Divorce, Single Parenting, Dating, Sex, & Self-Recovery

Posts tagged “My bored wife

Folding Her Clothes and Folding My Desire

the buddha in me killed the marriageI loved folding her clothes in the laundry. There was something cool about the jeans that were on such a different scale than mine. I could only imagine her beautiful legs and feet and toes as I origami-ed them into a warm fortune cookie.

The first time I remember looking into her eyes during love making and finding her bored was a year or so after my vasectomy. I was astonished. It was like looking back into my high school or college years and seeing the ho hum partner in a ho hum state of repose. I was flattened. I stopped. I didn’t want to continue in that relationship.

“Where’d you go? I wanted to ask. But I didn’t. And thus began my own folding. The more I desired her, and the more she desired less, the more I folded inward, and sublimated my physical desire for her with mental desires, masterbation, and fantasy.

I learned, I think I learned, I am learning, that it was a fatal flaw of my own, to cloak my own disappointment and unmet desire in a Buddhist repose. Yeah, I was above it all. Above the fray of the mundane arguments, above the loss of all sexual openings from the woman I was still madly and passionately in love with. I learned to go into my head. To believe that this was okay, this situation was temporary, things would eventually get better if I meditated, masterbated, and remained consistant in my love and presence.

I was wrong. I, in some ways, let her off the hook. When she was bored, and she had already had her orgasm, I should’ve asked. I probed a little, but was content to “wait” and “see” and be the master of my own desires. FUCK. What I was doing was removing the PASSION from myself as well.

I’m a bit stuck in that mode at this very moment. I talk about sex not being the goal. And while I believe that’s true, I also believe I deserve a willing and excitable sex partner. I am willing to be honest and open with my feelings, and in order to not lose sight of what those are again, I have to be willing to express my needs and also my disappointments.

So my wife was bored. My drive for my own passion, in that moment, evaporated in a flash. We’d had the “I guess I’m not going to orgasm” moments. And we’d laughed and talked through many awkward requests and challenges.

And she was B O R E D.

What I won’t settle for next is complacence. My hand is a happy host, but my heart has bigger needs. I won’t let those go unspoken ever again.

Honestly, I don’t think that moment, or my confrontation of the situation would’ve changed our trajectory. But the gradual acceptance and detachment from that loss that became more and more pronounced, that is what killed my marriage. She happened to check out a lot earlier than I did. But in some ways, I let her go, thinking that I would pick up the connection when things settled down a bit, when there was a little more money in the bank, when the kids were both in school.

NOW is it. I won’t become the fat buddha again. The belly that I work off is the isolation that I had agreed to. Do I have to be perfectly fit to find another relationship. No. But I do need to love and understand my own body, so that I can tune into the desires I have. And I have to express them so that I can learn and explore the fit with any relationship I attempt in the future.

The bored girl sophomore year in college was no big deal. Neither of us knew what to expect. My bored wife should’ve been real cause for alarm and awakening. Instead I slept and stayed up late cuddling with the internet. Computers and videos make terrible lovers.

Sincerely,

The Off Parent

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