I"m in agony here...

[bombardier50]

Saffie, thank you for your insight and kind encouragement. Everything you're are saying makes perfect sense. I do feel frustrated and helpless, standing here on the sidelines, waiting for her to decide to get some help. She suffers from insomnia, which has come on strong in the past several months. I'm sure it's hormonal, but she kept blaming me for keeping her awake. I felt so much guilt from this that I moved out of the bedroom, a move I now really regret. Interestingly, after I moved out of the bedroom, her sleep did not improve. So, here I am with this poor menopausal insomniac who works as a retail women's clothing store manager, and it's the holiday season. One night last week, she was talking about her insomnia, and I asked her very gently if she thought she might be experiencing menopause. Her answer was a quick and curt "NO".

So, Saffie, since you're an intelligent, expressive woman...explain this to me. Last week, on her day off, she asked me if I wanted to photograph her nude.

That's right. Nude.

I'm an amateur photographer, and I've shot nudes before, but never my wife. I thought, hmmmm, what does this mean? Of course, being a guy in my lonely state, I thought this might be a prelude to something else. I was really excited, and relieved. "Finally!" I thought, she's coming around!

So away we went. She posed, I snapped away. She is a beautiful woman, nice body, great face. And I would look through the lens and I just ached for her so bad. And finally, after an hour of this torture, I kissed her very gently on the neck and asked her to please make love to me. Her expression changed instantly. She pulled on her robe and sat up on the edge of the bed and said that she just didn't feel like it and if she just did it to meet my needs, she would "feel like a whore". I'm sure you can imagine how I felt.

I downloaded the pictures to the computer and then couldn't bear to look at them. A few hours later, she asked me if I had worked on her pictures yet, and I said no, it was a little too hard for me right now. She came up to me and gave me a big, long hug. That's the first time she's hugged me in months.

That's not all. So just yesterday, she tells me that she has a few minutes before work, and could I take some more nudes of her, this time in her fur coat? I didn't know what to do. If I said no, I was afraid I'd hurt her feelings. If I said yes, I was afraid I'd hurt mine. I took the pictures anyway, and then I just left the room and let her get dressed. So now I have two sets of pictures on my computer that I can't bear to look at.

So, what the hell was that?