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Post by MrOuch on Sept 15, 2007 17:25:05 GMT -5
amif,
Sorry. I guess I just wanted to flog the ole porn-is-bad dead horse. Please accept my apologies. I know this place is called "No-porn" and should assume that all who are here agree with that.
My bad.
MrOuch
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Post by arctic on Sept 16, 2007 17:57:07 GMT -5
Hi amaninfull,
I just wanted to drop by quickly and thank you for being such a prolific poster in my journal. I really enjoy your visits and I hope to have the privilege in the times to come.
I'm just so freaking tired right now dude, I think I ought to go to bed. Still, I wanted to pop by and tell you that I appreciate all the good work you do around here.
BTW, since you're a song writer, how about you write us a recovery song? That's something I've been pondering recently, whether there could be a recovery song of sorts. Anyway, just some thougths as usual.
Finally, you asked me whether I was Australian. Fortunately not, heh, heh. I come from a place where it gets really cold in the winter. Hence my username. I live near London though, and I've been able to locate a place that sells Djembe drums. I guess this should go in my journal, but what the heck.
Anyways, I can see that your recovery, or sobriety, or whatever you're in, is going well. That's awesome man! Let's continue to make the right and responsible choices.
Your friend, Arctic
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Post by unhappyheart on Sept 16, 2007 19:43:09 GMT -5
Wanted to thank you in both journals AMIF, I know what you're talking about. Self-development wise. I almost succeeded you see. But I think I fell back into the pit at the end of this year. That's why I am not so happy. Right now I am in my early twenties. I don't want my life to end horribly. That's the direction I see it going. I wish you luck with your quest of no p. You're much wiser than me, so I have nothing good to say to you in return. Only lots of thanks, and lots of apologies. You give me good advice but I wind up ranting at one point or the other. I'll stop at that for today. I wish you luck with everything.
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Post by ferdberfil on Sept 17, 2007 12:39:50 GMT -5
Hey amaninfull-
What a coincidence. My wife is seven months pregnant as well, and your thinking about MB is the same as mine.
I'm actually a bit envious you're able to converse with your SO about sex so openly. It's harder for us to talk about it, I'm afraid. We've gotten better about having conversations about lots of things, but this one is the hardest subject.
-FB
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Post by amaninfull on Sept 18, 2007 17:50:00 GMT -5
Wow, look at all the great posts in my journal! I'm popular!
You all rock. Even you, unhappyheart - especially you. What you should understand is that without young and supposedly-unwise people such as yourself, old and supposedly-wise people like me would feel quite useless.
MrOuch: not a problem, my friend. You have done some wonderful research and thinking on the subject, more than I and more than most anyone I've met; your posts have always made me think.
Arctic, man, next time just go to sleep - you can always post me some other time. As far as writing a recovery song... I've tried writing songs intentionally about a particular thing before, but it turns out that I have to work a lot harder at making them any good than the ones that come by and settle on my shoulder and start singing in my ear. Never let it be said that I didn't take the easy path. If a song comes by and it turns out to be pertinent to this subject, I'll share it with y'all, how's that? (Are you from Iceland?)
Ferd: Just read in the Secular Circle that you're going to have a child soon, too (before reading it here). Wow, huh? We're at 8 months now, actually... There are a whole lot of things that pregnancy and infancy bring up around the constellation of sex. There are a lot of ways that recovery seems to be impacted by it, too.
It may seem that I'm able to converse openly with my wife about sex, but it's a struggle. It's always easier to keep my mouth shut, and I imagine it is for her, too. But I do try to remember that that she is an essentially open-minded, non-judgmental person who loves me (and Lord knows I try to be the same), so I try to keep in mind that it's probably worth the risk. And it pretty much always is, even if I'm disappointed by the response, because the real victory is that we're creating a relationship where we can talk about it. Slowly. Gradually. Also, the reality of our sex life would be the envy of few.
Which brings me to my journal entry for today. I see myself being rather cold to my wife. Pushing her away. A lot. In many ways. The ostensible reason is that I am trying to be focused about what I'm doing, and she's often in the role of, "oh, just blow off work, let's do something fun!". And, perhaps a layer below that, I see myself as basically a lone wolf, more comfortable alone.
But I think there's more. I think I have "trust issues," as the therapists say. Trouble letting anyone in. Trouble opening up, being vulnerable.
Also, the reality of our relationship is that I never "fell in love" with her. She never occupied that place in my fantasy life of the coveted repository of all my hopes for terrestrial love. I've never felt for her, as I have for others in the past (others who were really not good candidates for partnerhood) that overwhelming softness, warmth, solicitousness, that caring, protecting...those wonderful "in love" feelings. I'm getting to those feelings the long way: by seeing, month after month, what a big hearted person she is, what a really great-fitting partner she makes for me - how much she truly loves me.
And I simply don't have the habit, the skills - yet - to be a warm and loving partner, day in and day out - even for one whole day in a row. I just don't know how to do it! So I have to learn.
Wish me luck.
AMIF
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Post by unhappyheart on Sept 18, 2007 18:41:21 GMT -5
Thanks for posting again AMIF. I unno how to thank you enough. This is again short but I have to express my thanks somehow
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Post by choselife on Sept 18, 2007 19:53:40 GMT -5
Trust that it will come, lead from the heart, and take it one day at a time. Surprise her with flowers, or anything else that you suspect would be special for her.
CL
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Post by rockwell on Sept 19, 2007 9:09:44 GMT -5
Amaninfull,
Someone told me once that real love is a process. It does not come all at once, and that "love at first sight" is actually not even love, but infatuation. Since true love never ends, it makes sense that it would be a slow process and it would grow stronger through the years, because love without true commitment is not really love at all.
One of the greatest passages that we are all familiar with on love comes from I Corinthians. It is often read at weddings, however when St. Paul wrote this he was not talking about weddings. He was talking about what love means. I
Love is patient and kind, not jealous, not boastful, not proud, rude or selfish, not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not gloat over other people's sins but takes its delight in the truth. Love always bears up, always trusts, always hopes, always endures.
Love never ends; but prophecies will pass, tongues will cease, knowledge will pass. For our knowledge is partial, and our prophecy partial; but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass........
.....But for now, three things last -- trust, hope, love; and the greatest of these is love. Pursue love!
1 Corinthians 13
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Post by suedehead on Sept 19, 2007 22:50:34 GMT -5
AMIF
Good grief!! Are you writing about me?! My relationship with my wife is so similar to this description. Having been married now for going on six years, I can attest to the fact that love grows with time. And, yes, I prefer (now that I have the perspective) the slow, growing burn to the grand but always too short fireworks display. My wife and I still have the same problems that we've always had. And these problems are due in no small part to my own coldness, my own addiction to solitude, my own refusal to be vulnerable or to show love explicitly. But I am slowly getting better. And she is slowly getting better (she has plenty of issues too).
And if I may add, pregnancy always exacerbates these tensions for us. It may very well be the same for you. Pregnancy has a way of building up walls if a couple's communication is in need of work already. That's been the case for us. But we are utterly committed to the marriage, and so we are slowly making progress. I remember my first year of marriage, I spent a lot of time wondering if it would really last, wondering if I should have pursued this girl or that girl instead, or if I should have just ignored the whole prospect of marriage altogether. Now, in most moments, I can not imagine my life without her.
Hope all continues to be well, AMIF.
suede
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Post by amaninfull on Sept 21, 2007 21:24:50 GMT -5
Suede - I'm going to visit your journal and post about this.
Thanks. It's a big deal for me. I mean, I have fallen in love before, and it's an amazing feeling, and I do miss it and wonder sometimes whether I've made the right choice (although at rock bottom I always decide I have).
Part of what's going on, too, that really complicates things, is that I was never attracted to L physically. And this has been really strange and difficult for me, because I've mostly been with women that I was attracted to physically. This has, to what extent I'm not sure, affected our sex life. I rarely feel like initiating things, seducing, whatever the right term is for making the first move. I don't really ever feel like ravishing her, and so forth.
For a while I used this as something of an excuse for acting out with online stimulation. But now I've closed that door, and chosen to face this issue like a grown-up and figure it out.
The pregnancy has complicated things even further, as far as our sex life goes. And having an infant and toddler could provide all the excuse we'll ever need to not address the issue.
I have brought some of these things up in conversation. (Heaven knows I would never tell her that I'm not attracted to her.) But I have talked about wanting to have a good sex life, and being concerned about where it is right now, and how pregnancy and early childhood might affect it. She shares my concerns. In fact we both agreed on a frequency we'd both be comfortable with (which is about 25 times - not joking - more frequent than it currently is) - but we don't seem to know how to get there.
She remembers a time when we were all over each other. I don't. I remember trying to get used to making love with her because she was someone I thought I might want to be with long-term.
So...it's tangential to my SA, but it's in there somewhere.
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Post by suedehead on Sept 21, 2007 22:33:28 GMT -5
This is where we finally differ a bit, AMIF. I have to confess to being more shallow. In moments of honest skepticism, I really wonder if the prevailing reason I "fell in love" with my wife is that I WAS physically attracted to her. Before marriage, I preferred the company of intellectual women with whom I could carry on long and amusing conversations about huge varieties of topics. But with B, I couldn't do that. Our courtship was very physical (for a whitebread Mormon couple anyway), and we had plenty of non physical fun, but early in the marriage I often wondered if I had made the mistake of physical infatuation.
I SUSPECT that what is happening with our intellectual life will eventually happen with your sex life. We are talking more, and, by jove, I really think she is much smarter than she used to be. I seek her advice on lots of intellectual matters. Her opinion means a huge amount to me these days. And I truly value her thoughts. The conversations still aren't as easy and fun as they were when I was interacting with "intellectual" or "artsy" girls, but they are just fine. And they have their own special amusements. Whereas I used to be a little afraid to take her into groups of friends whose opinions I valued, now I am fully confident she can hold her own. And if she can't, no big deal. She is special to me.
Time and patience work miracles--not always, but often. Now with two kids, I can attest that pregnancy and ealy infancy complicate sex in major ways. But for whatever reason, we started having by far the best sex of our lives after she had our first. That was well over a year after we got married, and the sex has just become better.
You're a smart man. I don't doubt you made the right decision in marrying this woman. So I don't doubt that this will get worked out in time. I hope I don't sound TOO syrupy or preachy, but you somehow make it easy for me to blab. That's a complement.
suede
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Post by amaninfull on Sept 23, 2007 13:58:22 GMT -5
Wow, suede, that is really cool.
Yes, I was chiefly attracted to L because she was one of the smartest, funniest people I had ever met, and I've had to find ways of dealing with the lack of physical attraction I've felt. So interesting that you are coming from the other angle.
I'm procrastinating painting the baby's room right now, so I need to sign off. I will visit your journal soon, really - thanks for your wonderful contribution to mine.
AMIF
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Post by timoteiy on Sept 23, 2007 15:50:40 GMT -5
Hi Amaninful,
I remember a time that I considered myself quite "addicted" to falling in love. That rush of hormones that flooded me made me forget alot of the pains in my life, and candy-coated my perception of the girlfriend. The problem is that I overlooked important problems in the relationship and my own problems with relationships in general. In retrospect without the feeling of falling in love I probably wouldn't have had the courage to get involved in the relationship in the first place. Mabe you're luck enough to have entered into a relationship with your eyes wide open, and really see the person you're with, instead of superimposing a fantasy on it.
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Post by unhappyheart on Sept 25, 2007 11:56:55 GMT -5
Good luck with painting the baby's room. It sounds like it'll look cute I unno. -shifty eyes- I like cute things. Neh I have no idea what a relationship should be like x-x But I hope everything goes well for you.
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Post by rockwell on Sept 25, 2007 16:16:07 GMT -5
"love the one your with"
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