Female in a hetero marriage, asexual and in love with same sex friend

[SH-2600]

I need to talk and get this all out of my head. I have been in a hetero relationship for 29 years and have known nothing else. I loved my husband but have never been in love. I have always thought of myself as being close to asexual, but strongly felt that this was something I needed to fix, that “normal” people want to have sex. I require a close intimate emotional connection to even consider physical/sexual intimacy. My husband and I have always managed this quite well, and although our relationship is not as conventional as some, we definitely had a good close partnership up until the last 2-3 years. We have 2 children in their late teens. This year, things seem to have shifted a lot. We have drifted from each other a bit and our friendship that underpinned our relationship has started to erode. He is struggling with work, life, sense of purpose and says he is unhappy and lonely. Adding to this, I am now questioning my sexual identity again. There is a woman who is the only woman I have ever had romantic thoughts about. She has been in and out of my life over the years, for a range of reasons to do with both of us, mental health issues, distance, readiness for emotional intimacy etc. this year however, after the death of a very close friend of mine, she has come back into my life and we have grown incredibly close. We saw each other recently for the first time in 6 years. We are both now ready for an emotionally intimate friendship and we spent 3 days together talking and getting closer. I am in love with her. She loves me very deeply but it is entirely platonic from her perspective. She is married to a man who has taken a significant amount of her mental health from her and from her kids, but she loves him and will never leave him. She seems to have flicked a switch in me and I know for sure that I want to be with her, but that is not something that will ever happen. I also have my primary relationship with my husband that is falling apart. I am feeling overwhelmed since coming home from the time with my friend, everything is so pale in comparison to being with her. Rightly though, she has switched her focus back to her life, and I am finding that incredibly difficult. I am also wondering if this year is a year for any big decisions because it has been a shocker on all levels. I am afraid to run from the life that my husband and I have built and I am afraid of continuing to deny myself and who I am. I am struggling. SH

[Timshel]

Sorry another crossover...talk soon.

[SH-2600]

The boulder is getting smaller, that is something. But there is still a way to go by the sounds of it. You deserve to get what you need from your relationship. I really hope counselling helps that. You need what you need, you are what you are. I get it. I also get that we are all still learning and we do and say stuff we are not always proud of. I actually think our kids will be pretty forgiving of us and the things we wished we said or didn’t say, or the ways we responded to difficult circumstances. I don’t know, we are only bloody human, what do we know? Maybe nobody is doing this stuff well!

I will preface this next bit by saying today wasn’t a great day, so tomorrow I may feel a little less intense about all of this. I still feel like a novice too! At everything. I actually feel so bound up, so tightly managed sometimes, and so full of holes at the same time. I just want to free myself, let myself loose for a while, let myself really feel. I feel like something is desperately missing. I want this longing sated. I just want to feel, wholly and deeply, with someone. But, I think perhaps that is unrealistic and who has that anyway? Nobody I know well. My marriage is sensible, comfortable and responsible! I know I talked about asexuality a lot earlier on, but I no longer am convinced that is me in all contexts.

There are other things wrong in our marriage, not just intimacy. We have little in common anymore, apart from the kids and our history together. it comes back to the safety and security thing. There have been periods of time in the last 30 years where so much of my energy and time has gone into managing my head. When I am so focussed inwardly like that, I need my environment to be safe, protective and secure. I am wondering if I would have made some different decisions if I was different, well yes obviously, but I mean am I here in my marriage for the wrong reasons?

I think the kids are beginning to notice. We are the opposite to you and M but I am not sure which is better! There is no yelling or volatility, just quiet. We both turn inwards and just go through the freaking motions of our day. There is little interaction, just what we need to get by and for the household to function. There is the occasional short response or a FFS when it gets bad. It gets very tense and really awful, but not loud. There is no release of the emotion.

I really want to know more about your badassery!

S (the difficult woman)

[smallwolf]

Hello again (both of you) - thought I would jump in on a couple of topics.

On sleeping... there is an app I use on my phone called virtual hope box. I am aware that for many app you have to like the sound of the person speaking. There are a few threw in the bin because I did not like something in the voice speaking to me. Anyway, this app has breathing exercises, short meditations that worked for me.

Its OK to give relationship advice to your kids ... the only advice I give is what not to do 🙂 There are only (?) things to be aware of - respect, openness and honesty. Bit rich coming from me as I am not a very open person.

Have you ever written your own story on paper? It was an exercise (homework) I had to do for my psych. It did help to discover where certain thoughts and beliefs came from.

[SH-2600]

Hi Tim,
I am almost sick of the sound of my own voice, I have posted a lot today (apologies for all of the crossover Timshel, I think now I have made it even worse). I will make this my last post today before starting my sleep bloody hygiene routine.

I will give that app a try Tim. I have tried a few too, and have tossed a lot of them aside. The voice is so important, I think.

Isn’t it our job as parents to dish out unsolicited, useless and even awkward relationship advice to our kids 😂?? Have I been doing it wrong? Seriously though, Tim, your three things seem like some good foundations. I have to say I can relate to not being open. In most parts of my life and with most people I am still quite guarded. It becomes a habit I think, well for me it did. You become well practised at keeping secrets and get very good at generalising! I am still closed off with my parents, and guarded with acquaintances and work colleagues. Obviously with you and Timshel, and the rest of the BB community I am fine! There are also a very small number of people IRL who I am really open with now.

With regard to writing, yes I write. Or more accurately, I used to write. I was also under instruction from my psych to journal. He also had me write third person and then first person accounts of my experiences as a child (just to help to desensitise, he never read them). Yikes, though! I find writing quite useful as a way to think and process. I still journal sometimes.

I also wrote fiction (not under instruction from my psych) and other stories. I actually love writing, it feels decadent and luxurious to write, although hard work. I even snuck in a creative writing unit at uni when I did my teaching degree 10 or so years ago. I am not sure I was particularly good at it, not as good as I would like to be. I never managed to write the great Australian novel, although there is still time,right?! A lot of the fiction I wrote was still processing some things, or examining different ideas in more detail and in different ways. Still fiction though. I don’t write stories any more because it gets consuming! I become very single minded and can’t put the story down, even when I shut down the computer. Writing and sleep become mutually exclusive! I did write a little bit for E in the last few years, she liked my writing and wanted me to pick it back up again. She was a prolific writer herself, mostly poetry and memoir type stuff.

And now I am off to bed. Good night all!

S

[Timshel]

My poor S,

I have spent the entire day pondering your last post. I have been so scared of coming on here and writing a completely inept and clumsy response. A response that doesn’t even begin to describe the emotion your words evoked in me. Along with recognition, I felt pain and anguish and grief. Grief for what is missing. A sense of loss for something that seems, in many ways, so requisite to happiness. I can’t stop thinking about that longing you described that needs to be sated. That yearning you feel inside you to love someone wholly and absolutely. And that feeling of freedom you aspire to. I understand. I really do. Just as I understand the sensation of feeling tightly bound. Tightly bound and full of holes.

There is so much about you that I get, S. And so much more I want to get. I can relate to your need to feel safe and secure in your surroundings. When so much of your time and energy is spent looking inwards, dealing with the machinations of your own brain, knowing the environment around you is stable and steady and that you are anchored to something well constructed is essential.

There is no doubt that you would be different if you had not had to endure the experiences of your past. Just as I would be had I not been diagnosed with OCD. Those events shaped our lives in so many ways. Some good and some bad. The bad is undoubtedly that sense of fear and vulnerability we feel which can prevent us from being brave, being daring. And sometimes that can feel like we are settling for less than we deserve. That we are making choices that keep us feeling tightly bound rather than those which set us free.

In many ways you remind me of a wild bird that has had its’ wings clipped. You long to fly and soar high above the clouds but you are inhibited from doing so. And that’s not fair at all. Is that why you like birds so much? Do they represent freedom to you? I always thought that if I were ever to be reincarnated, I would like to return as a sea eagle. I would spend my days effortlessly catching thermals along the cliff tops. What would you like to come back as if you had the choice?

I wish I could give you some helpful advice, S. I wish I could just grab a set of bolt cutters and cut off the chains that bind you and fill your holes with that polyfill stuff?? (like that doesn’t sound weird?!). Let me sit with this one a while. I feel I could be of so much more use to you IRL. I, too, feel very restricted here. Bang goes my head against a brick wall!

[SH-2600]

Hey lovely,

You are perfect. Everything you said was what I needed to hear right now. You get it, you get me, and I feel like I get you too and that is everything I need right now. As I wrote that post I was thinking of you and wondering how much of it would ring true with you too. OCD and PTSD have given us similar experiences and choices I think. I need understanding, care, space to talk and think. You give me that and more. I only hope I give you a little bit of that back.

I have to go to work now but I will come back later.

Thank you for being you.

S

[Timshel]

Absodarnlutely you do and then some!

By the way, your grandparents’ house sounds very much like my grandparents’ house. They, too, had a ‘good room’ or the ‘front parlour’ as it was called. A room so sacred that it was only used for the most ceremonious of events. Like the times when my grandmother (who became wheelchair bound later in life and couldn’t attend church) used to summon everyone together on occasion to attend a family mass! No joke! The parish priest would arrive in all his finery, an alter would be erected, that stupid chaise longue thingy would be removed, candles would be lit and all of us snotty nosed grandkids would be ushered in wearing our Sunday best and ordered to stand with our backs pinned against the walls and our hands clasped firmly in front of us so as not to fidget as we suffered through 45 minutes of liturgy and doctrine. Our poor little cheeks would be red raw on the inside by the end of the service as a result of the persistent gnawing and suctioning they endured through our futile attempts to suppress any contagious giggling or coughing fits. Mostly started by my grandmother mind you!! I distinctly remember wetting myself on more than one occasion whilst attempting to conceal my laughter. Happy days! They were actually. I had/have a large and boisterous extended family and the memories of Sunday mornings at my grandparents’ house, catching up with everyone, are amongst the best of my entire life. On days when the parlour wasn’t being used as ‘God’s Airbnb’, us kids used to dare each other to go in there and move an ornament around or turn a photo upside down just to prove our unflinching courage in the face of danger. It was a perilous feat but wow did it felt good if you managed to accomplish it without getting caught. Like you had somehow managed to pull off some master stroke of genius. I loved those times spent with my cousins.

Another favourite Sunday morning pastime we had was to head down to the local graveyard en masse and play hide and seek amongst the dead! Other times we would hoist each other up to shoulder height so we could look through the bars at the top of entrances to old family tombs and peer in at the shelves of broken down old coffins that were stacked one on top of the other like stale loaves of bread. There was a certain honour attached to being the ‘pioneer’ who was first to spot a bony arm or foot sticking out of a broken down old wooden box. We were a macabre lot come to think of it!

[SH-2600]

Hey again

I am sorry I evoked pain and anguish and grief in you dear Timshel. I am sorry that your choices, like mine feel limited and bound by circumstances. What would it take for each of us to be daring and brave, I wonder? To choose what we would really want, to free ourselves. What would that look like for you? Or can we even do that now?

I love that you want to turn up with bolt cutters and Spakfilla (and maybe It did sound a tiny bit weird, but I love that you said it anyway, you really do make me smile). I would sure as hell welcome you. You know, you have what you need to do that.

I hadn’t thought much about why I like birds. Perhaps it is the freedom. The ability to soar high above all of the nonsense below. To look down with a feeling of being untouched by all that is going on. I would like to be a wedge tailed eagle maybe, not a small noisy bird that needs to flap hard to get anywhere! I also kind of like the idea of being a tall old-growth tree. The deep-rooted, all knowing, ancient steadiness and noiselessness of the tree appeals to me. Both scenarios bring a sense of quiet and calm. One is set free and the other well-tethered! What does that say about me?

I really love the way you tell a story. In fact I love the way you write, full stop. I love hearing about your life and I can just picture your childhood Sunday mornings in the front parlour and in the cemetery! You tell those stories with so much humour and love. You and I were both really lucky growing up close to cousins and extended family. My cousins always felt like partners in crime too. We had free reign of so many places and got into a good amount of mischief too. Although the only bones we were exposed to were animal bones, not human! You were bigger badasses than us!

An extra note on my grandparents good room. They would open up the sliding doors in the evening to reveal the room, switch the tv on, but wouldn’t actually sit in there. They would just swing their comfy chairs around in the regular room and watch tv from the threshold of the loungeroom. Even they weren’t allowed in there! It seemed perfectly reasonable to me as a child.

Thank you Timshel.

S

[Timshel]

I AM A COMPLETE AND UTTER IDIOT!!

An airhead, a bubblehead, a doofus, a buffoon, a dumbbell, an ignoramus, a knucklehead, an eejit, a moron, a numbskull, a bonehead, a nincompoop, someone who has too much yardage between the goalposts, is one fry short of a Happy Meal and a few cards short of a deck! Somewhere, in Sth. Dublin, a village is missing its’ idiot!!

Whoa! Phew! Just needed to get all that out of my system!

Yesterday I had the audacity to think that I might return one day as a majestic, impressive, captivating sea eagle. A formidable vision, a glorious sight, gliding effortlessly and gracefully along mother earth’s rugged, windswept cliff tops, ogling her sumptuously abundant seas and oceans.

Ha ha haaaah! Hmmm! That’s not me, is it SH?

You, on the other hand, will ABSOLUTELY return one day as that tall, deeply rooted, steady and sage old growth tree. You will be a magnificent, tranquil, serene forest dweller. A supreme, scholarly presence. A counsellor, a teacher, a noiseless, whispering friend.

And you know that annoying, irritating little bird you mentioned - the one that tends to flap around incessantly, monotonously, but never seems to go anywhere? That noisy little bugger you wish would just piss off or shut up? Well guess what? You got it! Oui, c’est Moi!

I am, indeed, that clueless little bird. The one that bangs its’ beak continuously, boundlessly against your solid frame, uninterrupted! Pursuing something it is too blind to see, too deaf to hear, too mindless to notice. That stupid little ....

I owe you an apology. You must, at times, have felt like you were communicating with the most excruciatingly dumbest, thickest human being on the entire planet!

My poor SH! I will leave you now in peace for a while. We’ll talk later. I have a court case to attend. I’m facing 3 counts of ‘accidental’ assault. I was arrested for pegging bricks over random walls. Yikes! My solicitor wants me to use the ‘temporary insanity’ defence. But I prefer to take responsibility, admit I was wrong and learn from the experience. When you know better bla bla bla! All I can say is “desperate times, desperate measures”!

Cocktails? Something sweet ‘n’ bubbly perhaps.

[SH-2600]

You are NOT an idiot! Not at all. You are bloody amazing.

I can’t stop laughing after reading your post, you should see my grin! Ear to freakin’ ear! My family think I am odd because I keep chuckling to myself. You are absolutely that sea eagle my dear Timshel. You really are in so many ways.

Tonight’s cocktail hour beverage is a Barossa Grenache. Cheers! Although if I had a bottle of bubbles I may just crack it open. Talk to you later.

S