I've got to vent. This time, I'm going to vent about myself. About how I continue to be unable to confront my W, even when given multiple opportunities.
This morning, about 10 minutes before my alarm went off (about 45 minutes before hers goes off), I spooned up behind my wife. After a few minutes of my arm draped over her body at a couple inches below her breasts, I decided, what the heck, and gently cupped her breast. I got no immediate reaction, negative or positive, and, about 15 seconds later I gave it a gentle squeeze.
She pushed my hand away and muttered, "I'm sleeping. Let me sleep. What are you thinking? Just let me sleep." She wasn't yelling, or being rude or anything, she was just saying that she didn't want to be messed with because she was sleeping.
With all the ssm stuff running around in my head, I thought to myself, "it would be rude to wake her with the IWTMLOPW (I want to make love once per week) statement. Maybe later."
Alarm goes off. I go downstairs to find that my Grind and Brew Coffeemaker does not like it when it grinds, and brews, and there is no pot to put the coffee in. I had a mess to clean up, and I'm cussing my stupidity for forgetting to put the pot in the coffeemaker. I go back upstairs, take my shower, thinking to myself, "just tell her IWTMLOPW. Just tell her. Just tell her."
Finish my shower, shave, and I'm in my closet getting dressed and see that she's up, getting ready to exercise. We don't speak to each other because, well, she doesn't like to interact when she first rolls out of bed. "Don't want to confront her with this,first thing in the morning" I tell myself.
I go downstairs and get my stuff together to go to work. She comes downstairs. I think "she hates it when we start talking about stuff and she ends up missing her exercise time. Just skip it."
I hate myself at this point and, after saying goodbye, and as I'm walking to the garage she says, "are you mad at me?"
You're thinking to yourself, "what a perfect opportunity."
Instead, I say, "no, I'm just still pissed at myself for messing up the coffeemaker this morning." She says, "you're behaving the way you behave when you're mad at me about something."
I think, "oh great, now, if I bring it up, she'll focus on the fact that I basically lied to her about why I'm upset, instead of just telling her that I am upset and here's why; and, well, yes, I did indeed lie to her, so crapcrapcrap." So I lied to her again: "No, it's just the coffeemaker thing. Bye."
So what kept me from bringing up the issue this morning? Well, was it kind concern for her: not wanting to disturb her sleep, not wanting to disturb her exercise time? Or was it just the whole fear/avoidance thing?
We all know that the "kind concern" stuff is just a way I rationalize my avoidance.
Here are my fears (nothing new here): I fear the turmoil of another protracted argument followed by the silent treatment. I fear divorce. I fear "losing" the argument. I fear a new milestone where she refuses to see my needs/wants as legitimate, and what effect that will have on me and my desire to stay committed to the relationship. I fear appearing vulnerable to her.
So, with all those fears banging around, I start avoiding the conversation. I start rationalizing. "I want it to be a clean issue, so that she can't deflect with the 'you lied' argument or some other tangent." "I want to bring it up in the evening, because she's more...something (receptive? calm? I don't know. She's also sometimes more tired, more stressed, less receptive, just wants to veg out in front of the tv then.)"
I just hate that I am making this so frickin' hard. Why can't I just talk to her? What is wrong with me?
