I know I've forgotten so many important points from last night's conversation, it's very difficult to remember all the important stuff to post from such a long and interesting conversation.
However... here is one fragment that I recovered from the trash heap.
At one point while we were talking, W did something I think is VERY significant... she actually CONNECTED THE DOTS on our desire-difference "problem" ("issue", "opportunity"?). She was trying to explain how it doesn't take much for her to feel pressured, and that this can happen from something I say or do that seems so small and insignificant, and she said something like "It's like when we were first married, and you said that you were ALWAYS ready and rarin' to go, and when I wasn't, it felt like all this pressure on me all the time..." - and she was comparing it to the present time where she "feels pressured" because I still want sex and intimacy with her even though she "can't" (meno issues). Hoo, boy! So, if I understand correctly, what she's saying (and I'm not real sure she realizes just how much she let slip) is that she knows this has always been an issue with us! She knows it, but she keeps trying to sidetrack the issue. It causes me to want to ask her "What is it you're so afraid of?" It truly seems like she is afraid to let me SEE her. Afraid to let me truly FEEL her. Of course, this whole time, I've also been afraid - afraid to "put myself out there" by trying to initiate, because I might get rejected (who am I kidding... I knew darn well I'd get shot down more often than not). I've even been afraid to talk with her on a lot of topics. Man, it hurts like he!! to realize that. How pathetic is it that I have to "set the stage" in advance, just to get to talk with my wife?
So this morning, while she was otherwise occupied, I spent some time re-reading most of Chapter 1. W has gone now to bring DD20 to her LAST exam at University, and she took the book with her. She'll be gone at least a couple of hours, so she'll get a bit deeper into it. I'm looking forward to hearing what she has to say about it. The first part of the chapter relates a story of a couple in therapy, and it is pretty graphic in its discussion of sex between them and the issues surrounding it, so you think "Okay, I'm reading a book that's primarily about sex", but then as the chapter wears on, it becomes much more a discussion about the dynamics of marriage and debunking of widely-held beliefs about love and intimacy, so it'll be REALLY interesting to hear her take on it. Regardless of whether she continues to read it, I'm going to be ordering my own copy (this is a Library book), because this is a book I'm going to try to live by from now on. And I will no longer be willing to apologize to W or anyone else for expressing who I am and what I want out of life...
