Interesting stuff this weekend. My W and I have been getting along better, especially since I am a little more than a month into the “no pressure” campaign. We went to a wedding Saturday night and even had a babysitter. We were having a great time.
At the reception, W went to bathroom or somewhere, and I ended up talking with my Mom. Some background: my father died about seven years ago, and my Mom has not remarried. Also, she was pretty drunk, so the conversation flowed. The conversation went from classical music, to how my mom and dad would listen to classical music during sex (Bolero!), to the fact that my father lost the ability to have an erection in 1977 due to a disease that ended up killing him ten years later (schleroderma); to the fact that he loved sex and so did my mom. I asked her, out of curiosity, how often they would make love, and she said about once a week. About this time, W got back and my Mom said to her, “you’ve missed an interesting conversation. Your H asked me how often I used to have sex with F.” Well, you all know what happened then. A dark cloud covered W’s face, and she went from fun-loving W to quiet, pissed-off W.
On the ride home, I asked her if she’d had a good time, and she said, “yes, up to a point.” She berated me for asking my mom about sex-frequency, and asked me why I had done that. I told her that it was just part of a much bigger conversation with her about my dad and sex, which my Mom had initiated, but my W said that she didn’t trust me anymore. Most of the rest of the ride was in silence. She brought it up in bed, later, and I tried again to explain that it was just a logical progression of the conversation, but she didn’t believe me. She said it made her sad, and that she went from happy with me, to “repulsed” by me, in a second. I decided to stop arguing with her, and just play dead, so that it would give her time to cool down.
This morning, she confronted me again, and finally got a chance to tell her the basics of the conversation, but she still questioned why I had asked my mother about sexual frequency, rejecting my “flow of the conversation” explanation. I finally asked her why SHE thought I had asked my mom, and W said, “because you want further proof of how ‘abnormal’ our sex life is.” I assured her that was not the case, that I realized that, even according to TSSM, about 40 percent of couples were in our same boat, and that I had stopped trying to “prove my case” by numbers long ago, knowing that it didn’t make a difference to our personal situation. She said that I continued to pressure her (WHAT?), by not “letting go” of proving that our marriage was abnormal, as evidenced by me asking my Mom that question. She said that she had to know that I was all right with her saying “no” to me asking her for sex. Well, I haven’t asked for sex for months, I told her, because I was trying to give her room to work out whatever she needed to work out in order to feel comfortable with moving our physical relationship to the next level. But I assured her that, if she said no to one of my advances, that would be fine. She said that she hadn’t seen me doing anything that would make her believe this, and I reminded her that I had been listening to a lot of works by the Dalai Lama (thanks Dave) and reading some Epictetus and some other stuff (e.g. Schnarch), and that I thought I was achieving a particularly high level of “inner peace” about the whole physical intimacy thing.
She then started this whole academic discussion, saying that equating sex with love was a fairly recent phenomenon in human evolution, that she didn’t necessarily need to have a physical relationship with me to feel loved, but that she was “working on” getting to the point where she could provide it to me willingly so that our marriage would be better, at least in my eyes. I agreed with her on the whole academic thing, but said that I, personally, have equated sex with love, at least in the context of a committed relationship, and, while I thought we had a great relationship, I would, personally, feel much closer to her if we could get to the point where we felt comfortable with each other’s naked body, and with sex, again. She said she wanted me to get to the point where I didn’t “need” sex anymore. I told her to stop worrying about what I needed or didn’t need. I also said, “I only ‘need’ sex to the extent that you are willing to have it with me.” She said, “Well, that not really ‘need.’” And I said, “I know.”
Time was getting late, so I tried to wind it up, saying, “we’re doing better than we were 20 minutes, ago, right?” She agreed, albeit somewhat reluctantly, so I said good bye. For good measure, as I stood up I said, “could you give me a kiss?” (I know, I’m supposed to just do it, but her face was turned, and I wanted some lips). She said, “no.” I cheerfully responded, “Okay. Have a great day!” and told myself, “Her loss. See, I’m okay with her saying ‘no,’” I know that it’s about her, not about me.
