<nod, in very deep, Type 5 Contemplative Way>. It's funny. I always wished for more of an 'emotional connection' with my xH, during sex. But I realize, now, that if an emotional connection is happening outside of the bedroom, then I am dam near willing to confront any fear I have INSIDE the bedroom. Meaning, the more emotional connection I thought I NEEDED during sex, the more 'fused' I think I was. Make any sense?
So... the more secure I am with myself outside the bedroom, allows me room to feel more emotionally available TO my partner (and carry with me NO EXPECTATIONS). So inside the bedroom, I don't necessarily have to have it a certain way. It isn't necessarily the place I need my emotional validation, so therefore, I can let go, and enjoy sex as sex, or ML, or whatever it happens to become, because first of all, I trust myself in the R OUTSIDE the bedroom.
I think when you let go during this last 'job hissy fit thingy' with your H, you finally understood your particular division of church and state... what was his sh!t, and what was your sh!t... you let it go. And you were fine with it. Now -- that (meaning attempts to fuse by you or him) will take many different forms, so the next time it happens, you may not recognize it at first... but since you've already found your measure of peace, per se, alarm bells will go off in your head, and Mo will say to herself, "Oh, this is a "I'm pissed off at the world because of my job" type moment, even if it isn't about his job, and you will know what to do with yourself, kwis?
Just like with my golf game. The reason my swing has gone might not necessarily be because of my hands, but because I'm not tucking my elbow, or I'm overswinging... but in any event, my game is going to he!!. So I go back to the fundamentals... and I begin again. And it make take me a few rounds to find it again... but I always know when I am on the right track.
Same with you, and I am happy for you. You take an asprin at a time now, not the whole bottle at once, to find your cure. Best place in the world to be... and the better you get at it, the better he will get at it... for he will finally feel the freedom he has been seeking to be himself, and be accepted for it.
And that's all that we all want, isn't it? To be accepted for who we are, and loved for it, in spite of ourselves.
Long way of saying... I bet you'd be okay with him fcking some other woman, but I don't think you'd be okay with him marrying some other woman. Kwis? And now sex is sex, and has its proper balance of importance within the R... and you KNOW it. Because SEX is no longer where you seek or need your validation.
I was reading you last post to me and nodding along thinking "True. Yes. Uh-Huh." until I got to your concluding paragraph at which point I thought "Wrong. No. You don't get it (or me, perhaps)."
Quote: Long way of saying... I bet you'd be okay with him fcking some other woman, but I don't think you'd be okay with him marrying some other woman. Kwis? And now sex is sex, and has its proper balance of importance within the R... and you KNOW it. Because SEX is no longer where you seek or need your validation.
Think about what you are implying in this paragraph. It is good that I am no longer seeking validation through sex but there is some magical other place in marriage where it is good or proper for me to be seeking validation. I understand why you would like to believe that this is true. I understand why it would be more societally acceptable for me to say that it is true for me but it just plain isn't. If I had to choose between never having sex again or never being married again, I would definitely choose to keep the sex. However, this has nothing to do with how much I love my H or value him as a person. If my husband, my sexuality and my marriage license were all in a burning building and I could only save one of them, I would save my husband but I would save my sexuality before I would save my marriage license. This is particularly true for me at this junction in my life because my children are almost grown and my desire to "pair-bond" is strongly linked to my maternal or nesting instinct. There is no way I would stay in an empty nest sexless marriage. I don't even have to think about it. It just wouldn't happen. If my H would feel hurt because this implies that I value his sexuality more than, for instance, his companionship, that is just because he values companionship more than sexuality. That is his preference no different than a preference for chocolate ice cream over vanilla. I need to be honest about my own preference even though it might be poorly judged by others including my H or you (not to imply that I consider you to be a judgemental type- not the case at all).
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
Okay, I get what you are saying, but I did not mean to imply that marriage is the be all, end all. You certainly can have meaningful, healthy Rs with others and not have to be married to them. Nor does the piece of paper indicate depth of love or feeling. It's symbolic, to be sure, but to give up Who You Are for it, to me, leads to the very problems we've all experienced.
I guess my point was... marrying someone DOES indicate commitment and monogamy, an intention and a pledge you make to another... Fcking someone doesn't, necessarily. It is what it is. We bring meaning to IT, but many of us flip it.
You don't need a marriage license to be committed or monogamous, and you don't have to stay monogamous just because you have a license... but I do see a big difference between the concept of marriage, and the concept of sex. I don't think of the two as interchangable. That was my point.
Mo/Corri, I had the same reaction to Corri's post. Neither thought really bothers me all that much (sex vs. marriage), although I should note that this is true because I am not currently in danger of either one of those things becoming reality. If I was, I suspect that I'd have a *much* different reaction.
But, anyway. The thought of him marrying another doesn't make me more or less nuts than the thought of him having sex with another. They are more or less equal, with the sex having an advantage over the marriage, simply because of our past problems. Meaning: I haven't reached a place in my HD-ness where my core values have now changed over to the 'other side' and I now value his love more than his penis. I still feel essentially the same as I did, only in a much more healthy and functioning place.
Hmm... this is very interesting to me. I think I've projected here... not sure.
I think I might be seeing this a bit differently since I am now divorced... I've entered the dating scene again, have had sex with another man other than the one I was with for 17 years... could be me being a Type 5/6 thing, too, as opposed to whatever Types the two of you are. Aren't you two the same Type?
I think, having the experience of divorce... that I view marriage/sex/Rs in a whole different way, especially from the views I had of them when I was married. Not better, not worse, just different.
Though it does not pain me to think of my xH having sex with someone else, nor does it even bother me to think of him marrying someone else... I am very acutely aware of what is no longer there in my life. Nothing will ever be the same again. It isn't a good thing or a bad thing... I don't even know if I can explain it. Maybe some others who have also been divorced can speak to this... I mean, you move on, you find happiness again... I dunno. I don't know what I'm trying to say.
It's just that... when it's gone, it's gone. ("It" being your first marriage.) And it takes a part of you with it. The fact that both of you are in healthier places about yourselves within your Ms, and you are still in them... to me... is IT.
Just be a bit cautious on how cavalier you think you might be on choices you have not made... the 'thought' of something happening, and then it actually happening, can be two different things.
Having been D quite a number of years ago, I will try to remember what it was like
Initially, I was torn and felt lost as to who I actually was, being I no longer had the role of "wife", although I still had to continue a relationship with my xH because of children.
But as time passed, I developed a whole new ME - like you said "not good, not bad" just different. It is who I am today and I do things a heck of a lot differently in this relationship (regardless of its major flaws) than I did in the first M.
I think the main one is I respect me more. I will not let someone take my power away from me like I did before. Some men view this as a threat. They are the insecure ones and I stayed away from them (or at least I thought I did).
Being D is not the same as being M - of course it isn't! Just like being young is not the same as being old(er) etc. etc. It's just different and as long as you like that feeling of "different" it's ok. If you don't then you need to change something in your life to adjust that feeling.
I commend you on getting through one of the worse times of your life - I know I don't want to go there again and will do everything in my power to avoid it a second time around
Take care
Heywyre
M - 57 H - 65 1st A-bomb - Nov 27/02 2nd A-bomb - Dec 13/06 together 21 years *************************** Insanity is doing something over and over and expecting different results (Albert Einstein)
Corri, I get what you're saying and it may come back to the love language concept. Since your LL is not physical touch, it makes sense that you would feel more betrayed by the marrying thought rather than the sex thought.
Myself, though, I would feel just as betrayed at the sex thought, since this is how my mind processes "love".
However, the whole point of the convo was to say that I am no longer in the obssessive hysterical jealous psycho-beotch mode that I was once in all day long. So while I do not mean to sound cavalier, it is also true that I just don't feel psychotic over "thoughts" anymore. Or at least not that much. I'm still a chick, after all.
Mo's point, however, was that neither thought... him marrying someone else vs. him having sex with someone else... bothered her one more than the other. And I'm pretty sure that Mo is a Physical Touch girl.
Funny - my ex-H did recently remarry and it hardly registered, when he was dating he told me about having sex with someone and it hardly registered. If I were to think of current H having sex with someone else I sort of just view it as a likely end of the road for us. It would bother me but what would probably bother me more is the betryal part (although in the example given it was with permission). Having been through a D I am acutely aware that I can and would get over that betrayal too. Losing the marriage ("failing") would be hard - not because of the marriage per se but because of my personality. I do view the M and sex as so connected that it is hard to say which I value more - probably the M but by only a tiny margin.
The thing I couldn't quite put my finger on... Mo... yes, I agree with you... him being married to another or him having sex with another, neither one would necessarily be worse than the other. Especially if you told him to go do it.
Were either of these things to happen in some sort of deceptive way, I'd say you may not be hurt so much by him having sex with someone else, or marrying someone else... but you may very well have issue over the deception/lying itself. ???
If that is the case... I understand and still think it is wonderful that you are in a place where neither thought particularly bothers you. It's very 'un-fused.'
It's the loss of the loyalty/trust of a marriage, that to me, hurt so much. And TO ME that meant more than the marriage OR the sex itself. And that is completely independent of how I feel about myself. I would feel, again, the same way if something were to happen to my best friend... and I am neither married to her, nor do I have sex with her.
The break-down of all of it began with loss of respect... first for myself, and then for him.
Mo, I see you as having REGAINED your self-respect, self-love (not that it was completely gone, if you know what I mean)... but in this state... your H has the freedom to be himself because you no longer need him to be a certain way toward you in order to feel a certain way about yourself.
I think I threw in an additional meaning to marriage that you weren't even discussing.
Sorry.