First Date

I’ve just come back from a ‘date’.  It is the first one in many many months.  What with work and the kids and putting them to bed and then arranging baby-sitting we have both been neglecting this for quite a while.

So this weekend I primed my parents for a once-a-week baby sitting session to allow Susan and I to go out for a coffee or dessert after the children are in bed.

We used to go out together (although not every week) a couple of years ago.  It didn’t make any difference to our sex life but we did occasionally talk about it.  Usually we talked about the children, or other family or social matters.  Basically we talked.

Nowadays we barely talk. And that has alarmed me.

My relationship from Susan you have probably realised has drifted away from a husband-wife one to one purely based on the partnership of running the house and a close friendship bonded by the task of raising our children.  Basically, our kids keep us together.

On Julia Grey

I first read Julia’s articles when I was desperate for help and didn’t know where to turn.  Julia’s articles opened my eyes and I took alot of self-awareness and understanding from her and from the people who have posted comments to her articles.

I even put some of those things into practice.  I can report however that nothing worked.  I kept it up for over a year and even the efforts I made, initially appreciated, became meaningless once Susan started taking them for granted.

The problem was that Julia writes that she used to be ‘frigid’ wife.  Prior to that she was ‘normal’.  Sex was great at the start of the marriage and then waned over the years until it became a chore to her and power-politics of marriage slaughtered her sex-drive.

It was always a bit of gamble to apply her reasoning to Susan.  Susan did not become frigid.  She has been frigid all her life.  How do you get someone who never cared for sex and doesn’t care for sex to become interested?

I moved on from sex, building intimacy and trust.  Hoping patience and support would win the day.  She didn’t budge.  So it dawned on me that the issue now was no longer about sex although it is centred on sex.  it is about fairness, respect and self-lessness.

I don’t have a RIGHT to sex.  But I have a right to a reasonable discussion and accomodation on OUR sex life.  I don’t have  RIGHT to be respected by my wife.  But I do have a right to be allowed to express myself without feeling like Oliver Twist begging for more.  And I don’t have a right to get it all my own way.  I just want compromise.

I wonder if there is anybody, male or female out there who is like Susan or knows of someone like her?