I never understood it before, what happens when you lose your sex drive and your partner doesn't.
This is new to me, the feeling that sex is just not worth the effort. I don't understand it at all. And it's not just sex with my current partner, it's any kind of sex with anyone. It just seems like such a waste of energy and time.
Am I depressed? Probably. Do these feelings feel valid anyway? Definitely.
I am finally really understanding how being connected to someone, sharing a bed with them, sharing details of your day, and thinking about the future, has an intimacy all of its own that can be as fulfilling as sex.
Recently, I haven't been feeling excited about the future. I've been feeling pretty disconnected from everything a lot of the time.
Last year I ended a relationship when I felt this way. This year I'm not going to. I remember that these feelings passed and I felt better after a couple of months. So I'm seeing if I can ride it out. Maybe in a month I'll feel different. Maybe I'll feel the same. How does love survive this? What if this is my new "normal?" Those are scary thoughts, and I don't have any answers.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Everyone's a Gymnast.
Relationships the second time around are harder. People don't talk about that. They talk about how it's easier because you've learned so much from the first time around.
What they don't talk about is that being respectful of your old relationship, and fully present in your new one, means that you don't get to just keep going the way you were. The private jokes and secret language you develop with a person...when they're not *your* person anymore it seems to me that it's not right, somehow, to share those jokes and that language. Some of it, sure, but you don't get to share it all. And then there's the fact that in sharing those things with your new partner, you're not developing new private jokes with them, not creating a secret language that belongs just to you and your new partner. And that's unfair, too.
So you have to work harder to keep the balance. And nobody tells you about that.
And then there's the guilt. The guilt over what happened, the guilt that the person I have become could have handled my marriage better, the guilt that who I was didn't really give the best of who I could be. And new guilt, too, that every minute I spend with my head in the past is a minute that I'm not really in the present.
It's about balance, all of it. Some days it's an easy enough beam to walk, others I slice my feet open on the finely honed edge of my own shame.
But it's the only path from here to there.
What they don't talk about is that being respectful of your old relationship, and fully present in your new one, means that you don't get to just keep going the way you were. The private jokes and secret language you develop with a person...when they're not *your* person anymore it seems to me that it's not right, somehow, to share those jokes and that language. Some of it, sure, but you don't get to share it all. And then there's the fact that in sharing those things with your new partner, you're not developing new private jokes with them, not creating a secret language that belongs just to you and your new partner. And that's unfair, too.
So you have to work harder to keep the balance. And nobody tells you about that.
And then there's the guilt. The guilt over what happened, the guilt that the person I have become could have handled my marriage better, the guilt that who I was didn't really give the best of who I could be. And new guilt, too, that every minute I spend with my head in the past is a minute that I'm not really in the present.
It's about balance, all of it. Some days it's an easy enough beam to walk, others I slice my feet open on the finely honed edge of my own shame.
But it's the only path from here to there.
