Unrelated, I just read my user profile. It was very laugh out loud… I updated it.

I felt the need to follow up on the last post because I don’t feel like I finished making my point, or maybe I did but I have more to say. I have been spending more time with my children and with a greater sample size I have a more complete picture of what it feels like to be loved.

There is the unrelenting expectation, the ever escalating need, those things are there and I can’t pretend I love differently. There is also a comfort, an ease of sharing time and space. There is a genuine interest to understand and to appreciate the things that inspire or delight someone else, combined with a genuine interest to bring that someone into your own world of inspiration and delight. It is a recognition of safety in another person. It is a blind faith that your trust is not going to be abused.

My litany of gratitude includes knowing that I never hurt my kids or abused their trust or destroyed their precious innocence. It’s complicated but easy, in a way, to sort out my love for my children. My marriage is less simple, more volatile and more important to figure out quickly.

There was a five day gap between discovering my place on the autism spectrum and realizing I am a survivor of child sex abuse. I wish we had more time to figure out the first part before we got slammed with the second. I am going through a lot, but so is she and because she is neuro-typical(whatever that means) she doesn’t get access to the super powered processing machine that is my brain. She signed on for better or worse but this is worse than we ever imagined the worst to be. I am sorry she loves me.

She does though, I know she does because she tells me and I believe her. The problem is that her expressions of love are not things that resonate with me. This is not a new problem, we have spent some time working on it. Now we know that working on it won’t change how I process or communicate. Now we know I’m not shitty and she’s not shitty, we know that I will never be different, we know I will never be able to be what she needs.

She is trying. It’s not fair. I need her to be a person she is not and because she wants to help me she is trying. But I can feel how uncomfortable she is being near me. She would let me take advantage of her but I won’t because having sex with a person who doesn’t want to feels bad. I don’t even know if sex is what I want. I feel lust, physiologically, but emotionally what I am after is love. Passion and innocence can occupy the same space can’t they? But they cannot be manufactured.

Maybe I just need a ‘friend with benefits.’ Logically it makes sense, I get the physical relief I need(?) without worrying about all the emotional stuff. Sounds great, except there is no way I don’t fall in total love with this mythical unicorn woman. If a kind smile and a shared laugh throws me into a pathetic state of unrequited infatuation than kissing and touching would be worse.  Also, assuming I’m honest about what I am going through, what woman would ever want all this bullshit? And again, I don’t even think I’m after sex, not really. I’m after the before and the after. The closeness, the intimacy, the safety and the trust. I want to feel desired, I want to lose myself in the same. I want what I have never allowed myself to have.

My wife reads this blog, so none of this is news to her. She has never hidden her reluctance to fulfill her ‘wifely duty’ as she puts it. It sucks to feel like a chore to be done. I took advantage of her when I didn’t know why I needed sex to feel love. Untangling the knot has made it impossible to do so. Leaving me with nothing but guilt. I’m sorry she loves me, I offer her nothing and she gives me everything.

I’m trying to learn not to hate myself, this hurdle is a big one.

Challenges are opportunities to define ourselves.

Go Leafs! Go!