Corey came home a day early from hunting! So he's been around as I've been slowly wending my way through the day with the intent to pack interspersed with frequent naps. I'm happy that I got to see him before I take off for a week, but it would have been okay had we missed each other like we thought we were going to as well.
I was in bed, just on the edge of slipping into the depths of real sleep after a phone call had awoken me, and I heard the front door open amidst shuffling sounds and a muted jangling of keys. Confession: I can't stand to be encumbered by layers of fabric when I sleep, so I didn't feel that I could jump up to investigate in naught but my birthday suit! I lay there drowsily alert, trying to decipher activity based on the carrying sounds when Corey breezed into the room, all salty, sweaty woodsmoke smell and smiles, bending over the bed to kiss me. It was a warm kiss, but something was awry-- he was eating licorice!!! (I despise and detest licorice, especially the black kind! Oh, and he knows this quite well.) I determinedly kissed him anyway, but exclaimed afterward how cruel and gross he was, and he grinned and laughed and got a kick out of that.
The day has been a long, slow one. Much resting on my part, and the essential absence of any kind of deadline for being packed or leaving today has been a welcome knowledge. I fell in the shower today when I tried to sit on the stool I have. It slipped out from underneath me and I crashed down, banging my back on the edge of the stool's wooden seat and wrenching my hip a bit. I suppose I shrieked amidst the resounding thump and crash of the fall, so Corey came in to see if I was okay and found me huddled on the floor of the tub, unable to get up by myself and curled in a painful little ball repeating my mantra of "Owwwww, owwwww, ouch, owwww….!" He helped pull me to my feet and I was suddenly incredibly grateful that he'd come back a day early.
My sister in law accompanied me to dinner with the friends of mine that I celebrate the Anniversary with, and we all had a nice early supper at Olive Garden to celebrate the Anniversary. Everyone got along well, which is good. I was not really worried because C is a very charismatic and personable person, but she's not religious at all and my friends are, so I was hoping there wouldn't be a clash of interests or basic world views. We stayed away from the religion topic, though, and all was hale and hearty.
After coming home and all relaxing with books and television shows of choice for a while, I convinced Corey to come cuddle with me as I was going to be falling asleep for a bit (maybe the whole night, maybe just a few hours? I have no clue at this point, though I'm rather hoping for a whole night's sleep). We lay there in the dark for a bit, talking about his hunting trip and how it went, but soon the conversation ebbed away and I found myself dozing off. Just about then Corey got up and left the bed and I was very disappointed that he'd get up and leave just as I as falling asleep. What a super awkward moment to disappear, right? I vocalized my disappointment, but it turns out that he was just closing the door that had been propped open so the cats could come and go as they please. He came back to bed to be with me again and, well, all I have to say is that conjugal relations are awesome, and even if it's been a long time and you feel like a broken record by coming on to your partner again and again without apparent success, keep at it. Keep at it only if you mean it, though; when the time is right a lovely experience will unfold.
I'm gonna come straight out with an honest, brutal truth here that some people may find uncomfortable talking about: stress kills sex drives, and lowers intimacy if you let it. Truthfully, it has been a long time between the last time we were intimate and this time, and that's because we are frazzled a great deal of the time. Sex involves and requires a lot of emotions, and a lot of energy too, and when you're dealing with a mountain of stress being poured over you like a thick, viscous pudding it's really hard to dig up the motivation to do something that isn't "vegging", you know? For me, having sex actually helps me to cope with stress better and it alleviates my depression and anxiety to a degree, but my husband finds himself more drained by the act than I do. I'm revitalized by sex, but he is exhausted. I have a higher, more demanding libido than he does even when things are normal and especially so when things are stressful and out of sync, so that's something that we have both become aware of and keep in mind. It took communication to reach these conclusions, but there was a period of time where I was hurt and confused by his constant rebuffing of my advances; I thought that he no longer wanted me in that way because I had gotten sick, or that maybe he didn't find me attractive anymore, or that he was afraid to hurt me, or that he really just didn't care about me much. I was so wrong, but you can understand how an almost daily (or several times daily) rejection of a flirtatious sexual advance can give the impression that one is unwanted by and unattractive to the object of the flirtation.
Sex can be a huge source of assumptions, miscommunication, frustration, and simmering resentment, anger, and bitterness, and sometimes it's awkward to talk about but you just gotta do it for the health of your relationship. I'm serious. (Plus once you get the kinks worked out and both partners feel understood and validated, you can get some serious toe curling action up in there! If that isn't worth it, I don't know what is.)
Now I'm going to attempt to sleep (again, for however long) and ignore the steadily mounting pain. Falling in the shower and banging yourself up does nothing to alleviate an already worsening flare. Maybe the fatigue will overpower the pain, yeah? Funny how you can play one symptom against another to achieve a benefit to yourself, huh? The Monopoly of Illness, or some such.
I was in bed, just on the edge of slipping into the depths of real sleep after a phone call had awoken me, and I heard the front door open amidst shuffling sounds and a muted jangling of keys. Confession: I can't stand to be encumbered by layers of fabric when I sleep, so I didn't feel that I could jump up to investigate in naught but my birthday suit! I lay there drowsily alert, trying to decipher activity based on the carrying sounds when Corey breezed into the room, all salty, sweaty woodsmoke smell and smiles, bending over the bed to kiss me. It was a warm kiss, but something was awry-- he was eating licorice!!! (I despise and detest licorice, especially the black kind! Oh, and he knows this quite well.) I determinedly kissed him anyway, but exclaimed afterward how cruel and gross he was, and he grinned and laughed and got a kick out of that.
The day has been a long, slow one. Much resting on my part, and the essential absence of any kind of deadline for being packed or leaving today has been a welcome knowledge. I fell in the shower today when I tried to sit on the stool I have. It slipped out from underneath me and I crashed down, banging my back on the edge of the stool's wooden seat and wrenching my hip a bit. I suppose I shrieked amidst the resounding thump and crash of the fall, so Corey came in to see if I was okay and found me huddled on the floor of the tub, unable to get up by myself and curled in a painful little ball repeating my mantra of "Owwwww, owwwww, ouch, owwww….!" He helped pull me to my feet and I was suddenly incredibly grateful that he'd come back a day early.
My sister in law accompanied me to dinner with the friends of mine that I celebrate the Anniversary with, and we all had a nice early supper at Olive Garden to celebrate the Anniversary. Everyone got along well, which is good. I was not really worried because C is a very charismatic and personable person, but she's not religious at all and my friends are, so I was hoping there wouldn't be a clash of interests or basic world views. We stayed away from the religion topic, though, and all was hale and hearty.
After coming home and all relaxing with books and television shows of choice for a while, I convinced Corey to come cuddle with me as I was going to be falling asleep for a bit (maybe the whole night, maybe just a few hours? I have no clue at this point, though I'm rather hoping for a whole night's sleep). We lay there in the dark for a bit, talking about his hunting trip and how it went, but soon the conversation ebbed away and I found myself dozing off. Just about then Corey got up and left the bed and I was very disappointed that he'd get up and leave just as I as falling asleep. What a super awkward moment to disappear, right? I vocalized my disappointment, but it turns out that he was just closing the door that had been propped open so the cats could come and go as they please. He came back to bed to be with me again and, well, all I have to say is that conjugal relations are awesome, and even if it's been a long time and you feel like a broken record by coming on to your partner again and again without apparent success, keep at it. Keep at it only if you mean it, though; when the time is right a lovely experience will unfold.
I'm gonna come straight out with an honest, brutal truth here that some people may find uncomfortable talking about: stress kills sex drives, and lowers intimacy if you let it. Truthfully, it has been a long time between the last time we were intimate and this time, and that's because we are frazzled a great deal of the time. Sex involves and requires a lot of emotions, and a lot of energy too, and when you're dealing with a mountain of stress being poured over you like a thick, viscous pudding it's really hard to dig up the motivation to do something that isn't "vegging", you know? For me, having sex actually helps me to cope with stress better and it alleviates my depression and anxiety to a degree, but my husband finds himself more drained by the act than I do. I'm revitalized by sex, but he is exhausted. I have a higher, more demanding libido than he does even when things are normal and especially so when things are stressful and out of sync, so that's something that we have both become aware of and keep in mind. It took communication to reach these conclusions, but there was a period of time where I was hurt and confused by his constant rebuffing of my advances; I thought that he no longer wanted me in that way because I had gotten sick, or that maybe he didn't find me attractive anymore, or that he was afraid to hurt me, or that he really just didn't care about me much. I was so wrong, but you can understand how an almost daily (or several times daily) rejection of a flirtatious sexual advance can give the impression that one is unwanted by and unattractive to the object of the flirtation.
Sex can be a huge source of assumptions, miscommunication, frustration, and simmering resentment, anger, and bitterness, and sometimes it's awkward to talk about but you just gotta do it for the health of your relationship. I'm serious. (Plus once you get the kinks worked out and both partners feel understood and validated, you can get some serious toe curling action up in there! If that isn't worth it, I don't know what is.)
Now I'm going to attempt to sleep (again, for however long) and ignore the steadily mounting pain. Falling in the shower and banging yourself up does nothing to alleviate an already worsening flare. Maybe the fatigue will overpower the pain, yeah? Funny how you can play one symptom against another to achieve a benefit to yourself, huh? The Monopoly of Illness, or some such.
Anonymous | November 3, 2014 at 5:01 AM
Heh. Get the kinks worked out. Heh heh. <3 you, Chickadee.