"How not to watch live tv" or "Porn & The Multi Orgasmic Man"

Two things contemplated today in my search for coping mechanisms wrt my frequently mentioned intimacy-deficient relationship - more, and better, masturbation/sexual self-discovery, and heaven forbid, an affair (I should stress there's no one to direct my unfulfilled lust on the horizon just yet, but occasional 'you know what this look means, young man' encounters in local supermarkets have made the pulse race).

Vena Ramphal (http://venaramphal.com/ ) who has been very inspiring throughout her webinar today (populated only with shy and quiet males -self included!) is recommending that certain men read a very special book  - which I've just found here :-

http://www.healing-tao.com/tao-garden/universal/en/the-multi-orgasmic-man.html

...... and also, masturbation ..... but (if needed) a more discretional usage of pornography. Not less, just better, more intentional/directed.

So many women feel threatened by their partner's use of pornography (check the covers of some women's magazines and you'd be forgiven for thinking a new kind of Temperance Movement was about to start up, especially in the USA) - hence it is incredibly refreshing to hear Vena :-
a.) advocate guilt-free male masturbation and
b.) talk about male usage of pornography in a non-judgmental but instead friendly and concerned manner.
She is incredibly kind and has great understanding of both the female and male psyche.
(Oh yes that's an endorsement - check out her site http://venaramphal.com/ )

To be honest, the spectrum I usually find arousing may well be more in the arena of 'erotica' than 'porn' so I'd hope anyone would see my use of some discretion (although it will often be pretty errr .... 'complete' stuff I think it's always the aesthetic and 'real' that grabs me) ... because, my God, there is some awful rubbish out there that can really turn you off ;?)

I don't want to watch stuff that makes me depressed afterwards (and I don't mean because the leading man has an enormous penis under his eight-pack washboard hairless tum). Some stuff is just .... you know, grubby.

So, I think Vena has a very valid point - one which I already apply to television programs so it should be easy enough to apply to pornography:-

I watch virtually nothing 'live' seeking out instead the programs that would interest me at a later date on iplayer, youtube, C4od ... the best tool I have for this incidentally is 'Get iPlayer Automator' (for mac) which acts like a mac based PVR/TiVo application - brilliant bit of kit and shareware/freeware (But please support the chap if you like it). Programs get processed into iTunes at varying user defined quality levels (e.g. iPod, tv, HD etc).

Get iPlayer Automator

When you think about it, finding the program you want to watch is being broadcast at a time when you are able to watch it or even remember it is on is like expecting to find needles in haystacks on a daily basis.

Now if someone can just recommend something like this in return, but for the rude stuff - all the usual sites need a filter as the world of porn turns ever more desperate to compete with the last nasty it spewed out onto the web ....

Here's a good example, written (supposedly?) by a woman - Gem, that has recently caught my eye
- naughtygem.tumblr.com
.....  in fact there is a lot of erotica on tumblr.com. Nobody told me .... and I thought it was just another twitter/blogger/wordpress mashup !? ... Heck, look what happens when you click on the archive button or the mosaic tab
:0

Ok - maybe using people with good taste is as effective if not more a filter as a program ! Once again social networking wins the day.

Bye

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 :(

;?)

the long version - ranting anger vent

[disorganised ranting - unedited - come back in a week; it will be readable honest]

My objections are mainly about what little respect and consideration you currently show for me, my opinions, my wishes, feelings, etc., and just how little you do for me, how little care you show me

when you combine this with abusive and angry asides and constant nitpicking it isn't much fun

tbh from the way you behave I feel you are trying to get me to leave or want to leave yourself

you seem to think it's ok to treat me like shit and if I dare react it is then all about me being an arse - well it isn't

I'm also frustrated that when I see you are putting your feet up or relaxing I let it pass and don't insist or even ask that you help with the domestic duties outside of our daily work hours; this is mainly of course in the evening.

So, out of sympathy and usually love and respect for you, I leave you alone, bring you a nice drink, cook you some lovely food (that you usually seem to enjoy very much)

I know you feel you have been having a really hard time for the last several years of employment both at ******* and *******, and you just want to sit and read your book/watch tv/soak in a bath each evening.

I know how difficult things get between us when you are tired and rundown, so a part of this is also to help our relationship - I try and take the strain .......... it's a bit of a let-down when not only you don't reciprocate this empathy but you have a go at me.

some points I'd like to make -

1.) I want you to stop continually 'telling me off' angrily, like I'm some errant lowly domestic - more respect is needed if you want more back

(this makes me feel really shit and demeaned).

2.) realisation that you must think I am lazy and are saying as much

(I am shocked and horrified that you don't trust how diligent I am and how hard I work for this family - even more so that you think nagging/berating me is the way to get more out of me ...)

3.) you show a complete lack of appreciation and support for how hard it is to start new career from scratch with no CV, virtually no experience, whilst picking up this family's crap, and shopping cooking laundering and cleaning for you all, arranging all the social diaries, etc

4.) this weekend in particular you have let me do all the cooking, setting up the beds and 90% of the dishwasher emptying & filling whilst you're largely sat (and for the most part in the evening lying) on the sofa - I even got up without even a cup of tea let alone breakfast and gave you a few hours on saturday and looked after the kids on my own so you could get a break and talk to your Mum - Sunday morning you were virtually kicking me out of bed to do your bidding and drag DS to rugby

5.) telling me to shut up in front of DS this morning whilst I was only doing what you frequently do (point out future enforcement/consequences if not doing their homework/chores) - you attempt to censor me quite often infront of the kids - I find this highly embarrassing and feel like you are saying my views on their upbringing and manners are unimportant, that I am unimportant. It also destroys my authority in their eyes and makes it harder for me to get them to behave and respect me without me having to shout etc..

6.) over the last few months you have made quite a few extra demands on my time/energy and consequently I feel quite nagged and bullied and stressed out - as there is now ALWAYS something that hasn't been done (something that you have decided as being my responsibility alone and that is beneath your task list) - I simply do not have enough time and energy to get everything you think I should be doing completed

now just lately your behaviour towards me is escalating towards the unbearable

from sunday's aborted attempt by you to meet me with the car (as we always manage for you)

it's seems rather unfair that you haven't bothered apologising for your part in Sunday's BS - especially as I did, a few times on your ansaphone and also in text - all I got for my attempts to save you and the kids from a wasted journey was you screaming at me down the phone.

Imaginary Post Argument Thoughts ...

Hmmm...

This is getting worse ... my thoughts on a row

"Irrespective of how we could both try and score points here it's how I feel in these situations that concerns me, and how you seem to not feel, not anymore at least.

This is how I see from my point of view what happens, and how your actions make me feel.

I've tried before to get you to see how your behavior affects me, in the hope that maybe you could understand why I get so upset with the way you appear to take things out on me.

Things that frustrate you usually seem to be the spark; things that you see as being all my fault irrespective of the real situation or any shared reality between us.

I find this quite demoralising - it makes me feel like shit that someone supposedly so close could be so mean and nasty even if they were pissed off about a sheet in the laundry basket that both of us could have tried to launder.

Anyway, that's part of the reason you get such a reaction back: I'm usually in shock like a kicked dog. Your maulings hurt !

I've always hoped you'd find new more friendly and caring ways of making your point and maybe compromising a bit more, but it seems mostly futile.

Whatever I say, no matter how long I leave it before talking to you, no matter how much I beg for you to see the impact of your anger on me, it seems anything I say is interpreted as unjust criticism of your perfect being.

And that it's all about how awful my reaction back to you was rather than the fact that you have just been incredibly upsetting or hurtful to me in the first place.

So it seems you're quite quick to criticise me and my behaviour, yet don't seem to accept that you may deserve criticism in return. It feels like you think in all of these situations that you have the perfect right to 'tell me off' (your words the other night).

0-60mph ... you never first kindly ask me to do things more the way you want ... just go right in for the jugular, straight off ....

You hardly ever apologise - Sadly even when I'm pretty sure we both know we are at fault (as we usually both are) and I apologise first, it just seems something prevents you from apologising back. A day later when you seem to have gotten over your anger with me you still forget to mention it.

So our relationship rarely has chance to heal properly from this sort of event - there is rarely any kiss and make up, especially since you have taken to avoiding any intimacy as much as is possible, just more problems looming on the horizon as it limps along. When we get to the next fight we remember our wounds that haven't healed from the previous one....

I see you withhold your love and affection (and intimacy and sexual energy) more each month.

As the years go by, more and more I have to grovel at your feet to get any positive emotion or closeness from you.

Until recently, for some reason I haven't quite figured out yet, I was prepared to keep doing this begging, and I now think that has been part of the problem.

Maybe it's the recent years of ineffectual drudgery that had made me feel unworthy of anything more (as you have frequently described; not washing your clothes properly, not shopping properly, not reading to the children properly, not washing up properly, etc., etc., the list is long). As if it was all I deserved. For what seems ages you have gotten on at me about how little I get done and, by implication, how crap I am at the stuff that matters the most to you.

You treat me like shit because I am shit.

Well I don't accept that I have to put up with this anymore - I am tired of being the person you take everything out on.

I now know I am a worthwhile person; in spite of you doing very little in the way of encouragement or practical support to help me, I am building a new career that I actually get a kick out of, and meeting more people who show they have faith in me.

I don't know where this is going though. Even if we really don't have much of a relationship left, I'd still like to be here for you if you need someone when life is getting you down, but the way things are currently, my role within this relationship is not very rewarding and even if I could put up with it (and shrug it off like some poor blokes I see can do) I don't think allowing you to carry on using me as a punch bag is healthy for either you or our children (especially as you have become increasingly happy to start on me even with the children in the same room - and I find it very hard in these circumstances to allow you to run me down in front of them, let alone put up with this treatment, and none of that is good for any of us).

I don't think you mean to be like this but I feel no affection, love, warmth or intimacy, no partnership .... and when you talk to me the way you did regarding the laundry tonight I feel there isn't even a friendship anymore - as I know there is no way you would treat any of your friends as such a dopey skivvy, and certainly no way you would berate them for not doing a good enough job.

In essence there's just not enough love affection respect and care from you to balance out all the anger hate and dissatisfaction I get from you - and I don't know how to cope with this anymore; it's not doing me any good."

Ta Dah !;(

what do you think ?

Bullshit Meal Out

My thoughts on another night/meal out ruined by my GF 's inability to avoid controversial topics for restuarant discussion.

Background:- bullshit pseudo French restuarant serving rather poor nouvelle cuisine very badly on north Wales borders (Sebastiannes) in spite of trying. The duck breast is cut up into long slices like a row of used tampons. You cannot imagine how over fussed the entrees were. Wine list almost xenophobically French (only three Italian reds on offer) and fantastically over priced.

Conversation has (initiated by GF) negotiated such dodgy areas as how well child is doing reading (trust me, he's fine) women I allegedly was sleeping with before/at start of our relationship (trust me I wasn't) .... she however went off and shared a 2-man tent around Peru with some guy for a whole month, several weeks into our relationship, and took to being photographed bra-less with amazingly perky nipples in skimpy shorts and damp T shirt .... She would never even consider going bra-less in the house now. Needless to say she demands to be trusted on this one ? .. But it's ok for her to cross examine me of course.

Other fun topics neurotically raised ritually, in same order as per usual - how crap work, pensions, life is; and how shit I am and unlikely to amount to anything.

What I would like to say but haven't-

"I just feel you use these meals out (every single one I can remember) as an opportunity to have an expensive go at me whilst I'm cornered and in public - you seem to delight in nagging me in as direct a way as possible without any thought for my feelings on whatever depressing subject you have chosen to bring up ...

Does anyone else like being performance management reviewed over dinner by their frigid partners ? Whilst paying through the nose at the same time (and having to think of nice things to say about the chef's awful cooking) ?
John doesn't ..... (remember Terry Wogan's little Janet & John tales ?)

How would you feel if I did the same to you whilst you were halfway through our posh meal ?

I'll give you an example:-

One issue that I feel I am displaying immense patience and tolerance towards, is your near total avoidance of intimacy with me; imagine how it would make you feel if every restaurant meal out for the last seven years had included, at some point, this conversation;

"...So when are you going to eventually learn how to pleasure me orally when you're not in the mood for sex for a whole two months ?" (it's about the only thing I would ask her to get her act together on, as requests to desist from being such an uptight neurotic basketcase may offend).

Touché !!

In amongst the hundred or so ways she would force me to change, this hankering of mine for an improvement in sexual intimacy is something that would bolster my willingness to cooperate and assist with her other, many, issues ... But guess what her list item #101 is ?
You got that right !

LESS SEX

Now I know this is not gender based and just as many women will be suffering in similar situations to me (but with neurotic, impotent male partners that won't go down on them and love them there) so please tell me how you would cope with this, thanks.

Putting a brave face on as ever ....

The StopAtHomeDad.


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