I woke up at about 2:30 in the morning. Noah woke up a few minutes after me. We’ve been up talking since. So four hours of talking this morning. I told y’all we’d get up to at least 200 hours of negotiating on this. At the rate of 2-8 hours/day… we are getting there.

I can see what Noah means when he says I’m killing my marriage. I don’t think it is working quite how he thinks, but I think it is happening. I have watched Noah cry more in the past few months than I think he has cried in the whole rest of his life put together.

It isn’t just me who is hurting. I am hurting Noah.

I have a list of done me wrongs. I have things that have been happening for years that hurt me very much.

I need support. It isn’t fair that I need more than Noah can provide or that my friends can easily provide.

It sounds like my choices are get the support I want and deal with Noah dating and having NRE and he gets to go be all lovey dovey with someone else while I’m pregnant, sick, and miserable…

Or I choose to not get enough support. Those are my choices.

There isn’t really an option C.

Given that part of what Noah is saying when he asks me to get pregnant again is, “Maybe we can be better to each other this time” because I have acres of bitterness over the amount of support I got during the first four pregnancies….

Choosing to shove him towards other people is going to hurt me. I’m going to end up spending my entire pregnancy cut up. Because people saying they will babysit me during Noah’s dates…

That’s not going to work. Because the idea that I would turn to someone else when I am grieving like that is so laughable it’s not worth bringing up. I will tell you to get the fuck out of my house so I can deal with my feelings. No you can’t fucking hug me are you fucking crazy?

I don’t think that I am ever going to feel safe enough depending on someone else if what I need is cutting. No one else is there enough. You can’t be. You will let me down and then I will be screwed so I’m better off not depending on you.

I started this because yes, I felt like I was going to explode. Noah says I said I felt like I was going to die. I believe I said it. I don’t know that I meant soon. I did/do feel like I’m going to explode and do things I won’t like.

My life is very carefully constrained. Yes Noah, I know yours is too. I don’t think you are starting off from a place where you are as prone to go make bad decision after bad decision after bad decision like I do. My life is differently constrained.

When I feel like I’m going to explode, what does it mean? It means I think I’m going to cheat because I can’t be good anymore. It means I can’t be good anymore and I’d rather lose control and go fuck people then lose control and be a raging bitch at home.

I’m scared of how much pain I can bear. Because my tolerances go up and down and when my tolerance is up I sign on for a lot of pain. When my tolerance goes down I’m trapped.

We tolerate group play without feeling like we need to pull away and go off by ourselves to die. We enjoy group play. It doesn’t feel existentially terrifying in the same way.

I think that even though I want to quite a bit, I shouldn’t go sleep with the Quiet One tomorrow. It would be our first time. It would be bonding. It would increase the chance that I would hurt him really badly along with hurting Noah really badly. Yeah, I’m afraid that needs to be a no.

Shit.

Because if Noah goes off and does the NRE thing…

I am not going to bear that well. I’m just not. Let’s be realistic here. And if that happens when I’m pregnant and already disordered and fragile?

Let’s think about how well that has the potential to go and think about how poorly that has the potential to go.

How fucking well am I going to handle my only safety in the entire world going off to love on someone else while I’m pregnant?

Will I or the baby live another nine months? Will I live through that long enough to dump a third kid on him before offing myself so he can raise the baby with his new partner?

I honestly can’t say. Which makes it a stupid position to put myself into.

Why do we want this baby so much? We keep talking about it. Because we do. Because we look at the two kids we have and we both feel like that is the pinnacle good experience of our lives. These are the best things we’ve ever done or made or been near. We could have more of that? Please. Yes. Please.

What does that mean about my sex life? Oh it’s complicated.

Am I going to explode still? I don’t know. Pregnancy will change the hormone balance again. To what? Fuck if I know.

What I know is I can’t go through a lot more mornings where Noah sobs on my chest and tells me that his god is telling him that he isn’t good enough and it is killing him.

I like being Noah’s religion. If you are going to be a god you need to take it seriously and behave honorably and I am not doing so.

I don’t think that lifelong monogamy is possible for me. Which doesn’t mean I’m allowed to date.

I’m not polyamorous. I’m slutty. I have a partner who can bear a certain amount of that and no more. I can’t have a serious boyfriend. That’s just a limit for my life. It’s not to say that I can’t have friends I play with.

But Noah can’t bear how much attention I’m paying to the Quiet One. It hurts him and I have to stop. I can’t treat this like a retaliation for my list of done-me-wrongs.

If I’m doing something because I have to that is different from doing things to get even.

Given how eloquently Noah has expressed the pain this is causing him…….

It hurts him as much as it hurts me when he is dating. Sometimes I get the impression that the black hole inside of him isn’t a lot smaller than the one inside of me.

I need to not destroy Noah.

I think I need to have some variety of sex in my life but I don’t need to destroy Noah in the process. Not when he has such liberal boundaries around group play.

Having group sex doesn’t cause either of us to feel like we are dying. Either one of us going off to date solo makes the other feel like we aren’t needed any more and we should make ourselves small until we don’t exist any more.

For me that involves a lot of cutting. I don’t think his coping will be so flamboyant but it won’t be better.

I want to stay married to my best friend. I don’t want to give up pieces of him because I feel like they belong to other people now. I will though if he starts another relationship and goes off and does things with them that I like. That won’t be for me any more no matter how much I like it.

There is no fair here. Nothing like fair exists. But how much unfair can I shove on him in the name of balancing my own unfair?

fuuuuuuuuuuuuck.