Where everybody knows your name...but not really

[MJontheMend]

The theme from Cheers was running through my mind as I was thinking about posting here again this morning. I see you guys as a line of bartenders upon whom I am once again going to vent my current batch of marital woes.

Actually things have been pretty good overall. I learned an important thing about myself, my sexuality since I last posted. Due to our recent twice-a-week scheduled sex arrangement, my H and I had definitely the longest running period of actually having sex approximately twice-a-week in the history of our almost 19 year marriage. The thing that I learned about myself is that (who'd of thunk ) if I actually do get laid about twice a week,I'm good. I feel very little urge to have more sex or MB, I don't fantasize much or even think much about sex. It becomes a non-issue. So, this makes me happy because it makes me feel more normal.

So my current problem has to do with the fact that the twice-a-week schedule didn't stick. My H stopped "showing up" on Wednesdays though he did keep up with the weekend commitment. (I should add here that both of us have been striving to be good partners otherwise in our marriage so contributing issues are not in play.). Here is what I think was my contribution to the problem. I think I am stuck between the desire to maintain the illusion/delusion that my H actually wants to have sex with me and the desire to actually have what is a satisfactory amount of sex for me. So the first few weeks my H didn't show up on Wednesday, I made excuses for him in my own mind. Instead of saying to myself "He doesn't want to have sex with you.", I told myself "We had a busy day there wasn't enough time for sex." or "He's just kind of stressed about his work situation." etc.. Anyway, this Wednesday there was really no good reason we couldn't have gotten together. Neither of us had work or social commitments and no new and/or unusual stressors were at play. But right from the get-go my H was in crabby-funk mode. Here is the weird thing- back in the "bad old days" I would have immediately assumed that this was his way of indicating that he had "a headache" and no sex would be forthcoming but things have been good enough lately that I had built up a sort of vat of good will towards him that allowed me to believe that he was just in a bad mood for some reason that didn't have to do with sex. So, I didn't react in any sort of bad way. Just indicated that I was sorry he was feeling funky and went about my business the rest of the day.

Wednesday evening my H had a few beers and he approached me and indicated that he wanted to talk about something privately. He said " I just wanted to let you know that I am aware of the fact that I haven't been meeting our schedule on Wednesdays.". I had two responses to this statement. On the one hand, I recognized that my H was making an effort to accept responsibility for his behavior and that he was doing this because he values our relationship so my first response was to say "Well, we have been pretty busy.". My H responded to this with "Well, we weren't busy today.". Now, I know that he was only trying to take full responsibility for "not showing up" by saying this but my emotional reaction to this statement was to burst into tears because I heard it as "There was no good reason for me to not have sex with you today except for the fact that I just didn't/don't want to have sex with you.".

So, there you have it, just call me CeMar-female version I'm sure I deserve it, but I can't help it, I want to be wanted/desired sexually by my H and I don't know how to keep myself from developing the romantic delusion that it might be a possibility. I feel like this is my problem and I'm not angry at all with my H, I think he is making an effort and if I was a better person I would just feel compassion for his struggle to feel desire, but I really feel like I don't want a LDH, perhaps mostly because I hate seeing myself in the role of the HDW.