Emerging, momentarily, from the whirlwind that is my life...

I've been soooo very busy lately that I've left things unfinished, unsaid, unresolved here on my blog. Work has been more demanding than usual lately. I'm handling a labor arbitration on November 30 which requires a lot of prep work. I did one back on Sept. 28-29, and had to write a really long legal brief following up on that which I just got done. And oh yeah, it's not like my regular workload went away in the meantime! Plus all the usual home stuff has been going on - my lovable but demanding toddler (fully verbal now, hooray!), my car which has been in the shop for 3 weeks after I was rear-ended at a stop sign, my hot water heater which blew and needed replacing, my cousin's wedding in NY coming up which required dress/suit shopping for me and the hubby, etc. etc. etc... Sometimes it's really hard to just pull away from all of that and devote time to something so "frivolous" as a blog.

What little time I've had to devote to blogging has been spent on no less than three abortive attemps at drafting my Part 3: Motherless - Karen post. I'm having trouble doing this in less than novella-length, which just isn't what blogging is about. I have so much unresolved business, so much frustration and anger, just so much to *say* that she won't hear from me, that I'm having trouble summing it up in a blog-appropriate length. Getting it done can't help but be cathartic, what with all the thought and work I'm having to put into it.

I just wanted to follow up on my earlier "Ach - drama" post. Things with the hubby have NOT been as bad as they were when I wrote that post. One of the things my hubby and I have in common is that we both keep things inside, building and building, until finally we express them out loud in a huge explosion. That release of pressure is always followed by a period of relief and recovery. I'm not at the same place he is sexually, but he is certainly entitled to feel how he feels. And he had been feeling frustrated for years, when he finally exploded on me that night. That conversation was followed by about two weeks of no intimacy, at the end of which we picked up basically where we had left off. He hasn't made any real effort to push my boundaries again, which I've really appreciated. I'm working at being as good as I can possibly be at the things I'm willing to do that he does like. And, checking in on his Internet history, his porn viewing time has gradually slowed since then, if not stopped. More importantly, the non-sexual physical intimacy has come back in a way that I haven't seen in a long time. We cuddle when we sleep again. I've had a lot of tension stored up in my hips, back, and neck, and he's been giving me these wonderful long massages with his truly magic hands, every time I ask or even just look uncomfortable, without pressuring me for sex afterwards. (though that's a great way to get ME to want it, and I'm sure he knows it!) I've missed the physical intimacy - I'm not sure why it's back after the sh!t that went down, but I'm glad, so glad.

A commenter said that she was concerned for me that my hubby appears to just not respect me at all. I can see how it would look that way from what I've posted here. I don't post about the good things in our relationship. I don't post about how, twice a week, he drags out the broom and vaccuum and mop while I'm at work so I can come home to a nice clean house. I don't post about how he backs me up in my professional career choices, and helps me make the best choices for me and us through thoughtful discussions. I don't post about how he does projects at my request - like how he rewired our electrical service and brought our huge heavy treadmill up from the basement so I can work out on the thing and finally get started on losing the baby weight. I don't post about how he makes us Sunday breakfast, doing my eggs just the way I like them and making me turkey bacon because I don't eat pig. I truly believe he *does* respect me, and he shows it in little ways that don't always merit blogging and wouldn't be evident to an outsider looking in.

Would therapy be helpful? Probably. But unfortunately, he is in that large group of people who thinks that psychology/psychiatry is a crock of sh!t for all but the most debilitated. I can't drag him into therapy and get him to honestly take part in it with that mindset, much as the U.S. hasn't been successful in imposing democracy upon Iraq. He certainly has his issues to work through. I don't know that jealousy is one of them - he's quite happy being home and being supported, although he'd like to have more walking-around money (who wouldn't?) and recognizes how lucky he is to be in his situation. If there is jealousy, it's not on the surface, and he doesn't seem to recognize it. But there are real issues with anger that resulted from his childhood in an abusive home, seeing his dad beat the crap out of his mom, and dealing with his dad (who is frankly a total crackpot) throughout the years. And just to be clear, he has never once raised a hand to me in anger! He has his issues. I try to support him in his efforts to process his sh!t, much as he does the same for me. He's been there for me for much of the Alice stuff and almost all of the Karen stuff, and has held me while I cried and raged out loud.

I am human. He is human. We have grown from mutually-immature young adults to relatively mature 30-somethings together. We do not see eye-to-eye on everything, and especially when it comes to sex, we are simply badly mismatched. But the love is still there. I don't think he's lying when he tells me he loves me every day, and when he shows me that love in a hundred mundane little ways. We could certainly be getting along better in some departments. We have a lot of work to do, or at least a lot of compromises to continue making, if our marriage is to survive in the long term. But neither of us has given up that fight yet.

I will be honest and admit that I have a pretty good husband. He actually contributes his fair share of the housework. He's a better cook than I am. He is a wonderful, loving father to our daughter who totally adores him. He gives the most wonderful massages, and knows exactly where I hurt and how to make it feel better. He gets along great with my family, and truly appreciates them as people. He makes me feel safe and protected living in a neighborhood that sees the occasional home invasion or shooting. He listens to my hopes and dreams, and tries to think of ways that we might make some of them actually come true, and how we might align them with his own. He has a warm and loving family, who have opened their arms and hearts to me.

The sex issue is a huge one. It's the scourge that comes along and imposes misery upon us from time to time, and then goes into remission for indeterminate lengths of time. It's not yet definitively dealt with, and probably there is no permanent solution other than for us to agree that I will give a little more than I'd like to be giving and he will take a little less than he'd like to be getting. But right now, I'm trying to give that little bit more, and it looks to me like he's trying to take that little bit less. I don't know how long that will work, but it feels OK at this particular moment.

Last night we slept with our arms around each other. That felt like real love to me.