a cure for the disease

Listening to Boards of Canada; song of the moment is "Peacock Tail"

On some mornings, quite like the rainy one today, I find myself wondering why I’m in a relationship. It’s not that I have a terrible girlfriend; she’s a wonderful person to be with. But the relationship isn’t perfect or at least that’s how I view it but what relationship is perfect? A  peculiar thing about personal perspective, its a very subjective thing with very subjective ideas that paint it. Allow me to explain.

The sex has dropped in frequency quite significantly since we started dating. Is that enough to brand it a bad relationship? No, but it can be a little frustrating. And it has been a point of contention in the past without her knowing. Apparently, my girlfriend has become quite unhappy with her physical appearance, specifically her weight gain since we started dating. This has never been an issue with me, I’ve told her this a hundred times. I’m always trying to have sex with her but I’m almost always met with some excuse as to why she doesn’t want to, most of which may be true but I know the underlying reason for the constant denials stem from her suffering self-esteem. She says she’s going to improve her self esteem by improving her physical appearance. That’s great to hear, whatever it takes for her to feel comfortable enough to have sex with me but it becomes aggravating and tiresome when I see her and hear of her not keeping true to those statements. So what am I supposed to do with that? "Oh you can’t eat that, you said you were going on a diet so that you can feel better about yourself (since my words and actions of reassurance aren’t enough) so that we can have a more consistent sex life." That just sounds insensitive and selfish so I say nothing and the frustration sets in.

Being told no on a daily basis is very discouraging and compounds my frustration. Unfortunately my frustration starts to play out in other parts of our relationship which inevitably leads to some argument. She thinks its about what we’re arguing over but really, it’s about my sexual frustration manifesting in other facets of our relationship. Remember, I went 9 years without being in a relationship before we started dating. That’s also nearly 9 years of abstinence too (peppered with a handful of encounters, saved for another entry). So I’m ready to make up for lost time, something she knew about and even played on a little while we were just talking. Her words were "I feel sorry for the next man I go out with, i’m going to wear him out". When I remind her of this she plays it off by saying, "and it worked too!" Not exactly the best response for something she knows I’m frustrated with. She does apologize from time to time because she knows how often she says no. But here we are still playing out the same routine with hardly any change.

My girlfriend is a bit of a feminist, something that she freely admits. It’s not over the top by any means; after all she is dating me, a guy, ha! I’m an open minded man; not a chauvinistic fiber in my body and respect her points of views. But from time to time, while being very much a guy because I am one, I seem to step on her toes, inadvertently, with what she thinks are chauvinistically motivated statements or actions. You’ll have to take my word when I say that I did not remotely think that way when the offending situations occurred. But, I suppose, making a statement about two female video game characters getting it on might come across that way. Or modifying a video game to have a female character dress scantily (not that there aren’t hundreds of other games that do this already, out of the box that I do not play out or respect to her) might seem a little insensitive. I did it only because I can (if you’re a geek/nerd you’ll understand that logic and if not then know that really is a reason to do something for us geeks, ha!) and not because I have some manly idea that female game characters should dress a certain way for men. It’s bizarre to me, really. It almost seems like she feels threatened by made up characters and what she thinks my ideas are about them. It frustrates me to hear her label these things chauvinistic but when I counter by saying I’m anything but that (which she knows) she says she’s not calling me a chauvinist, just the acts. I’ve always been of the mind set that labeling an action a certain way is also labeling the person performing the act: Calling a homicide monstrous but then saying you’re not calling the person monstrous doesn’t quite jive. And if you’re curious about the emphasis given to "video game" that’s because this is the only context in which these situations have occurred and not because I was "being a pig" with some real life situation.

As you might imagine, this can be very frustration when it happens. It feels like she takes these things as a personal attack and impulsively reacts but quickly tries to put the fire (that she has to know is coming) out by saying she’s not calling me a chauvinist. I don’t really know what to with that so we argue.

In general, our arguments get very frustrating. Not so much because we’re having one (every couple have arguments. they are natural and can be a very helpful thing in regards to getting ideas communicated, if done constructively) but due to her thinking I’m telling that she can’t express her ideas and opinions. In every argument we’ve had she inevitably started saying that I’m trying to suppress her, that I’m quick to try to make her shut up when she feels a need to tell me something she’s not happy about. What’s actually happening is that I’m expressing my opinion about her opinion. I would think that she would see that as being a logical reaction since she is essentially doing the same, only starting it instead of responding to one. But some how I get called out for apparently trying to muffle her words. Extremely frustrating. This may be something that’s seeded from some part of her past… I don’t know. I assure you, I am not trying to tell her to shut up. Is it not a human thing to react to something that you feel needs discussion?

But does any of this significantly contribute to my second thoughts about being in a relationship? Only marginally. There’s a much bigger, underlying reason that I know exists but at the same time eludes my clear understanding. For the 9 years prior to this relationship I had gotten used to the idea that maybe being with someone wasn’t what my life was to amount to. I suspect that part of that is still at play. It was quite a turbulent shift when we started dating on a serious level. There were some growing pains. I’m probably still shedding those ideas, even a year and a half later. The other part of it is I don’t really know where I see myself 5 years from now, hell even 3 years from now is still a mystery.

This entry is not about me thinking about a break up, it’s just me being real with what does occasionally cross my mind. Besides, i’m far from perfect. What would it say about me to break up over a few things that are not make or break items. My girlfriend is wonderful; if it were not for her I’m not sure what my state of mind would be in light of my father’s recent, unexpected passing. She fully supports me and I, her. I just need to shake t

hese thoughts which I suspect come from something much, much deeper within myself. Something that skews my views on the world around me, in general.