Afterall...this is MY life II

[Burgbud]

I doubt I can do this in the fifteen minutes I've got but it's the Friday before a holiday weekend, so why not give it a stab?

Mojo quotes from another thread:

However, what I have learned with hindsight is 20/20 vision is that what I coulda/shoulda done was started to live (enact boundaries, reveal my preferences) within my seriously flawed marriage as if I was living within my ideal marriage not just my ideal sex life. ... If you can't talk openly with your spouse about sex, desire, love, your relationship, your preferences and choices that need to be made regarding these issues then your marriage is rife with fusion and s*cks like a lemon.

Whenever the porn topic comes up in your thread you always get folks who seem to be telling you that porn isn't as big a deal as you make it out to be. But you say, and you're entirely correct, that porn is exactly as big a deal as you make it out to be. I don't have a problem with that and I suspect that Corri, at least, doesn't either.

I have some suspicions about you, too. I suspect that if everything else was wonderful in your marriage and you felt very emotionally connected to H in other ways, the porn wouldn't bother you much. I suspect that if H got hit by a bus or hooked up with a stripper and ran off to Mexico and you subsequently found the man of your dreams who was perfect for you in every way except he liked his porn, it wouldn't bother you much. I suspect that porn bothers you a lot because sex is the area where you've long felt the most emotionally connected to your H. You guys struggle to find an emotional connection anywhere else but you've always had it in your sex life, and the porn leads you to question whether you've even got that. There's now nowhere in your marriage where it's just you and him, connected.

That doesn't make porn the issue in your marriage. It does make it a big issue to you, understandably.

As for suggestions as to what you might do, I'll offer some. Do what Mojo says she coulda/shoulda done. Start living your life. If you want to f#ck your husband then f#ck your husband. Don't bother for one second whether it's an undeserved reward for him, that's where you're going off course. It's about you. If what you really want is to make love but when you see him you don't want to make love *to him*, then don't. That's about you, too. Can he make it any more clear that he's going to do exactly whatever it is he wants to do, regardless of what you might see as you punishing or rewarding him?

Is there ever one second of the day when he's not him? Is that one of the things that you find attractive about him?

So let me ask...are you scared to be who you really are in your M because your H doesn't like who you really are? If that's the case, how good are you at being what he wants you to be?

In however much more time you're willing to give to your M, do you owe it to him to show him the real you and let him make the decision to love you or not based on that, rather than on how well you can meet his vision of who you should be?