Waiting More Than a Dozen Years

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

Wow. SSM is not your problem. Why in the world did you marry this demanding, domineering hypochondriac?

First, I question the classification of her as a hypochondriac. And I point to what I did as a child to indicate that I am VERY self-aware on these issues, probably moreso than most people.

As for the rest, the simple answer is that twenty-three years ago, this is not what I would have predicted as the path we would be on. Eighteen years ago, when we decided to get married, despite the difficulties we encountered, it seemed like a good idea. Unlike my two previous love relationships, this one (as I've mentioned previously) always had a degree of challenge to it. Maybe that's what happens when an ENTP (me) is in relationship to an ENTJ (her). But at the time and with the information I had available, I made the choice that I did.

Ten years ago this month (August 1999), when asked, I said I would have made the same choice even though we had already gone two years without any sex. She was still in post-operative recovery and we were dealing with various post-operative side effects. But the football-sized fibroid on her uterus and the softball-sized cyst on her right ovary were gone. You want to talk to me about health care reform, I'll tell you about the insurance bureacrats over the seven-year stretch that seemed more intent on profit than health-care. At that time, however, my hope was that when we revisited this, that she would have a change of heart and the part of her reasoning that was tied to the gynecological issues could change.

Quite simply, I was wrong about that.

None of this happened overnight. Unlike my previous marriage where my sex-life and my whole relationship changed, literally, overnight with the birth of my son, this was (and is) a slow, gradual process.

Now, given the benefit of 23 years of hindsight, I would not have made the same choice. Ultimately, I would have been better off never getting involved with anyone else after my first marriage ended, concentrated on being the great father that I did become and just left it at that.