Hap- I still feel like I'm doing quite well. I don't even feel like my "burst into tears" was an example of not "holding onto myself". My new (perhaps self-serving) take on "differentiation" is that it's not a matter of keeping yourself in emotional check at all times but rather an ability to maintain or quickly revert to consistent behavior no matter what happens. Thus, after posting here on Friday, though I was not feeling very positive about my relationship, I quickly returned to my resolve of late which is that I want to feel good about myself in relationships even if the particular relationship is s*cking at the moment. I can be a good wife even if I'm not getting what I want from the relationship at the moment in the same way that I can be a good employee even if I'm not getting what I want from my job at the moment.
Quote: Blackfoot has it right, you didn't stick to your boundary. When you failed to stick to it he lost some respect for you - losing respect = losing desire.
I really don't think this was the case because I wasn't feeling afraid to confront my H about the lack of sex on Wednesdays (at least not consciously). I was actually kind of regretting setting such rigid boundaries because due to circumstances beyond our control Wednesdays have been very busy lately and though I am psychologically unwilling to accept the fact that my H simply doesn't want to have sex with me, I am willing to accept the fact that he is someone who needs a space of free time in which he can relax himself into sexuality. Really, there was some poor communication on my part. The first Wednesday that I looked at the calendar and saw that my H had a lunch date, my daughter had a concert and I had business commitments, I should have said something like "Hey, it looks like we're really busy today. Do you want to wait until the weekend to get together sexually?". I guess that I thought that I was communicating this in an indirect way that was why I was "shocked" into tears by my H's comments. It was like he was shoving me back into some wretched "HD wife" role when I wasn't even feeling or acting like a HD wife. I think the reason why I wasn't "feeling" like a HD wife was due to the fact that I realized that I am just fine with sex twice a week. I'm really not an insatiable sex addict or desperate for attention/affection which I seek through sex or whatever. I'm pretty normal or just high normal for a woman. My sex drive is probably just the equivalent of my height (5'9"). Tall, but not freakishly or even "stand out in the post office line" tall. So, by analogy, I was kind of feeling like the kind-of tall girl who is trying to be nice by pretending not to notice that the kind-of-short guy she is dancing with is wearing boots with heels in order to equalize their heights because she is otherwise enjoying his company as a dance partner. Then the guy comes up to her one evening and says "I wanted to tell you that I haven't been asking you to dance as much lately because I don't want to go to the trouble of putting on those boots.". Suddenly, I saw myself as "freakishly tall" from his POV even though I still knew that I was just a normal height. So my immediate reaction was a mix of hurt vanity and "Don't do me any favors.".
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
