Noah emailed me. I’m going to respond here because I’m like that.

When you talk about you dating other people and it not working out because it “feels tainted to me,” there’s something I think is worth pointing out.

It’s not just when I ask you the same question repeatedly that you feel like you need to say whatever it takes to get me to fuck off. When you’re dating other people, the “whatever it takes to fuck off” can and does happen any time you feel pressured. Which often includes when I feel bothered, or disapproving, or frustrated about something unrelated.

So at those times, whether you feel “anything to fuck off” graduates to “lying” or not, you’re okay with telling me things that are clearly untrue, and I may or may not have any way of knowing if they’re true, any time you’re feeling stress. And you chose (and/or would choose) to date other people when you’re already under stress and you reasonably expect me to disapprove.

You’re not wrong about the whole thing feeling tainted to me. But I think you mostly miss what part feels tainted and why.

From the same post, but not otherwise related:

There are many non-sexual services you perform for which I praise you, do things for you and/or otherwise acknowledge it. When we’re talking later about a service that you feel doesn’t count, I’ll often mention that I praised you for it, or that I did something I felt was in return and/or to appreciate that service, and you’ll counter with something else you do for me. There are, of course, many things you do for me.

What I get from those exchanges is that me appreciating you mostly “doesn’t count” if you’ve done more for me than I do for you. It seems like anything less than “me winning the points game” is the same as “I don’t care about anything non-sexual you do for me.” A thank-you or other small acknowledgement only counts if you feel like I’m “winning”, and “winning” is only a thing I’m going to make you pay for later.

That, too, is complicated.

I’m not sure if there’s some more formal and specific way I could acknowledge service for me that would be better. I tend to start from “oh, thanks,” often followed by some specific description of what you did if it’s not clear from context (I often skip a description if you’re, say, in the middle of loading the dishwasher since I consider the task I thanking you for to be obvious.)

That’s… okay, I guess? But if seems clear that you don’t long-term consider yourself appreciated for such things. I’ve done a fair bit of praising you for things you do, especially in recent years. If you feel completely unappreciated for anything non-sexual, that suggests the praise and thanks are doing what I hoped they would.

We’ve talked about acknowledgement before. At the time we agreed that “thank you” is most of what you’re looking for. But it doesn’t seem to count, which suggests it’s not currently doing what we thought it would years ago. It may be time to revisit that discussion.

It’s reasonable that you think I don’t understand what you feel was tainted but I’m not sure that you entirely understand what I mean either. I think me *dating* was absolutely not going to work out no matter what I did and I was a serious asshole. When I told you I was dating because I needed to and you insisted I come up with more and I said because I need to feel pleasure during sex and you kept insisting I come up with more of a reason I got really mean. I’m sure you remember what flavor of mean I was being better than I do.

The part *I* was referring to being tainted was literally just the sex part. You spent years and years and years pressuring me for sex. I was finally able to show up for the once or twice every day you have been pressuring me to perform for years and even when I could finally do that you were god damn mad at me every minute.

Sure I was being an inconsiderate asshole in every other way… but if you tell me the sex the sex the sex the sex is the only thing that can make you happy…..

I tried all the other ways to make you happy and I failed. So fine I showed up with the sex and then it sucked too.

I can’t show up with the sex you want without being that kind of asshole. I can’t. I’m not fucking capable. I know that you don’t want me to have another serious partner who takes time and energy and prioritization. I get that. But you also frequently told me/showed me for many years that you also can’t be happy unless I’m providing an amount of sex I can’t physically stand unless I’m doing a whole host of other supportive behaviors for myself that suck for you.

I know that it is shitty to turn and date other people when under stress. I haven’t had a part of our marriage where I haven’t felt enormous stress to provide sex I don’t necessarily have any interest in and yeah I’m totally not fucking managing that. Because enough years of “if you are under stress you don’t get to go do anything to cope with the stress” means I’m going to crack.

You know how you told me for years that you loved me and cared about me and wanted me to feel good in my body but you were very happy to fuck me dry while I cried and grimaced and lay like a rock under you?

At some point I lost my ability to just absorb that and act like I was ok.

So I said some very mean things. Many that weren’t really true and I was just being an asshole. Yup. That happened.

I know the dating wouldn’t have worked even if I had been less of an asshole. That was going to be tainted even if I did it right. But when I managed to suck it up and provide all the sex you wanted for years… it still didn’t count and that bugged the shit out of me. Because it isn’t the sex. You will complain for years that you can’t be happy without the sex but if the sex appears and you lose all of the other sycophantic shit I’d been doing for years things went up like a Roman candle. You want everything. And I’m supposed to just… make that happen no matter how much it hurts me.

I am tired of bleeding so you can get off.

I don’t know how to deal with the depth of fury I feel about this. It isn’t all about you. It isn’t all your fault. But you are sure fucking wrapped up in it too.

You absolutely do tell me thank you in the moment for things I do for you. But you also tell me that no one who loves you could think that you should be in our marriage because I am so terrible. Which sure makes it sound like alllllllllllll the other stuff I have done has no value. If our marriage is so bad that you shouldn’t be here… that means that the “gratitude” you feel for the things I do is pretty small potatoes. I’m such a problem that you should leave.

Being married to me is so bad you should leave. So who fucking cares if I empty the dishwasher or if you say thank you. The service is stupid and pointless.

You have told me that you can’t talk to anyone about our marriage because…the implication was that there is no redeeming value here.

So what does thank you mean anyway?

I am having a hard time with the fact that you would tell me something so mean like, “I can’t talk to anyone about our marriage because no one could be on my side and think I should stay” and then that turns into “I didn’t say that” and now thank you for the dishwasher is supposed to be the measurement of how well you appreciate me.

You think you should leave. Because I am awful. No. I don’t feel appreciated.

Noah thinks about our history in a more linear fashion than I do. I don’t remember things in chronological order and I never really have. I think in terms of associations. When I was writing No Secrets I had to categorize my memories based on a bunch of weird little associations then try to stitch them together in order. I’m still not certain I got it perfectly in order.

So when we talk he can list off how I mistreated him year by year. Ok. I can talk about “Ah, when this was happening this other thing happened and this other thing and that’s why that thing over there happened.” But I don’t remember which years of our marriage have been better or worse. That’s all very fuzzy to me. I mean… I could go read my archive but who the fuck has time for that?

I think I’ll remember “2016” until I die and shiver whenever I hear it though.

Anyway.

Noah and I have both done a lot for each other. We do things for one another all over the place. We have both learned an amount of affability and predictability that is shocking. Clearly he’s better at that than I am, but he started from a better place too. We have both done a lot of work in this department. I am still a bitchy person; I’m sharp and critical and demanding. Pieces of that I now see as me trying my best to manage my extensive list of weird ass requirements in life. I’m a delicate fucking snowflake and I need fairly particular amounts of exercise and people interaction time and rest and sleep and sex and foods and… My body is not easy going. My body can’t just take “whatever” and be ok.

I am struggling with my commitment to stay alive. Because the problem is the kinds and quantities of pain I carry around. Which isn’t fair and it sucks and it hurts Noah and I absolutely understand why there are people in this world that believe I am emotionally abusive because I am mentally ill and they don’t even need more evidence than that. “You hurt people by existing. You abuse people by talking about you existing.”

I know.

Noah and I have both worked on adult financial responsibility for one another. We both came into this marriage with gaping holes in our skills and we have both worked really hard to manage our combined resources way the fuck more responsibly than we ever managed our independent resources. Most of our money goes to medical care and food. Then travel. I have been very consistent about saving money for the future. I like to joke that Noah is providing for this stage of our life and I am providing for everything that happens after he stops working. Because that man was not on track to be so comfortable before I got my hands on his money. The best part, in my mind, is how rarely we argue or fight about money. We have more than we need to meet our needs. We have so much that we can afford to give wads of it away and that’s not a problem for our life. That’s an incredible privilege that I would not have if Noah were not so hard working.

And you know what? Even that is complicated. Cause I know a lot of people who work as hard and harder than Noah and they aren’t doing very well financially and that’s bullshit. Noah does this well because he has been set up to be in the right time at the right place since he was a child. He made good choices all the way through his college and career. He has rapidly acquired all the knowledge he can related to his entire field so that he can figure out which choices will get him in the right place to work how hard he wants to for a fantastic amount of money. That’s very lucky and cool for him.

Big problem in our marriage: my difficulty being nice to white men. This has manifested in a great variety of ways through our marriage and creates a noticeable strain for us.

When we started our marriage things were very different. I was a lot less capable of meeting a variety of Noah’s needs. I was not comfortable with how much time he wanted to spend touching me. It was very difficult for me to adapt to his expectations around physical contact but I have done so. In the beginning I couldn’t handle that much touch that wasn’t sexual. So we fucked all day and night long because that was the compromise we could manage together.

I worked on accepting touch. I had babies. I stopped having time or interest in sex all day every day and night. It became a problem that my sex drive had dropped. There were a lot of years where I didn’t really orgasm. I think there was like a 3-5ish year gap? Yay breeding hormones. But we never stopped having sex; it didn’t matter how it was going for me.

We both came into our marriage with, in my opinion, a fair bit of sexual dysfunction. We both have hypersexuality impulses. A lot of my hypersexuality impulses are both impulsive and compulsive and they revolve around self harming choices. (When I stepped out last year I may not have picked dangerous people but I did a tremendous amount of permanent harm to my life.) Noah needs to have sex in order to deal with his tremendous feelings of shame and basically nothing else helps. That puts me in the position of being like his drug dispensing machine and that’s not ok. (Yes, we both know that semen is an anti-depressant and we do have sex frequently because we notice that my mood varies tremendously based on when I’ve last had some deposited. BUT STILL.)

Sex is complicated for everyone. I hear that folks go into therapy to talk about: sex, kids, money, housework.

I have done the vast majority of housework throughout our marriage. Noah has had periods of doing a lot: pregnancy, during the remodel… but mostly I do the cleaning. Sometimes I go through these pseudo-modern-woman phases and I set up a chore chart and ask Noah to do more for a while. Somehow that never lasts very long. He does to the cooking and meal planning now though. Except when I do it. Which isn’t that uncommon either. Whether Noah is in a phase of actually doing a lot of housework or not he expects to be praised and petted as if he were doing it. Specifically: he tells me that he needs me to have sex to motivate him to do all the stuff he does for me no matter how much he is really doing for me.

He doesn’t view most of what I do as being for him even though I can link it directly with logical reasons why I do it the way I do out of respect for his preferences. I don’t view most of what he does as being about me even though he can link it directly with logical reasons why he does it the way he does out of respect for me.

It’s a real festive situation.

We are trying to find the words to communicate about his emotional state. It’s hard because we run into these situations where the words he is using have vastly different meanings in my head and it’s definitely like we are speaking a different language.

He told me that I go through periods of treating him like a roommate. I blink real hard at that and think of the many people I’ve lived with and sputter and go, “Whaaaat?” Cause…

I have never in my life put as much thought and energy into an adult as I’ve put into Noah.

I feel like we go through periods where I take him for granted and he gets the short end of the stick when it comes to my attention. At those times he often gets the brunt of my frustration and overwhelm regarding some other part of my life. It’s not random or targeted at him. Things in other parts of my life go up and down in intensity and that massively impacts what I have to give to Noah.

To the point where I feel like it is not a good idea for me to have very many out of the house obligations or overly consistent presence on social media or forums or anything like that because if my mood fluctuates and I pay less attention to Noah… that’s a problem.

Noah feels like he can’t have friends. Despite me spending a lot of time for many years begging him to go see a fucking friend. When he wants to travel and dump many hundreds of dollars to see his friends I cheer and shove him out the door. When he goes to see his friends I don’t interrupt unless I am literally in the fucking hospital and I cry and apologize for interrupting then.

Hosting people in the house is subject to my rampant social anxiety. Hi pervasive belief that everyone hates me and me inviting them is creating an onerous situation where they have to do something they don’t want to do, clearly because it’s not like they ask to come see me unless I pressure them and they feel guilty and…

I go through long periods of not reaching out. And it’s not really about you. I have a god damn mailing list of people who said, “Hey! IT’S OK TO PESTER ME WITH INVITATIONS” and I would rather cry than do the work involved in reaching out. I just don’t have anything to give.

I feel really sad and helpless and unable to carry the weight of trying to create a community because I don’t really fit into any other community anywhere.

BDSM has been hard for both of us through our marriage. I can partially understand why Noah was irritated with me playing with friends last year because when I’m doing heavy SM there are a few predictable consequences. One: I withdraw from physical contact… especially with the person who hit me. I mean… I can turn it on to touch them for a few hours but then I will be withdrawn for the rest of the day and night. I live with a lot of chronic pain and sometimes if I am dealing with having been hit a lot… you can’t really touch me without me wanting to lose my mind and start hysterically screaming and beating on you like you just committed the gravest assault. Because I’m no longer consenting to you giving me more pain and the only way I can keep you from hurting me more is to stay the fuck away from you.

Yeah. Ask me how well that kind of fucking cycle goes in my current life with Noah and my kids expecting to god damn paw me 24/7.

I feel like we have done most of our bdsm play in the psychological or D/s realms. I mean, I haven’t had a whole lot of orgasms without his permission in eleven fucking years. I feel like it is god damn appropriate to say that we have always had strong D/s elements in our sex life. But I’ll admit that we don’t do a lot of the SM part. And… he doesn’t ask for bondage and I’m really not up for asking for it so we don’t do it.

I go through long periods where I just can’t deal with feeling like if I ask for something he will do it halfheartedly to hurry and get to the part he wanted to start with. So we do a lot of fucking. And no bondage.

I go through long periods where I just can’t handle hearing “no” or being flexible about being moved around in someone’s life. It causes too many other negative effects in my life at those times. So I shut off from most people so I don’t have to hear it.

That has an impact on our marriage.

Because Noah and I are in a situation where neither of us feel like we have a lot left to give. We do a lot for each other and the well of “I want to give” is about run dry and neither of us know how to get much outside help with that when we get to this point.

The systems I try to build to help with this all fail for a variety of perfectly valid reasons. Life is about a lot of moving pieces and getting those to line up and stay lined up is a challenge. I’m not blaming anyone or feeling angry about any particular situation. Like, the babysitter’s family moving away has been a serious blow to the support structure for our family. We were so god damn enmeshed with them and that’s been really hard. The other divorces that happen with friendships are hard too.

But they are part of life.

My kids feel like they have a stable life with a lot of people in it. At least, that is what they tell me. Rebuilding this seems absolutely daunting… but I would build experience elsewhere too. I don’t really believe I would hermit forever. I’m a sunny soul. When I’m not depressed.

I make a fantastic number of choices all night and all day that are not focused on my needs. That’s really complicated. It’s both a good and a bad thing. It is part of why I am so rigid about how I do things. Because one of the biggest factors driving a lot of how I’m trying to shape my behavior is: I’m supposed to figure out how to be in less pain so that I can live longer for Noah and the kids. I created this fucking situation. I put myself in this position so I would have no choice but to grow the fuck up and change things in my life.

I mean… I know people who spawn and don’t grow up. Let’s not invalidate that as a life path. But I didn’t god damn do it. I have worked god damn hard at maturing. I’m not perfect and the cracks in my mask are biggest on the side that faces Noah.

And that’s complicated.

I spend a lot of time and energy trying to solve my feelings of inadequacy and failure and depression. I perceive that Noah does very little to work on his own similar feelings besides want to be more famous in his field and earn more money and say that only sex can make him feel better.

I feel like we go back and forth because it’s not really about how often we “have sex” it’s about a kind of attention that Noah only really feels when it involves sex and I don’t know what to do about that. I’ve tried a lot of things.

I’m not invited into his masturbatory life much. I’ve indicated for many years that if he wanted me to be around for masturbation that would be fun… but instead we both hide and masturbate alone. I mean, I have to ask for permission first. But it’s not a shared activity for us.

I don’t think Noah needs to be ashamed of what he wants. I just don’t think I can necessarily meet what he needs and that’s a different problem. He doesn’t have a lot of spontaneous desire to ask for the rope practice that would turn him into the rope top of my dreams either. *shrug*

He does ask me to dance in the house now. That’s a huge thing. Sometimes it is even really fun instead of awkward and uncomfortable. He is trying. I do see that he is trying.

And I am too.

And is that enough?

We are both clearly devoting our lives to one another. How is that working out for us? It’s mixed. The balance is off somehow.

I feel like daily snuggling and 2-3 meals a day together and talking all the time and having sex at a rate well above average for our god damn demographic means that clearly we are both putting a lot of god damn time into our relationship.

Time spent is not the problem.

The problem is that we are so tired we can’t give one another the kind of intensity that we both use like rocket fuel to plod through what is otherwise a very exhausting round of Being An Adult. Being An Adult is boring and shitty. We do the work of being semi-healthy animals but there is something we just aren’t finding. There’s a piece we have failed to figure out.

And I’m pretty fucking sure that me doing more talking isn’t going to help that much.

It’s kind of funny that after years of bitching loud and long about how white men need to shut the fuck up and listen more… I’m not pretty damn grumpy at this white man for not talking more.

It’s not that I need more time of him talking but I need to hear about his feelings instead of web comics and video games.

I’m such an asshole.

I’ve been the designated Problem for a long time now. But part of what gets kind of heaped in my direction is my inability to cure Noah of shame. If only I wanted more sex with him then everything would be perfect.

Yeah. But you married the wrong woman if the measurement stick was the sturdiness of the cunt.

I cannot do that.

That is something that my body cannot do and I need to stop trying because the emotional fall out is too great and it impacts too many people. I can’t keep dashing myself against that rock.

So what’s next?

There’s this thing that when people grow (and I think Noah and I both have) sometimes they don’t fit as well with people they picked at a different level of dysfunction. We need some shit to change and I don’t know what and I don’t know how.

If Noah really believes I hate him this much then I should either divorce him or kill myself because doing this to him is cruel.

It doesn’t seem to matter what I feel. He believes what he believes. And I’m hurting him by staying. I’m wrecking his life. He feels abused. And it’s my fault. He believes that no one could love him and believe he should stay with me.

That really means I should go, one way or another.

Divorcing him with a third child who is a baby seems like a really big problem. Leaving him with two children who can basically care for themselves seems like a much smaller problem. That means I have four months to get it done.

These issues stack in my brain in weird ways. They combine and intertwine such that my memories are sometimes amalgamations of conversations and impressions and I know that’s not great. But trying to sort it out is the only thing I know to do.

Ok, marital problems.

I don’t think Noah spends a lot of time getting really upset but we’ve had a few conversations over the years that struck me as particularly intense and I’ve latched on to them in memory in ways that bother Noah a lot.

I feel like Noah values me (or at least he valued when he married me) for the fact that my consent is kinda not important. My cunt is just available whether I like it or not. We’ve talked about how monogamy is not celibacy a lot. We’ve talked about how it isn’t ok for me to deny Noah sex for any reason, including medical reasons, on a long term basis. He will give me a grace period of a year and then things are Just Going To Change. That has become a sword of Damocles over my head. My cunt has to be available or I am not worthy of being a wife.

I feel like Noah has some fairly set ideas of what bdsm is and they don’t always overlap with mine. Last night we had a fierce conversation where I asked him what the orgasm control and the denial of personal right to determine masturbation and the degrading sex and the name calling and the hurting me is if it is not bdsm. Because if we have been in an M/s contract for going on a year and you still feel like it is appropriate to yell at me that we will never get around to doing bdsm because I don’t want him enough…. what the fuck do you think bdsm IS?!?! Noah does hurt me sometimes. Not in extreme ways because I haven’t been up for it, but our sex is not pain-free. I submit to a lot of stuff. I bathe him. I’ve followed various other rules for a long time. If absolutely everything I do is devalued and “doesn’t count” towards us having a bdsm relationship… then fine. I guess you are right after all and we will never be doing bdsm. Even though I met a quota for years about having sex ten times a month whether I wanted to or not… nothing counts.

When we first got married I was still very much in a period where I was not comfortable with most casual touch. For the first three or so years we were married if Noah wanted to cuddle… we’d sit on opposite sides of the couch and he could touch my feet. That was what I could bear. It is very hard for me that Noah has repeatedly over the years stated emphatically that sex is what makes him feel loved and the other things don’t count. So I’ve worked very hard on my panic disorder and I’ve learned to cuddle him because he wants it… but it doesn’t count towards making him feel loved. Even though it was incredibly hard for me to learn to do and it literally took years of effort.

Noah used to complain a lot that I didn’t share his interests. So I can discuss most of the comic series he reads and I’ve watched his favorite movies and I listen to him read the books he wants me to know about. I would say that he has only started really trying to do the return favor since the road trip and that’s still… I think I put more effort into sharing his interests but I’m not sure I’m evaluating fairly. And none of this time or effort counts as showing love for him.

Noah talks a lot (fairly and reasonably) about how hard it is for him to be emotionally level for me and that’s a huge gift he gives to me. I agree that it is a huge gift. I do understand that it is a lot of effort for him. It’s visible effort… I know how he struggles with being upbeat and cheerful for my sake so I can sponge off of his good humor. But the thing is… I have put in equally as much work if not more. He may have started off this marriage not being as good natured as he currently behaves… but I started out a basket case who cut myself and isolated myself constantly in between crying jags and screaming at people. I haven’t injured myself in… I don’t know how long. It’s been a long time. That was a multi-decade habitual response to dysregulation. I have replaced it with fucking typing. I used to need full days of hiding alone in my house in order to go manage a two hour munch. Now I am “on” and I have to be cheerful and helpful and loving and physically affectionate…12-14 hours a day every single fucking day and I don’t get breaks. I don’t get an hour off a day to hide in a room and work on my feelings. I have to just fucking show up and act nice and put my shit to the side ALL DAY EVERY DAY.

I don’t feel I get a lot of credit for this. When I am minimizing things that will serve to dysregulate me (like heavy SM scenes) I feel like the response is that I am being mean and taking a toy away from Noah. When I feel like I am trying to be able to show up and do my primary job every day without fucking up.

Would it be more fun for me to have more babysitting and do more dysregulating things with my body? Yes. But my parenting would go downhill faster than an Olympic skier. We have collectively decided that for a few decades here it is more important that I show up for my kids than that I have fun. But I feel like I get punished for sticking to that. Punished isn’t the right word. I feel like I am resented for it. And I was getting to the point where I had more space to be able to do that without being a fucking asshole…

But now I’m pregnant and the whole fucking thing is starting over. I won’t have that much bodily privacy for another five fucking years.

And I feel like that means I am doing something terrible to my husband and I feel incredibly resentful of that. Yes, I want this kid really really badly. But I want this kid fully seeing how shitty it makes my life to have another fucking baby. Babies make my life shitty. I am not the kind of mother who says, “My life barely changes”. EVERYTHING CHANGES when I have a baby. I give up independence and autonomy and I am a fucking life support device. I don’t have bodily privacy. I don’t have space for myself. I am subsumed into the me-not-me who is currently in that state of need. There is no fair here.

I know it isn’t fair to have your sex life derailed from where you want it to be. I know it isn’t fair that when your body is still doing the normal same old same old you don’t get what you want and need under those circumstances. I know that sucks.

But I fucking started this journey with chronic pain and then I exacerbate it in every way. I start out emotionally dysregulated and I stick a fucking rocket launcher on the back of that when I’m pregnant. I can’t fucking sleep well. I can’t eat well. I feel like fucking shit just about every moment of the day.

But I’m so meeeeeeaaaaaaaaan if I don’t want to have sex.

Clearly I don’t love Noah if I’m not having sex.

I kind of want to jump off a bridge.

So I can stop grocery shopping and doing laundry and cleaning and home schooling the kids and putting a death grip on my behavior so that I’m not mean to people around me and I can stop dealing with how hard it is for me to accept casual touch and I’m going to start fucking masturbating three fucking times a day and I’m never asking for permission again and…..

I’m really frustrated.

I feel really sad that I’m a failure as a wife because my cunt is defective and that is all that I am judged by.

I feel desperate and sad and hopeless. I feel like I will never be able to make Noah feel loved so why in the fuck am I beating my head against that rock?

Because I love him so much and I’ve still never had anyone in my life be as nice to me as he is. Even though he is kind of an asshole sometimes. Perspective is a big thing.

Noah does a lot for me. Noah is incredibly helpful and kind to me most of the time.

But I have a hard time with how many of my friends are all #TeamNoah and Krissy should stop being such a bitch to that poor sainted man.

I’m not saying I should be pitied or that Noah should be denigrated to hell and back. I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying that I don’t ever write the Full Story because I can’t. I write my current thoughts and feelings and impressions and that’s fucking limited. I don’t have enough god damn time in the day to write the Full Story.

This. Is. My. Alone. Time.

I have learned how to be regular for this marriage. I have learned how to show up every day and deliver on my promises even when I don’t want to. I take care of my family whether I want to or not. (Noah does too… I’m not saying that I’ve done more than him.) I’m saying that I did not grow up seeing people show up through the hard stuff. I’m making this up out of whole cloth and I’m doing it because of how much I love Noah and how much I want this to work.

When it was very clear that I had to stop fucking around or my marriage was basically over… I stopped on a dime.

I feel like I get all the credit for fucking up and being wrong and no credit for how far I’ve come or how much I do.

I’ve now been married for eleven years.

I like Noah. I don’t just mean I like what he does for me. I like him. I like the way he smiles. I love the way he softens around me like butter, as if I’m safe.

I like that even though I sometimes get very mad at him for having different opinions than I have, he doesn’t back down and he stubbornly defends his sources because he came to this conclusion for reasons. I like that he doesn’t bend at my whims.

I love watching him parent. I picked Noah as a coparent and I made a really god damn good choice. He’s such a good parenting partner for me. Our kids shine with love and that isn’t all me.

I appreciate how much work he’s willing to do to help me figure out my complicated body.

I like how hard it is to go to sleep sometimes because I wannna keep taaaaaalking to hiiiiiiiim.

If you had asked me when I was 10 years old if I believed I would grow up to have a good marriage I would have fallen down laughing. But here I am.

He’s consistent. He remembers the promises we make to one another and follows through on them better than I do. I think our relationship would have disintegrated without him holding it together saying, “Nope. We promised X, Y, & Z and so we’re gonna do that.”

He is kind. Sure, he gets on my nerves in lots of ways… but he is consistently kind to people. He slows down and explains. He will help anyone who asks him for help. He’s getting waaaaaaaaaay better at volunteering help without needing to be asked. He watches for ways to make life better for people inside of our family and out of it.

Did you know that he tutors people in programming stuff all the time? Sometimes locally and sometimes long-distance. All folks who really can’t afford to take a class. They need help and they reach out to him and he almost never says no. He wants as many people as possible to have access to the kind of fantastic life he has gotten to have because of programming.

He will stop and talk to anyone about ways to improve their career trajectory. He has lists of articles he sends out to people who are in various transitions whether in his field or not. He really wants to help other people do better. Even when they aren’t programmers.

He goes really far out of his way to try and find ways we can do things together. Naturally we have very different temperaments and interests. He keeps trying to find things we can share. Most of it doesn’t work out, but he keeps trying anyway.