Engagement

[SolidMechanic]

It's been a really busy couple of weeks. Between business travel, buying a car, selling a car, having way too much work to do, and helping kids with midterms, I've hardly had a chance to breathe. I've been looking for opportunities to connect with W, and have had some success. We've been able to spend a little more time together up in our room before bed time just talking, and engaging in some sort of physical activity - massage or something like that. We've been more openly affectionate with each other, at both routine occasions, like leaving and coming home. And we have increased our levels of affection at less typical times, too. It's not sex, but it's connection, and it feels nice for a change.

One thing I have told her is that I was not going to hide my sexual self from her any more. That it might have given her the false impression that I was OK with the way our marriage had become. This came up when we were in the bedroom and W was giving me a foot massage. She offered to do it for me, and I can't remember her ever having done that for me before (she may have and I just don't remember). It felt quite nice, and she even said that I have nice looking feet! As a joke, I told her I was getting aroused, and she joked back, "I didn't know you were into that kind of thing." It's nice to have light conversations about this kind of thing. Anyway, we were talking afterwards and holding hands. It was a warm, intimate moment, and lo and behold, I started getting aroused. And I told her so. And at this point I told her that I wasn't going to hide my sexuality from her any more. This is who I am, and we need to deal with this reality. She didn't react to my statement one way or the other, but that's OK.

We started looking at marriage counselors a couple of weeks ago and came up with a short list the previous weekend. I asked her to call the one that she liked best, and set something up. I suppose I could call the counselor myself, but a) she was not my first choice, and b) I am looking for my wife to take some ownership over our problems. Well, W is quite introverted and hates making phone calls (she's been putting off calls she needs to make to straighten out old medical bills), so it didn't surprise me when she didn't set anything up last week. So I reminded her this evening. She said "Yeah, I know, don't nag me." That's bull, really. I hadn't said anything in over a week. If I let it slide, nothing would happen. I didn't point that out to her, because I would just be setting up a father/daughter dynamic that I want to avoid. I hate being relationship cop, too.

It's possible she doesn't understand yet that we are on the brink. Or she doesn't care. Or she's confused by my behavior. I don't act like I want to leave. I act like I love her, which I do. I guess it's hard for her to reconcile the seemingly contradictory ideas that I can both love her and leave her. I'm just not capable of following the "ILYBINILWY" script, or the adultery script, or the MLC script.

Anyway, we'll see how the marriage counseling thing goes this week. She says that she doesn't know what to say to the counselor. How about something like "I don't feel like I can make love with my husband, and I'm afraid he's going to leave me?" That would make a good start. Unless you are afraid to talk about sex.

SM