The Bumpy Road to Recovery #2

[Bagheera]

This week's episode: Not the best of Weekends, or How Bagheera Screwed Up

In last week's post, I talked about the most recent issue that my wife and I are dealing with in the sexual arena. Part of that issue (her inability to respond positively to some spontaneous show of passion on my part) stems from the fact that she feels like she is already being pushed -- HARD -- to maintain a sexual frequency that is significanlty higher than her 'natural' desire (for now, at least). To her great credit, she's been able to Just Do It! and enjoy it, letting me take the lead and set the pace, but in my enthusiasm I pushed things TOO hard and kept her tachometer in the RED a bit too long.

Typical male, or typical Bagheera (or both). She really needed me to back off a notch or two, and give her some breathing room. Which, last week, I tried to do. Until Friday night.

Date nights always get me. We go out, we have a good time together (with no kids around), we connect emotionally, and I want her -- plain and simple. I don't intend for it to be or feel like an 'obligatory' thing, something that has to happen (which admittedly ruins the romance of it): it's just how I'm feeling after a night out with her. And last Friday night, it didn't happen, and I got miffed by it. And if I had just shut up there and let it go, we could have had a nice weekend anyway. But NOooooo....for whatever reason, I got really pissed off and broke out my laundry list of complaints about her: everything that I had been keeping to myself over the past few months came out in a nice little tirade.

I know better than this. I've read the books, I understand now, after all the years of doing it wrong, how to bring up disagreements and handle them in a non-destructive way. I talk about it here. My temper tantrum was wrong on a few levels:

(1) The root issue was about sex: her desire to curl up with a book for the evening, and my desire to cap the evening off with a nice roll in the hay. Everything else was superfluous.

(2) I broke out the first horseman, CRITICISM, and attacked hard. This hurt her and made her very defensive, and, of course, resolved --> nothing <--.

(3) The issues were primarily ones that I consider to be what the Gottman's call "perpetual issues:" things about her personality and the way that she does things that I really need to just accept and not ask her to change. And I thought that I had done that: we have both been working on the things that are most important to us to change, and have been learning to accept the rest (at least for now...baby steps).

So yeah, I was a jerk, and deserved a night...or two...on the couch. It's also an indicator that I still have too much of the "Nice Guy" in me --> in that as long as I'm 'getting laid' I tend to keep all my other complaints / issues to myself, rather than discussing them (outside of the bedroom) in a calm, honest way with her, and allowing her the chance to air HER issues with me. So meanwhile, the issues quietly stacked up, and when the 'getting laid' part got threatened, they came blasting out in a not so nice way.

By Saturday night, I was ready to talk and make-up, but she wasn't. We did, at least spoon and sleep in the same bed.

By Sunday night, she was ready to make-up, but I had 'shut down' my desire so hard (after Friday and Saturday night failures), that I turned her down. The woman *rarely* initiates, but I just couldn't get myself into the mood to respond properly.

So now it's Monday, and we're still out of step. Hopefully, we've both had enough of a "time out" to get back 'on the road' again soon.

Also, it rained...all weekend, and it's still raining today.

So yeah, guys. Chew me out for not being able to follow my own advice and supposed knowledge in this area. I've still got a long ways to go toward being the man I want to be, and the man who really turns her on.

-- B.