love my wife

To love her, I must first love myself…

“What a crock of Bull!—How selfish! Love myself?? Self-love? What is that psycho-babble, red-herring, narcasism?”

Well, says God without uttering a word, Let Me Show You.

I have loved my wife with everything I had to give. I have “been in love with her.” I have put her first and relied upon her for my happiness…but wait. Relied upon her for my happiness? That doesn’t sound like love. What kind of man relies upon another for happiness? And what a burden to place upon someone whom you claim to love! I almost gagged myself once the realization hit me.

I am miserable.

She is miserable with me. She wants a man who takes care of himself. Someone who is steady, stable, confident in himself and not so needy. When I feel down or bored or frustrated, or horny, I go to her to fix me. We have an arrangement see. When I go to her, it’s just like everyone she has ever known love from. It’s comfortable to her. “Fix me: I need you. Ergo you are valuable.” But she knows there has got to be more. What about unconditional love? Unconditional value? All the co-dependants I have ever known including myself have told me that unconditional love is an illusion or that they already had it. I look back and laugh at my pitiable self. I surrounded myself with people who made me feel good and never learned how to do it myself. Now that I am stuck with just one mate and looking elsewhere feels wrong, I must rely on her to make me feel good. And if she tires of this, I feel betrayed, abandoned, unloved.

But she is strong and refuses.

Why am I so miserable? why can’t I pull myself out of it? I try substitutes…Gaming, porn, masturbation, escape…I say whatever she wants to hear to get her to play her role…but eventualy I am forced into the realization that she can’t do it for me.

I look at me inside me, hurting, wanting to be happy, but not knowing where to turn. I think back to all the times little me wanted to be happy and looked to me-the decision maker-to get it done. But me-the-decision-maker in my ignorance refused. I passed the Buck to her…I ignored me and in his desperation, the little me inside turned to expensive substitutes. Gaming, porn, fantasy, and all the while, little me resents me. The decision-maker has failed me. The Decision maker has no love for me. I do not love me and so I have built this shell to survive—this shell of loking outwards for love, looking to her, to friends, to fantasies, and hating myself when they fail, feeling guilt and shame because I have no inner trust, no character.

In the mean time, we have made viscious cycles of trying to get love out of the other. She has felt hurt by me and disappointed. She tells me she didn’t sign up for this and I am way too broken. I take my beating because me-the-decision-maker has atrophied into nothing.

Until lately.

I started flexing…the pain instigated it. I would leave to escape the shame of not satisfying her…not being good enough. I would just leave the house in my car and drive around till I found a place to game. (usually my brother’s house) But at least I was sticking up for myself…starting to protect myself. Then Mark (my counselor) told me to do something different when I left…to ask little me what was wrong and listen. I started sorting myself out…getting to know myself. my little self and I felt better…without even playing computer games! I was learning to cope. I was proud of my decision maker. I still failed myself from time to time, but I began to draw certain little lines. Boundaries where I would choose to defend little James. I would not stand for her to belittle me in front of my sons. I tell her Jen, that hurts me deeply and I leave. Then I deal with that hurt. I have decided to spend more time away from Jen; that way I won’t fall into those neural pathways of relying upon her to make me feel better. I took up whittling. I gave myself permission to play a few games so that I would not let the shame overwhelm me into porn. ..Ironically, these lines hurt Jen. She feels isolated. She feels abandoned. She feels like I don’t love her anymore and it hurts.

She lashes out in her pain…accusing me of being absentee…of never trying. I really want to just show her all my progress and show her what a good guy I am and make her pain all better, so she will stop hurting me but I recognize just in time—that’s the old codependant way. I empathize and tell her that these things have to stay in place for me to learn new coping skills. I tell her that I will be responsible to our counselor and she can ask him how I am doing. I tell her that I feel finally good about myself and am beginning to trust myself.

she doesn’t understand…she may know in her mind it’s the right thing, but in her heart, she feels what we had breaking…and even if it was miserable, it was reliable and did something for her.

Not only this, but now she is forced to sit in her own codependance alone. She has to dwell in her own mess…in her own broken self-talk, outward seeking, non-self-loving crap. And she wants to blame it on me, but our counsleor set up boundaries of things I was to do and I have done them. I have been home to put the kids to bed. I have stayed in my budget. I have picked up my dishes. I have taken my meds.

it must still be my fault she is so miserable…but I will wait.

Today she told me she wants me to move out. I panicked. I have 4 days, but I am calm as a summer morning now. I know in my heart I am doing the right thing. That feeling comes from God. And this tells me that she is getting closer to the breaking point…the point where there is no more counting on others for your own love.

I hope I can be there when she doesn’t need me.

this is love.

You cannot give what you do not have.

When I think of LOVE I get that jittery feeling of possibility and hope and magic. It’s the thrill of chasing…of being obsessed…of doing ridiculous things to make her happy, the ecstasy of being guided by the sweet, irrational Master. Love is an unexplainable feeling where all the enzymes, get fired up and race around in my blood giving me a heady, foolish glee that drives me to serve with all my heart and might and if-not-mind, at least with all my well-intentioned soul. I love the weaving, frantic, rushing to see my Object. I love looking forward to the first sight of her and seeing her smile. That smile to other people looks like just another human being, but to me is the light of God’s greatest sun. It tells me I am lovable. Not just lovable…it tells me I am loved. She must be the most incredible person in the universe. Finally, someone who recognizes who I a really am. Logic be gone. I can read all her genius in a single look. It fuels my desires. Expression gets stymied and I am content to let go of other trivial matters like staying alive, work, and rational thought. Do I become stupid from the love tonic? Of course not. I become enlightened. I catch a higher plane of existence which puts logic in lowly, perfect perspective.

Then I get married.

In a vain attempt to validate these feelings, by crowning them with the highest office of love recognized here on this earth, I jump gleefully into the partnership with my inspiring lover.

And then come the expectations. Generally, married people aren’t really in love…at least not with their spouses. Weird. I knew tons of married people before I married and they weren’t in love, but our love was special…oh yes. Our love was one of a kind. We would show the other marrieds what marriage is really about. Our marriage is the glorification of love, the ceremony that sealed our happiness. The golden mean that all other lovers could try to attain, but only my Object and I would ever truly know the indescribable height of passion. Marriage was made for us alone. We shall show them all what Love can do.

Our love can now be physical and alive, a new giddy medium to add to our spinning passion. Gods be praised for letting us roil in their substance! Love is a many splendored thing…It brings us higher than the angels ever went. It makes us stronger than the night. She thinks I am the greatest man in the world and she is the only one that knows me.

On day 23, she doesn’t like the way I keep my things. How odd. It’s like she’s not being herself when she looks at me like that. There is genuine frustration on her face. Whenever I see that look, I want to find what is causing her frustration and thrash it bloody with a spiked-bat. But she says it’s me—that I—the greatest man in her world am the cause of this frustration. How could a lover ever cause frustration except through straying absence? She really doesn’t like some of my jokes? What’s wrong with football on Sunday? I don’t know what is happening. My object’s smile seems not quite as brilliant and when she holds me, I imagine we are back in love, but logic is escaping its prison and I don’t quite feel so enlightened.

Oh no, Our love won’t die like that. I tickle her and say sweet things and turn off the game. Our love is bigger than any game, than any league, than a million screaming fans. Love higher than the clearest sky cannot be quenched.

It seems strange that we now have assigned duties. I do the trash. But I would do the kitchen and the walls and scrub the air molecules with a toothbrush if it made her happy. I am starting to have to rationalize her rebuffs more and more. She doesn’t want to snuggle or kiss passionately for some reason and what reason is bigger than our love? I seek to probe the past with her to root out the meddling demon that would dare interfere with enlightenment. My spiked bat is ready. I wonder if it’s me…and she indulges my question. She actually thinks it could be me…ME…her Object.

She takes out the ruler of logic. It is entering our relationship, invited, steady, emotionless. She makes painful sense of me, while my spiked bat clatters to the ground. If I truly loved her, logic. Sense is not sensual. I feel slashing, rending words slicing through my guts. They are not unkind and make perfect sense—to an outsider.

But what about our love?! What about me? What about the greatest plateau which poets and dreamers may attain? What about the rain of Gods and the blinding smile? What about hope and trust and falling into you? What about us? Must we now make sense of each other?

Logic requires judgment and absolutes. It can be measured and proven. Logic is a 3X3X3 cube of feces. The odor is caused by release of 0.032 parts per million ammonia dioxide into the direct surrounding air and a dispersal rate of e-.045dilution/second.

I find myself searching for a ruler to measure her measurements. I cry as I notice that she is fatter than when we married…not because I care, but because I now can notice such a logical, measurable fact. I make myself sick with the realization. Does this mean she is no longer my Object? Enlightenment is a fading dream. Love gives mocking way to duty and spirits away to the next unmarried victims. We have tasted love and now are left to measure, judge, re-measure, negotiate, and be civil. I have tasted passion, who wants to eat stony shit once god has flowed down his throat? Who wants to eat anything at all, once they have tasted love?

The counselors all tell me that love is an illusion, but I have felt it. They tell me that the fairy-tale, passion of the gods must be earned, measured, worked for. But I have children now. I know better. I do not work to be in love with them. I did not strive to have her fall in love with me and here we are, paying the jokers 85$/hour to smear the 3-inch cube into a prescription for mediocrity. Separation of duties. Duties? I would rather go crazy than live in the craziness others call sense, logic, duty. Take out the trash yourself.

Washing machine-blood and guts all over. now THAT’s love. I stood in the kitchen looking down at myself lying underneath the contraption. There I was on my back, with one leg bent and the other one stretching out of the laundry room. I had the flashlight and greasy hands down there, tools spewed around and sweat running down my forehead. It was so cliche-the male fixing things-I felt like a fatherly man. It’s still broken, but I THINK I have figured it out…it’s the clutch. If I had known that washing-machines have clutches, I would have bought the warranty.

I do love her, but I want it to grow. “Love her eternally” is not a valid goal since at no time in eternity can it be completed. (there will always be tomorrow in eternity.) “More Today.” But love is so many-faceted, I could love her more in one area and let my love for her in another area slip. I guess if loving her includes in the definition, doing for her what she wants-no-needs and prioritizing her happiness over mine, I will be fine.

rambling musings filled with illogical dependancies and causalities embodies poor writing, but when the subject is love, there is really no alternative.

after years of pornography and blame and escapism and just being a sleeping jerk, I have a long ways to go to repent and the damage is lasting. I had no Idea marriage could be this great. She still has lots of Trauma though. I caused it, but she is brave and I can be patient. I sure do love FINALLY having a friend in this world.