.

My first reaction was to tell Lori to go clean the impulse manifolds in her pajamas. But then I started thinking, and realized that for her to know, Ruth must have told her. And by told her, I mean the whole, sordid mess. Otherwise Lori would wonder why Ruth fell asleep on the phone with me, a guy who was not her "boyfriend" and for whom she had no feelings other than that of friendship.

That gave me hope. It made me realize that Ruth really did care about where our relationship was at present, and where it was headed. It told me also that she was not capable of seeing me in the role of "boyfriend." In order for me to be her boyfriend meant terminating the special friendship we had, at least in her mind. She couldn't bear to lose me as a friend. That's what she eventually told me, when I finally summoned up the courage to tell her outright that I loved her.

Over the decades since, I've gone over our strange relationship in my mind thousands of times, trying to figure out just what was really going on. If I'd become a psychiatrist, maybe I'd have a chance at coming to a retroactive diagnosis for what this really was, and a possible solution. But I wasn't a shrink and those days were far in the past and never to be relived.

In the present, I was happily married, a family man, and had to admit a indulging in a small guilty pleasure that Ruth was not only still single, but still living with her parents to this day. She'd never been able to commit, not to me, or anyone else apparently, and as far as I knew, was probably still a virgin. I often wondered if she looked at me now, with my wife and family, and thought to herself "this could have been my life."

After all, I had told her I loved her, and she'd said "I'm so sorry!" and hoped to somehow continue our special friendship after that as if nothing had happened. It hadn't. It ended quite abruptly after a collect call to her one night as I first started college. I didn't speak to her again for over twenty years, and then only in Facebook chat for a few hours.

Still, to hold a grudge against her on my part, or relish any misfortune upon her past or present was unfair. I would feel guilty whenever I smirked in response to mulling it over in my mind. It was a very sad ending for her, and though she always maintained she was happy and contented, I could never stop wondering how that was truly possible. Not because she'd rejected me. Whether she had been with me or not was immaterial. The fact that she had spinstered herself away in isolation was a fact and I guess from my perspective, I couldn't comprehend that existence as a fulfilling one.

I admitted to myself that Ruth and I had engaged in some of the most creatively wild sex I'd ever known; a damned shame it was that we never broke free of the "no touch" barriers she'd established for our encounters. I wished, not for the first time, that I could somehow go back in time and knock some sense into my past self, and urge him (me) to just ignore Ruth's resistance and push ahead, driving her out of her self-imposed safety shell and into the real world of true intimacy. The worst that could have happened was that our friendship ended – in other words, no change from the current reality.

The hour had grown late and my tossing and turning was keeping my wife from sleeping. I was still quite awake and fantasizing about what I'd have done then if I'd had knowledge of the future. I pondered over and over how, even if it were possible, changing the past would obliterate my present. I had no desire to lose my wife or family, and felt bad for even entertaining thoughts of "what if" and fantasies about an ex who wasn't even an ex! What had happened between Ruth and I was woven into the tapestry of who and what sort of man I was today. I wouldn't change that for a second.

Yet my mind persisted, wondering what might have been if I'd only realized that Ruth was scared of physical intimacy. She was afraid of losing me as a friend if we didn't carry our relationship further, and had told me as much when I confessed my feelings of love for her. Ruth had become dependent, almost addicted, to our special brand of friendship with benefits. Did she live in constant fear that I would one day stop being her friend and thus stop providing her with the shelter and convenience of a virtual relationship? Did she ever fully realize that I would have done anything for her, on any level, if only she could love me back in kind? I wondered.

I had determined years ago that the problem was really within me. What Ruth had needed most was for me to take the reins and push her out of her comfort zone and into reality. I know that I would have loved her and cherished her during the first difficult real encounter and long afterward. She had been my first true love, and I loved her still for holding that place in my heart. What Ruth had needed was me to be the man I was today, but back then I was still just a boy with no clue in the universe of how to break the sexual stalemate we'd found ourselves in. We were both virgins trapped in a fantasy, with no concept of how adults dealt with these issues.

At nineteen, I was horrified at the concept of "forcing" myself on anyone, and had no idea that sometimes a man is expected to be sexually aggressive in order to prove his worthiness. Some young males at this age go too far to the other extreme, and think every "no" uttered by a potential mate is really a yes in disguise. I was so worried about coming across as a sexual bully that I played the role of "Mr. Nice Guy" to the hilt, forgetting that it's often this type of behavior that turns a woman off. Some women prefer their men to show their strength through less-than-sterling behavior. James Bond was a good example, and I knew at the time that Ruth was really turned on by his character. She would frequently ask me to play that role for her in our fantasies, with herself as a demure "Bond woman" being swept off her feet by the suave Mr. Bond and his penchant for hard line charm.

Yet, being young and naïve, I missed this point entirely. Instead of Bond I played the part of protector and defender of her honor, riding in on my white horse to save her from the dastardly "bad boys" she'd invariably flirt with and flee in terror from at their arduous advances. I even went so far as to call up one poor kid and give him the scare of his lifetime by pretending to be Ruth's father and insisting that he leave my under-aged "daughter" alone. I was not her father, nor her brother, but I was her best friend. And sometimes transitioning from best friend to lover is a difficult step in a relationship. Sometimes one has to risk everything in order to win the girl, and like Ruth, I was terrified of not having her as a friend in my life.

Yet this was exactly what Ruth needed to take the next step in her our sexual growth. She was too scared to become physical with anyone, and through my enabling of her phone fantasies, provided her enough sexual outlet to never try reality for the first time. Though I'd never condone non-consensual sex, the reality was that Ruth had given me her blessing, and had waited (and maybe still waited?) for me or someone to firmly confront her fears and take her by the hand.

By now, I was in a semi-dream state, having reached that strange level of consciousness somewhere between sleeping and waking. This was the moment that I realized I could control my dreams, and that I was in fact being pulled into one as I lingered between states of awareness. I was seeing through my younger-self's eyes, reliving one of many encounters with Ruth that had almost turned physical decades earlier. Yet I retained my perspective and knowledge of what as to come in my future, which meant that I was effectively time traveling and doing it inside of my own younger-self's body.

I looked down at myself. I was thin once again, and dressed as I had in the 80's, much to my embarrassment. I was sitting inside of a car and next to me was Ruth, who was driving. She had the CD player going and was listening to Pink Floyd: The Wall and grinning. She seemed oblivious to the fact that I was looking around in confusion, trying to recall when and where I was. I looked over at her and my heart began to race, as it always did. Ruth was wearing a short black leather skirt and plunge-neck blouse. I could see her legs clear up above her knees and the silky smoothness of her thighs took my breath away. She must have caught me looking because she shifted her legs and for a second I could see up underneath and caught a flash of red. She was wearing red panties.

I sighed and looked down at my lap. My boner was in clear evidence, and though Ruth pretended not to notice, I felt certain that she had. I recalled how much she liked to tease me in those days when we spend time in the "real world" on these not-quite-dates where we'd hang out and drive around and do all sorts of activities. She never referred to me as her "boyfriend" though looking back, she had no other steady male companion, and we were inseparable.

I remembered how jealous I would become when she'd refer to one of her other male friends as "Joey" or "Kevy" (always a diminutive form, never "Joe" or "Kevin" and liked to watch me rage inside as she'd talk about how cute he was. I realized just then, with the knowledge of my decades-older current self that Ruth was not merely trying to get a reaction from me, or even be cruel. She was goading me into action. She wanted me to just grab her and kiss her instead of retreating inside my head like I used to do, wishing that she'd accept that I was her man. After all, I was who she spent her night with every night, even if we were miles apart and connected only by a copper telephone line.

I decided for the moment to just savor the realism of this dream/memory and let it play out as it had, hoping my memory of events hadn't degraded too much over the decades. Perhaps, since this was just a dream, I could change the outcome, and in this way experience what might have been. I looked at Ruth again and deliberately began to undress her with my eyes, something I dared never let Ruth see in the past. I wanted to see what her reaction might be and to relish the opportunity to remember so clearly what she'd looked like in those days.

Ruth had never been classically beautiful, nor I handsome in that same way. We were truly well suited to one another I could see now, with more than twenty years of additional experience to gauge such things. But while Ruth was a bit plain and would never be a fashion model, her body was amazing to me then and now. She had large breasts, D cups, even at eighteen, and plenty of curves. But what made Ruth so infernally hot to me was the knowledge of just how lusty she was when she let her imagination run wild. I knew even as I looked at her, envisioning her naked before me, that her pussy was wet and throbbing for attention. All she had needed was a man to fill her, and rescue her from her fantasy world. I could have been that man, but I wasn't then. I could be now.

This was my dream, and I was in control. Whatever I did now would have no effect on my real life in the future, and if I woke up the next morning with cum-stained shorts, so be it. Maybe I'd even write all of this down and post it on the internet for the current-day Ruth to find and read, and maybe we'd finally admit to one another that we both blew it back then. Either that or she'd hate me. I suppose any relationship is better than none at all.

Back in the dream, Ruth had noticed that I was ogling her and despite herself she grinned even wider than before. She arched her back slightly to make her breasts perk up, and even trapped beneath a lacy bra, I could see her pert little nipples were hard from the attention I was showing them. She was really digging the fact that I was fondling her with my eyes! I kicked myself for never having realized that perhaps all she'd needed back then was for me to not be the perfect gentleman my momma had raised me to be in the real world and more of the bad boy that I was in our phone fantasies. What a moron I'd been back then!

Deciding that since things seemed to be going so well with just looking, I snaked a hand up and over and laid it across the car seat on her right shoulder. Ruth shuddered as my hand made contact and I expected her to flinch away as I'd always imagined that she would do, but since this was my dream, she'd reacted the way I'd always wanted instead. And maybe the way she would have back then, too, if I'd only had the balls to try.

I slipped my hand under her blouse and down her back, feeling her warm soft skin against my palm. I'd never felt anything so exquisite and watched as Ruth's flesh became goose-pimpled from the bare contact of flesh on flesh. Ruth's lips parted slightly and I thought I'd heard a low whisper of a moan escape as she did so. I grinned, realizing that in this fantasy replay, I could do as I liked and no matter the consequences. I couldn't make a "wrong" move! That freedom, coupled with my present-day self's experience and perspective, made this a win-win scenario regardless.