Waiting More Than a Dozen Years

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

In you, I see an unconfident man, who has no reason to be.

I only have a few minutes this morning before I have to go and teach a class, so I will make this short.

You completely miss the point.

Confidence has nothing to do with this and my easy going style made your challenge far too easy. Now, if the challenge was make my waitress orgasm five times (while still doing her job) that might have been more of a challenge.

The only person who really decides whether you have anything to offer is not you, it is only the person that accepts you whom decides that.

But much more relevant is the thought that had I followed my intuition 25 years ago and held to it, I might or might not have had a sexless life, but I certainly would not have had a sexless marriage because that would not/could not have happened.

And that is the point you miss.

I have two journals that are filled with the musings of a discarded husband (That's what I titled them in 1984-1986: The Journals and Journey of a Discarded Husband, with the tagline subtitle: "At Least I Had a Sense of Humor About It."

What is interesting as a retrospective is that I went from the serious job of examining my life and putting it back together, to what I thought I learned and what I had to offer. It was confifent, it was insightful, and it reflected an exciting life I had rebuilt. I am exceptionally clear about what I wnat in and why. I am also clear about what I had to offer at the time. I can reproduce that here but looking at it now, it is utter male bovine excrement.

The point is that there is something completely different about being confident and self-assured and the act of trying to sell the idea that you have something to offer. Very often what others see in you as being the your qualities are things we know about but can't see what others see. Why? Because we are immersed in who we are and all the experiences that we use to distiguish ourselves in relationship to the world around us. It is simply the air we breathe and we are largely unaware of it.

So, don't confuse the view of and a way of being of "I have nothing to offer" with lack of confidence. One has absolutely nothing to do with the other. What it does relate to is that had I maintained that POV and gone on with my life, intentionally uninvolved with ANY long-term relationship and (certainly not marriage), I would not be here "complaining about" my sexless marriage. In fact I would not be here at all.

And if my life had remained sexless for the past 25 years after my first marriage, I would have known why...it would have been on my own terms and my own choice, not necessarily someone else's.

And reflecting back over how the past 25 years have gone for me at a sexual level, I made a huge mistake when I thought that I might once again have something to offer and thought I was ready to go meet the world and so who else was out there.

I would have been far better off just being the father and the man I was being 25 years ago and leaving it at that.

Th only redeeming factor in this situation is this: I have brought this to myself and brought myself to this life to learn to remind myslef of something about the way life is.

If only I could remember what that is....