Sobbing into one's pillow

Dear Reader,

I am soooo depressed. 

I am finding it really hard to deal with my partners lack of sexual interest in me and also more dangerously her lack of interest in actually doing anything about this or trying to make it easier to deal with.

It's eating into the heart of me, and I guess what really scares me is that I can't stop the damage; damage it's doing to us and our family as well as how it's affecting me psychologically and spiritually.

I have tried doing the really patient 'us not touching intimately thing' for a few months  to give her a chance to feel things first for herself rather than me risking all on desperate continually rebutted advances.

I have tried being more self confident and manly; she used to like that.

I have tried the whole bath candles dinner massage playing with her feet listening (practically every day for the last seven years since her return to work - even on days when I have been out working too). 

Nothing is making it better and I cannot even begin to imagine spending the rest of my adulthood years (i.e. 'life') in a sexless relationship - I just start crying; it's getting in the way of my ability to function on an even basic level, proper depression that sucks the motivation, for anything else in your life's day, far away.

Being able to make love with someone you're in love with is possibly the most important thing in the world to me - I sense it as a supreme energy in the same way breathing air and eating food but way much higher up spiritually - I do not see it as fucking.

Yes I care so much about my children and their future happiness but I know I will not be much use to them if I'm this depressed and dysfunctional.

We are at the 'ten times a year or less' end of the spectrum which I have recently learnt is considered as a non-sexual relationship by many counsellors .... 


I guess they know that if it's happening that rarely then it's already got to the point where, when it does happen, it's not happening because of a normal sexual response between the two adults; more likely because of a sense of guilt on the part of the less sexually-needy partner.

When I was in my thirties and early forties I just couldn't get my head around men using prostitutes; I almost took the sort of attitude that Queen Victoria had in regards to lesbians - "it doesn't happen - I refuse to believe it exists"

.... aghast,  'they must be desperate' ... I thought; and, 'how do they even get it up with a woman who doesn't want them enough to do it for nothing?' I'd ask myself - as for me a huge part of the physical reaction on my part was a response to being wanted, desired ..... lusted after.

Men that carried on affairs in marriages I could kind of get my head around because at one point in the past long ago I had been confused as to which of two women I was in love with. But prostitutes ?!

No.

Now as I age in this most depressing way, the increasing desire, as my frigid love leaves to dress and start her day, to just have someone pop in to our bedroom, slip between our sheets, to place their arms around my hips and her lips around the tip of my penis and show me some tenderness and hold me tight as I give up some lifeforce (ahem; I'm a blogger not a poet !) ................. tantalises in a hellish way.

Separation and removal from her and my beautiful children's lives, decided upon entirely by this very cold and unemotional woman that I have made my life with, given up my career for .......... would surely follow ? 

I'm fairly certain she would see only my blame in this sorry state of affairs; she hates to admit any fault on her part as it is (part of her wonderful professional conditioning, working for a 'bunch of arseholes' in the city as she does).

Or would she pat the young professional on the shoulder and sleepily say 'tag' as she left the bedroom and the warmth between the sheets, relieved that it is not she that has to then face that what she has decided she no longer wants to deal with ?

And does anyone find it sad that actually I'd fantasise about my penis being inside her, not the whore's mouth, as I did this morning when I masturbated and then lay there with tears in my eyes, mourning the death of our sexual love ?

I'm really interested in what other people feel about this from either side of the fence (and I don't just mean gender - I know this happens to women and men) and whether anything similar is happening to them too, so please, please leave a comment even anonymously. I need to know I am not alone in this despair.

All the best

vom bug

Jeez we've all lost a stone in three days.

Seems there's a new winter vomiting bug that takes out your knees via inner ear (and thus balance) nerve infection, then as a real treat, it gets to work on your gut.

A real nasty; I won't be posting any pics. ...'on the plus side' (there is ALWAYS a silver lining)... I have had two lovely days with boyo at home and we've been cuddled up on the sofa together watching every known episode of Shaun the Sheep, Sarah Jane Adventures and even for posterity's sake some old Numberjacks. Most of the teachers were off with it anyway ... so no big loss of educational progress ?

He's been inseparable from me but then talking to God on the big white telephone is a new one for him (since his forgotten babyhood experiences) so he's been a little freaked.

Love him, he's a trooper. Will really miss him this week (though I still have his bug to keep me company).

Soooo.
Night night; it's finally bath time for stinky Daddy.

P.s. You should check this site; Www.damnyouautocorrect.com .... V Funny if you have an iphone or not.

Bloody Mums' Groups

Wow !

I'd forgotten I'd changed the background.... Wonder what my one reader (hi how you doing ?) thinks of the chirpy decor here .....

I have a complaint - It's been eight years now and I am finding it depressingly isolating the way many cliquey Mums' groups operate ... e.g. I constantly discover I have been dropped from the email coffee-morning list, or that I am not invited to social stuff - even after being practically forced to come along by some those who were invited (bless 'em I still have one or two friends) but are not the actual Mum running the social event du jour ("of course you're invited - don't be paranoid there, Mr. Stoopid !!" - with a pat, very high up on the back).

This morning, after being ridiculed as per above, for thinking that I wasn't invited to a lunchtime thing being held today by one of the Mums, I received a desperate text, stating ...

"Women-only lunch at El*****'s!"

(as in 'holy crap, I hope he gets this in time or we'll all look a bit silly and El***** will be pissed of with me and may not invite me next time, either !')

to which I have bravely (jokingly !) replied

'Suspected as much - thanks though; enjoy the naked firemen ;?)'

I'll bet that gets some real belly laughs .... 

I had no intentions of 'crashing' that one anyway - I know better from experience now, and can read the signs without fear of it being attributable to silly paranoia. When someone has your email address phone number and sees you every morning at school drop, if they want you to come they invite you ... ffs

Well I guess on the plus side it helps me to understand and empathise with my poor 8yo daughter's current dilemmas at school. They have that awful "If you want to be in our gang then you're not allowed to play with your friend Amie, and she can't join our group 'cos she smells" type of bullshit that's going on bigtime at the moment in her class.

Helpfully the teacher tells me "Err yes, this is the age that they seem to do that quite a bit" ...

Good, great, so that's ok then, I guess, it being the standard to be expected type of bullying, not that awful, horrid non-standard bullying.

In other news related to this ...

Few days ago I was called up out of the blue by a Michaela Strachen of BBC Radio 5Live to do a live interview type program feature, based on the news that stay at home fathers experience post-natal depression.

.... As I suspected she may have more than just my phone number, I declined. My partner is not a big one for dirty linen being washed in public and I have to respect that. 

But if I could have been assured of anonymity I could and would have ranted for England on this topic. 

The above sexist exclusion by the supposedly more downtrodden gender would have been very high up on my list.

I am particularly angry about it now that I discover one of my neighbours, who has decided to support his wife's return to her career by going part-time with his career, to do the stop at home dad thing, is experiencing exactly the same thing.

Poor sod - he's sane and stable now, but I wonder how he'll be in four years time ? Previously working very high up in mental health care, I am hoping he'll spot the warning signs before it's too late. I say previously because whilst he's still at senior level at the moment, I'm wondering whether he'll get sidelined as he's no longer full-time.

So ..... Hey !! Way to go there, Gals ! ..... you actually get another male who is prepared to do what you all spout on about, and you socially exclude him.

[Men - pay attention; this may be one of those 'if you actually do what they say they want you to do, you are fucked' -type conundrums of the female psyche, the kind of thing that misogynist old men try to tell us about]

Again there's a silver lining - on the plus side it helps me to realise that I was correct in thinking it was happening to me because of my gender, rather than my personality or smell or something.

Now - if you've found yourself here because you are a new stop at home dad, brace yourself for the truth - you are going to need to mentally protect yourself from this, because with no career and a pile of domestic drudgery, a partner who is having a shit time at work and taking it out on you, and (in my case and I hear many others also) no intimacy or loving sex for months on end, you are going to find it tough.....

As in battle-tough; it may break you at worst or be bloody lonely at best.

Once the novelty of having you around (possibly the sole stop at home male in their group?) with your still-taut forearms changing nappies during Monkey-Music/Have fun with Polly's Phonics wears off, THEY WILL DUMP YOU.

Get a massage. Use childcare. Keep fit. If it's too late and selflessly you have let a lot of things go, like your old friends and your sixpack, go to a male environment (e.g. grubby old man's pub/bar, cricket club, golf ? etc.,) once a week at least to remind yourself you are a man. Observe how the other men there don't seem too troubled by life ... you too can again be like them !

Do this now. Before you are rudely awoken and find that not only are you not a woman (eh ? .. a flight of fancy ? - hey those delightful mums will soon remind you you're not ...) but neither are you any longer 'a man' in others eyes.

Or, you'll be occupying space somewhere between 'east European nanny' and 'scruffy incontinent dog', with similar house rights and occasional access to the t.v./fridge/bed.

You're partner will have lost respect for you (she sees alpha males at work who still get to the gym and have 'mojo' as well as a fat paypacket and career, that will flirt with her). She will think you are making this all up, so don't expect any sympathy there if you dare whinge on. 

My beloved helpfully insists it is all in my mind, that other Mums are having a way worse time of it etc., etc..

Consequently would I be out of order if I wondered whether the glass ceiling she cites as reason for her lower paypacket is all in her mind ?

Got that ? - Yes I'm bitter, but I didn't start out that way.

Thanks for all the support Ladies.

#drippingwithsarcasm my tweeps.

L8ers - I have beer to drink and ironing to do :(

;?)