Not a good day. Not a good day at all. I’m having anxiety attacks and freaking out. I can point at specific things and say, “See–that’s why I am feeling this way” but it isn’t entirely true. Yes, I feel like this because of those things, but it is my interpretation of those things that creates the problem.
I want to be cryptic and I want to get this shit off my chest before kids get here so I can maybe calm down. I’m sorry baby, I don’t think privacy is going to win this time.
I’m still freaking out because of the scene that went so badly for me in December. I still feel edgy and scared and disturbed. I still don’t want to have sex much. I feel unsafe. But my beloved baby doesn’t feel these same things because he didn’t have the same experience. I don’t say that as a slam or negative statement about him–just as a statement of truth with no judgment. The trouble comes in because I don’t want to have sex. He does. Having ridiculous amounts of sex has been one of the big pillars of our relationship. So uhhhh now we are having a hard time because I don’t feel safe enough to do it and yet he still has the same libido he has always had. I feel pressured and like I am failing to live up to the basics of our relationship. Mostly due to the fact that I am pathetic, insecure, and stupid we aren’t doing the open relationship thing right now so he doesn’t have any other outlet either. This is a problem because I feel like I am not willing to meet his needs and I am keeping him from getting them met elsewhere. This very much feels like the whole situations becomes “all my fault.” It doesn’t help that we have this whole brutal honesty thing. I know he isn’t happy and I feel terribly guilty and awful.
Noah gets upset with me because I can take things he says and twist them just a little bit and use them to beat myself up for a long time. There is a lot right now I am doing that with. I’m having a hard time really believing that he should be with me given that I am failing to a)meet his needs b)allow him to get his needs met elsewhere. I feel like he is suffering because I am crazy and stupid and that isn’t fair to him.
I started thinking at some point this morning that I should just start completely shutting ‘me’ down and just do it. I realized years ago that I am just a hair and a bad day away from being multiple. I am very good at putting on a completely different personality in order to get through various things. I’ve done this since I was a little kid but I have always fought very hard to keep the different personas highly conscious of one another so I am not a real multiple. If I stopped fighting so hard I could easily disassociate completely though. It has certainly happened. I kind of feel like it might be better/easier if I just started doing that. I know that it would be a new and exciting kind of psychological damage and I shouldn’t be seeking new damage in the course of trying to deal with old shit but it feels right now like I am so broken that there is no point in trying to be anything else anyway.
I want to cut. I want to cut so bad I can barely breathe. I would almost like to retreat to the relative comfort/hiding place of being suicidal but I am just functional enough to know that it isn’t an option. I wish it was. Somewhere along the way of fixing my shit I realized that suicide is entirely selfish and I am just functional enough to know how much it would hurt many people for me to do it. I kind of with I didn’t realize it because sometimes I feel like I am drowning under the weight of having to suck it up for the sake of other people.
I don’t know how to be the partner Noah deserves right now. I feel so awful and pathetic and terrible. I hate that I *feel* like he would be better off if I completely disappeared so he could find someone better. I hate that intellectually I know that would destroy him and he would probably never feel safe enough to really look if I did something like that. I would give just about anything to not hurt right now.
The bell rings in three minutes. No more time for me to be stupid and self absorbed.
Is there anything I can do to help you?
I love you. I wish I knew how to be supportive for you now.
Something that helps me…
in times similar to this (ie: my bad places, though they look different than yours most likely, are still “unhappy land”) is to remember that its okay to not feel good.
Some of it I dredged out of Care for the Sould by Thomas Moore (sp?) but the basics for me is often that my depression or rage or sadness or what have ya, isn’t a “wrong” place to be, it simply is where I am at…there is some process inside of it, that my mind needs to figure out, work through or just accept…and if I give myself space for that experience…sometimes I’m able to catch a breath on the other side of it….
It doesn’t always work, and it is in no way “advice”. Just sharing my experience of the darker places of my self and how I try to integrate them.
“I know that it would be a new and exciting kind of psychological damage”
For what it’s worth, it wouldn’t be new damage. It would just be a way to cope with old damage. People don’t up and decide to dissociate unless they have already been doing it to cope for a long time. I can attest that it’s a pretty damn effective tool- and, from my clinical knowledge I can say that you are not going unravel further than you already have into that realm.
Please be good to yourself for you first. Noah can wait for sex. ” Putting out” when you don’t want to is just going to be damaging for both of you in the long run.
Do you want to hang out sometime soon?
I want to see you and I don’t. I fear that I would spend the time dumping on you and you don’t deserve that. Heh, it is your bloody job–you don’t need to have friends doing that to you in your off time.
Good to know that I am not likely to get more bananas in that area at least.
I’m sorry baby, I don’t think privacy is going to win this time.
It’s all good. You actually do a lot more holding back on my account than I ask you to, or than I need.
I kind of know that. I get scared though.
FWIW, most marriages I know of have peaks and valleys in the sex dept.
Take care of yourself,
-P
Having ridiculous amounts of sex has been one of the big pillars of our relationship.
Hmm. Having ridiculous amounts of joyful sex has been a part of your relationship, yes. So, you’re one of the few people that know my relationship shares that trait. I know for us there’s a kind of pressure that *not* having sex creates, when it probably shouldn’t. When sex starts feeling anything like obligatory, you start losing that “joyful” aspect.
So uhhhh now we are having a hard time because I don’t feel safe enough to do it and yet he still has the same libido he has always had.
Right. OK, food for thought here. Would you still be having this kind of guilt and angst if you were having a period of abstinance because you were experiencing some kind of *physical* illness that made sex difficult for you? Or, for that matter, for him? ‘Cuz there will be other times in the course of your relationship when this might happen. Pregnancy and the first six weeks after childbirth (if you obey your gyn), for example. Or much later in life, when his plumbing stops being as spontaneously jubilant in response to your “come hithers.” (Note that I say when, not if.)
I feel pressured and like I am failing to live up to the basics of our relationship.
“big pillars of our relationship” “basics of our relationship”
Sweetie, I know the two of you have a history of sex beyond belief, but I don’t see that as the foundation of your relationship, but rather a wonderfully joyful result of it.
Mostly due to the fact that I am pathetic, insecure, and stupid we aren’t doing the open relationship thing right now so he doesn’t have any other outlet either.
So, you know you’re not the only one who has this struggle, because we’ve talked too much about my own struggle around this. Which means you know my views on the fact that this has nothing to do with being pathetic, or insecure, or stupid, so I’ll spare you a rant you don’t need to hear.
You’re in the first year of your marriage, and you’ve asked for “focus on us” time — and more importantly, he has agreed.
This is a problem because I feel like I am not willing to meet his needs and I am keeping him from getting them met elsewhere. This very much feels like the whole situations becomes “all my fault.”
I repeat – you *asked* for this, and he *agreed*.
It doesn’t help that we have this whole brutal honesty thing. I know he isn’t happy and I feel terribly guilty and awful.
OK, he isn’t happy. He isn’t happy about what? That right now, for whatever the reason, he isn’t having the joyful abundance of lovely sex with his wife that he knows you and he are capable of having together, when things are going well? He loves you, and loves having sex with you. That he can’t, right now, isn’t something you’d expect to make him happy. Seems to me, you’re not exactly jumping up and down about it, either.
He has other needs, too. He has the need for his life partner to continue to grow. When he signed on for this relationship – the *second* time around – he came into it knowing you had this work to do, and he signed on for being the one to do it with you.
OK, I’ll stop now, because I may have stretched my Mama rights a little thin with this. Just remember that I love you, and I hurt for you, and if there was anything in the world I could do to make this hurt go away, I would. I see you making progress on your “stuff” all the time, so I have to believe that it’s getting better. And I suspect that Noah believes that, too.
I love you, sweetie.
*sending you love and support*
The situation totally sucks. I can’t offer anything to help, but know I empathize and that, given time and work, this too will pass, and it will get better.
It’s going be okay. It is. He loves you and you love him and it’s going to be okay.
Issues like this are not anywhere near as abnormal as one might think given how people rarely tell.
T and I have had plenty of issues of our own. I’m still happy and grateful to be with him and he seems happy to be with me too.
Forget the pressure thing. One has too. This will heal in time, with gentleness applied. No screaming at the wound.
My best advice is to make sure you are still touching, cuddling each other. Stay connected.
Leave the sex out of it for now, if that feels best and allow yourself to be held and hold.
And know that the idea of a close relationship where sexual issues never surface is pretty much nuts. It seems to me that the closer we are in relationship that the more likely they are to surface. Once the trust is there the neglected wounds want treatment.
There is another side, on the far side of this trust will be deeper and sex will express that more intensely. Believe me, it’s a beautiful thing.
You’ll come through this together stronger and more in love and deeper in trust.
One other thing, remember you were in major bodily pain only yesterday (may still be, I don’t know). What that means is that your resources to handle emotional pain and stress are probably tapped. Forgive yourself for not being invulnerable to life and take care of you, take care of your body.
It’s going to be okay. Much much love and beauty and dreams and hope and healing coming your way. I know it.
~ love ~
ps. if *any* of the free advise does not help I expect you to ignore it in your own best interest. If it does help yay! Take care beautiful girl.
I know you’re crazy busy for the forseeable future, but I’d love to get together with you sometime and talk. A lot of the responses I’m thinking to this post just aren’t things I’m comfortable sharing in this venue (too much of my crap.)
I can’t really articulate a helpful response, but you should know that whenever I’m talking about owning and coping with problems, you’re the person I think of as an example of doing that well. You’re very impressive.