An End/Beginning of Year Update

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

Captain,

You helped me very much when I first came here -- I view you as very wise, and yet I continue to be completely confused by your decisions. You refer to a commitment you made to your wife and your absolute determination to honor it, yet you live an unsatisfying life to hear you describe it. You've had great personal victories in terms of weight loss and fitness that are very admirable, but you and your W seem to be locked in a type of cold war.

You refer to giving your wife reminders and making other comments that she probably interprets as slights and digs. You also set the stage for her to step up and engage in some intimacy with you again and she leaves you hanging. It's a painful thing to read about.

From what you write, she is suspicious and paranoid about losing you -- it doesn't seem at all like she's operating from a position of not caring. What is her perspective on all this? If you were describe your situation from her perspective, what would it be?

One can simultaneously honor a promise AND not be happy with how it affects your life. One example is that which we call "marriage." From the perspective of having a married life that includes sexual intimacy, yes, I am unhappy about the way it has turned out for me. In the moment when I think about that specific aspect of my life I can say that I am "unhappy." But there are other moments in my life where that issue isn't even on my radar. That wasn't so true in 1997.

There is no cold war here. That war is over and she won. I have given her space to be who she really is. This is who she is.

You asked what I might write to describe my situation from her perspective. Two things come to mind if I was writing in her voice: first, that her stopped trying to get me to have sex with him. And second, I never believed that he would take me at my word and believe that were no conditions where I'd want to sexually intimate.

The Captain