cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I want to have sex with her because I love her. Trish wanted to do a "temperature check." Which ended up consisting of me going over to her place nominally for dinner, but what was served was literally just a shitty vegan sandwich that Harry had brought home from work at the high-end restaurant where he works as a line cook. She wanted to put the relationship on pause for two weeks because she apparently struggles and recoils almost every time that I touch her, because she has constructed a narrative in her head which consists of the worst possible interpretation of everything I have ever said or done during our 17 years together, edited together without anything good or happy or just ok that ever happened. Her conflict is due to who I am now. Which is someone who has dedicated himself for years to thinking about what my obituary might look like and who would show up at my funeral and what they would have to say and whether it would be worth writing a biography of me. For years, I have been focused on how I can help other people and create things and do things and make everything around me be a little bit better. I do this every day. I did guerilla gardening and bought groceries for strangers during the pandemic. I give something away for free at least once every day while running the bookstore. I give out hundred dollar bonuses to my employees as often as I can. When a kid who comes into the bookstore is interested in old book, I give them something printed in the 1800's as a gift. I still maintain about two miles of public trails. I have been laser-focused on doing everything right with Trish. I will not fuck up. I have listened to her, and fixed or built things that she needed, and offered advice about her career goals and then shut the fuck up about it when she did not want to hear about it from me. I bring her flowers and take her out wherever she wants to go. I have been in many relationships during the last 14 years that we have been apart and have learned a hell of a lot about how to act, and how not to act, and how to help someone I care about who is in crisis. Trish sees what I am now and she wants to bask in it. She wants to be around me, she wants to talk to me. She wants that so much that she is conflicted by this mental barrier that she has to being touched by anyone, and by her to even contemplating having sex. I don't know what happened to her. She was intensely sexual when we first got together, and intermittently after that she could be hyper sexual. And now she is afraid and isolated and lives a very small life working a temp job at the university library which is about to end and she desperately wants any job that is not another administrative assistant position, which is what she has done for the last 14 years. She wanted two weeks apart and not dating to think about this. Today she texted me to say that she thinks it is more like a week, with a heart symbol. I told her that I love her when we parted the other night. During this big conversation the other night, she asked how I had changed since we had parted. I told her some of it. About the stalking, about having to accept my own death during my year of civil rights journalism and living only with a view towards what I have accomplished and how I may have helped other people. That this is how I live now. PTSD works for me. If it makes me more kind and thoughtful towards the people around me, I don't think that it is a problem. I told her what I need if she ends this. That I do not want to constantly experience heart-break by being around her. No more birthdays and Christmases and Thanksgivings ruined for me by having to sit across the table from the woman who broke my heart. If she wants to end this, then we discuss matters pertaining to our kids' well being and other than that we will not see each other until and unless our son has a wedding. This is not an ultimatum. This is how I need things to be in order to not feel a constant sense of soul-crushing heart-break. If this is something that she has to think about, the answer should be pretty obvious. If I was just some random guy, if spending time with me is nothing special, then she can just hang out with other people. Talk to someone else. Why would you want to spend time with your ex-husband? If this is something that is special and valuable to her and if I seem like someone who can't be replaced, then isn't it worth doing the work to deal with her mental blocks and hopefully going to therapy and telling me what she needs me to do in order to re-create this relationship as something that makes her life better? A "no" to this should be obvious right away. Apparently it isn't a "no," so it is worth doing the work for. Which would be good for her regardless of my own interest. I love my wife so much. I just want to hold her and kiss her and spoon her. And she has all of these suspicions that every touch is an attempt to fuck her, when I really just want to hold her and love her and smell her and touch her. And yes, I want to be inside of her. But I also want to touch her just to touch her. I want to hold her hand just to hold her hand. And she doesn't trust that. I'm not sure that she believes that I love her apart from wanting to fuck her. Which makes no fucking sense. I could be fucking a 25 year old or a thirty year old or a fifty year old a week from now if I wanted to. I am with Trish because I love her. I want to have sex with her because I love her. I really hope that the 'one week' text is a good sign. 3:00 a.m. - 2024-08-27 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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