All right, I'm having one of my bitter, analytical moods right now. I've been studiously avoiding references to sex since we made love on Thursday the 2nd. She was feeling pressured, so I'm trying not to pressure her. And this afternoon she actually reached out and touched my butt when I leaned over in the kitchen. That hasn't happened in months.
But I made the mistake, tonight, of asking her whether she still feels pressured. "Well . . . not really." Not really? What does that mean? "I meant no. I misspoke." I know you better than that . . . just tell me. "No, I misspoke. I meant no. I don't feel pressure."
On the one hand, I don't believe her.
On the other, it would madden me to be constantly second-guessed and treated like I might not be telling the truth.
On the third hand, the last time she finally admitted to feeling the pressure, it was after weeks of telling me how happy she was.
On the fourth hand, the book I'm reading right now says men think of women as liars because women contradict their past statements, but women see no contradiction because they're expressing the truth of the moment--and they express it as if it has always been that way and always will be. So if she felt happy yesterday, she expressed happiness as if she'd always been happy. If she feels pressure today, she will express that feeling as if she has always felt pressure. It's not literal truth the way a man thinks of it, but an expression of what she feels at the time. I have to tell you, that sounds like patronizing crap to me, but it does explain a lot of behavior.
Maybe to her it feels like she just had sex four days ago, so why would I bring it up again already? But to me it feels like she's had four days of no talk about sex at all, and any pressure should be off--but without SOME pressure from me, sex is going to be off the table permanently. She's just not interested.
I'm still trying to wrap my head around the basic conflict in the advice I've gotten. At one point, people say to back off and avoid any pressure. At the other extreme, everyone says to man up and assert control of the relationship. At any given moment, it seems, one or the other does work--but the catch is that she won't tell me which works when; if I'm a "real man" I should just magically know the answer, apparently. The answer is either to ignore her sexually or to take her roughly in the barn--choose wisely!
You know, when I was a kid, some idiot thought I might be a genius and I was invited to spend a weekend at IMSA, this creepy school for brilliant teenagers near Chicago. They didn't allow cars, they didn't play football, and they burned their own mascot in effigy at a pep rally while we were there. It was more or less a place for people who were too far beyond their peers to be able to function in a normal school. I did not enjoy my stay there. In particular, I remember my roommate. He was obsessed with Dungeons 'n Dragons. The moment we met, before I'd put down my sleeping bag, he had a puzzle for me. I was supposed to choose which of three doors in a cave to open. Two were death and one was life, and there were no markings, no differences in the doors, blah blah blah.
Basically he wanted to play a monkey dominance game by keeping me guessing at a puzzle he'd designed to be impossible. He never did explain why his choice of door was the correct one; I don't know if there was any rhyme or reason to it.
I hated that son of a bitch and his guessing game.
I don't like guessing games.
Anyway, I'll probably feel better in the morning. I'll get up early, take a walk with my wife, and we'll see. Don't read too much into my late-night rantings; I need a way to vent a little, and this is it.
