In spite of my best efforts, I still haven’t even begun to master the PM idea that I shouldn’t try to figure out W and understand her side of our SSM. So this may be way off base, but the “mothers” have me back into analyzing mode. The question is, do those of you familiar with my sitch think that I could be W’s “father”?
W was the third of four, and was very obviously her father’s favorite. (If you knew her siblings, the reasons would be obvious.) Where I had to work for everything I got, her father was the type that pretty much indulged her. The month before we were married, I remember her telling her father that she needed to do some Christmas shopping. Without even being asked, he peeled off a couple of $100 bills for her – and this was back in 1975 when $100 was still a fair amount of money. I’m not sure why that made such an impact on me, but that’s about the only thing that stands out in my memory of that trip. It was just so foreign to what I was accustomed to. Of course she had her own car, and pretty much anything else she wanted too.
I’ve told you about her money problems. I’ve also said that she’s a SAHM. Before we had kids, she spent 12 years as a SAHW. So for our entire M, she’s been completely dependent upon me for her financial support. Things are marginally better now, but when I asked for the D and went to the C, my number one complaint wasn’t sex, but that I felt that she was totally dependent on me. What I said was that I was doing all of the work in the R; I was providing all of the emotional support. Like Mojo and HM said, I was the strong one in the R. She had completely abdicated to that strength and leaned on me for everything.
Now, having heard this mother stuff, I’m wondering if I was a replacement father. I have no doubt at all that she loves me, respects me, appreciates me, admires me, and all those other things. The only thing she seems to have a problem with is f*cking me. Mojo says that most men aren’t motherf*ckers – well, I would venture to say that most women aren’t fatherf*ckers either. Maybe I’m too worried about figuring her out. Maybe I’m too quick to latch onto any theory that comes down the pike and offers any kind of explanation for W’s behavior. But if she saw me as a “father”, that could explain her seeming discomfort at feeling sexual with me.
