The song right now is Tonight I Wanna Cry.  I wish he had used a real word, but whatever.  It’s kind of funny because I’m not crying.  This is the first time in a week I haven’t been.

I’m thinking hard about what marriage means to me.  You see, I’m at a weird tipping point in my marriage. A point of leverage.  Most people don’t get to the point where they have lived with their spouse longer than anyone else ever in their lives until about twenty years in.  I’ve been married for five years.  I have lived with Noah longer than I ever lived consecutively with either of my parents.  It really doesn’t matter if it is not fair that I hold Noah to a higher standard of truth telling than other people use in their marriage.  I do.  And that’s the fucking deal.  You take it or…

Ok, now I’m crying.  I will get to the point where I am not angry all the time.  This is a stage.  I know that.  But I will never stop needing that level of trust.  Noah is already the only mirror my life has.  I won’t leave Noah.  It really doesn’t matter if he breaks my trust over and over.  I will never be willing to walk away from another person.  I will be mean and nasty and vicious sometimes and try to drive them away because I am angry.  But I can never leave again.  I don’t have that in me.

Yesterday I talked to the friend who was born across the street.  She asked me if I could bear living with it because her mom couldn’t.  I remember how that happened.  I visited during that period.  It was bad.  I remember what happened to her family.  I know what has happened to her mom.  Noah will never leave me and I will never leave Noah.  I’m afraid we may hurt each other very badly though.

Given that everyone in this house agrees to the basic premise that our kids deserve to grow up safe and happy we will make sure they do.  I’m really scared.  As much as people mock me fucking constantly for being angry, oh my fucking god you have no idea.  You have no fucking idea what I sit on.  I am direct and I am female.  Stop fucking commenting on my anger.  If a man said the same thing you wouldn’t fucking say, “Don’t hold back, tell me how you really feel.”  Well, Noah might.  And he does it on purpose to be a fucking asshole.  (He does not say it to me.)

I have to choose to not be angry.  I have to choose to bite my tongue and not escalate.  I have to choose to not make nasty comments.  When he goes out with people I have to not snap, “And you had better fucking come home this time.”  He knows already.  He knows I am on edge.  He’s not going to push that again, maybe ever.  What will he push instead?

I apparently get to hold him hostage for the rest of our lives.  His level of nonmonogamy will mirror mine.  I guess that’s a good way of seeing how effective of a whore I am.  How long can I hold out?  How long until I have to admit that he is right and he should be allowed to do whatever he wants whenever he wants because I want to do the same.  I don’t know.  It’s not worth the fucking drama.

I have to decide how to tell this story.  What story is this?  I’ve already been monogamous for most of the marriage.  I guess I’m supposed to be one of those stories about how open marriages don’t work.  Swinging?  When I know that everything I do is giving Noah a free pass to go do it with someone else.  Wow.  All of a sudden it really makes me feel sick to my stomach.  It’s not about him having the sex with someone else, although I do try hard to not picture it.  Noah wants to egg me on to do things with other people so that he can do it.  I don’t want to be used that way.  I don’t want to feel pressured to have sex with other people because I know I have to in order to give Noah “permission” to go do something I’m not thrilled about anyway.  I am really unhappy about being part of the Embargo Noah, I’m not fucking doing this arrangement.

No.  I am not going to be a gate keeper.  You can’t blame me for the rest of your life for what you do and do not get to do.

I feel like what I am going to do is learn to shut my mouth.  I’ll perfect my come on.  I’ll do what Noah wants me to do and I’ll sleep with other people.  I will learn to tell the story perfectly so that I don’t talk about the fact that it always hurts.  It always leaves me uncomfortable for days.  Even the fairly nice stuff with lots of lube.  I don’t fit other people.  It always rubs wrong.  It’s feeling increasingly apparent with each person I sleep with.  I have intense feelings about that.  I feel intense compulsion to figure it out because Noah wants me to.  Noah wants me to be slutty.  He wanted that kind of wife.  He really did.  He went out and picked the woman with the highest body count he could find who wasn’t already married.  I guess I didn’t tell him up front how much of that sex was quasi-consensual childhood experiences did I?  It kind of changes the picture.

It’s going to be interesting when people see the blanks filled in on my promiscuity.  I wear it like a bragging badge.  I am such a whore.  Everything is complicated.  I don’t feel bad about the sex I had recently.  I don’t feel like it makes me a bad person.  I didn’t break the sanctity of my marriage, blah blah blah.  But it was remarkable to me just how weird it felt to me to be so uncomfortable during and after sex.  I had forgotten that part.  That used to be such an understood part of sex for me.  Oh yeah.  It always hurts.  It doesn’t with Noah.  And it’s not that he has the smallest penis I have ever had sex with.  (Uhm, err should I insert a disclaimer?)  Smaller penises often hurt more than him.

We fit.  I don’t know why.  It’s one of the most intense parts of our marriage for me.  He is the first sexual partner I’ve ever had where I am not uncomfortable and/or in pain during and after.  I mean, he can but it takes effort on his part.  Sex is such a huge part of me and my life.  I am so intensely conflicted about it.  I finally have a partner who doesn’t hurt me every single time we have sex.  I don’t want to leave this.  I don’t want to give up on sex for the rest of my life.  That’s what my mother did.

I wouldn’t really do the single and dating thing while raising my kids.  I would stay home and cry that I fucked up my ability to watch their whole lives.  Being a mom is a way of finding out what it would have been like to have a mother who was continuously with me throughout my childhood.  Yes, I’m doing it in a much more high intensity way than most of my friends who are mothers.  You don’t have similar wounds to heal.  I need this consistency.  I need to have a stable period in my life of twenty years.  At least once.  I need it.  I have to choose this.  If I left I would never have a stable period to finish growing up in.  I would never get to have that safety.

Tom gave me the first period of safety.  But he wasn’t willing to let me finish growing up.  Noah will let me grow up.  He will let me change.  He will encourage me whole-heartedly.

But he doesn’t want just me.  And I am very compulsive about sex for a long list of reasons.  I don’t have a good excuse, and I’m not sure I need one given that I’ve been honest and up front and negotiated to be allowed to do the things I wanted to do for a very long time.  So did he.  He doesn’t need an excuse either.  He just wants it.  New-shiny-sex is pretty hot.

But it always hurts.  There is always a down side for me.  Not to mention that I feel intensely conflicted about being out of the house and not present with my kids.  It’s not like I do night-time parenting any way.  Noah does, except when he’s out.

It is hard to not be angry all day every day.  I’m not.  I’m a little snippy.  I’m generally very polite with my children.  But small irritations are escalating too fast for me these days.  I get so mad so easily.  I’m not doing anything other than making terrible facial expressions and having a shitty tone of voice, I hear. I don’t want my kids to remember this.  I don’t want to be this person.  I really don’t know what the road forward looks like.  I’m so scared.