Pending...

We had another "conversation the other night.

It always seems that Mrs_C has to find her courage in a bottle.

When we were dating and first married she drank a lot, and would often rip into me, but that tapered off when we had kids.

It was weird how she would drink a bunch, chew my ass off and then want to have sex. When we first got married it was bit of a pattern - she used to complain that I didn't want to have sex with her. I tried to explain at the time that I didn't want to have drunken sex with her after she had ripped me a new asshole. Psuedo-submissive play sex is one thing (or possibility), but actually being a doormat doesn't turn me on

SO anyway, the other night (around 10 pm), she had a few drinks and decided to broach the subject of why I was mad at her and why I would be thinking of leaving her. She then cut me off every time I tried to say anything - that's a standard tactic of Mrs_C - don't let the other person actually say anything. Mrs_C also knows that once I get going, there is almost no possibility of derailing my logic (underlying assumptions, maybe, but not the logic).

I got to listen to roughly three hours of lecturing about how I'm a lazy shitbag, and have been through most of our marriage. I had it explained to me that I have done only three nice things for her since we met, and that she has spent our whole marriage doing nice things for me, and I should be grateful - but instead of being grateful I'm just angry - and isn't that just a fine how-do-you-do... She also reminded me that I was unemployed and living a somewhat marginal existence when we met (no job yet after university - high unemployment in the area I lived in at the time) - her words were "Think about where you were when I found you...".

After I was actually allowed to speak - after she made several trips to the wine bottle and a couple of smoke breaks outside with appropriate slamming of doors (waking up my son [14]) - I explained that if I had been unable to do anything right in the last 17 years, maybe it was futile and I had better just be good about cutting her losses by getting out of her life as anything other than co-parent.

I proceeded to list all (well... lots) of the things that I have done to be apologetic for - and invited her to add any that i missed. I apologised yet again for my transgressions. I then asked her the same question I asked previously and cited when we had our first conversation:

Link to previous post: Wednesday, August 24, 2005: So, Mrs_C and I had "the conversation"

I once asked Mrs_C to name one thing she believed she had done wrong during our marriage, or one problem that was her fault or that she was responsible for.

once again the answer was the same:

She was unable to name a single one. I guess she's perfect.

I said that it was impossible that I had only done 3 nice things for her in our whole relationship. I then went on to cite a couple of dozen examples of me doing something nice (this barb/attack of me "never having done anything nice" has been thrown at me before, so i actually have a list that i have compiled and memorized for this situation)

I then asked her if she found it a reasonable proposition that any married person would have made no mistakes in 17 years in

their relationship. I asked her to just look inside herslef. She didn't have to name one, she just had to be honest with herself.

She couldn't rebut.

I described how I cared for her but felt an absence of passion. Physical desire, yes, attraction yes - but passion for the marriage or relationship - no.

She told me that I was the love of her life and that she would never love someone as much as me. She again said that if she

had known that what she was doing would drive me away, she would have never done it. Other special excerpts:

- "i thought you loved me so much that you would never leave, no matter what i said"
- "I don't want to grow old alone"
- "that's real nice of you, i'm a 46 year old woman, my youth is gone, and you're going to leave me now after 17 years, after you've spent me"

Things went in circles for awhile and I went to bed at around 3am because I had to work the next day. Mrs_C called in sick.

When I got home she told me that she had been thinking all day and that I had done plenty of nice things for her - she cited a bunch of additional ones I hadn't even thought of.

She said that she would wait for me to either find passion in our marriage or make my decision.

And there it sits this week.

Less hostility, more amiability.

Pending...