Back, for now

Well, a lot has happened since I last logged in here. I've been visiting old friends, finding clarity, remembering that I'm strong.

My husband has been struggling with depression and with health problems for a long time. I've been taking care of him for a long time. This has been tremendously hard for me, and in the process, no one has taken care of me. Honestly, my husband has been so preoccupied with his own needs and feelings that it has been as if I have none. None that matter, anyway. The fact that we haven't had sex in at least 9 years, maybe more, is only a small part of the problem, though I realize that it's a big part of the problem faced by some of the people who read this blog.

There have been several lynchpins to our relationship:

• It doesn't really matter how unhappy I am. That's not a problem.

• If I complain about being unhappy, that's a problem.

• I am not special. I am not attractive. I do not need to be treated like I am special or attractive. It's okay for me to be taken for granted, neglected, and rejected.

• On the other hand, I am good, kind, moral, and noble. Since I am, I will naturally take care of my husband and be responsible for absoutely everything in our lives.

• My husband is unable to assume full responsibility for anything because of his health problems. Despite my health problems, because I am strong, I am capable of handling everything, reminding him about what he needs to do, and fixing any problems caused by anything he neglects to do.

• While we both know that things are bad, nothing has to change, because my husband won't be responsible for himself as long as I am here to fix things and take care of things and take care of him. My only choices are to continue enduring or to leave.

• I have justified continuing to endure by telling myself I believe that, this time, he will keep his word. This time, he will take responsiblity for himself and live as a full-fledged adult. This time, he will qui making excuses for not having sex with me. This time, he will deal with his emotional issues, including his family issues.

I went away for four to five weeks. I spent the first week in one city with one set of friends and then went on to another city, where I stayed with a couple different people. The first was the man I've mentioned in the past. My husband, while wanting me to be faithful, of course, trusted me implicitly. And he was right to do so.

No affair.

Lots and lots of clarity, though. The man in question is an old, old friend. He knows me well. We spent the first two nights I was there talking about my husband. He knew what questions to ask. He made say things out loud that I didn't really want to admit to myself. The first thing he asked that was hard for me to deal with was "How did [your husband] handle it when you first started having health problems?"

I could barely whisper "Don't ask" without falling apart.

I didn't have an affair. My husband did when I first got sick, though, before we knew what was wrong with me, when we thought it was "just" depression. When he was "just" depressed before that and ended up in the hospital, I was there for him.

We never really dealt with all the things that went wrong when I was sick. I was too sick and too weak to leave. By the time I was starting to get well, he was sick. I've been taking care of him ever since.

Maybe part of the reason we don't have sex is that, in his mind, I've become his mother. Maybe he's grateful that I take care of him but also resentful that I do. That's not fair but is natural.

One thing I learned while I was away is that a lot of people were very glad to see me. A lot of people think I'm special. Some of them even think I'm attractive. They all believe I'm worth treating like a special person.

One in particular adores me. He's not available. Neither am I. As I said, we didn't have an affair. We never will. But knowing that I am loved, in any way, by someone whose love is so worth having has been amazing. Miraculous. A wonderful reminder of how it feels to be treated like I'm special. A wonderful reminder that I am. Special. Worthy.

And all the clarity also reminded me that I'm strong.

Another thing I learned while I was away was that I dreaded coming home like I haven't dreaded anything in a long time. Maybe ever. The last time I felt so bad about something as I did about going home, I was 19 and my father had just died.

Then I learned that I have friends who are willing to help me. I have friends who, even though they haven't seen me in years, are willing to let me stay with them until I can get a job and earn enough to get my own place. It started with my old friend. After a terrible fight with my husband, he asked if I was going home, and I said I had no choice, nowhere to stay, no job anywhere but where I lived, and that not enough to pay rent anywhere.

And he said that I could stay with him if I was only going home because I felt trapped. He said that even though it put him way outside his comfort zone, even though his girlfriend was not going to like it on a epic scale of not liking things.

And having someone care about me enough to put my being okay ahead of his own comfort and convenience, when he owed me nothing, was a revelation to me. My husband certainly would not do any such thing. He has behaved, and I have let him behave and have behaved myself, as if my needs don't matter and my being okay isn't even a subject for discussion.

Me? Okay? Of course I'm okay. I have to be.

It turns out that I don't have to be. And that's good, because another thing I realized while I was away is that I am not okay.

But being treated like I deserve to be made a difference. Having an option made a difference. And that one option, that one place to stay, gave me the confidence and optimism to ask other friends, friends whose SO's are not jealous of me.

There are six places I can stay. Everyone I've asked has said yes. Two members of my husband's family have offered to let me stay.

I'm back at home right now, waiting for my husband to get out of the hospital. When he's home and well and his parents have come to stay with him, I'm leaving.

I'm going to go stay with my friends, get a job, and save my money until I can get my own place. And then I'm going to get a place and live alone for three full months. At the end of three months, my husband and I can reassess where we are and whether we want to be together.

I hope that we're in a position for that to happen and that we both want it to.

I hope he chooses to work on his issues and to become self-sufficient and happy.

If he doesn't, we can't be together.

Because the new lynchpins of my life are:

• My feelings do matter, I need to be okay, and I have to take care of myself. No one else will do that for me, and it's not healthy for me to do it for anyone else (not healthy for me or them).

• I am special, attractive, and worthy.

• I really am strong. That means that I'm strong enough to be okay, even if I have to lose everything and start over.

• My husband is a good man who deserves to be happy. He can't be happy if I take care of him, and he won't take care of himself if I'm here. He needs to learn to take care of himself without me before it will be healthy for either of us for him to be with me.

• I can't make him okay, but I can make myself okay and give him the chance to be okay.

• Whatever the outcome of me leaving turns out to be, it will be better than the outcome of me staying.

• I can do this.

Love having this blog

I really do need this space to say things that I can't say anywhere else and work through feelings of the kind that one is not supposed to admit to having.

That last entry and the comments it received really helped me face what I was feeling, explore it, and deal with it. I find myself realizing that it is the attention, rather than the source, I was responding to. I want and need that kind of attention from my husband, only with waaaay less ambiguity than the attention from my old friend. I neither want nor need it from the old friend.

Obviously, things need to change between my husband and me.

But having really admitted to what I was feeling about my old friend has helped me realize that a] that was something I could get past and b] it was never really about him at all. As I said in a comment, if I had to avoid him to remain faithful, that was really an issue with my marriage.

And now, it feels (again) like an issue with my marriage, not an issue with him. The temptation to have an affair vanished like dawn's mist in the morning sun once I articulated that, once I realized that what was tempting was being found attractive, being treated like a woman--hell, just being noticed.

What I need is for my husband to stop being self-conscious and focusing on his own feelings of awkwardness, and if indeed he notices me, to let that show. And while I fervently hope that that will change before I leave, if it doesn't, I feel confident that some time apart will help the process along.

I am feeling so much more optimistic than I have in a very long time.

Thanks, anonymous blog--and thanks, Stormy!

Fighting temptation

I took a couple entries down because something happened that made me think the person who was the subject of one of them might have found this blog. The details would have made it unmistakable that it was written by me, about him. It turned out to be a false alarm, but I hesitate to re-post either of those entries.

If, however, you happen to have read the entry called "dancing," about an old friend who was never really my boyfriend and never really not my boyfriend and some of the interactions we've had via e-mail recently, then you may recognize this blog as something of a continuation of that story.

The twist is that I'll be seeing him before this coming summer is over. And my husband won't be there. And it has become increasingly clear that our feelings regarding each other are complicated at best. If I had two lifetimes to live, I'd spend one with him, assuming he could overcome the cowardice regarding relationships to which he freely admits and be able to spend it with me. In a way, I am relieved that he remains a coward. That makes any serious questions about my future a moot point.

I love my husband. I am very glad to be sure that I won't be faced with a decision that I wouldn't want to find difficult but might. I only have one lifetime, after all, and I made my decision, but it's true, too, that the men concerned had something to say about that decision. I was wildly in love with the man I married--but it is also true that I married the man who wasn't afraid to be with me. How things would have been if neither man had been afraid, I don't know. I know I made the right decision. I know my husband and I are right for each other. I know this other man and I are not. I am sure I made the right decision.

Absolutely sure.

But I am not sure it's the decision I would have made had things been different.

I've been talking with my old friend on the phone and exchanging e-mails with him, as I do with all my friends, as we have for years (though we fell out of touch for a while). As I said, it's clear that his feelings regarding me are complicated. And realizing that has complicated the hell out of mine. It was simple: We were friends. Might-have-beens were irrelevant. I had no reason to think he regretted his decision, and I didn't regret mine.

And I still don't. But my husband has been sick for a very long time. I literally cannot remember the last time we had sex. It's been more than five years. And I've been faithful that whole time. His medical problems are, I hope, finally all diagnosed, and I see a substantial improvement for the first time in years. But he's not there yet, and we're not having sex yet, and over the years, he has been so tired and so unable to take care of things that our relationship has changed: Despite the fact that we both always wanted an equal partnership, I've been responsible for almost everything for what seems like decades (or perhaps centuries) now. I've ended up building a social life for myself which is more or less separate from him, because his health problems haven't really left him inclined to be social or up to doing so much. I make the decisions about the household, though we talk them over and, nominally, they're joint decisions. The awful truth is that he has been too tired to do more than agree with whatever I suggest. This has changed the whole dynamic of our relationship.

I feel more sexual than ever.

Our relationship has become completely desexualized. We both need to learn new ways - or perhaps relearn old ways - of being with one another, of relating. I do not want to be "the boss." I want to be his partner. I do not have sexual feelings toward someone who needs me to be the boss or the caretaker. Being a caretaker does not feel sexy. Being taken care of by a caretaker does not, I know, feel sexy, either.

My husband says that, since he's started on this new treatment, he wants to just "grab" me. While that is theoretically refreshing to hear, the fact is that it doesn't sound even a little appealing as something that might happen all of a sudden, out of the blue. I have felt too completely unattractive, too utterly rejected, too thoroughly undesirable for too many years to be ready to just fall into bed with the man whose treatment of me has led to my feeling that way.

And while he has been sick, with two diagnosed illnesses, he has flatly refused to consider the possibility that anything was physically or hormonally wrong with him when it came to sex, so he refused to be tested. Finally, I really pushed the issue, after doing quite a bit of research, and his testosterone level was shockingly low. A friend who is up on such things told me "That's like an 8-year-old girl's level" when I told him the number. So, for years, he's insisted that he is attracted to me and yet behaved as if I were not attractive at all, while suffering from a tremendously reduced libido. He once told me, when he was angry and upset and at his worst health-wise, that the problem was that I wasn't attractive enough. He has said other hurtful things over the years and been quite rejecting. I haven't felt attractive to men in years, until fairly recently.

I want to be able to have sex with my husband. I think about sex as often as teenage boys are reputed to. But we have a lot of work to do on our relationship before things will be okay sexually--and it will be at least another month before his testosterone levels are normal, and that's if the double dose works.

So this really wasn't the best time for me to learn that the only other man I ever thought for a moment about marrying has feelings for me.

I don't think I need to worry that he will fail to respect my marriage vows, unless he has reason to think that that would be okay with me. But he is not a fool, either, and he knows me as well as I know him. If I can tell, based on what he's said, that he has feelings for me, he can tell that I have feelings for him.

The fact that we both know those feelings are going to lead nowhere serious is a good thing. But it is an entirely different good thing than, say, knowing they won't lead to a brief affair.

The reason I will be seeing him is simple: In order to make the changes we need to make in how we treat each other, my husband and I need some time apart. We need to be in contact, but not over those quotidian things that clutter up relationships and bog things down and reinforce habits of mind and speech that need to be broken. My husband needs to learn how to take care of himself again. I need him to learn that, but for himself as much as for our relationship, he needs that. And that won't happen while I'm here.

I would like to be gone for longer, but we can't manage that. I will be gone for about three weeks, though, for two of which, I'll be visiting the city where we used to live, where I have many friends and where my husband's family lives. I went to college there and lived there for almost a decade of my adult life. It's where I met my husband. And it's where my old friend lives.

I really don't have anywhere else to go for that long, and I also really need to be with my old friends in general, with people to whom I'm just me, regarding whom I have no responsibilities, who don't want anything from me except just to be me.

But it's where my specific old friend lives. The one who will always be a loving friend but who is also a man with feelings for me who, despite everything (see above) has seen me within the past few years and still finds me attractive. And God help me, I'd find him attractive no matter how he looked (though I am assured by other friends that, except for being grey at the temples, he hasn't changed much and that he is "as handsome as ever").

I decided many years ago that I am not, under any circumstances, going to have an affair with anyone, ever. I also decided, then and again recently, that that includes not having an affair with him.

Oh, let's be honest. There was never anyone else in the running.

And I am determined not to have an affair. But I find myself thinking that I can't have a second life, but I could have two weeks outside of time, two weeks that no one need ever know about. I am ethical and honest all the time, but that is because that's what I choose, not because it's all I can be. I am truly the most honest, forthright person I know most of the time. I tell my husband everything--but I haven't told him about this blog. It's my place for working through my feelings (it being *my* place is one reason I am writing such a long entry; I need to work through these things whether anyone else sticks it out to the end or not). And I don't feel the slightest twinge of guilt about not telling him.

Normally, I would. Normally, I would feel guilty about not telling him I'd stopped at McDonald's without him, irrelvant as that is. Indeed, right now (not just normally, then, but always), I would feel guilty about not telling him I'd stopped at McDonald's without him.

But I do not feel guilty about this blog, because it's something I'm doing for me, something I need to do for me, and something that is really none of his business. I think he would be uneasy if he knew I had an anonymous blog that I used for working through issues like these. I think he would be very uneasy if he even knew I had some of these issues. And so I suppose that, in theory, it's my duty to tell him about this blog.

I am certainly not going to do that, though. Nor am I going to feel guilty about not doing it. I am not saying that I didn't have a stab of paralyzing fear the other night when I was on my way home and was suddenly unsure if I'd left this blog visible--but fear of getting caught is entirely different from guilt. The lesson I took away from that was to be more careful, not to get rid this blog.

He and I have been around and around about honesty, because he was raised in a family in which lying was the norm. And when he lies to me or even just keeps things from me, it changes his behavior in fundamental ways. I know that something is wrong. And things are never right between us until he tells me the truth. And he has learned that over time. He doesn't lie to me any more.

But I know that, unlike him, if I made the decision to lie, I would do so without letting affect anything in our relationship or in my thinking or behavior. I really very seldom do anything wrong, and when I do, it's almost never a conscious decision to do so. I feel lousy about any little thing that I do do wrong. But on the very rare, very few, occasions in my life that I've chosen to do something completely uncharacteristic and completely in opposition to my normal ideas about right and wrong, I have also made the decision that, having made an exception, it will be an exception, and it won't change the rest of my life. I very rarely compartmentalize, because I basically see everything as being connected, but when I do, I am very good at it.

I don't think it has ever occurred to my husband that someone who tells the truth more than anyone else he's ever known could also be a very good liar. I'm not a liar, because I'm not proud of that part of myself, because that's not who I want to be. I am scrupulously honest because I have seriosu scruples about being anything other than honest. I don't like who I am when I lie with ease or frequency, so I don't lie to people I care about. (I do not, however, count lying to phone solicitors, nosey strangers, idiots who ask how they look in "these jeans" and just want to be lied to, and people who think lying is the lubrication that keeps the social world going round--"I'm sorry we were late, but the traffic was awful" is preferred to "I'm sorry we're late, but we lost track of time and didn't get ready on time.")

So, yes, I've been having thoughts that I could have an affair without actually affecting my marriage, without getting caught, and without ever hurting my husband. And no, I don't like the fact that I've been having those thoughts.

I am reduced to reminding myself that it was my old friend's need to confide in "just one person" that resulted in anyone knowing we slept together even once. And then, of course, I remember that no one ever knew we slept together more than once, and it went on for years.

I also remind myself that, even if I could convince myself that "what my husband doesn't know won't hurt him," in complete contradiction to everything I believe, having this affair would break my heart. Of the three people involved, if my husband weren't hurt, he might be the only one.

And yet...

And yet.

We never really got any closure. I think we've finally said goodbye, more or less, or at least started to. But I think we need to finish that process, to really say goodbye--and naturally, the idea that this could be a way to say goodbye is awfully seductive.

But it's not true. This would be a way to become closer to this man, to strengthen the romantic bond between us and undermine our friendship. I know that. In the end, it would hurt tremendously. I know that, too. Part of the problem, of course, is that I want to be closer to him. I am fighting that temptation.

I want things to be right with my husband. I know they will never be right with my old friend as anything but an old friend. I value my marriage, and I value the friendship I have with my old friend. I don't want to ruin either.

But I am tempted.

Married, not dead

Lo, these many years ago when I was young and beautiful, or at least young and not-hideous, I stopped by the record store (yes, records; I said it was lo, these many years ago, didn't I?) and coffee shop where my friend worked. I was wearing a strapless sundress and, being young and not-hideous, my hair was right and my make-up was right, and so on. I believe I was blonde at the time, too, though I'm not sure that's relevant.

My friend commented that the owner of the business had been looking at me (I hadn't noticed) and she thought he was thinking lustful thoughts. I said, "Oh, don't be silly, he's married."

She looked at me like I was perhaps a little slow and said, "He's married, he's not dead." Privately, since he was nearly 20 years older than I and hardly knew me, and was married, I thought I hoped she was wrong and that, if not, ick.

As far as the lusting after slight acquaintances who are 20 years your juniors, still ick.

I have discovered, though, that being married does not, after all, mean being dead to the attractions of other people. Most of my married life, I haven't had much interest in anyone but my husband, and I'm not really the lusting-after-acquaintances kind.

And I won't ever be having an affair, nor have I ever had one or given any serious thought to having one.

But there are men I've--noticed--over the years. There are men I've never forgotten. There have been a few men I've noticed noticing me, and when that isn't off-putting (that is, attention from a man in whom I would never be interested), I have to admit that it is very attractive.

Like more than one other married woman, I sometimes find myself feeling less than attractive--and the best cure for that is the attention of an attractive man. I don't ever set out to make a man feel attracted to me, but I find that I'm not very disciplined about avoiding men who seem to find me attractive, either. Right or wrong, I might even seek it out, just a little, volunteering to work an extra day I know the man is working, choosing the man to ask for help with something rather than asking someone else...because if feels good to feel attractive, to feel alive that way, to feel sought after. It's never going anywhere--and no one has ever had any doubt about that.

But it is nice to be reminded that I'm not dead, either to these feelings or in the eyes of other men.

Very nice.

Recently, whether this is because I am feeling more like a sexual person, the cause of that, or (more likely) both, it seems there are a number of men on my mind, some from the past (but still around), some from the present. They are very much on my mind, and each is special in his own way, and because this is my space, my blog-as-journal, I think I may spend some time writing about them. As I said at the beginning, at least writing things down will help me get my feelings sorted.

Blog as journal

Maybe no one will ever read this blog. I don't know how to meet people or attract readers here starting from scratch.

It's all right with me if no one ever does. I like comments. I love comments. I like to interact with people. I like to meet new people.

This blog is my place to say what's on my mind about topics I don't usually discuss, though. It's my place to be free and express thoughts I normally keep to myself. If it turns out that I'm still keeping them to myself because no one ever reads, then it does. Writing them down will still help me get them sorted and make me feel I've expressed myself.

After my parents divorced, my mother lived practically a cloistered existence where men were concerned. She was a socially active, successful professional but never dated. She's just not that into dating. She's not that into sex or talking about sex or feeling healthy about sex. She feels that it's our mission to overcome any sexual feelings we might have.

As you might expect from that, she didn't talk much about any sexual feelings she had. I have certainly talked about sex with my friends over the years, although I'm not really into sharing details of what who did with whom and exactly what body parts did which. But I don't have a lot of female friends who are older than I am. I don't have any older sisters.

For whatever reason, I have arrived at my forties completely unprepared for what a very sexual age they would be, if only mentally.

I was warned that I might need to worry about peri-menopause, which hasn't been a factor. I was told to expect gravity to work, and wow, it does. I was told that I might have a teenager's complexion and my periods might be irregular.

But I did not expect that I would so come into my own when it comes to sex. I think about sex more than ever. I want to have sex more than ever, and I always wanted to have sex more than many women. But now, I am grown up. I look back on lovers past and think "If I had known then what I know now, if I had been as unafraid then as I am now, if you had been as unafraid then as I am now - wow!"

How is that I'm here at what is supposed to be the age of encroaching sexual decrepitude as randy as a teenager but more intense and centered? Where did this rush of sexuality come from?

Is this age-related? Or is the result of my current state of abstinence? Has the enforced period of no sex in my life resulted in making it the focus of so many of my thoughts?

Is it the sudden presence of men from the past and present, men I find exciting and interesting and arousing, men who are all unavailable to me for one reason or another but who show interest, anyway?

How did everything become all about sex? And why do I love that so much?