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]

Top o the morning to ya! How’s that? Although you know I have never actually ever heard any Irish person say that. I think I’ve only heard it in Hollywood movies!

I wouldn’t have a clue who I’ve hurt in life, that’s why I said inadvertently! I’d just stand with a megaphone on the world’s highest peak (yeah I’m talking Everest) and shout “Sorry to anyone I’ve ever hurt”. I do remember standing a guy up on a date once when I lived in France. He just wouldn’t take no for an answer so I said yes eventually but had no intention of ever turning up. That wasn’t the nicest thing to do. Em, I threw a packet of flour over another guy once who kept writing me love letters and turning up at my house with them. That was pretty shit and made him look like an idiot. He’s fine though, went on to get married and have kids with a nice girl and now lives in the UK. We had been friends and it was just a phase he was going through! I told my aunt that it was, in fact, my sister who blocked her loo with toilet roll when it was actually me. My poor sister was only 4 at the time and had to stand there and be lectured about using too much loo roll. My poor little sister! I’m sure if I think long and hard enough I’d come up with a lot more stuff! But, in all honesty, it’s my parents I’d like to have another hour or two with. Just to say all the things I wished I’d said. They both died unexpectedly but at least I had a few minutes on the phone with my Dad to say goodbye. I knew a I wasn’t going to make it home on time and I sort of wanted to give him permission to let go and take all the love I had for him with him as he went. My Mum died a year later and my last conversation with her was a bit abrupt, something I will always regret because I never got a chance to make amends. My Mum was a complicated person and, well, she could be the best Mum in the world or not depending...but still. I am not religious but I would still like to be able to visit them at their graves and talk with them. I love the place they are buried too. It is up in the mountains, about 15 mins from where we lived and it’s a real country graveyard which has a view that stretches right over the City of Dublin and down to the Ocean. I want my ashes scattered there when I go. There’s a great pub nearby too, for the afters you know....I even have a list of songs I would like played...a bit macabre I know! Just songs that say something about me!

Sorry, just feeling a bit melancholy at the moment and my jaw hurts.

[SH-2600]

Being so far from your Mum and Dad when they passed would have been hard. The story about your Dad and your love for him made me cry. You have a beautiful heart my friend. Sometimes our relationships with parents can be complicated but they still know how we feel about them. I am sure your Mum knew. You know your son loves you, I know my kids love me, even when we are at odds. Relationships with our parents are not all tied up in one interaction either. I understand that you carry regret about that last interaction though. If it was the second last it would carry a lot less weight.

The graveyard sounds so beautiful. A place to put down your burdens and sit for while, talking to those you need to speak to. I don’t find it macabre at all that you have thought about what you would like when you go. One day, I would be honoured to see that song list if you ever felt like sharing it with some woman you met online!!

OK, the people you have hurt... I take it back!! Maybe you do just need to stand on a mountain and shout, so you can reach all of those poor lovelorn young men you left in your wake! And your poor sister!!

And, stop clenching your jaw! You will do yourself some permanent damage. I know, I know, easier said than done when there is a lot going on.

I hope you sleep well tonight.

[Timshel]

SH, I, like everyone else, have regrets in life, things I wish I’d done differently, different paths I wish I’d taken and so on. But I guess, at the end of the day, you just have to deal the cards you’re dealt or have chosen and get on with it. Others have been dealt much tougher hands in life. People like you. I absolutely hate what happened to you SH. I hate the idea that you have PTSD because of it but I am so incredibly proud of the woman you have become. I hope you received some sort of justice and saw some form of contrition from those men who saw you as fair game. But I know that is not always the case. I know complete closure is probably impossible but I hope at least you have come to a place of acceptance and self-forgiveness knowing that you weren’t to blame in any way, shape or form for what happened. I really do want that peace for you.

As for your son. No one should never have to face bigotry and homophobia. But I’m sure one day he will be a better man because of the strength and resilience he has had to build up in order to deal with it. People will always respond badly and feel threatened by what they don’t understand. And that is all it is really, ignorance. Bigotry and homophobia so often are a result of fear, whether it be fear of the unknown or a fear of what they may actually be feeling within themselves and cannot comprehend. In some cases those who are the most homophobic are those who actually fear their own feelings the most and look for society to, in fact, protect them from themselves. It is often those who protest the loudest who are, in fact, the most afraid. Your boy is a smart, talented and brave young man. He will survive and thrive. And your daughter, well it sounds like she will, in her own good time, find her own identity as well as learn how to properly dissect a block of cheese!

Screen time! I really just gave up on the arguments after a while to be honest. And surprise, surprise, once I gave up arguing with him, my son started self-regulating. I think he just wanted to take charge of the situation himself. What parent these days hasn’t struggled with that. Your son and his team must be good at online gaming. I believe many AFL teams now, including the Adelaide Crows, have their own online gaming teams and those guys and girls train just as hard as any professional athlete. They are coached in exactly the same disciplined way. I believe, in the US at least, gaming is a massive sport and industry sector.

Ciao Bella!

[Timshel]

Okay woman, you asked for it. You freak!

Below are my memorial songs. Apart my sister and my son, you are the only person I have shared these with (and I suppose any members of the BB community who might happen upon this thread!)

Whoa, here goes! This is weird.

1. Nick Cave - Into My Arms (one of my fav. songs of all time)

2. Sinead O’Connor - One More Day (theme song from the Irish movie ‘Veronica Guerin’ starring Cate Blanchett. True story based on the life of investigative journalist of same name). Dedicated to my son and the lasting words I would like to leave with him - ‘Dry all your tears, come what may, in the end the sun will rise on one more day.’

3. A Great Big World - You’ll be okay (just like the song)

4. One More Light - Linkin Park (symbolises for me the importance of every single person who ever walked this earth)

5. No Hard Feelings - The Avett Bros. (how I would like to leave this world)

6. When I die - The Waifs (the words speak for themselves)

7. Waiting for an Angel - Ben Harper (the end is nigh)

8. The Story - Brandi Carlisle (well you have to go out with a bang don’t you, this song takes you an such an unexpected journey, just like life)

Plus - 3 of my favourite poems:

The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry

Compassion by Miller Williams

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven by W.B. Yeats

Hey, Do you know this quote? It seems fitting for you and your friend.

Friendship is unnecessary , like philosophy, like art.....It has no survival value; rather it is one those things that give value to survival.

C.S. Lewis

[Timshel]

Sleep well SH.

Talk more soon. Timshel.

[SH-2600]

I am so privileged and grateful that you have shared that with me. I am going to listen to those songs today, because there a couple that I am not familiar with and some I am. I need to tell you something though before I get on with my day. ‘Into My Arms’ is my favourite song of all time. The song carries a lot of meaning for me, across a number of different contexts (and now there is another one!). I find it difficult to listen to it now without crying, You will see why in a moment.

I love Nick Cave. That man is a poet and he writes a love song from such depths of his heart, and from his guts and bones. There is nothing saccharine or surface level about his writing. His songs feel like they are written for imperfect people, people who are a little bit broken but all the more beautiful for it.

My friend E who passed away at the beginning of the year was 20 years older than me, but we had a very strong and deep connection to each other. We were both surprised by it, neither of us expecting it or really looking for it, but it found us, at work of all places. We taught together. There was no mother/daughter figure stuff, it was purely friendship and it quickly transcended a work friendship. Age was not the biggest difference between us either. She had an exceptionally strong faith and I do not (as you know). We had talked about Nick Cave before as his Dad was her high school English teacher! E had so much admiration for Nick Cave’s Dad as a teacher, a man, a thinker. What I didn’t expect (because her taste in music was very different to mine) and what I didn’t know until only a few weeks before she died was that there was one Nick Cave song that she loved. Anyway, one morning not long after she finished 6 weeks of radiation treatment, she sent me a text that went like this, her exact words by the way. She was always very reflective and emotionally honest.

E - I am sitting here in the sunshine listening to Into My Arms, a song by Nick Cave and I am thinking of you. The beautiful piano chords at the start of the song are sublime. The words speak to me. Do you know the song?

Me - “I don’t believe in an interventionist (or any) God, but darling I know you do”

Me - My favourite song of all time.

The conversation continues on about the song, about love, about our friendship. I have that conversation on my phone. In fact I have a lot of our conversations. How lucky am I?

“But I believe in love”.

I will talk to you again soon. Thank you Timshel.

[SH-2600]

So, you know there will not be a dry eye or heart left unchanged at your memorial. Holy f$&*, those songs and poems are beautiful. Apart from “into my arms”, I knew the Waifs song, and the Ben Harper song, but the others were new to me. I read the poems too. I knew the Yeats poem and the Miller Williams one was familiar to me for some reason. I think I have seen a quote that paraphrases it. You have shared the Wendell Berry one before and I love it. The Sinead O’Connor and Brandi Carlisle songs, oh my heart! Thank you so much for sharing that list with me. I do understand the significance of sharing it.

It is weird on these forums. We are open and invite people in, we share in a way that would take so much longer in person. Partly because of the anonymity, even though it is a very public space, partly because it also feels private, and partly because we recognised something in each other. This friendship is no less valued and valuable to my survival!

This question is a bit out of the blue, but do you write at all? Apart from on here. I have just been wondering.

I will post again in a bit as I want to say some things in relation to your other post last night.

SH

[SH-2600]

Hi again,

Not many people get through life unscathed. What you are going through, have been through and what it has taken from you breaks my heart, and I honestly want to take away all of your pain and the white noise, even if I could just hold on to it for you for a bit, or make it so you never feel alone. I don’t think the hand I have been dealt is any harder than yours. It is different that’s all. And there are a lot of people who have had to deal with much worse than me. I was lucky in the scheme of things.

Justice is the only thing I would want now (well apart from it not happening in the first place), but they are both dead. One of them was from within my family and the other a family friend, so I don’t think justice would have been there even if I did speak up. I don’t mean that as a criticism. It is a just product of the time and place I grew up. I had opportunities to speak out, even as I got older, but I didn’t. For a long time I struggled with that. I can only feel compassion for my younger self now, especially the 8 year old me, but also the 20 year old me who also kept quiet. Mind you, 51 year old me still has never had a proper conversation with my parents about it. Paedophiles say things to you to make you keep their secrets, to make you feel complicit and it takes a pretty remarkable individual to step away from that to seek justice. When I think back though, after Mum did her manoeuvring to get them partially out of our life, they laid quite low, in the family and in the town. They lost some of their shine, their position. They were there though, on the margins and always in the periphery. I was genuinely afraid a lot of the time. Night times brought me undone constantly.

I have come to believe that those kinds of monsters are made, not born. They are a product of the things that have happened to them. It isn’t an excuse for their behaviour AT ALL, but it is an explanation, and that helps me. The family member was my great uncle, my paternal grandmother’s brother. There is a really bad story in that family that went to the graves of everyone involved. None of them were ok. None of them spoke of it. My grandmother and her two sisters were very, very damaged by whatever went on, and it created at least one monster.

I am at as much peace with it as I ever can be I think. I am fine talking about it. My self-worth is still sometimes in a shambolic state and I need maintenance regularly, but I am ok.

[Timshel]

Hey you,

Glad you liked the songs and poems. The teary eyed, broken heart look was exactly what I was going for!!!!! Only thing is, if I don’t kick the bucket soon, if I were to live to a ripe old age let’s say, there’ll be no one left in Ireland to mourn me so I may need to rent a crowd! In Ireland there used to be a tradition in the olden days (you know, my era....) of hiring ‘keeners’ I think they were called, for funerals. They were basically paid ‘criers’. All women I think (us being the more emotional, hormonal sex and all that!!??). And they were good too, they gave it socks! It was a bit similar to what Arabic cultures do. You know those women who can use their tongues to create that amazing sound?! I think they are used in both times of celebration and mourning in the Middle East. Anyway, I may need to start looking into that. To be honest, I have told both my sister and my son that I am not really the type of person who needs a memorial of any sort. These rituals are more for the living than the dead but that doesn’t in any way undermine their importance.

The thing I have actually always liked about religion is, in fact, the rituals. The marking of events, the ceremony, the liturgy. Rituals of any sort have always fascinated me. Especially those of indigenous cultures. It is like they give meaning to life in some way, honour it by paying tribute to the past, acknowledging the present and embracing the future. Rituals have always been an integral part of all world cultures and are practiced by people from one end of the earth to the other. They fulfil a need in us to connect to something far bigger, far greater than ourselves, to find solace, to find peace, to find meaning, to be absorbed into some sort of universal consciousness or something. Very interesting!

Anyhow, I have told my sister and son that I would be just as happy for them to chuck my ashes out the window of a moving car if that is easier (better make sure they catch the wind the right way though....). Do you know the Australian film Radiance directed by Rachel Perkins? It is one of my favourite Australian movies. I just love the cinematography, the lighting, how it captures the Australian landscape perfectly. And of course, the beautiful script and incredible acting. There is a scene in it where the mother’s ashes kind of get ‘dropped’ accidentally and have to be subsequently vacuumed up and sorted from all the other dust and debris in the vacuum cleaner..

I shall return !

[Timshel]

You are indeed lucky to have conversations with E stored on your phone. I would suggest you download them onto a memory stick or save them to the the cloud or something for the future if you haven’t already done so. I have lost some stuff I had on an old phone.

E sounds like an incredible person and she lives on through the impact she had on you and your life - how she may have educated you or influenced you or even changed you. And you, in turn, will go on to have an impact on the lives of others and so on.

“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.” Pericles

I, too, adore Mr. Cave. Another one of his songs I really like is The Ship Song. He is Australia’s Leonard Cohen or rather Leonard Cohen was Canada’s Nick Cave!! Two master wordsmiths!

Actually my son was born to Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. It was playing in the birthing suite at the exact moment he was born. The K.D. Lang version from her Hymns from the 39th parallel album. So now I consider it his birth song. In my family, my mother liked to allocate everyone a ‘birth song’. Usually a song that was either popular or playing around the time you were born. If I tell you the one my mother allocated me you have to promise not to laugh. Promise? Okay, here goes. The musical film GiGi was popular and/or in cinemas around the time I was born. So I was ‘allocated’ the song ‘Thank Heavens for Little Girls’ sung by Maurice Chevalier!! C’mon, you promised and I can hear you laughing from here?! I didn’t choose the bloody thing! What’s really funny is that I was not a real girly girl by any means. I was a bit of a tomboy, always covered in scratches and bruises from climbing trees or jumping off walls etc. Poor Mum got that one wrong! But I’m stuck with it now.

Nick Cave’s songs do come from a deep place and almost pay homage to man’s imperfections and flaws. Just as we are all beautiful in some way we are also all flawed in some way. Our beauty and our imperfections coexist along side each other.

Quite often beauty is actually found in imperfection. Like for example how a tree becomes more beautiful the older it gets, the more twisted its’ branches become, the more knots it develops and so on. A person with imperfections can also become more beautiful, both internally and externally. Their scars reflect their life story, become part of their character, help form their personalities.

Timshel