Analogy

Over the last few months, since my Wife and I went on a marriage guidance retreat with Dr Ruth, the tension between us has not dissipated. There may be various reasons for that, but I’m not going to go through that here. My blog wasn’t really meant to be about Our marital difficulties – true, it started with the intent to reinvigorate our sex life, and for a while, so many years ago, that seemed plausible, but hope has diminished, and optimism has drifted into the distance. For all our emotional and sexual divisions we might as well live respectively on Mars and Venus.
My Wife seems not to want to consider sex unless We are on firmer emotional ground.
I struggle to find firmer emotional ground when there is no sex.
The circle snarls at those within it.

It’s not that simple, obviously! I don’t for a moment mean to suggest that

Never never say never

… and amidst Our failing to be unequivocally better at being a coherent Us, something struck me.

On Our last day with Dr Ruth, we touched on the issue of sex. The thundering mammoth in the room. We barely scratched the surface.
No … it was less even that that. We only really acknowledged that there was a surface to be scratched.

On holiday, after the first couple of days, as we bickered on an almost daily basis, I found myself realising

Holiday black and blues

For the last few years, family holidays have been fraught situations. Take us, as a family, out of our usual territory, increase the time we have to spend with each other, and the cracks start to show.

So when my Wife and I successfully managed to book a holiday together, hope was surely high that this might be the summer holiday that broke the mould.

Before we left home,

Difficult

Anyone who blogs about personal stuff will know that writing about difficult situations can be … well … difficult.
This has been a difficult post to write, to the extent that this is my fourth, fifth, maybe sixth attempt. All previous versions have been trashed.
The last 6 weeks have been difficult.
But to cut a long story short …

Since spending three days with Dr Ruth, there have been

A harmless assumption

All men masturbate and most men watch porn.

They were bold assertions, and I’m sure Dr Ruth could quote data to back them up (possibly Kinsey or Janus or NATSAL). And whilst I’m a great believer that broad, loosely statistical statements are pretty meaningless without context, these two are not without benefit to me.

My Wife and I have

No one said it would be easy

One post-Dr-Ruth conversation that was positive. The next two, far from it. We have a long way to go.

Trust
Accept
Assert

It turns out none of these are easy.

I’m going to

She can use me, but not use me.

I had felt like She had used Me as a punch bag.
I had assumed She’d had a bad day and was taking it out on Me.
I was wrong, but even if I had been right …

It’s not OK for Her to use me as a punch bag.

There is, however, a paradox.

I am