An update, and a response to a comment left in my previous post.
“I think what you’ve written in your post is a classic example of why women need to sit back and embrace the traditional role of letting the man take care of them and not worry about his goings on… If he get’s laid off that’s his problem. Your problem is to back him up, make him feel great and frankly give him a good BJ before he goes to work, so he’s all calm and aloof…
Don’t mother the man or nag him, or boss him about. Don’t try to upload your feminine bleating into his head, he doesn’t need that. He needs to feel like a warrior. Anything you do in that direction – GOOD. Leave the rest to him.”
I’m going to respond to this in several points.
1) “If he’s laid off, that’s his problem.” On the contrary, that is very much my problem. I’m depending on him 100% for any and all monetary support. Sure, I can make a little on the side here and there, but realistically, if he were unemployed for a large length of time, we’d be fucked. If he gets laid off or fired because of his own negligence, and I can see it coming like an oncoming train while he keeps repeating the phrase “everything is ok”, how could I possibly sit back and let that happen? There is no way.
I wrote out a big paragraph of examples of why I don’t trust him to fully take the bridge, but it feels like a husband bitch-session, and that’s not really fair since we’ve worked through some of these issues. I’ll just say simply that low testosterone is coloring all of his interactions and decisions right now, and that makes his interactions and decisions circumspect. He’s already on meds for his thyroid, which should hopefully at least cause a dent, and his first appointment to talk about t-therapy is coming up soon. Until then, I don’t entirely trust that he’s thinking straight and not in the low-t fog. He’s not himself right now.
2) Giving him a BJ before he goes to work… one reason I haven’t written a lot here is that we’ve been in one hell of a drought. We broke the 2-month drought last weekend. Yes, 2 months no sex, for various reasons. He admitted to me a couple of weeks ago that he’s been forcing himself to have sex with me for the last 6 months. Stress and low-t. For the most part, I’ve taken it in stride, but it’s a hard thing to hear. Even now that we’re starting to get back in the groove a little bit, I’m not entirely sure that he’s not still forcing himself for the good of our marriage, because I start to get downright crazy without it. He says he’s not, but also says he understands why I would be unsure. Giving him a BJ sounds like a sure-fire thing, but I’ve read too much about low-t men rejecting their wives’ initiations, and how much that hurts, to even begin to think about it. I know I should be outcome independent, but I already had a difficult time initiating, and now I have a growing worry that he’ll turn me down if I tried. So things are rather tenuous in the bedroom right now. We’re working through it, but knowing that he’s not “all there” hurts my heart, even though I know it shouldn’t.
He’s lifting weights again, and taking an over-the-counter T-booster. I’m trying to cook good home-cooked paleo foods for us as often as possible. We’re doing what we can with what we have.
3) Don’t mother him or nag him… You’re totally right. I shouldn’t do that, because it doesn’t work. But I’m not sure anything would “work” right now, so I’m just left feeling a little hopeless about the whole situation until he can get to a doctor and get a solid plan of action in place.
TL;DR: That’s all well and good except that there’s a medical condition involved, and that complicates things, because simply having a penis doesn’t make a guy a great leader worth following.
If only it were that easy.
Aside from that, I’ve been up to a lot. Crafting (I’m 1/3 done with the 4th Doctor’s scarf, bought a book on sewing that I’ll start after I’m finished with that), de-cluttering the hell out of our living room so that our nearly 2-year-olds don’t kill themselves, taking photos, reading, getting the kids involved in a home school group, hanging out with friends on my own, going to a gym with child-care (so nice!) and, at Ian Ironwood‘s suggestion on my last post, writing. I’m shooting for at least 500 words a day. Will it turn into anything? No idea. But I’m forcing myself to write, keeping it private, and deciding what to do with it later.
It’s hard to balance. Because I know I need to do all those things, but it also saps my energy like crazy. I’ve had more energy since I started progesterone and thyroid therapy, but I still feel like I have a lot less than a normal person. My sleep is still really bad. But I do feel better.
We started Dave Ramsey a month ago, and that’s coming along nicely too. We’ve been far in the green since December. We should be getting our tax return soon. We have plans. I feel a lot better about that part.
Life is looking up, I just need to let it.
