Trapped! In the Dentist’s Chair!

Whether my report is good or not, I have always been very good about going to the dentist.  I do try my best to brush and floss appropriately.  Try as I might, however, my mouth has likely put my dentist’s son through college and every time I see some new gadget in his office or some new decoration, I can’t help but feel that my teeth (and wallet) paid for it.

My dentist is a good guy and I’ve been going to him for many years.  He has two hygienists, a cool one and mine.  The cool one is a big-boned girl that cleans my wife’s teeth.  Mine is, well, you’ll see.

My hygienist is a well-meaning but nosy ex-New Yorker who tends to give too much information (TMI).  One year, I sat in the chair and told her I was well.  In response, I thought that the socially acceptable thing to say would be “and how are you?”.  As it turns out, her family had been struck by tragedy.  Such a big tragedy that it involved the loss of a child.  I sat uncomfortably in the chair as she recounted every detail.  At that point, the sharp, scaling hook didn’t seem so bad.

Over the years, I have found out too much about her, the other staff (“we’ve got a divorce going on” or “staying with the guy to marry him but she’s got herpes”) and unsolicited details and opinions on just about everything.  Last year, I thought I had it cinched when I switched to the cool hygienist.  I wasn’t as enamored with her technique but at least the conversation wasn’t awkward.  I got booked back in with the cool one and next thing I know, they’ve changed my appointment back to TMI!

I was in to have my teeth cleaned a few days ago when she sat me down and began going to town on my teeth….and my ears.  It turns out that her husband recently was found to have an early malignancy of the p-r-o-s-t-a-t-e and they went back to (insert major metro area out of state) for the surgery (as though any one of the hundreds of doctors in this state couldn’t have saved them the trip) at (insert major medical center here).  They went there because they needed someone they could “trust” because there’s a “special” bundle of nerves “down there” that serve an important function.  If I could pick one word, dear friends, it would be “Ew!”

The whole time I am gagging on my spit and she jams the suction into my mouth…she’s hammering away at my teeth and I am pinned to the chair.  I have tears welling up in my eyes and I am praying to God to please make it stop.  Luckily, the subject abruptly changed to his post-op course which saw them staying with relatives and an explosive diarrheal illness break out on the ranch.  At this point, I am seriously wondering why someone hasn’t hauled off and smacked this woman.  I started to picture the big-boned one and this one in a cat-fight.  Screeeeeeeeeeeeeech!

Now, my teeth are squeaky clean and I have a goody-bag with travel sized everything.  I feel like a whore having been ear-raped to get it.  Then again, what’s a boy po’ to do?

Hating on Christmas

OK, I don’t REALLY hate Christmas….just the endless mail, email and cacophony of sales people trying to sell me things that my loved ones really need.

I recently made a large purchase of a new camera lens. I told my wife that under no circumstances was she to buy me anything for my birthday (last week) or Christmas. Today, she called me from the mall. She told me how she’d shopped for my sister-in-law and the kids and something for me. Of course, who wouldn’t love a gift, right? I can’t help but think however, that she went in all well-intended and came out with more than she’d planned because the “holiday spirit” moved her (aka, “Target Syndrome”, “Home Depot Syndrome” or “Costco Syndrome”).

I don’t mean to be a scrooge because honestly, I LOVE giving gifts but not because Best Buy tells me that the woman in my life needs an e-book reader or a new (insert electronic device here). I’m still ruminating over what kind of gift to give my employees this Christmas. My business partner wanted to leave the newest one (only with us the last two weeks) out. I thought that would be cruel. Give her SOMETHING. ANYTHING. Just don’t give her nothing. We want her to LIKE working for us.

What Did She Just Say?

This week we have an IT consultant in our office intermittently to help with any questions regarding a software upgrade.  I’ve met her several times before as she was part of the training team that trained us in the software.  She is probably in her late twenties and somewhat attractive.  I didn’t pay her much mind until she started commenting on an article in “People” about Tim McGraw.  She said that he does (I forget the number) of sit ups or crunches daily.  My billing manager (I don’t know why she said this and I’ll likely kill her for doing so…) said “Oh yes, LS does that many”.

This girl then turns to me and says that I should get a pair of jeans like his and a hat.  “That’s some serious sex appeal!”.

This isn’t the first time she’s flirted…just the most obvious.  Of course, she knows I’m married and, of course, I changed the subject.  I don’t know if I can roll with the office flirtation like I used to.  Maybe I’m just getting old.  BOO!

When Rome Comes To You

I’ve always been interested in how foreign cultures view and react to similar phenomena.  The phrase “When in Rome…” is certainly one that I think about frequently when I “people watch” or travel to another country.

What happens however when someone foreign comes here?  Do they have the same saying in their language?  Does their culture believe in “assimilation”??

I work with a woman who is from a former eastern bloc nation.  She is an administrator who runs a really tight ship.   I’ve known her for about eight years and while she can be tough on her underlings, she’s always been very nice to me.  She obviously likes dealing with me much more than with my business partner.  She speaks English well but with a heavy accent.  Over the years, I’ve come to learn that she has two kids; the younger one is in college.  She’s married to a man that she immigrated with.  He’s a contractor.

This weekend, I saw the other side of “Helga”.  It’s one I’d seen before.  She tends to drink at work-related dinners.  She tends to get chatty and touchy.    I will say that this woman has a definite eastern european blonde haired-blue eyed look and she seems to have been made for the wonderbra.  This was a dinner gala event that her company bought a table for and asked if my wife and I would join them.  Of course, I felt a little awkward since my former love interest (during my separation) was seated at the same table but those places are so loud and she was seated far enough away that it didn’t really seem all that odd.  Helga came up to us during the cocktail hour and chummed up to my wife.  She wanted me to “loosen” up.  She sat between me and my wife.  The odd thing was that my wife was okay with this.  She referred to herself as my “work wife” which was odd, but okay.  We moved on.  As the evening moved on she gabbed and gabbed with my wife.  She would lean over to me and make comments about this or that.  She hugged us both somewhat enthusiastically.

I would be lying if I said that I never felt some very mild sexual tension with this woman but I think that as a guy, I tend to over-read that sometimes.  She’s attractive to some degree.  This was embarassing though.  I really think that this woman was out of control.  My wife then follows this all up with inviting her to my birthday party the next day (I emailed the wrong address trying to input it on my phone) and we didn’t hear from her which is just as well.

As we left the party, the woman volunteered her daughter to babysit for us.  She offered her backyard (out in the boonies) for astronomy gazing.  My wife then told me “She’s only staying in her marriage because her son said he wouldn’t know who to pick if she and his dad split up.”  HUH?  WHISKEY-TANGO-FOXTROT?!

You spend two hours with this woman and you got her whole life story?

Of course, I am not surprised.  I have long felt that “Helga” was unhappy in her marriage.  She’s worked long hours and she’s plunged head-first into work most of the time.  I always thought that perhaps she needed the money.  She could also have been avoiding her husband whom she doesn’t really seem to see all that much.

I was left somewhat unsure when we left the gala.  Obviously, I was leaving with “the real wife” but now it seemed embarassing to think about Helga and her personal problems.  The fact that she’d made a spectacle of herself on the dance floor was disappointing and I really thought she was so drunk she might proposition us for a threesome. (The answer would’ve been ‘no’…).

It seems strange when people do this and it shouldn’t.  After all, the holiday parties that I go to have someone making a spectacle of themselves every year and usually it’s the same few people doing so.

Hot Chicks at DMV

Hot Chick Being Helped

A few weeks ago I received a license renewal form as I’m about to hit the big “4-0″. Of course, I did what every red blooded American would do. I waited. Gee, combining “getting older” and “a trip to the DMV” had me thinking that there could not be too many less popular errands.

As time is running out on my thirties faster than Usain Bolt in the 100m, I decided to go today. It’s lucky because I forgot that they’re closed Mondays. I was also lucky because I entered the building right on the heels (nice, spiky heels mind you…) of a really hot woman. “Lordy!”.

I figured at this point that the DMV wasn’t THAT bad. She wound up right behind me in line not once but twice. As it turns out, her forms were more complicated and her state worker more slow. I still haven’t figured out the art of the “subtle camera phone photo of a hot person without looking like a pervert”. I couldn’t resist.  Now, I will tell you that she was “hot” but not “slutty”.  I will freely admit though that her jeans were tight.  I was worried that if she farted, her shoes’d fly off!

On my way out, I couldn’t help but notice an attractive blonde with pouty lips. Thank you DMV.

The Cell

I am married to a woman who loves me. She thinks I’m wonderful; She tells me that she loves me. She just never wants me.

Our life has become a cycle of increasingly “obvious” or “aggressive” overtures that eventually will culminate in some physical intimacy. Then it’s as though someone will press “reset” and we’ll begin again. She won’t go to counseling and her doctor told her there’s nothing medically wrong with her besides the fact she’s had two children.

It feels like I am stuck with nowhere to turn or nowhere to go in this. MTAE made a comment recently that reinforces something that I’ve always believed which is that more often than not, it’s a question of communication. The problem isn’t that I don’t communicate. I reach out frequently. I am the one with the interest in exploring my spouse as a lover. We tell each other that we love each other but how much do we really communicate?

I think therein lies much of the problem.  We can talk about all of the mundane little things that occur in the daily lives of married people and we can do so to no end.  It’s the deeper, emotionally connected dialogue that we fail to achieve.  It’s not that I don’t try.  She’s resistant.  I don’t know if that is something that she learned from her mother (who never needed a man after my wife’s father left) or if that’s something more recent.  The truth is that whatever it is…it’s untapped and uninvestigated.  In her times of personal honesty, she knows that she’s not meeting me half way in intimacy.  When we find deeper, intimate thoughts (on those rare occasions) I know I’ve found something.  When you find that honesty, you just know when you’ve hit it.  I’d rather that this was not something that requires alcohol (hence the name “liquid truth”) and I am loathe to even think about plying her with booze just to get honest, uninhibited intimacy.

The logical place where this all goes is therapy.  I know that and you know that.  I’ve even told her that she must.  She’ll usually tell me what I want to hear and she won’t follow through.  I don’t know what to do about that.  I have learned one thing (amongst many) in all of this and that is that she has to want to change or else it won’t happen.

Some people just don’t have the skill to relate to their partner.  It’s learned.  Some people don’t know how to relate.  They’ve never learned.

Need to Say “No”

I have a friend who’s very generous. Every year, he buys season tickets to our local college football team and invites friends, neighbors, clients and colleagues to the games.

College football is very important to him as far as sports go and I generally like it as well. He refuses payment for the tickets and usually, I go to at least one game a year. He’ll call me during bowl season because he knows I’m up for a trip and my wife will let me go. We’ve had some fun that way.

This year, for various reasons, I haven’t been able to get out to a game. I haven’t been too disappointed as he tends to want to get out there at 8 am for a noon-time game. I can’t tailgate for four hours in the cold. Sometimes, I just like going to the game.

Today is the final home game. He asked me about a week and a half ago if I’d go and I told him that I thought I could go but that I have been working Turkey Day and yesterday and that on Sunday, I’d be spending the day down at my brother’s. I didn’t like making that many withdrawals from the “Bank of Wifey Good-Will” in such a short period of time. Of course, I forgot about the game until two or three days ago when he called to confirm. At this point, it was hard to find another person, so I felt bad and agreed to go. I told him though that I’d drive on my own and meet them at the tailgate around 10:30 or 11. He’s okay with that but it’s hard to psych myself up to get out there.

I should have just said “no” in the first place and been done with it. I’m sure this happens to you as well, doesn’t it?

New Initiatives in “Doing It”

I suppose it goes without mentioning that there are two sides to every argument.  My wife and I had a good talk about our love life the other night.  Perhaps it was a moment of honesty on her part.  Perhaps, it was two glasses of Chardonnay.  I don’t know and I won’t complain.  I pointed out to her that these “lulls” in intimacy (or “droughts”) are not signs that the relationship is dying but they are tests.  They are challenges to overcome.  Can you prioritize your spouse for one evening when you’d rather do just about anything else???

I think that the few (and I do mean very few) confidantes that I’ve had on this subject over the years have never been very helpful because the assumption that “she must not be that into [me]” just isn’t true here.  This isn’t a case where the wife and husband don’t love each other or find each other attractive.  Perhaps there’s a part of each of us feeling unattractive when we look in the mirror but it isn’t that the partner thinks so.

As I was going off on last week’s diatribe about not getting enough nookie, I did come across an article about a columnist for the Denver Post named Douglas Brown who wrote a book called “Just Do It”.  This book was based on his experience after coming home from a conference (he’s a sex columnist) where they discussed a group of Danish men who’d formed the “100-days’ club”;  The membership consisted entirely of men who’d been sexless in their marriage for over 100 days.  He returned home and in discussing it with his wife she suggested they “reverse” it and have sex for 100 straight days.

At a minimum, it had my attention.  I decided that I wanted to read this book.  I generally hate books about relationships and sex because they rarely seem to have anything but recycled themes and theories about nothing.  I picked it up at my local bookstore on Saturday and I read the beginning.  It’s interesting.  I don’t know what type of intrigue or promise it holds for someone who isn’t already in a steady sexual relationship but the first two chapters seemed to hold my interest.  This book isn’t an attempt to document the details of the sex but rather the process that they went through in discovering it.  They were a couple much like many of us.  Married, two kids, two jobs, etc.   It seems to be relevant.

What’s more is that my wife started reading it so perhaps there’s some hope….

Just Enough

As usually happens, when we get into an “intimacy funk”, the wife will do just enough to stay out of the doghouse. It was a good weekend in that area. A work in progress…

The Good Roommate

Sometimes I feel like my dating life with my wife was a bait-and-switch.  Like many couples we enjoyed our intimate moments and the focus on each other was primary.  I had found somebody that I was compatible with intellectually and sexually and life was good.  Early marriage was much the same and 18 months after we were married, our son arrived.  I won’t bore you with the difficulties of the birth or how he should have been a cesarean when they tried to deliver him vaginally.  Big head.  Big shoulders.  You do the math.  Of course, after the birth, they tell you to abstain from intercourse for six weeks.  I didn’t have that date circled but it came…and went.  So did eight weeks…and ten.  Life was never the same.

My wife focused primarily on her child (and two-plus years later on her next) and I became relegated to somewhere between the cat and the goldfish.  I’m not saying that I’d have her not put the kids first because that’s a priority for us.   Somewhere along the line though, you have to find time and room for the intimate relationship that sparked this series of related events.  My children are not a result of my love for my wife as much as they are a manifestation of that love.   A busy job and two children essentially exhausted any chance that my wife would have emotional capital to spend on me.  It got worse.  She would lash out and take out her stress on me and after seven years of marriage, we separated.

I couldn’t take the abuse any more.  I wasn’t sure what I’d done to deserve it.  I was responsible for drop offs and pick ups at day care and preschool three days a week.  I made the lunches.  I made the dinners.  I too was tired.  In the ensuing time alone, it was hard.   My kids were hysterically upset at times.  I was upset at times.  My wife (I was later told) would go into the bedrooom and cry because her husband had walked out on her much like her own father had.  In the early separation period, we had tried counseling but were all but told not to return as my wife wasn’t really interested in opening up fully.  She still kept her guard up and “sort of” participated.  She had no interest in self-improvement or what she brought to the conflict.  Over time, I believe that this went into a cycle.  First, she pretended that she was interested in some “magic bullet” that this therapist would give us.  Next, she resigned herself to divorce telling me to move on with my life (I had filed at this point because after six months we were getting nowhere) and that brought in other variables (an ex-boyfriend that was interested in her and a woman from work who was all over me).  This just confused things.  I wasn’t sure whether to hold back for my relationship with the wife or to jump as she claimed I should do.  I withdrew from the other woman.  I realized deep down that my wife and I had a much stronger bond and attraction than I cared to admit at this point.   Something happened for my wife too.  She had some moment of clarity.  She acknowledged her work life stunk.  She acknowledged that she took it out on me.  It was worth another try.  So, we tried.  Again.

That was five and a half years ago.  I can’t say that we’ve had nearly as many arguments and she allows me to “be me” and not some version of a husband that she was intent on making me.   She fixed nearly everything that was broken.  She just is a sexual moron.  I don’t mean that to say that she doesn’t understand how the physical act of intercourse works.  It’s GETTING there.  The night before last, I tried to cue her after an especially nice and personal conversation by sleeping naked next to her.  She didn’t lay a hand on me.  The next morning I pointed out to her that I was hurt by her lack of acknowledgment.  The next evening…nothing.  She fell asleep watching TV.  This morning, I awoke to find her gone.  She’d walked the dog.  She’d folded some clothes and tried to get on the computer but had trouble booting it up.   Of course, no where in all of this did she actually cuddle or kiss me much less try to initiate any sex.

After all of these years, you would think that she’d understand that it doesn’t turn ‘on’ and ‘off’ for me like it does for her.  When I am turned on, I pretty much remain in that state (with some variation) until something happens.   I can’t just turn it off once the switch is flipped.

Where does this put me?  I told her many years ago that if you take marriage and subtract the intellectual or sexual intimacy….then you have a roommate.  I don’t like feeling like a roommate.  I was a late sexual bloomer.  I didn’t want to have sex with anyone that I didn’t love.  As a consequence, I have had few partners before my wife.  Now, I feel like (at least in the physical intimacy sense) I was a schmuck.   I committed my life to this woman.  I promised to take her above all others.  This is what I’ve gotten.  I am blessed in many ways.  I have a good job and a respected professional life.  I couldn’t imagine two better kids than my own.  I don’t live extravagantly but I have what I need.  I just feel like loving me is a chore.

Marriage is like a bank.  People spend much of the early time of marriage putting currency (intimacy, love, experiences) in the “bank”.  You can be the type of person who puts currency in steadily or you can ignore it for a long time and then wonder why it’s empty.  You are cashing in that currency under times of stress or other situations where you withdraw against your credit.  This is why many people wind up in crisis after the kids are grown and “we don’t have anything in common anymore” or “we’ve grown apart”.  Marriage is a continual investment of yourselves.

There is a part of me that looks back on my courtship of The Wife and wonders if I made a mistake in my choice.  I honestly think that intellectually and personality wise, we are a good fit.  We are not entirely the same but we have similar senses of right and wrong.  We have similar senses of humor.  There is a part of me however that remembers sometimes I had more libido than she.  I guess that isn’t unusual but I think perhaps I should have realized that while this woman loves/loved me very much that she had absolutely no modeling of any kind of a loving adult relationship as a child.  After her father walked out on them, her mother swore off men and basically tried to create three feminists.  I think that she wants to love me.  As brilliant as she is in some things, she’s decidedly one of the stupidest people I’ve ever seen with regard to intimacy and romance.  She tries.  She came home with a small gift for me yesterday.  Sort of an olive branch I guess.  The problem is that this peace offering isn’t followed up by resolution.  In the last fifteen years, I would say that it’s been very frustrating to know that she has (on rare occasion) ripped off my clothes like a sex-starved vixen.  Unfortunately, I can count those instances on one hand and she was probably drunk in all but one of those moments.  I have never seen sex as a reason to leave.  Lack of it does open up temptation but I can’t do that.  Good relationships aren’t based on sex but all of the best ones have it.

She has a massive stick up her ass that needs removing and right now I am back in the mindset that I’m not sure what to do.

I am in “roommate mode” as I am just putting my head down and doing my chores.    She told me this morning that she’s going to change “one thing about [herself] every day” and today it would be to give me a more proper “goodbye kiss”.  Fine.  Done.  That’s on the way out the door.  I’m feeling like an idiot again.

In the past, I have thought of getting her to see a therapist by herself.  She says she will and never does.  There are books galore on the subjects of “female arousal disorder” and “saving your relationship” but they’re all the same.  They tell you to make a set date.  They tell you to designate a night as “sex night”.  My wife’s too much of an idiot to actually do any of these things.  Candles, poetry, baths, oils, thongs, dildos, vibrators, lingerie…none of that is going to work.

I’m just stuck and afraid that whatever years I have left will be spent begging this sexual dunce to step up to the plate.  Back to do the dishes.