Your story breaks my heart... I can just feel the "thud" as you walk into that brick wall.
What if you had watched a program where at the end the two people sit down to a beautiful meal together--let's say it's pasta (like in "Lady and the Tramp"), exquisitely prepared, violin playing in the background, gorgeous sunset... they're holding hands and looking deeply, blissfully into each other's eyes... and your W looks at this scene and says, "Gee, men always want pasta so much. I know you like it a lot, too... boy, I'd hate to be you."
So you say, "Well, the pasta they're eating on this program is homemade with the finest ingredients, and the sauce is absolutely wonderful. I know; I've had a taste."
She replies, "I don't see why you can't be satisfied with opening a can of Spaghetti-o's when you want pasta."
You say, "Spaghetti-o's are only the merest inadequate hint at what pasta can be. Besides, the pleasure they are experiencing is only partly due to the quality of the food... the biggest and most important part is that they are sharing this beautiful, delicious meal together... each one knowing that the other is happy and satisfied."
And she replies, "I'll just have my can of Slim Fast. I'm sure the pasta can't be THAT good."
Her comment, "are you mad at me?" really sounds like something from the distant past... you don't say that to a peer and partner... it's the child in us that wants to know if someone is "mad" at us. No one asks that kind of question to a colleague at work, for instance.
I wonder whose face she sees on yours when she lets you know that you aren't going to "get" to her no matter how hard you try... That comment really makes me feel like she's testing you.
But you have to ask yourself, why do I keep on wanting sex with someone who so clearly doesn't want me? What important person in your deep past are you still trying to get to love you?
As you know, supposedly (or "supposably" as a friend of mine used to insist on saying...) we attract the perfect partner who will challenge us with our earliest issues, and stomp on those old, bruised places so that we can finally resolve them and heal.
