What it feels like (today)

Two years since M.   I have been meaning to write down the small but significant ways that life has improved.

But first I want to try to capture a little of the overwhelming feeling that I'll call, 'The Funk'.  It's like being depressed, but I feel it mostly around her:  the object of my addiction.  She's the one who insists on treating our sex life as if it involves choice!  Ridiculous!  I'm angry and resenting her not giving me sex, or if that, not really wanting me in our sex.   But she picks up on those negative vibes and reacts by not wanting to come near me.  So the very thing I want, I push it away through my heavy and weird wanting.  Sex isn't really what I need.  What I need is to feel loved and accepted and wanted--yes, sex is my preferred delivery mechanism for all these.  But it's not the only way, and sometimes not the best way. 

It's a quiet weekend together.  We have time to talk and enjoy being together.  There's no reason we might not be intimate together this weekend..... Except me!  My mood, my funk is strong.  I'm very quiet.  It started with my counter, my fair-meter.  I woke up thinking about how she decided to not give me sex last night.  Which then reminded me how often she's done that lately.  Which then reminded me how long it's been since she actually wanted me sexually, enjoying making love to me!.

I'm sitting in a restaurant with her but I can't pull myself out of my wordlessness.  Then she asks me how I'm doing.  I don't know where to start.  I think she's criticizing me for struggling.  I think she's just trying to get me talking so she can give me a quip for how to change my attitude.  I know these feelings are too much about her to talk openly about.  I settle on a partial honest statement, "I don't feel needed by you".  It's true, but I say it because there's a sexual interpretation as well as bigger one.  I try to think of something to say, but 9 out of 10 of my ideas are negative, and most of them are about how I'm upset that she's been neglecting me.  She can feel the 'vibes' coming off me.  My mind is stuck going 'round and 'round about how I'm not wanted, not needed, not enjoyed.  I want to feel better but I'm depressed because I can't.  I know the only road to intimacy is for me to be normal, yet I can't help being needy.  The state I'm in is not attractive, yet I need her to be attracted to me.

Still, what are some of the little things that are different/better after 2 years of no porn:

1) I'm not obsessed about every way she's showing her ageing.  I notice, but it doesn't make me angry, it doesn't take over my thoughts.

2) I'm content with my age.  I walk past older couples and I don't dread the 'writing on the walls'.  I walk past younger couples and I don't yearn for her and pine and ache to be with youth.

3) I can almost always get to sleep at night without sex.  I used to get so angry, that often I'd miss out on that nights' sleep.  I'd be very full of resentment of her the next morning, and maybe through that next day.  Not anymore.  I might be mad for 10 or 20 minutes, but I usually sleep okay and am not harboring or ruminating on it the next day.

4) I can be at home on my own all day, several days in a row and rarely does my mind turn toward addictive sexual gratification.  I used to be hopeless on my own at home, now it's.... just.... fine!

5) I can be at home with her, no one else in the house, and not obsess and get worked up and obsessed until I'm angry and unable to communicate (because of fantasizing and being unable to stop thinking about having sex right there, right then.

6)..