Termi, I can't wait to hear your thought about PM.

Pep

Well me either, if it would ever come!!

I figure, even though my first marriage is by all accounts an abysmal failure, I should keep studying marriage for its own sake. I mean, there are people who have married multiple times without giving it a 10th of the thought I have (my H included). Anyway, who knows what will happen--I may get another chance yet, and I do *not* want to screw it up.

Termi .... it will open up all your relationships .... it helped me with my kids.

Pep

Termmmie,Been working on my thoughts via WORD. Dustdawg just came upstairs,... "big sigh." "are you OK?" I ask in my most co-dependant tone. "not really" he says. Darn me for asking him to bleed alittle. Better turn up the "turn-o'quit"...I go a bit smaller to bed.

Well...he's got his side of it too. But what the hell does "not really" mean, when asked if you're okay?

Instead of the co-dependent tone, you should start peering into his face and roaring, "WHAT'S EATIN'YA??" in response to those poignant sighs.

Men. (Not all--just the therapy-resistent variety.)

Therapy-resistant Dustdawg, with bald spot and a teen-age outlook comes home from the Therapist. And gives me a Chershire cat grin,... "whats up?" We sit down to talk and I find they shoulda just spent the hour talking sports. He got more answers to how "typical" this is...and this prompts more questions from me.

My letter was not the topic of concern. He cavalierly tells me that he knows that the grass is not greener on the other side of the fence. Which means all the "I wasn't looking, or never considered", stance he had been taking was hooey?
He goes on to add, that in 3 or 4 years there would have been the same problems.

I inquire because he has poor relationship skills?, or because all women are demanding. No answer.

Looking at him I say, "can I take your word that you really don't think there is anything out there better?"...again with the cat grin, "no, that will never happen again!" Giving him the cat grin back...I say, "no, can I take your word that there is no greener grass out there for me ?"

He looks startled, I say that the purpose of this therapy is for him to learn how to "see" me. As a person and not an appliance. For him to get some self-comforting skills and not require his enviroment to affirm him 150%. Because if that doesn't happen, I am left to stand on astro-turf, a fake grass...with us both just feigning interest in the other.

I've always said the "trump" card that kept us, totally different people, loving and happy...was his impeccable character. It worked well before the impeccable character, became "peck-able"...now other than killing spiders and providing a meat-dildo, what have I got?

He makes mention of some of my "traits", that before hand had been bones of contention, as now "desirable"...in a sophomoric attempt to affirm me. Confusing me even more as to what he thinks of me.

He said that he was told to work on "communication skills". Really? how? No answer.

I ask if he made a follow-up appointment to talk about his needs for mega-affirmation? He said no.

So here I am, happily trotting off to the therapist...pist. I communicate, I don't fornicate and soon won't menstruate.

"meat-dildo" .... OMG! <img border="0" title="" alt="[Embarrassed]" src="images/icons/blush.gif" />

dustkitty,

About some people, I guess you just have to accept that that's all the depth there is. What you see is what you get.

So, that leaves you asking the important question you've identified before, about growing to a point of non-usefulness to the other, or, "is there anything better out there *for me*?"

What you feel for the dawg might be enough to stay with him, I don't know. He is who he is. If he is something more (that you can't see or he doesn't share), the result is the same.

Sigh. I dunno. If the dildo (you said it, not me) is of an adequate size, you might just accept that all things being equal, with men (and they are, pretty much, with few exceptions), you are better off staying with the dustdawg in a less-than-fairytale marriage.

Depends. It just depends. You are comfortable in the reality-sphere. You have no illusions. You are incredibly bright and perceptive. Does "wanting more" truly, necessarily, have implications for action?

You have to make your list, I guess. What constitutes a "deal-breaker" for you? The fact that he had an affair does not (something for which he should consider himself lucky), you are willing to work it out. But he seems to want to stay in the same groove.

OK, that's enough. I laughed about your "co-dependent tone". Q: How do you know when you're cured of co-dependency? A: When you feel more sorry for yourself than for other people.

haw, haw, haw...

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by terminator:
<strong>Sigh. I dunno. If the dildo (you said it, not me) is of an adequate size,...</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Well then I am out of here...that's what he kills the spiders with, even they giggle and point.

What constitutes a "deal-breaker" for you? The fact that he had an affair does not (something for which he should consider himself lucky), you are willing to work it out.

No, it is the deal breaker. That was the trump card. I am giving it time to see if now that his facade of stability is dust at his feet. I need to see who he really is, and if he isn't anything more than a dawg, thinking dawg thoughts and doing dawg things...without the desire to hold all this up for some type of reflection?

Then what have I got? Christian marriage vows?... Unequally yoked till I croak?

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by terminator:
<strong>

haw, haw, haw...</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Gosh, Termmmie, I never imagined you would have that type of laugh <img border="0" title="" alt="[Razz]" src="images/icons/tongue.gif" />

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> No, it is the deal breaker. That was the trump card. I am giving it time to see if now that his facade of stability is dust at his feet. I need to see who he really is, and if he isn't anything more than a dawg, thinking dawg thoughts and doing dawg things...without the desire to hold all this up for some type of reflection?

Then what have I got? Christian marriage vows?... Unequally yoked till I croak? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">OK, but wait...do you forgive him the affair, then? I'm going to assume so. So then you need to see who he really is. What if he is no more than the dawg? Can you still love him, for who he is? He may NEVER have a need to hold this up for reflection, remember--men are less likely to analyze motives/relationships/behaviors.

To me the question is, if he never cheats again--has learned that lesson in however rudimentary a fashion--can you still love him and stay with him?

Or do you think that the reason he cheated is that neither of you knows who he is, really--and that the only way to go on together is with that knowledge, on both parts?

Forgive me for being obtuse. I think I may have made assumptions from a scattering of your posts and I may not have the whole picture or be reading it correctly (because of humor or whatnot).

That laugh--how could you doubt it of me??--I'm a raw crude animalistic unthinking unfeeling OP... <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="images/icons/wink.gif" />

Oh and PS--what you have got, going on--besides "Christian marriage vows"--think hard on that. Because staying together "in spite of" has more meaning, I think (to God) than going off on your own...to find what?? (Not saying that God wants you in marriage in utter misery--but, seeking...)

I know what ya mean about that "unequally yoked" feeling tho. Trying to find meaning in that myself...

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by terminator:

is that neither of you knows who he is, really--and that the only way to go on together is with that knowledge, on both parts? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Termmmie, I spent one solid hour with my therapist trying to get that very message across. He didn't grasp it. Kept coming back to what ever DD says I might not believe.

Ok, then let him show me, if he doesn't want to talk. Right now the only actions I have seen is small painful recounting of a "stupid" thing. Yes, I have had years of him being very good to me.

However, when one finds out that one's basic personality...(I am tenacious, and "think outside the box"...he says I am a bulldog that over analyzes everything. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Roll Eyes]" src="images/icons/rolleyes.gif" /> )...and he started having conversations with a "simpler" person...I think?..whoa?

So do I think he will cheat ever again. Naw. I think I will. How can I keep all my conversations of any depth directed at message boards and church-ladies. I am afraid that someone will massage my mind is just the right way...and I don't want anything "messy"

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> That laugh--how could you doubt it of me??--I'm a raw crude animalistic unthinking unfeeling OP... <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="images/icons/wink.gif" />
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I say, "Haw Haw Haw" to that
<img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="images/icons/wink.gif" />

kitty,

Did you have an affair before?

I commend your honesty about what you want and what you are not willing to live without.

Also I commend your honesty and insight about the possibility of someone "massaging your mind in just the right way"--and what a mess it turns out to be.

Have you said this to Dustdawg--that you are afraid you'll cheat? and why?

As an aside, I am really starting to wonder about these therapy-resistant types; is there an affect disorder, Asperger's, something clinical that explains this?? because it certainly seems to be widespread.

Or maybe it is just men. If you read Lonesome Dove, recall the July Johnson character (as juxtaposed with the Clara character). Classic man-woman character study...Clara was very outspoken, strong, perhaps unnaturally so, been through many trials...some would say hardened, maybe by that day's standards...she said things to July like, "why don't you practice criticizing me. At least I'd get to hear a sound out of your throat."

Insightful man, Larry McMurtry.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by terminator:
<strong>kitty, Did you have an affair before?
Have you said this to Dustdawg--that you are afraid you'll cheat? and why?</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Oh my! Termmmmie remember the venom I spewed about my living with a mother that inflicted the arrows of unrequited "love"...and my sorrow kneeling at the flames that burned around my dear father's feet as he lived with a woman that mocked him with her sorrow?

Like no. I could have lived with an impotent quasimoto, and never even glanced in the direction of a potential affair partner. Darn it.

DD however lived in an Eastern European chauvinic culture where picadillos were toasted with the Eucharist wine! He was told that cat's screams where heard as they were whipped as a result of his commitment.

However, now that fidelity is out of the mix, and the fence around the greener grass has been trampled. And I long to have as many uterine orgasms as I can as the days before it lays on the cutting room floor, fast approaches? I do reach for my Rolodex and think with my "g" spot.

All this to say, if my lust can eclipse
my moral standards...what would happen if someone reached out to me and said "tell me more of what you feel?"

I asked my therapist today to check if our insurance company covered lobotomieeze? How much weight loss would a frontal lobe reduce me by?

And yes, I told this to the DD. This has made him think. And made him fail to get it up for the last few weeks. It is my fault and not the spiders. He knows he could lose me. However that happened at the first thrust of the "spider killer"... don't I wish marriage was about love, that I can do.

Alas, I go to sleep with him now, safe from spiders and uterine orgasms.

Thanks Termmmie for being here.

I think as long as your sense of humor holds out, everything will be fine.

Looked-up Asperger's Disorder, hoped it was brought on by too much praise and German Beer, and Viagra was the pharmaceutical solution! Sigh, no <img border="0" title="" alt="[Frown]" src="images/icons/frown.gif" />

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Asperger's Disorder is a milder variant of Autistic Disorder. Both Asperger's Disorder and Autistic Disorder are in fact subgroups of a larger diagnostic category. This larger category is called either Autistic Spectrum Disorders, mostly in European countries, or Pervasive Developmental Disorders ("PDD"), in the United States. In Asperger's Disorder, affected individuals are characterized by social isolation and eccentric behavior in childhood. There are impairments in two-sided social interaction and non-verbal communication. Though grammatical, their speech is peculiar due to abnormalities of inflection and a repetitive pattern. Clumsiness is prominent both in their articulation and gross motor behavior. They usually have a circumscribed area of interest which usually leaves no space for more age appropriate, common interests. Some examples are cars, trains, French Literature, door knobs, hinges, cappucino, meteorology, astronomy or history. The name "Asperger" comes from Hans Asperger, an Austrian physician who first described the syndrome in 1944. An excellent translation of Dr. Asperger's original paper is provided by Dr. Uta Frith in her Autism and Asperger Syndrome.
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">http://www.aspergers.com

Naw, not the DD, he's a bit clumsy, and was sheltered as a child by a doting grandmother that fed him enough to make him reclusive. You don't much need much human behavior insight to grasp the implications.... <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="images/icons/wink.gif" />

However, I did have a childhood friend, facinated me with her interest in Shakespeare,...in the the Third Grade? Angelic creature, so clumsy her shoes would come off and she would carry them as she repeated the Bard's words, often to answer common questions. She always went straight home to her room, I visited there one day and found antique shawls and marionettes hung from the ceiling. Her mother called her a different name than what she called herself.

I have often wondered what happened to her, and looking back as an adult, her parents were going through the stages of finding out the father was having an affair...she would recount her parent's battles like she was describing a ballet. Her parents divorced. Why was I interested in her? Because at my house the same battles were happening, and I was terrified. I thought maybe Shakespeare was the answer, didn't work. Tommy James and the Shondells didn't either. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" />

<small>[ September 10, 2003, 06:39 AM: Message edited by: dustkitty ]</small>

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by terminator:
<strong>Or maybe it is just men.
If you read Lonesome Dove, ..."why don't you practice criticizing me. At least I'd get to hear a sound out of your throat."

Insightful man, Larry McMurtry.</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Yes, just as a toddler craves attention, negative attention is better than no attention...and sometimes when the toddler makes the mother shriek, it is his first awareness that there is more than the one persona
involved in his fellow humans.

However maybe July, when he antagonized his momma, she never shreiked, she was placid. He never came to the awarness that it was normal to be multi-dimensional. So in Therapy he would hear what amounts to "science fiction." Yes, July would be Therapy-resistant.

Oh, McMurtry...yes, there is some fiction that is just chewing gum for the mind...not his. Have you "around" Lonesome Dove? Comanche Moon the prequel? I am currently reading "Gap Creek",jagged choppy man-woman hog-slaughtering, and sexual excitement compared to the color of vegetables.

No, July was just clueless. The Woodrow Call character would have been therapy-resistant as well as clueless. The conflict for him was an illegitimate child who he wouldn't claim as his own because he was inexplicably attracted to the boy's mother, a prostitute. He wanted to deny the "need" she evoked in him (and thus the boy).

Incidentally, Clara had contact with both and gave them both a piece of her mind!

Very very interesting.

Termmmie and Pep, oh babes the most wonderful things have been happening to my inner child. She has made phone calls, she has stood with her little arms crossed and said 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore!"...

The Therapy Resistant, Dustdawg looked up from his kibble dish and said...HUH? ...

My therapist didn't have the duck drop when I said the secret word...so I get a rebate on last week's session.

You babe's want to know....come close...(glad nobody reads here but us!)

After almost 4 decades of my dear mother saying "don't tell about my infidelity, or daddy will be mad, loose his job and we will leave our lovely home....and I won't love you anymore"

I called. I told. And DD didn't say "now I am mad, now I will loose my job, now I we will leave our lovely home.

He said..."I love you"....

Who did you call? Who did you tell?

What happens now?