Waiting More Than a Dozen Years

[Young at Heart]

Captain;

Reading your posts has taught me a lot about patience that is not within my basic nature. In some of the most recent posts, I see a more reflective focus than thoughts about the future. Perhaps that what year ends are about for some.

I am reminded about the section in the Book Future Shock on stress points. Your wife's medical issues coupled with your own strong feelings of sexual/intimacy loss are probably giving you quite a few stress points.

May I suggest that you find some time as the care-giver in your relationship for you? Allow yourself to also think of some happy things you can do in this coming year. Depending on where you live, there are social agencies that provide family care-givers a needed periodic break.

Good luck

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

Young@Heart

Thank you for the kind words. Patience is one thing that I was apparently given at birth by the truckload (though it does run low at times). It's been 12 days since her surgery and she is, literally, off her feet.

Most of the time I camp out in my "man cave." Wireless routers and printers give me access to most of what I need, everywhere throughout the house. She is gradually recovering and beginning to do her work from the bed. People come by from time to time to spend time with her. It has given me a pretty good idea of what quarantine could be like during some sort of pandemic outbreak.

Last night my stepdaughter came by and brought us dinner (actually her mom ordered it, she picked it up). She offered to give me a break if I needed it. I let the two of them laugh together while I did the dishes.

When I came back upstairs, they were laughing about a "voice response" Santa Clause. In one of the responses, my wife said "I don't do threesomes." I almost said "you don't even do twosomes," but thought better of that.

After getting my wife ready for bed, I setteld down to watch the last period of the hockey game and then the Texas/Alabama game, while waiting for the snow.

I do a lot of waiting and thinking these days.

[Walking]

Feeling "slightly more daring," Virginia? I hope you understand that question/statement.

In the Carpe Diem sense ... yes ... in the American Lit Walt Whitman historical genre ... not so much!!

Captain - your post earlier this week was the first of a series of messages or "signs" I've been sent over the rest of the week that have provided the beginnings of some really fundamental thinking and healing for me. Thank you.

The thought, or feeling, that "something is wrong" is a powerful and at times debilitating mind set and I've been a victim of that for too long.

The MWD Divorce Busting (and SSM) philosophy is based around the premis that the only thing we have the capacity to change is our own thought and behaviour patterns. By changing our own behaviour, the behaviour of those around us will change in response. I've learned a lot over the past few years by understanding that. Your post took me to the next step (and it's been a theme of your writing, but one I only just "got")to truely understanding it's only "wrong" if I think it's wrong.

I finally understood when I read that post that it's not what happens to me it's how I react to what happens to me. Likewise, it's not what I think it's what that thinking makes me feel (ie wrong, not good enough, unworthy etc).

But, as an adult, you can notice it and, once noticed, look to see what path you might choose, including the conversation of the 5-year old that once told you "something's wrong." You asked about being able to disassociate, this is part of it too, but I call it awareness

I didn't understand this - but over the course if this week I've come to. I've realised this week that we all have foolish ideas about who we are - and many, many rigid rules about how life ought to be lived - but we can change those rules. I can change those rules for me so they suit a 39 year old woman, rather than an adolecent girl ... I hadn't gotten around to doing that.

Yesterday I picked up a book that I bought 5 years ago when I first left my husband. Louise Hay, You can heal your life. I read it at the time, but obviously I wasn't ready for all the lessons she has to teach.

Ms Hay's hypothosis is that what we THINK about ourselves becomes the truth for us. She considers that we are all responsible for eveything in our lives, the best and the worst. Every thought we think is creating our future. Each one of us creates our experience by our thoughts and our feelings. (She even lists physical illnesses and suggests they all have their root in some way of thinking or a belief about ourselves that we create ... eg - Menstrual problems - rejection of one's femininity. Guilt, fear. Belief that the gentials are sinful or dirty or Cancer - Deep hurt. Longstanding resentment. Deep secret or grief eating away at the self. Carrying hatreds. "What's the use?" and my personal favourite because it's a huge health issue for the Indigneous people I work with and nothing has ever made more sense to me than this explanation ... Carbuncle (boils) - Poisonous anger about personal injustices(and here I thought it was about nutrition and hygiene)!!!!

It's all about awareness. It's not about making myself less involved in what's going on around me in order to "disassociate" it's being sufficently aware of what's going on and why to be aware of how appropropriate or not any reaction to the situation is. Aha..!!!!

Thank you for taking the time to discuss those issues in your post. You've helped me break through a mental block that I've been grappling with for a really long time. I'm very grateful.

I head back to the bush today to return to work after 4 weeks with friends and family in my home state. I'm excited about what this new thinking and understanding means for me and I'm looking forward to what the new year will bring.

Thanks again. V

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

It's late (or early depending upon your POV) and I've been searching through the latest information on various discussion boards on trailer music and my personal favorite composers. Before I went to bed I thought I'd drop over here and see what is up.

V, I'm glad that what I've said clicked in a way that you finally "got." Pretty remarkable, huh? This is the way I've thought and processed info for as long as I can remember.

Just remember that some of the qualities you've built as a result of "something's wrong" can be some of our very best (even though you can still sense the personal dissatisfaction of the "something's wrong"). The next step is whether you are a victim of that or you make an active choice to go forward with that "way of being." And yes, lots of people have been trained to react in a certain way. Whether that's training you've provided or their own experience does not really matter, you are not aware of that andwhether you wish to allow that to continue unnoticed.

They, like my wife, might refuse to alter their behavior in the face of being presented (confronted) with their behavior. But that is different from them not knowing.

Anyway, have fun with the noticing of the reactions, and for fun make up outrageous interpretations for reactions to what is happening around you.

Keep me posted.

Your captain

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

Virginia

One other thing about the separation between what happens and how you feel about it. It all originates in language, something I have emphasized here and throughout my life. So, what you feel is given by what you say about it. It is all in the language one uses (in what you say about what happens and how you feel about it).

Time to fix breakfast and take a conference call.

Later

[Walking]

G'day Captain

If you're around, would you mind going over to the MLC board and taking a look at Drummerboy's thread. He's going through a tough time and one of the things he's questioning is the impact of his wife's hysterectomy. I know you've researched the physical and other impacts of h (particularly from the husband's point of view) and I think he could really benefit from your wisdom.

How are you? How's the thinking going?

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

How are you? How's the thinking going?

A mind is a terrible thing....

Actually, I am adequate.

In my neck of the world, the John Edwards admission about his mistress' child being his is dominating local news. Of course, the fact that their house is just a couple of miles from mine would explain that. I have some thoughts on that situation since John Edwards is less than a month older than I am.

During the last couple of weeks I've gone back to writing on my autobiography. Made some good progress, lots of stuff that I simply hadn't thought about in a very long time and some interesting insights into what has driven my choices. I have an advantage in that I have some previous journaling that gives me contemporaneous views of how I looked at the world.

One of the things I've noticed over the last couple of weeks is that there is a way of being that I take on around caregiving. It isn't like I take on some other mantle, but more like there is a part of my daily routine that I "drop" off my persona in the day-to-day interaction with my "working world" persona.

I relate to it as a core part of who I am that extends back to myself as a child (taking care of and looking out for my brother). For me it's a "quiet place."

But I have also asked myself a question that I haven't asked before: Do I even want a sexual relationship with my wife any longer? My automatic answer was "yes."

Now I'm not so sure.

[Young at Heart]

....Do I even want a sexual relationship with my wife any longer? My automatic answer was "yes." Now I'm not so sure.

I realize that you are in a much different place that I am, having dealt with an extended SSM. However, at only 5 months without sex with my wife, I have asked myself if I can feel brave enough and comfortable opening up my soul and vulnerability to rejection again. Part of my "fear" is that I have not yet seen any actions that would document a change on the part of my LD wife. I have heard some recent words, but seen no physical actions from her that indicate a willingness to treat me differently.

I would appreciate it if you could share a little more about what you are thinking and why you are "not so sure."

Thank you and good luck in your care giving role.

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

I am still processing this myself, so understand that this is not some well thought out reply.

I have assumed, for all these years, that if my wife wanted to restart a sexual component, for whatever reason, that I would naturally say yes. As has been noted by others, in other threads, it's not so much the sex and the sexual release as it is the closeness and the intimacy that is shared along with the act itself. I have never been one who would sleep with anyone simply because I had the opportunity. It is not who I am.

I simply assumed that because I desired that level of intimacy once again, that if the chance occurred, I would take it.

Now, this is a woman I have not even slept in the same bed with for the past five years except when we travel and then only when there is one bed to sleep in. Before that, I would at least sleep in the same bed most of the time. It's been so long since we've been in a shower together (until just recently) that I could not even tell you when it was. Maybe 14 or 15 years.

Initially, to get my wife into and out of the shower and washed up really took me getting into the shower with her. Now I'm able to get her into the shower and onto a shower chair. It was during one of these most recent showers that this question arose (for me).

It was never something I had asked myself before. And the internal answer was surprising.

By the time my wife chose to be non-sexual in this marriage, our sex life whad already diminished down to once every eight months or so, and it had already been a source of frustration and complaint for me.

So, this sense of not being sure is a new one for me. I wonder, for example, if it's just coming from a sense of "we've been non-sexual for so long, that any sexual overture from her would be suspect."

Part of that is probably triggered by my having to provide so much care for her at this time. Part of it may simply be "habit." Another part may be me just recounting my life in an autobigraphy. But I was surprised that the question even came up (for me).

There are some significant anniversaries coming up for me. In two weeks, it will be 24 years since my second wife and I first met. In 4 weeks it will be one year since my mother died. In eight weeks it will be 24 years since we first slept together and in 11 weeks it will be 13 years since we last made love.

We are walking up on 13 years of a sexless marriage, not just SSM. So, in 2 weeks when we reach the 24 year milepost, more than half of that time will bhave been spent in a sexless abstinence and when we get to the "13 year" milepost, 74% of the time in that marriage will have been sexless.

Why change?

I'm still sorting that out.

[Young at Heart]

Thank you for sharing.

I think you have raised a fair question for you to have an answer for. I would think that your wife would be grateful of your care for her during her recovery. I would further assume that she would want to bestow on you some special gift as an appreciation for what you are doing.

She gave you a Christmas gift that you found special. It would also not be surprising for her to want to give you some other kind of gift as a continued statement of appreciation. Most likely it will be a material gift and not one that will make you have to evaluate your acceptance.

For me, if my wife were to say she wanted to have sex with me tonight; I would probably say thank you, but I need to work my way into that. While I can almost 100% guarantee that I will not have to make such a choice, I don't think I would now be willing to open my heart/soul completely up to intimacy only to find myself rejected again tomorrow.

This fear of emotional rejection is something that I need to work on overcoming.

Thank you.