you may now listen to this chapter for free on YouTube: Folding Her Clothes
Married life had a stabilizing effect on me too. I adored the idea of my loving wife. I loved folding her clothes in the laundry. There was something alurring 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 lovemaking and finding her bored was a year or so after my vasectomy. I was astonished. Seeing my ho-hum partner in a ho-hum state of repose. I was flattened. I stopped. I wasn’t just there to finish. The emotional disconnect was jarring.
“Where’d you go?” I wanted to ask. I didn’t. 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, masturbation, 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, masturbated, and remained consistent 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 previously had a few “I guess I’m not going to orgasm” moments. And we had laughed and talked through many awkward requests and challenges.
She was B O R E D.
What I won’t settle for next is complacency. 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 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.
Porn makes a terrible lover.
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