Waiting More Than a Dozen Years

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

Before I came back over here to reply I was continuing to read your Bumpy Road thread.

I cut a bunch out of my post this morning and just trimmed it back to what you saw, but I probably left out the very best.

Given your response, you aren't ready for it.

I am hardly a shrinking violet in my life in who I be and what I do. You seem to think otherwise. You seem to think it's hard work, takes time, etc., etc., etc. It isn't and it does not.

Want to know how long it takes to transform your life? It takes this long, the time it takes you to read the following sentence.

"We got your biopsy results. It's cancer and it's malignant."

How long did it take you to read that. I came in at under 2 seconds AND when I heard those words (and those were the words my doctor said to me, to us, because my wife was with me when they broke that news), my life and more importantly my relationship to everything in life immediately and irrevocably changed.

You ask any cancer survivor who is willing to talk about their experience (because fear can crush you and talking about it can be daunting) and although we all have our different ways of dealing with the situation, the one common denominator I've found is this: complacency about life and living goes away.

You realize that "someday" or "oneday" are myths. There is only the here and the now. That can fade somewhat as your survival continues and the prospects to get to 5 years and beyond start looking promising. You can slip back into old habits and your mortlaity is just below the surface. Yet, acting frantic to race against the clock can be just as disquieting.

And that whole transformation of my life (and it was transformative) took place just a little before she decided that she no longer wanted a sexual relationship with me. She had said the following and has said a number of times since then (sometimes in frustration, sometimes in admiration): "you are the most self-contained person I've ever known. You, literally, don't need anyone." What do you hear when you read that?

She is correct in her assessment. I don't need anyone, not even her. My existence is not defined by "needing" someone else. I made that very plain at the beginning and, as a concept, it bothered her early in our relationship.

That I wish and am willing to share my life and that I choose to live my life in close proximity to people and to interact with them seems to run counter to this. It's a choice whom to allow in your life and how far. And I'm aware of the story that plays into. Marshmallow? No. Someone who is old, tired and dying and has given up certain parts of his life, yes.

As for what you think women want (and therefore apply your POV to what my wife does), assertiveness might work for you as a word to describe it AND in her case, nothing could be further from the truth. The correct word is there, you just miss the application of it.

What do women (or anyone for that matter) "want?" It's the experience of "want" that they seek, not the having or the being. In absence of the "want" because you now have what you say you "want" you replace that want with another one (want). Ours is a "wanting culture," never satisified. Many have trained for that all their lives. The man they "want," they can't have (or as Dana Carvey goes further to say "because he has a boyfriend").

It is a word game and the occurrence of our lives occurs only through the langauge we use. No language, no occurring life. No way to relate to any of it, just pure stimulus-response-reaction. But let's imagine for the moment that it is not just a word game.

So, you assert that what my wife wants is assertiveness. I'm sure you base it on some well-meaning and well-intentioned POV. In this case it simply has no ground-truth, as in facts on the ground.

Let me backfill, she and her siblings all tell me that I am so much like their father. Laid back, even keeled most of the time, dry, punny humor, and flashes of insight and knowing that seemed to come out of nowhere (how did he know that?). We all jokingly say that she married her father when she married me. But that is just a back-story.

Her second husband was a very assertive person, she would say "controlling." He always pushed back, set limits and then took steps to enforce them. Nothing physical I ever heard about, but definitely verbal dissatisfaction expressed and fairly directly at that. He had very definite opinions about the way things should be (some of which they apparently both agreed upon).

So, do you care to guess what he got for all of his assertiveness and "being a man?"

Lets see, in the last 7 years of their marriage he got no or very little sex and sexual intimacy (she refused him on that point and he was quite unhappy about that), he got a wife who started to buy a lot of clothes and shoes. The shoes, more than 200 pairs. I don't think he ever knew (but he may of suspected) that she was driving around in her hot little convertible (and she just bought a new convertible last year) and during the days she was off sleeping with her first ex-husband. Oh yes, and when the opportunity arose for another promotion and a transfer back to where they met and they first started out, that's when she told him "I'm not going."

Does this sound strangely familiar? So, what is the common factor? The only thing that I share with him is that we've both been married to her, made love to her only to have her turn sexless and a shoppper extraordinaire, and then for something that is perfectly normal as part of the relationship and next steps, she turned both of us down on what we asked for. We also share something else, though I may know it and he does not. We've both had a spouse have an affair on us. He, too, is a cancer survivor though his diagnosis came long after they were divorced.

Yes, he and I are very different and have dealt with her in completely different ways. For the longest time I only had her side of the story. But I think I have part of his side of the relationship. And if you think my loss is impressive, think about what it must have been like for him. Assertive, confident with a family and a career on the up and up. And boom, no sex and no moving back.

And until today I've never put that together in the way you are just reading it.

There is one other thing I will say about what is going on here. I know a portion of her story. She's told me what it is, what drives her.

She is invisible. No matter what she does, no matter how accomplished, she will go back to being invisible (and that is not a good thing).

So, in high school, for example, she put down her clarinet, and took up being the marching band drum majorette with this tight-fitting, busty, gold sequined outfit while twirling a flaming baton (it was the early 1960's) and I've heard plenty of "dirty old men" rememberances of her.

Only someone who is invisble would take the family car (a sedan) that they been given to drive (and it was in her name) and trade it in for a convertible to drive around in (and be noticed). When we met she was driving a Fiat convertible and she basically drove convertibles or T-Tops/sunroofed vehicles until she went into her SUV driving phase for about 6 years. The truck driving phase was when our sexlife passed into the sexless zone (less than 10 times per year).

Only someone who is invisible would have so many clothes that they take up two-thirds of our large walkin closet and three other closets in the house. Shoes, well maybe 40 pairs. Jewelry, so much that the floor standing jewelry cabinet with the mirro in the front door is getting heavy enough that its hard to move it to vacuum the carpet).

Only a person who is invisible would fill up and decorate the house (and displace stuff that I owned before we were married) so that their mark on the house would be seen. (I say that if I moved what is mine out of the house, you'd barely know I was gone).

Oh, and we joke about this, about our marriage being the best kept secret in town, but in a way it is telling. We got married on the other side of the country in a small ceremony on the side of a mountain (how fitting for me). So, our friends, family, children did not attend even though they were invited. There are a number of people who know we are married, but because she kept her last name from the last marriage (for professional reasons and I concurred with that), there are far more that don't know that.

Anyway, we held a retirement party for a friend of ours and the people that were invited to this party at our house (there were about 150 people total, probably 50-60 at any one time in our house), were mostly the friends of my wife or aquaintances with my wife but freinds and coworkers of our retiring friend. It was a great party and I was happy that we hosted it for her. As the party wrapped up around 9:30 pm, I was going around picking dishes and stuff, putting stuff in the diswasher, etc. One of the people who was left noticed and commented how nice it was that I was staying to clean up.

"I ought to, I pay the mortgage on this house every month."

How nice, he thought out loud, that I was kind and generous enough to pay the mortgage for her house.

I said to him, "John, I live here. We're married."

To him, he had seen us together for years, seen my wife in her professional setting with the same name that she had always had for as long as he had known her, and just knew this as her house. I did not see it in the way then that I see it now.

I know my own story and I know you have one, too.

But enough for now.