sdcjournal

Ok, well I'm glad you told me in whatever way you feel comfortable. I
will leave it to you to work out your own stuff and you can let me
know if there's something I can do to help. I honestly don't feel any
pressure or resentment. That is something I worked on in therapy,
because for a long time I think I was too reliant on you making some
move that would get me out of my crappy situation. In the end, I
needed to do something for myself. And it's the same for you, I think.

Honestly, this frustrated me for a long time. It's hard to just want
someone to be happy, or feel fulfilled, and have that drawn out for
several years. Obviously that's not as hard as going through it
yourself. But I hope you believe me when I say that I just want you to
be satisfied and challenged and all that good stuff. However you get
there is fine with me. You know that.

As for the other stuff (sorry to be vague, but I'm in class), I'm not
sure what to say that hasn't already been said. I'm kind of tired of
having this same conversation because I feel like it's also causing
some of my issues of feeling like I need to "please you" or whatever.
I will try to start Opening Up this weekend. I hope that might help us
to have a different kind of conversation. Because I keep feeling like
I'm in this loop where you tell me you're unhappy about something and
I feel like I need to do something about it to "keep you" or make you
feel better.

gotta go

On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 4:31 AM, Jeremy Meyers <softlord@pobox.com> wrote:

Dearest Kate-

So, here’s why I was up late last night.  I had some some stuff that’s been
bubbling under the surface (and sometimes not under the surface).  I know we
said we’d check in with each other, so here’s some stuff that’s going on
with me that for whatever reason I haven’t talked about or been able to
crystallize my thoughts on.  There are no huge life-changing bombshells in
here, and I’m not leaving, so don’t worry.

When I decided to move here with you, I knew that your schooling and the
program would be your priority.  This is the deal that I accepted, because I
love and support you and this is what you should be doing.  I did a lot of
reading on “what its like when your partner goes to grad school”, and
thought I was prepared.

However, I think a side effect of this is that its put into further stark
relief how unsatisfied I am with my life and what i’m doing with it. I’ve
basically been treading water since my Waggener job ended, to varying
degrees.  I know we’ve talked about it, but I’m not sure I’ve really
processed the full extent of my feelings on the subject.

I’ve always held that a healthy relationship consists of three parts.
Yourself, the other person, and your relationship.  I feel like I’ve lost my
own life momentum as you are gaining yours, and I’m not happy about it.

I’ve become acutely aware of how much of my own life (as distinct from our
life together) now revolves around you and your schedule and spending time
with you.  Obviously, I like spending time with you.  However, I’m very
frustrated that my life right now is about spending a lot of my time doing
freelance stuff while waiting for you to get home.

You’re the only person I’ve spent any significant time with since we got
here (and even for a long time before we moved). This leads to me wanting
distance sometimes, even when I don’t specifically want to “not be around
you”.

I love you and our time together, but I am also lonely, unchallenged and
under-stimulated a lot of the time.  Even before we were together I was
basically spending most of my time at home and alone, so this is not new
behavior.  I don’t think I’ve really let that sink in without trying to
explain it away or feel guilty because of some fantasy implications about
our relationship, when its not about our relationship.

None of this is news to you, obviously. I’m reticent to dwell on it too much
with you because I don’t want you to feel any pressure from me or that I
harbor any resentment toward you about your schooling.  I appreciate all the
support you’ve given me on this front and I’m sure I’ll be leaning on you
for more in the future.  I don’t, and I don’t want your priorities to shift.
It’s all on me to lead and theres nothing for you to adjust, I don’t think.
I dont know if theres anything specific I want you to do to help, either.

The thing is, I suck at doing stuff for me.  I’ve always been bad at it. I
don’t like making doctors appointments, I even put off bullshit stuff like
haircuts, and i’ve always fallen into jobs or relationships and left them
way after it was really time.  This is something that I really dislike about
myself, and though I have the rare moment of clarity about them, most of the
time i’m in a fog of ‘well what if thats not the right thing’ and disgust at
this stupid fucking habit getting the best of me while time in this life is
so short.  The phrase “wasted potential” comes up a lot.

So, thats something I’m going to figure out. I’m not sure how yet but I will
(and I have some ideas that i need to actually DO), because continuing on
how I have been is not sustainable and is only hurting me and by extension
our relationship, which is too important to me to fuck up now.

Other things....

It makes me sad that there are things that you’re ashamed of or deep dark
secrets that you still don’t feel comfortable enough to share with me,
things that could bring us closer together.

It makes me sad that you say you don’t treat yourself very kindly.  I want
to support you as much as I can, though I’m not sure what I can do or
whether it’s even my place, or if anything I could say would help you in
that respect.  But if there is, I will do it.

It makes me sad that after this much time we’re still so delicate with each
other sexually and can’t figure out a way to be more overtly sexual (or as
you say ‘sluttier’, though i’m not sure thats exactly accurate in my mind
and maybe thats part of the “problem”, framing being more overtly sexual as
a charged word like ‘slutty’).  These are things that I struggle with
internally.

I want to figure out why, I want to break through, I want to be way kinkier
and more spontaneous and adventurous than we’ve ever been.

I get frustrated, however, when it feels to me like you’re not being very
proactive with your needs and instead focusing on being accommodating and
reactive.  This is, I think, a theme that I’ve been struggling with trying
to accurately and specifically identify.  I’m not sure I have it precisely
right, but here’s what I’ve come up with.

It seems (from my POV at least) like you sometimes go into situations (be
they sexytimes or otherwise) with the attitude of not wanting to “disappoint
me”. That makes it very difficult for me (and you too, I suspect) to engage
in the moment.  For me it feels like it raises the stakes of every
interaction. It relies on you then feeling like you’re doing what I’d want
or what you think I’d expect, or deferring to my request or preference.
Then if I’m doing something outside of that or not providing or following
the right script, theres no way to communicate it without maybe ruining the
moment or risking the very thing you’re trying to avoid?

It also doesn’t leave room for your actual needs wants and desires to be
communicated or to happen, so maybe you’re ‘stuck’ with either me guesing or
you not getting precisely what you want out of the interaction, or more
often its me asking what you wanna do and getting frustrated, or you asking
what I want to do and me getting frustrated.  No good.

I’m not sure what the path to get to a better place about this is.  I can
hear your response already “well you don’t say what you want either”. I hear
what you’re saying, but I’m not sure that would help given the dynamic (not
that its the easiest thing for me either). This kind of stuff has us stuck,
and it needs to change.

One of the reasons I’ve been encouraging us both to read Opening Up is
because there’s a lot of stuff in there about sexual communication and
templates and things, and maybe that will help, er, open us up, regardless
of whether it leads to a restructuring of our monogamy boundaries.  In fact
it would probably be helpful to separate out the reading from any commitment
to opensexytimes, which is perfectly fine with me.

Some of the local people I’ve been talking to on OKC (and some that we’ve
been talking to together) seem like they’d be fun to hang out with even if
we dont end up getting naked with them.  I’m just not sure whether you’d be
okay with that happening, be i together or me by myself...I’m trying to make
friends on my own here too.

I’ve been thinking about it a bit and as much as i want to be having hot
threesomes and moresomes and meeting fun couples to play with and stuff, I’m
not sure given all the other stuff above that I’m even in the right
headspace to share that adventure and have it be sustainable.  I guess we’ll
see.

As pervy and kinky as i am, I'm also bored and lonely as I said, which is
possibly not the ideal situation to begin such things.  I don’t know,
though.  I just know that it’s really most important to me that it be
something that we're both excited about, or at least honestly open to
independently rather than you doing it because of how i feel about it or
that same sense of not wanting to disappoint me if you don't like it.

Well, now it’s late, I’ve been wrigting this letter for 3 hours and you
probably think I’m mad at you.  Well, I’m not.  I just needed to get this
out.

My love always

-Jeremy

Momo