Saturday, April 18, 2020

Resentments: listing them to help them along their way

I resent her.  Mostly physically and it all fits under the umbrella of being a 'real woman' and not the porn fantasy that I brainwashed myself to expect for all those decades:

She's getting older, flabbier, saggier.
while porn gave me never-ending variety and youth and physical perfection.

She doesn't want me more than anything else. She's sensible and practical.  There are scenes in movies and TV where people rip each others' clothes off, oblivious to the rest of the world in their passion and overwhelming desire for each other.  Porn makes me expect this (and her gagging for it with no connection, no foreplay, no work on my part).
Then there's TV shows where lifelong partners undress and talk about their day while climbing into their own side of the bed with their habits formed over many years.  They might might read in bed, they might kiss, they might talk about making love, but they often don't.  Real life means talking about our sex-life, alongside talking about other relationships and practicalities.  Not always sexy.

She doesn't represent fertility.  Her impending menopause has not only put a damper on our love life, but it simultaneously reminds me of both us being in the last half of life and how diametrically opposite from young-sex-fantasy our reality is.  Instead of vagina being a mystery of pleasure and desire, with the period being an ignore-able symbol of her youth and fertility, it's become a reminder of the unsexy practicalities of her childbearing past (along with her drooping breasts and permanently pointy nipple--mutilated by breastfeeding,--something else that's unsexy and not about me.  Every period is an unwelcomed guest which should have left the party long ago.  We're too old now and just want to watch TV and go to sleep.

More Realities.  She burps, she shits.  
I've held women to a double-standard and I haven't minded them working harder to look better, to be attractive even when sexuality isn't relevant.  I can fart, but she shouldn't burp.  Of course her bowel movements are smaller and shouldn't smell.  They should be dainty and really she shouldn't shit at all according to my narrow view that ignores reality and focuses on fantasy and sex for pleasure.

I've ignored the parts of reality that don't fit the idea of youth and idealized sex.  I embrace her breasts as erotic zones, sex organs, a way to turn both of us on.  But I resent the natural and normal changes they've had from the miracle of feeding our beloved children.  I've worshiped her sexuality as a way to make me feel powerful and alive and happy.  I wallow in the peace of mind from knowing she's committed to me and will be here for me for the rest of our lives.  While I simultaneously resent her getting older and changing.  I can't justify having her, enjoying the comfortableness of 25 years' of intimacy while simultaneously yearning for someone young.  I'm not really wanting someone else.  I'm wanting that stupid impossible fantasy of porn.  Porn never gave me children, who really do give my life meaning.  Porn never listened to me and understood me, only an ageing and flawed woman can do that.  Someone to love is what I need as much as someone to love me.  I am working to leave behind the fantasy from porn so I can embrace the real her, and real love (giving and not just getting), which involves pain and lack as well as satisfaction and real connection.

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