Hmm. Well, sex has been a non-issue for the last few days. I'm working on installing central air in our ancient money pit, but for now, only our bedroom has AC. It's been hotter'n'dammit here lately, and we've had the entire family in the bedroom at night. During the day it's too hot to think about sex without melting. Maybe you could manage it under a cold shower, but that's about it.
I've been working on more GAL stuff. I've gotten a little more active over on the No More Mr. Nice Guy online support group, and another member and I are going to try to start a "real" group in our general geographic area. One of the warning signs for "Nice Guy Syndrome" is a man with no male friends. Well, I had guy friends before I got married, but that coincided with moving back to my home town after four years of college. My college friends weren't there, and my high school friends were gone for the most part, too. I got so wrapped up in my wife and my marriage that I just didn't go out and make new friends. Now my good friends--male and female--outside my marriage are all people I've met online. Some of them I've never seen face-to-face. Part of the reason for that is that I'm a shy guy who just doesn't reach out and take the risk of making friends. Part of it is that I live in a part of the country that's more hostile than most to my main interests, so the people I meet through those hobbies tend to live elsewhere. So now I'm going to force myself to take a look around and really talk to people. We'll see how that goes.
My wife and I had a good talk the other night about where we are now and how much progress we've made. I was trying to tell her--clumsily--that I understood how much she's been working with me on our marriage and I appreciated it. We ended up talking about a lot of things. She still seems surprised every time I talk about how much it hurt when she was rejecting me and I didn't understand. It's as if we've never talked about it before.
I'm starting to wonder what will happen when the new school year starts. I know she's dreading it. I wish she'd just leave; I don't think she'd be out of work for long. Our field is very short of people locally, and nobody can afford to treat us the way she's being treated. But I don't want to push her to solve it my way.
