The stable foundation upon which you build your interactions with women - with everyone, really - is your frame. Your frame is your highest ideal of self, the man you want to be and the man you are becoming. You're never done improving your frame, but of course there does come a point at which you've built it into a sustainable bulwark, requiring less maintenance. When you reach this point, your frame no longer occupies the majority of your thought; it flows naturally. And then, new tests begin.

A strong masculine frame flows into action. You know who you are, you know what you want, and you know how to speak & act to achieve your desires and represent yourself. You become used to this, the state of supreme confidence, mastery of your own identity. So what happens when life throws you a curveball, and you have no automatic response?

It could be something big, or something so laughably small. But it will come. In my case, it was such an infinitesimal problem that I felt like a complete moron for even worrying about it. The proverbial mountain from a molehill scenario. Nevertheless, I had to figure out how to handle it before I could keep moving forward.

My girl is an avid reader. It's one of the things I love about her; no mind-numbing reality television or soul-sucking gossip mags for her. Give her a good book - or occasionally a bad romance novel, but hey, girls need porn too - and she's happy. And this, ironically, was my problem.

We work different hours. I've been working around 60 hours a week for the past several months due to understaffing, but I'm almost always home before sunset. She works an erratic retail schedule, but nowadays she tends to be there well into the night. When I first picked her, her schedule more closely mirrored my own, so finding time to go out and do fun things, or stay in and do other fun things, wasn't an issue. These days, when she gets home it's already past this old man's bedtime. But she's still wound up from work.

So she reads.

Sex isn't a problem; all I have to do is take the book out of her hands, lift her off the sofa and carry her into the bedroom when I'm desirous of some amorous activity, and she's eager to please. But afterward, she goes back out to the sofa and reads for another hour or two.

And honestly, this started to bug me a little.

At first, it wasn't any sort of big deal. We'd fuck, she'd leave the bedroom to read, and I'd fall asleep. After a week of this, though, I began noticing changes in her attitude. Changes in my attitude. A difference in the quality of sleep I was receiving. And I started to resent her reading.

What the fuck, right? I felt fucking stupid for this, but I didn't want her to stay up reading for hours past my own sleepward sojourn. And as I realized that I really wanted her to just stay in bed with me...I felt like a fucking pussy. How do I respond to this? Where does this fit in my frame? It did not compute.

So I ignored it. Fuck it, I can sleep alone, right? Well apparently, wrong. I started having trouble falling asleep. I could be dog-ass tired when I laid down, but as soon as my head hit the pillow - boom, wide awake. I started getting to sleep later, and waking up later. No time to meditate before work. No time to hit the gym. No time to write, to cook breakfast, to take my time. And a week later, my mornings were completely fucked up.

It was fucking ridiculous. I kept thinking and thinking about how I really wanted her to just come to bed and sleep, but I couldn't for the life of me think of any reason to make her stop reading on the sofa. I like that she's a reader. And what kind of girly-man can't fall asleep by himself? Might as well put a bow in my hair, for christ sake!

You see, I had my frame all figured out and set, but there was a problem. It had been all about action for so long, I wasn't prepared to think about something like this, something unexpected. And it took me far longer than it should have to figure out the solution.

I'm sure all of you, reading this, see the obvious where I did not. But I spent almost three weeks in a fucking quandary about this. Until last night, clarity hit me like...like a good night's sleep.

I picked her up from work at 2230, and when we got home, I stripped and laid down in bed, tired from another long day. She changed out of her work clothes and grabbed her e-reader.

"I'm going to go finish this chapter, and then I'll come to bed."

I sat up. "Nope."

She looked startled. "What?"

I patted the bed next to me. "Come to bed. Your chapter can wait until tomorrow."

"But, but, it's a good chapteeeerrrr..." She tried the little-girl voice. I gave her the amused-but-stern voice right back: "It'll still be there tomorrow. Bed. Now."

And, of course, she practically leapt into bed with me, settling onto my chest with that contented sigh.

And now, here I sit the next morning, awake with the sunrise, and ample time to write this post before work. Yup, I'm a dipshit for not figuring this one out sooner. I didn't need a good reason to make her come to bed with me, all I needed was to know that I wanted it to happen so I could make it happen. When the action wasn't automatic, I took too long thinking about it in the wrong way, instead of quickly thinking in the right way. I got stuck in what I thought my frame should be, instead of simply being my frame.