15-03.11.60 in Book Two: The Fifteenth Year of the Third Millennium of the Common Era

Wow… I love that all of my ProseBox friends are such prolific writers. And I mean that with full sincerity. It is wonderful to have so much content to enjoy! Over 80 entries to catch up on!

Why have I been absent? Work. Monday and Tuesday were both 12 hour days. So I can say clearly… Tuesday night I was exhausted! Came home to my wife enjoying her second day off in a row… both days of which were spent Binge Watching Top Gear. I needed a nap… I mean 24 hours at work in two days and at least 6 hours of it on my feet in court. Add that to the Daylight Savings bollocks and the exercising… my body was crushed! Apparently, needing a nap somehow pissed off my wife. She wanted me to cook dinner and do laundry. She’s had two days off and has used them to relax (good) but after two long days… I want to nap and it is a problem. I told her I’d take care of the laundry within the next 24 hours and went into the bedroom to pass out. She woke me, rather upset that I’d slept for 3 hours, in order for me to cook dinner… as she was finishing the laundry. IF we can ever get to a marriage counselor… we really have to talk about her concepts of “To Do List” priorities. She feels a crap ton of anxiety over To Do Lists… but isn’t super strict with herself about them. If she has something on her to-do list that she can give me? Then I have to do it when she asks because otherwise, she gets mad and/or does it herself and gets mad.

Funny thing is… between her obsession at getting something done on her time schedule, my nap and rushed cooking at her insistence and her ongoing Top Gear binging… we missed both of our shows today. We watch Agents of Shield at 8 and then Face Off at 10:00. We missed both of those. Balls.

Perhaps she is just in one of those moods because… shortly before bed… she throws a fit because she is furious that we have “so much shit” in the house. Uhm… we live in a barely 2 bedroom apartment (the square footage suggests it is more appropriate to call it a 1.5 bedroom) that we chose because we needed somewhere to live during law school. I get it. We need to move on… we need to start the other half of our life. I also get it that she is going through this anger and freak out because I encouraged her the way I did. The idea was to create a partnership… to encourage her to use these 7 weeks before April 15th to figure out what she wants to do. I understand that it is terrifying. I understand that she has grown so accustomed in these last 35 years to a lifestyle of blame and postponing and all of that… so her reaction has been to Binge of TV, get frustrated, get angry, and remind me that her life isn’t how she wants it. This is why I’m like.... okay.... I can’t do this for you. I get that it would be easier to be emotional and embrace your fears… but all I can do is argue (to force you to face it) or just let you take out your fears on me… which I personally hate, have told you as much, but have to put up with because I am trying to be a supportive husband. CRIKEY!.

Anyway… moving on to Wednesday:
It started off… rough. Because of a dream that hit me pretty hard. It started off as a party being thrown by my parents in my Godfather’s palatial estate. However, I was feeling truly sour the entire time because every minute my parents would have me alone, or my brother and sister-in-law would have me alone… they would absolutely tear into me for not passing the bar exam. It was brutal. Finally, I just exploded at them all but in front of all of the guests… so my parents acted shocked as if I’d had no provocation for such an outburst. Then the entire party goes to a showing of the musical Wicked. But when we get there, we see that the entire theater is sold out and MY chair is broken… meaning, pointed the opposite way of the stage. My mother simply says, “Nothing to do about it now, just try to enjoy the show.” So, I was again a bit miffed. I tried explaining the injustice of it to her via an interesting Baseball case that we had discussed in Tort Law in Law School, but she was annoyed at my talking because she wanted to keep taking photographs for the nice elderly Asian women she was sitting next to. Then I woke up. So, I’m already not feeling too great about this last bar exam but that? That was kind of devastating.

It didn’t help that after I woke up, I had to get to work. Nothing says “Don’t worry about a law exam” like spending hours around lawyers and court rooms. It was, honestly, a nothing day for the most part but… I got a little queasy from freaking out.

So it was nice when I got home that I was able to play some video games and have a nice long conversation with a good friend of mine! Got my mind off of things for a bit.

Then the hallway outside of my door really got my mind off of the Bar Exam and had me face-to-face with marital issues. I am on the bottom floor, next to the out door of the building. Here’s a quick, humorous tip for people who live in apartments and especially for people who have roommates.... if your bedroom or apartment is not suitably private enough for your conversation… the public hallway is not an acceptable alternative. Apparently, one of the new tenants that moved in hasn’t figured that out. Because Wednesday… long loud very private phone call right in front of my door. Thursday? The other end of the phone call had come for a visit… so I got to hear the both of them conversing for another hour. And, at least Wednesday’s conversation, was about desire and frequency and all that jazz. Which… I get it. I know the world is full of women who are the opposite of my wife… but it is so much easier to pretend that the only women who actually want sex are the ones being paid to act like they want it in Porn or TV or Movies. Yeah, that may be silly or stupid but… it is one of the reasons I asked what I did yesterday. Because… growing up you constantly hear the Old Standard about how women don’t want sex and men want it all the time. And growing up, more of my female friends were open about how that was absolutely not true. Which… at the time, I appreciated and enjoyed. It was nice to know that women wanted sex… it made me feel like waiting would be even more awesome. But… then there is my wife. A woman I have known for ten years; whom I have found beautiful probably about 90% of the time; and a woman whom I love. And in our entire ten years, the only time it ever seemed like she genuinely wanted me was at the beginning. The first three to six months. And everything after that has been… numb? Or just… disinterested? And I even said to her recently, “I wish you felt as strong a desire for me as you feel for finishing your to-do lists.” To which her response was, “I guess it is just a different kind of attitude towards each.” And before you suggest that I add “Have Sex With Your Husband” or “Kiss Your Husband” or “Make Love to Your Husband” or “Make out with your Husband” or “Tell Your Husband You Love Him” onto her to-do list… I have. In all of those forms and more. And she always treats it like a joke or ignores it or… so that plan won’t work. I just… it reminds me of something that used to come up in Philosophical conversations in college. Some young woman would be complaining about her boyfriend cheating on her and say, “And the girl wasn’t even pretty!” or something along those lines. This is the kind of thing that can explain that. Because… it doesn’t matter if the other person is sexually thrilling so long as a long unfulfilled need is finally being met. That is also why a lot of “mistresses” or the male equivalent don’t make ideal partners… because it is based on a single need being taken care of instead of a whole person (sometimes.) Not that I would cheat or even that I could cheat but… the situation brings to mind the philosophy of it all.

Which brings me to today. A day filled, so far, with chores and playing games, and catching up with a few people I haven’t talked to in too long. Tonight I hope to catch up on reading entries, cook a chicken dish over rice that I’ve been eyeing and watch Archer. And try, desperately, to avoid mind-based landmines. In other words, I have to stop obsessing about April and I have to believe strongly that I can make my marriage work.