Self Abuse

I've been better this week. Mostly because I've been too busy to be bad. Idle hands are the devil's workshop, right? Well, I'm an atheist, so it suffices to say that it's not as easy to be distracted when there is work to be done. Imagining that there are invisible good and evil super-beings overseeing and controlling my everday life is odd enough without suggesting that sexual desire belongs to one or the other. Once I saw masturbation referred to as "self abuse." Really? Orgasms are obviously addictive, but the worst side effect I've ever experienced after having an orgasm is a good night's sleep. Which makes me wonder why Heath Ledger ever needed a prescription of Ambien. You're telling me he couldn't have just had a beer and a shag and then woken up to a bright and sunny new day?

But continuing with my original thought, the only thing that makes me feel devilish about my sexual habits is deceiving the missus. That's obviously not good, and I would be bothered if I ever learned that she was keeping secrets from me, too. But consider this. I make dinner for her and I most every night. And I don't always enjoy making dinner. Meals aren't all that important to me, I'd be just as happy having a box of Cheezits for dinner, but proper dinners are important to my wife. So I prepare them. Now if ever I decided that I didn't want to make dinner for us anymore, I would not be indignant if she started coming home with take out food. What right would I have to be angry if I was ignoring something that I know is important to her? So sex is important to me. She knows that it is. And we don't have sex every night. We don't have sex every week either. So where I may feel guilty about keeping secrets from my wife, I don't think the reason I do is exclusive to me.

If my wife were not Catholic, if she did not think that masturbation was an abomination under God, if she were openly sexually explorative, there would be no need for secrets in our house. You might ask, wouldn't it be better to be honest with her regardless of her beliefs? No. I know for a fact that it wouldn't. Once upon a time I did let her know that I watched pornographic movies on our TV. When the smoke cleared and the dust settled, our sex life was better for a short while, then it was back to the usual.

The work that has kept me busy this week was for my brother. He needed some help making changes to a Flash video player in a short amount of time, so I took Monday off and spent all day making the modifications. I wasn't sure I would be able to help, but the person that was originally helping him crapped out, so he was in a jam. When all was said and done, I completed the project on time, made some extra money and learned a good deal in the process. It's been so long since my day job challenged me like that. I think I could really make some cool things with Flash if I committed myself to it.

I especially want to make my own porn site out of my Flash animations. It could be useful on so many levels. First, I would be forced to draw more often. Second, I would learn even more about working in Flash. Third, the only porn I would be looking at would be my own creation. Fourth, if I charged for access, it could be a source of income, too. So far I've registered a domain and made a splash page. And I've developed a player that lets you control a looping animation in a lot of different ways. You can speed it up, slow it down, zoom in and out, pan up and down, left and right, control the sound and switch between different animations. I think it's cool anyway.

So Horrible

This last weekend we visited my inlaws in Tallahassee. It was a three day weekend since Monday was Martin Luther King Day and all three days were spent there. I really didn't want to go, but I didn't want to complain about it either. I hate when my wife complains to me about having to visit my parents, so I spared her the agony. I don't think she wanted to go very much either. For some reason we needed to visit them, even though they came to stay with us for four days after Christmas which was just 3 weeks ago.

One of the things that I dislike about visiting them is just hanging around the house with nothing to do. So we did do something each of the three days, but her family takes so long to get ready to do anything that we never left the house until 2 or 3 o'clock in the afternoon. So I watched a lot of TV. Meanwhile her Mom talks constantly at full volume, henpecks her Dad, makes excuses for going off of her diet, not exercising, not cleaning the house. I get so frustrated.

Of course I had no time alone to myself and no sexual attention from my wife, so I was waking up in the middle of the night dying for sex. I couldn't get back to sleep so I just lied there next to my wife, staring at the ceiling, imagining how it could be possible to talk to her openly, make her want to please me, or get out of our marriage before we have any kids and find someone more attuned to me. On the morning of the second day I stopped her before she got out of bed and said, "If I don't have some sex I'm going to hurt or kill someone," so we fooled around. I know that seems like I got what I wanted, but that is the bare minimum. That is having sex only when and if I ask for it. That is acquiescence, nowhere near passion.

Tuesday it was back to work. I have two bosses, both were out of the office this week so everyone has been coming in late and hardly working. I haven't done anything all week. I have things I need to do, but I can't bring myself to bother. I just don't give a shit. I know it's entirely passive aggressive of me, but it is what it is. After work I haven't been doing anything noteworthy either. I enjoy my time alone before my wife gets home, then I make dinner for us, we eat dinner and walk the dogs together, we sit at our computers and then go to bed.

Where once I was really getting away from pornography, I have been so horrible this week. I have a Cinemax subscription my wife hasn't noticed, I subscribed to a porn website, I stopped at an adult store and bought a DVD. I posted a fake profile on a dating website and have been corresponding with a known scammer. I even purchased a domain and a web host to start a smut site of my own. I have so many unfinished Flash animations, I really think I could do it if I just had the time and motivation. I never will.

Not Green Enough

I read over a lot of my past entries. I see I go back and forth between knee-jerk complaining about my life and a more collected perspective that has to admit things aren't so bad. I don't want to take good things for granted or forget that life could always be worse and was most definitely worse at one time. I might complain about my wife sometimes, but I do think it's worse to be alone without any hope for companionship. Working a full time job destroys my morale, but it's worse to be without income and deep in debt. And if I find it difficult to make the time to finish some drawings, there was a span of several years after college when I couldn't bring myself to draw anything. My wife may not want as much sex as I do, but she still does want sex, and there is always the promise that we will have sex again in the future. Everytime I look at my wife's naked body it's as if through my teenage eyes. It's such a gift that once seemed impossible.

One of the biggest differences in me over the years is just my overall mood. I was once so comfortable being depressed. I absolutely loved listening to sad songs. These days I've been finding new music through Pandora.com and I've noticed that everything I like seems to be upbeat, optimistic and hopeful. Moreover, some of the people who I thought had it all together are taking happy drugs now just to get through the day. I never thought I would see the day where I would deem myself better off than most. I'm not saying that I'm full of enthusiasm, but I can make it out of the house, and I can show up on time.

But like anyone else, I always want more. Every new accomplishment might make me happy for a few days and then it just blends in with the mundane. Even though I do believe I am better off today than I have ever been at any point in my life, it's not enough. And the main thing that frustrates me is that the greener side doesn't look so far away. The fence isn't even that high. Wouldn't it be possible to draw for a living? Isn't there anyone who would pay me for and appreciate my talent? And would it really take that much time and effort for my wife to sexually satisfy me? Does she even know how much more love I would express if she did? What would I need to do to start looking forward to tomorrow?

We Need To

The two days of vacation time that I had all to myself were a wash. The first day I wasted and the second, though I tried to make some new drawings, they were crap. My heart wasn't in it and I didn't stick to my usual methods of working. I just set myself up to fail. But the weekend wasn't so bad. I expected that all of the time would need to go toward taking down Christmas decorations and moving things up into the attic, but there was time for other things.

On Saturday morning, for instance, my wife slept pretty late and I did one of my best drawings so far. I colorized it on the computer and posted it on a drawing forum website where it got some positive feedback. The last drawing I posted there had received no responses at all, which is pretty rare on that site. When my wife finally woke up Saturday morning, she didn't get out of bed too quickly, which indicated to me that she was ready for some nookie. Normally when we have sex after a hiatus I feel like the first time isn't too spectacular, but it was really good.

Sunday morning, she slept in again. We hadn't done any housework on Saturday, so I wanted to get it out of the way as quickly as possible. By the time she got up, I had already done a sinkful of dishes and dismantled the Christmas tree. She got out of bed, though. We had breakfast together on the couch and watched TV for about an hour. I put my arm around her and acted sweet. Then she got up and and I pulled her back down so she was sitting on my lap. I ran my hands over her body, massaged her. I fondled her breasts and she laughed. And then she got up. I got the sense that she wanted to get started on the housework now. No matter that she slept for three hours after I got up and then proceeded to kill an hour doing nothing sitting on the couch. Now, all of a sudden, the housework was important to her. More important than what I wanted to do, apparently.

I finished working on the kitchen and then went to take a shower alone. When I take a shower alone it means that she will probably shower alone later and I will have 10 or 15 minutes to myself to look at pornography if I want. In the shower I thought all of my usual frustrated thoughts. I wished I could communicate how I felt, but I couldn't conceive of a way to do it without having her get defensive and angry. That wouldn't accomplish anything. When I was getting dressed I said to her, "Yesterday was so great. We were so in sync with one another. And I managed to do a good drawing that I'm proud of." I was hoping she would realize that I was comparing yesterday to the present day, but I think the point was lost.

While a mechanic was coming to fix a flat tire on one of our cars, I took down all of the Christmas lights on our house. My wife emerged to say she would help me once she'd had some lunch. The mechanic fixed the tire and I finished taking down the lights. I brought them inside in a tangled clump. She helped me separate them and then we went to work in the garage. We had all of the Halloween and Christmas decorations, plus some furniture to move into the attic. I started moving things up. My wife asked what she could do to help. I suggested some things. She announced that she was getting a headache and that she had some work she needed to do for her job. See you later. When she talks about things that need to be done around the house, the sentence starts "We need to..." but it typically translates as "You need to..." She came back out later and helped me finish cleaning up the garage. Even though she was getting on my nerves, I still felt good about everything we had accomplished. The house did look much better than it has in a while.

One of the things my wife says we need to do is, "We need to pay off our credit card debt." The unspoken corollary is, "While I still purchase whatever random things I want for myself." So this weekend she wanted a Stylophone which was available on eBay. A Stylophone is an instrument that David Bowie played on "Space Oddity." Mind you, she already has one smaller Stylophone which I've only heard her play once, and that was when she first got it. It's obviously not a priority for me that we have another one, but I'm not really interested in being the asshole that quashes her dreams either, so I just told her, "I don't feel like I can talk to you about it. I know you want it, but I don't believe that you won't ever find another one up for auction again." She agreed and said that she wouldn't pay more than $115 for it. Shipping is $25, so she wouldn't have paid more than $140 for it. Thankfully, someone outbid her. And believe it or not, it wasn't me.

She said she was going to take a shower and invited me to join her. I reminded her that I had already showered. She said it would just be quick and that she planned to wear a shower cap to keep her hair from getting wet. That light blue shower cap has to be the most unattractive thing I have ever seen her wear. I told her that she wasn't selling me on the idea. She said she wouldn't wear the shower cap, so I went and showered with her. Neither of us were very affectionate though.

Then we went to bed. I would have enjoyed some sex if she initiated it, but she didn't. While she fell asleep I watched some of Chris Rock's standup on TV. He talked about how if you've never felt like killing your partner, you haven't really been in love. How if you like having sex, then marriage isn't for you. How when you're in a relationship, you both need to have the same focus. And the focus needs to be on her. I grinned and felt validated. She dismissed his commentary saying, "Black people are different than white people. Men are different than women." A lot of black comedians' standup does sound like that to me, but Chris Rock was being a bit more insightful than that.

After she fell asleep I watched some crappy adult programming on a Cinemax subscription my wife doesn't know about. I got bored and turned it off. Sometimes I want to improve our communication and have us both commit to trying harder to meet each others' needs, and sometimes I just want my needs to go away.

The Prospect of Free Time

Another year has gone by. I have no resolutions. I'll probably find other ways to disappoint myself this year.

I just read through my last two posts from back in September and a good deal has changed since then. My wife has been in her "new" job as a pharmaceutical sales rep for about 6 months now. It's clearly the best job she has ever had and she'd doing really well at it. It was exactly the sort of challenge she needed in her life and I can see how it makes use of her best qualities.

As for her headaches, a local neurologist prescribed her some nasty anti-seizure medication which actually started making her pass out. It was pretty scary. When she reported the side effect to the neurologist, the neurologist first suggested raising the dosage. Then she tried to prescribe a different anti-seizure medication. My wife didn't agree to either. I researched treatments for her type of headache on the Internet and found another option which doesn't have any harmful side effects. Between that and her watching her diet to avoid any products with MSG in them, she's back to leading a more normal life now.

Our sex life has been about the same as it has been. We have a decent amount of sex when she's in the infertile phase of her NFP chart, but her interest in sex kind of stops there, while mine persists.

Shortly before the holidays she had an abnormal period which led us to get a pregnancy test. The test was negative, but we're rather certain that she miscarried. That made her extremely sad, of course. Me too, but I'm obviously a little more removed from the situation. Up until now, we have been completely successful using NFP to hold off having kids. Even so, we still would have welcomed one with open arms. We really only want to wait another year or so more.

I've been uncertain how to help my wife work through the sadness. Do I try to talk to her about it incase she's bottling up her feelings? Or would it be smarter to just let her bring it up if she wants to talk and let time move us forward? I don't feel like I've done anything but last night she told me that I've done a good job of being supportive.

I've assumed that this event has temporarily killed my wife's sexual desire, but I can't say it has affected my own. The holidays afforded us about a week at home together over which we haven't fooled around at all. I tried to get her turned on a few times in the morning but without any luck. She even wore the sexiest black dress and red boots out on New Year's Eve, but I didn't get to help her out of it. Given the recent events, I've tried to be a gentleman and not even bring up my so-called needs. I only mentioned that I wanted to have some fun once, to which she suggested it was my fault for falling asleep so early. Really? That night she fell asleep early.

There was a time, maybe back in November, where I felt like I had freed myself from wasting time looking at pornography. I replaced the habit with drawing, and if I wanted to draw a girl, I printed it out so I wouldn't be stuck in front of the computer. I had some simple rules I would follow to limit my opportunities to look at porn and they were working. Now I can't remember what they were. Maybe I wasn't using my computer when my wife wasn't home.

So much for that. Now I feel as though the part of me that draws in his free time is one clearly defined alter-ego and the part of me that enjoys pornography is another. Yesterday my wife returned to work after her holiday break and I was somebody else all day. I looked at pictures, videos, I even voice chatted with two different girls on SecondLife. By the time my wife got home, I just hated myself.

I have to go back to work on Monday and my wife will be home for the weekend tomorrow, so today feels like my last chance to accomplish anything over this entire two weeks off from work. Mind you, many of the days went into preparing for Christmas and celebrating Christmas with family. But today, I could do anything, and I'm just here feeling frustrated and anxious.

My hope in starting this blog initially was that I would stop living day to day and see the bigger picture, see the negative scripts that I replay over and over. Maybe I could see through them then and replace them with something constructive. This one that I have lived so many times before is the "Prospect of Free Time." Leading up to it I have gradiose visions of all that I will achieve with a block of time to do whatever I please. Inevitably I get mired in visiting or being visited by family. And then when I do get time alone to myself, I feel so anxious with so much hope and so little time, that I end up wasting the opportunity just trying to alleviate the stress. Often I try to do it with porn, but I've also wasted entire days over this vacation playing video games. I don't even feel like I'm enjoying myself with either. I just can't bring myself to do anything else.

So this is it. Today's the day. And I've already wasted half of it writing this.

Home Sick

So the next cell phone photo I received from my wife had her making a kissy face. How disappointing. I was looking forward to it all day and that was it. Yes, it was a nice gesture, she didn't have to send me anything, but the first photo wasn't exactly cutesy, it was hot and sexy.

She sent two more photos over the next two days and they were much more in line with what I was after. They turned me on a lot. Then I didn't need any more photos because it was Friday and time to fly up to visit her in person.

The flight from Jacksonville to New York was short, but involved so many other short trips in cars, shuttle buses, and airport monorails, it took almost 7 hours to get to her. It felt familiar. It reminded me of the time I visited a girlfriend in college who decided to spend a semester in England. On one hand it's nice to be missed, but then I've never had anyone go through so much trouble to visit me.

But then she teared up when I walked in her hotel room and the hectic trip and all of the little superficial frustrations of living with another person disappeared. Somebody loves me very much and I love her very much, too. I felt so appreciated, and more special than my nephews make me feel when they fight for my attention.

So nice having sex! With her erratic NFP chart, her hospital stay, and then this business trip, I think it was almost a month since we last had sex. She thinks she's put on a little weight since she's been away, but her body looked fantastic to me. We went into New York City on Saturday, then to my hometown on Sunday, and I don't think we argued about a thing. We only got to make love twice. I was hoping we'd have one last go before I needed to leave on Sunday, but I came down with a cold and felt completely worn out.

I've been back home four days now, still fighting off this cold. She's still up at training and finally gets to come home tomorrow. I haven't gotten any more sexy cell phone photos from her, but all the same, this cold has killed my sexual desire. I'm actually disinterested in looking at pornography. I just want to sleep until I feel better.

Pleasantly Surprised

So it's been two months since my last post here. Some interesting events have happened, but as far as I and my wife are concerned, we're still the same. I'm still the same. She's still the same.

Last month she had a really strange cycle where all of the signs that we use to chart her fertile and infertile phases were too sporadic for us to delineate the end of one phase and the beginning of another. Our only recourse was to wait until she had her period to know that we could have sex after then.

She was so frustrated about it. I appreciate that she really looks forward to the times when we can have sex, that is great, I obviously do, too, but there's no use in getting so aggrivated over something you have little or no control over, like your waking body temperature. She makes it seem like the NFP chart of her cycle restricts us from expressing ourselves sexually, when it only restricts when we can have full-on intercourse.

Much as I'd like to and try to instigate it, we don't fool around much when she is in her fertile phase. Where I'm just as happy getting stimulated in some other way, she just wants to fuck and anything else pales in comparison for her. I know what you're thinking, and I'm really no slouch when it comes to stimulating her other ways, too. I promise you, I'm experienced, attentive and patient, and I don't hear any complaints.

Around that time she was really getting on my nerves in so many little ways. She still hadn't been notified of when she would get her 3 weeks of sales training in NJ. That meant that she was getting paid to sit around at home, and every day she was stressing about it. She's under a year-long contract so she can't be fired. Here she started a job with essentially 3 months of paid vacation and she couldn't just relax and fucking enjoy it.

What's more, it seemed like anything to do with my visiting my family, be it my brother and his wife and kids, or my parents, was something for her to complain about. And my parents aren't really that difficult. My Mom always goes out of her way to please everyone. Anytime we visit it means we'll probably eat a favorite meal (of mine or my wife) and we'll go home with extra dessert or cookies. Torture!

On top of that, it seemed like my wife was constantly reporting one ailment after another. It seemed to be happening so often that I suggested she might have some unconscious attachment to not feeling well, which, by the way, is a great way to start an argument. I know I sound like an asshole here, but I'm generally caring toward her, I ask if there is anything I can do to help, anything I can bring home, but after a while it just brings you down to live with someone who never seems to be healthy and satisfied with life. It frustrates me when there is nothing I can do to fix the problem outside of small empty gestures.

Anyway, I was wrong, and the crumby chart was foreboding. As the weeks progressed, she started to get migraine headaches. She'd have them in groups, day after day, where previously she was just getting one occasionally during her period. The symptoms progressed until she started to feel numb on one side of her body. It freaked us both out so we went to the emergency room. She was admitted to the hospital and was kept under observation for two days.

I stayed with her the entire time that she was in the hospital, sleeping in an uncomfortable recliner, and running home every so often to let our dogs out and feed them. I was nothing but calm and supportive and tried to bring her something to make her more comfortable each time I returned. She had an IV in her arm, so I enjoyed the opportunity to help her take a shower. They determined that the numbness was just part of the "aura" of her headache, but they gave her some new medication to take that might actually eliminate her migraine headaches all together. We were both relieved when she was released to go to go home.

Shortly before she went into the hospital, she was given the dates for her training in NJ. At last. I was really looking forward to the time alone. I do love my wife, but I think I appreciate our time apart more than she does. I really need her companionship, but sometimes she talks so much about so many superficial things, I just stop listening. And having her away means I don't have to make dinner on any sort of normal schedule. The prospect of a good 3 weeks alone made me very (unrealistically) optimistic about what I could accomplish while she was away.

All this time with her not feeling well, having a messed up NFP chart and little interest in non-fucking sexual acts, combined with my overall lack of self control, has kept me leaning heavily on the pornography crutch. Even while I feel pretty bored with it. The good news is that I've lost all interest in playing SecondLife, so I don't waste a lot time there anymore. I tried voice chatting with someone over it some time ago, like phone sex, and it didn't do much for me. Now it's demystified and I know it to be really awkward and stupid.

Knowing that my wife would be away for a while, I've gotten fixated on the idea of going to a strip club, since I've never been to one before. Part of me thinks it would be exciting and good for me to try something I've never done before. Another part of me thinks it wouldn't be all that great. I'd probably feel really self-conscious and wouldn't be turned on at all. I don't think the reality of the situation would compare with the fantasy. At the moment, I'm successfully putting it out of my head.

So my wife has been up in NJ for a week now. I've barely accomplished anything that I wanted to, like cleaning up around the house or drawing. I haven't played a single video game, though, and I did prepare one piece of artwork for assembly. I'm just waiting on a tool in the mail that will allow me to finish it. I also have spend some quality time with my family. So it hasn't been a total waste. But needless to say, I've been binging on downloading pornography and now I'm feeling kind of low. I deleted everything from my computer again, but I also need to put my DVDs well out of reach.

I still feel like I have no idea how to reconcile my strong sexual desire. Should I focus all my sexual attention on my wife instead of pornography, or would that just set me up for more rejection and frustration? Should I try to stay away from pornography at all costs, or should I just accept that it's inevitable and try limit the amount of time I waste on it? Should I try to avoid being alone so that I won't have the opportunity to look at pornography, or is that avoiding the real issue, which is a lack of self control? Should I be open with my wife about it, or will that just wreck whatever progress our sex life has made?

I probably wouldn't even mind the fact that I've been looking at a lot of pornography if I was also drawing. But for some reason, I'm seriously anxious about drawing and I'm using pornography as an outlet for that stress. So when all is said and done, I either have no time left to draw or no energy for it. I recently read a self-help book titled Freedom From Self Sabotage which helped me understand the nature of my bad behavior, but I haven't changed my habits in the least. I hate myself for wasting this opportunity to draw and be creative without any outside distractions.

At the end of this week I'm going up to visit my wife in NJ for the weekend. I honestly would be just as happy staying at home and at least trying to accomplish something. It seems like a fairly expensive booty call overall. But she's really excited about me visiting, and it is good to feel needed. We are planning to do some things that I want to do, like see a favorite comedian perform in NYC and drive around the town where I grew up in NJ, so I am looking forward to it also.

She and I have talked on the phone every day and have been sending text messages here and there. She hasn't been asking me much about what I've been doing. I guess that's good because I don't have much to tell her, but I wonder if she's even interested. I'm afraid I sound bored when I talk to her. I do miss her, but I hate talking on the phone.

Last night she pleasantly surprised me with a naughty cell phone photo of her naked backside. It was completely her idea, I didn't prompt it any way, and it made me so happy. It might seem silly, but I found it incredibly thoughtful on her part. For the moment, I felt like she understood where I'm at. I think she and I both would be happier if I was looking at pictures of her over anyone else. Of course, I insisted that she send another photo immediately, but she only let me have the one. So I told her that I need a daily photo while she is away and she agreed. How awesome is that? I can't wait!