Waiting More Than a Dozen Years

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

I really haven't given an update. Been thinking about it but just decided to be quiet for awhile and see what, if anything it brought me.

It's been 151 months since my last sexual intimacy. The days, weeks, months, and years keep adding up.

If you go back to mid August, there was lots of anger, silence and gnashing of teeth. My wife was not speaking with me.

After two weeks the ice finally broke. I did not do what I typically do (which is to go sit down and discuss things with her). I'm already sleeping alone and so not speaking or even eating together was just a few more minutes of silence. I turned off the TV so that even when she came downstairs, there wasn't anything on as a pretense to be in the room with me.

What broke the ice was this: I had been scheduled to speak at a civics group which she heads and I had been on that schedule for several months in advance. We hadn't discussed what I would present or how I would do it or anything, so she had no idea of whether I would be the consummate professional or just embarass her in front of her friends in the organization (mostly women).

I showed up prepared, went about setting up the presentation and when it came my to my time, I was the consummate professional with 15 slides to lead people through an hour long presentation. At the end, the people who attended were telling me (and my wife) that this was the best seminar that they had ever had. Maybe it was the fact that I hadn't embarassed her, maybe it was all these women who focused their attention on me, but it statrted with my wife telling me that I had done a wonderful job.

That began to open the conversation without argument. But it was very tentative at first.

But the ultimate outcome was and is there is no going back. There will never be any more sexual intimacy in this marriage. I've been living with that for the last couple of months.