psyche

without knowing
her story
how can i consicously
avoid her
pain?

I watched my mother become a virtual Jekyll and Hyde - all for love of a man who after 9 long years of confusion, love, paind and dedication, she finally gave up on. She changed into another woman when he was home, from the one she was when she was alone. During the times they were broken up, she was an entirely DIFFERENT woman - strong, agressive, intelligent, outspoken - and the second she got married again it was like all of her fire just whoosh! gone. By the time I was 10, I hated it. I LIKED my mother unmarried, and I didn't care if we had to live in a shelter - I'd take that woman over any man and any kind or amount of love ever. But she kept going back. Three times. 9 years. What change finally broke her down? Was it the long simmering grief of the first, or last - and with it the sudden realization that she wasn't herself anymore - and that she COULDN'T be herself with him? And that - I think - more than anything else buried in my pysche, is what makes me so hestitant to change myself for love. I don't want to step even the least bit on that slippery slope of reshaping myself into an image that best pleases him - and forgetting (or just plain neglecting) what pleases me. I don't want to change into a wife and lose who I've worked so damn hard over these last 27 years to become. I'm not ready to just fold and become this - other woman. I happen to like the one I already am.

I've no clue what their sex life was like, but I do know that she never taught me that sex was a requirement, prerequisite, or reflection of love. It was somethng that adults did, some something that lead to disease and babies, and something that felt remarkably good - but sex was  love? Never that.  I grew up knowing how to laugh with ease at the boys who told me that if I loved them I would have sex with them - I was never that naive. I learned that love does make sex feel better - but some of the best sex I've ever had in my LIFE has been with folx I don't love in the least - and most of the people that I love most - I've never had sex with. The connection jsut doesn't - exsist for me. At all.

And now - I'm facing more or less the same - comment - but now in a grownup wrapping. He's my husband - and I'm supposed to want to have sex with him, right? Because I love him, right? And the fact that I even question it makes me feel - guilty. Unnatural - broken somehow. And at the same time - I feel deeply resentful of the thought that I will haveto change something about me to please him - and the pressure, and the guilt, and the resentment of my stubborn refusal makes it worse - I mean - how dare I not want to please him, and how dare he demand that I please him and why can't we just get along in peace?

Because he won't change and I don't want to.

And then there's the compromise - of course.  Once or twice a week - nicely scheduled. How delightful. A onerous duty that comes at a certain time is no more a pleasure than one that sneaks up on you in suprise. And perhaps there's the issue - why do I think of it as an onerous duty? Because I'm not interested. Why aren't I interested? That - that is the crux of it. It's not as if I'm sexually repressed - I'm about the most cheerfully phsycially affectionate sensual person I know - I just *shrugs* have little to no interest in the actual dirty. Do I come? Yup - no problems in that area. It's just - *sigh* I don't know. And I feel like finally I'm adult enough to admit it - and I married the wrong man for that particular admission. So - either I change, or he goes.  And both options make me cringe.