Crossroads

I'd appreciate any help/advice anyone can possibly give me here....

I'm at a crossroads

My wife and I just had a 'conversation'. She tells me that she is seeing signs and she wants to know what's going on. I'm not ready to tell her anything. Issues have been coming up between us for a few months; we seem to be living in two different time zones and we've lost total touch of how the other feels completely. She says we don't do anything together; well, I've tried to ask her to do stuff but there's always something or other going on. We are consumed by work which is stressful, she is in school almost full time which adds to her stress and overall family and health issues, not to mention this holiday season which tends to put even bigger stresses on us.

I've told her that she seems to complain about everything, work (she has changed jobs about 5 times in the last 4 years, always something or other and she's certainly not happy in her current one), school (too much of a workload, too many credits) and life (she always tells everyone we have no money--which we don't have tons to throw away, but we do ok); we have no close friends, the only outside relationships for her are her family. I told her that in her complaining it does make it sounds as if I'm the root cause of all her problems with life and honestly 90% of the time I don't know how to approach her or talk. Lack of communication brings resentment, which causes yet more lack of communication and awareness about how the other one feels, overall assumptions which most of the time are wrong of course but then comes the resentment. I overheard her talk to someone the other day about a distant relative she ran into and mentioned how the last 15 years have certainly not been kind to either the relative or her...how's a guy supposed to feel about that? I have tried to help out in every other possible way, there's nothing in the house I won't do to help out with the kids, housework, cooking, laundry, you name it...

Here is the crux of the issue: lack of sex...it just isn't there. This has always been a problem for us--or is it for me? Sure we had our honeymoon period like other couples and once kids came into the marriage things changed. I certainly have my own issues and lately it is not just hard but impossible to connect at this level...I have my share of the responsibility, I know, but honestly I seriously wonder if by fixing this (if there is even such a thing as a magical fix to this and somehow manage to have a continuous, fulfilling sex life) would everything else get fixed too?

She asked me if there is such damage on each other by trying to keep whatever this is called (certainly not a marriage), is it even worth it trying to salvage it? I also realize that you guys are reading my side of the issue only, remember that. I struggle believing that by getting lucky once or twice a week, if such a thing could even happen would fix everything else, but hey, things may be more lost than salvageable anyway. Any advice or enlightenment would be appreciated...

Interpretations and Confessions

I remember the first time I ever heard this from my young man's president. We were sitting in priesthood and this must have been one of those uncomfortable, yet needed lessons to scare horny teenage boys out of their wits: The YM president said that masturbation lead to homosexuality. I also do remember several of the guys looking down at the floor with more than an embarrassed look in their faces. A couple of years later I discovered where this principle came from: I was reading portions of the Miracle of Forgiveness and ran into this...I don't know if anyone recommends this book as a resource to anyone, but I certainly hope not!

I also remember the first time I felt so overwhelmed that I just had to ask for advice. I was away from home in a student ward and nothing was making sense to me. I asked for an appointment with the bishop; I honestly could not piece anything in my life together and it was time to find some guidance. I'm sure it was a standard question for him and I had only been asked this once from my mission president and never again: He asked if I masturbated, but I figured as long as I was sharing confessions I would tell him of 'my problem': I told him that I felt attracted to guys. This must have taken every ounce of dignity out of me, because I sat there and bawled. Again, I'm pretty sure he had heard this before and must have had canned answers ready for every problem, because after a minute or so and without any other explanation told me that this would stop when I got married. I never went back to that ward again, I just couldn't bring myself to do it and found a family ward to attend and never ever brought it up with anyone at church again.

This was 1991...I really hope none of this non-sense is being taught in the church anymore. Now in retrospect, I still made my choices, I am really not trying to put blame on anyone here, I believe everyone probably did/does and gives the best possible advise advise when asked...

California's Proposition 8

I had not been able to articulate my feelings on California's Proposition 8 as of yet, but happened on this article while reading the SL Tribune's online edition. About 10+ years ago Robert Kirby became my own personal patron saint:

Robert Kirby: I don't care if gays get married

Robert Kirby
Tribune columnist

Article Last Updated: 10/24/2008 08:17:36 PM MDT

A couple of years ago, I wrote a column in which I announced my official position on gay marriage. Basically, I don't care.
Not only do I not care if gays get married, it is none of my business. As a flaming heterosexual, it's a full-time job for me just to keep my thoughts clean in church. I don't have the energy to fret about somebody else's libido.
The column must have resurfaced on the Internet. I'm getting mail again telling me what a failure I am as a Mormon because I'm not solidly behind Proposition 8. As I understand it, the California ballot item would prevent the domestication of homosexuals. Or something like that.
Here are just a few of the attempts to get me to see reason.
"Are you a member or not? Do you want gays to get married in the temple? Please follow the brotheren's [sic] council [sic] on Proposition 8. This is a important gospel principal [sic]." G., e-mail.
"No unclean thing can enter the house of the Lord. Gays are unclean because of the Scriptures. You have to be hot or cold about it or the Lord will spat you out." T., e-mail.
"Were you listening in church when the letter was read from the First Presidency about supporting proposition eight?" R.Y., e-mail.
"Get with Prop 8 or your [sic] a homo." Anonymous, letter.
Hard as it is to counter such brilliant logic, my position hasn't changed. The only serious concern I have about gays getting married is that they'll register someplace pricey.
The church is serious about the sanctity of marriage. I get that. But aren't more potentially "dangerous" marriages already being performed out there? For example, I hear in church all the time about marriage being ordained of God. But I also hear about how the glory of God is intelligence. Shouldn't it be against the law for stupid people to get married? What's more harmful to society - two well-dressed men getting married and settling down, or two idiots tying the knot and cranking out any number of additional idiots? You should have to pass a harder test to get married than the one we currently have. Essentially, there are but two questions: "How old are you?" and "Is that your sister?" Hell, you could pass this test just by guessing.

There are drawbacks. Most people get married when hormones and youth make them about as dumb as they'll ever be. So, even a relatively easy test would by default raise the age limit to about 40. With an increased marriage age limit, there would be fewer births. Genealogy would become easier to do. With fewer births, there would be fewer children born gay. Hey, isn't that what Heavenly Father would want? OK, I was just kidding about that. But if you're really serious about putting a stop to gay sex, let them get married.

Craziness

I haven't been able to post for a while...work is insane and many other every day things going on all at once. I've been working on a couple of postings, but they just don't seem to be anything that I would consider post-worthy.

I promise I will do better and get my act together here soon...it isn't like there aren't even any current events going on to discuss.

Life Cycles

Sometime in 1999 when the internet was barely making its way to everyone's home I had already been on it for a couple of years due to being in school completing my bachelor's degree. Even back then, it didn't take long to fin the world of sexual images and I had the perfect excuse for staying up late at night 'doing homework'. One of those times, my wife was searching for an online game or something and started typing on the URL address line and my settings were such that the auto-fill was on; several links came up that shocked the hell out of her and brought her to my 'secret' world. The next few months were filled with turmoil and uncertainty. She then told me that a lot of things made complete sense, but she had not tied all the pieces together then.

Somehow we made it out of that one...

About 5 years later (2004) we were living with her folks and saving money to get into a house. To say that stress was at a high time level is an understatement with work, family, extended family and myself now in graduate school. We had a family argument with someone (a sibling or something) and I was mighty upset. Unfortunately I had gone back to my old internet habits, but this time I had found some internet lists and had chatted with a few people online. While discussing 'coming out' with someone, he told me that I would decide to tell my wife basically when I didn't care about anything. Well, that argument made me not care about anything, so I had taken the kids to the movies and when we put them to bed I had a talk to her and dumped all my problems to her, which included gay porn and masturbation. I had read and heard horror stories about this situation and my biggest fear was how she was going to react to this revelation.

She must have had a ready script/rebuttal prepared for such an occasion, because she told me in less than 10 minutes that we were going to divorce, the kids would live with her and that we were basically done. Although we had agreed that we should not tell anyone what was going on, she ended up telling a few of her siblings in the next couple of days and she told the kids we were divorcing when I wasn't there to explain anything to them. I must have not slept for the next week or so but I moved out of her parent's house and got my own place within a week. I don't know what happened when she went from "we'll work things out" to "I'll never let you see the kids; you piece of #$@#". I was basically bowing to everything she would say and demand, as in her POV I had basically ruined her life. Those two weeks have been the most hellish and miserable of my life. I have never cried so much as when I did then. It was heart breaking to pick up the kids after school for a little bit, then have her take them with her and tell me how much they were suffering because of me. My son, was 10 years old at the time immediately assumed the role of her care-taker and my daughter was just confused-one time she asked me: "why don't you love mom anymore?"

A few days later reality must have set in when my wife told me she couldn't do it, she was sorry to kick me out and that we should work things out somehow. She'd come crying and begging not to do this to her and the kids. I was in shreds by then and told her that I would not move back to her parent's house, but they could move in to where I was living. I offered once and then twice. The last time I offered I told her that it would be the last time I asked her to do it and she accepted. I offered no assurances, but at least I had all of them back, especially my kids. I also had something of a coming out to my mother and a few of my siblings and I went to counseling for a few months during which time many things surfaced about my past, my relationship with my family and overall life, eventually things got better and we got back into our home lives, got into our home and life became 'normal'.

It has been over 4 years since that time. We are getting close to 5 years and for the life of me, I hope that the cycle is not about to repeat itself...