"What Sort of Training Do You Need, My Dear?"

"I need be trained into a good submissive. Learn to take whatever is being done to body and not saying or moving.  — a******6"

That is an interesting proposition.  It reminds me of a time when I stood facing a blank wall and was punched again and again, never knowing where or when the next one would land.  I was thinking about that incident just today, as it happens.  Problem is, I wasn't a sub doing a scene with my lover.  I was a kid being physically and emotionally abused by my brother, his command to remain in position enforced by a savage kick to my kidney or my testicles when I tried to move.
Incidents like that may be why I am a Dom today, I don't know.
But enough about me.  How shall I go about training you?  Let me think on that.

Still My Favorite Valentine

Definitely, and by a long chalk: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlequin_Valentine

The Woman Who Received Many Blessings

Once there was a woman who received many blessings in her life, so let us call her Deo Gratia. "D.G." is a suitable name for her.

D.G. received many blessings, but she was only allowed to keep two of them.

The first thing that happened to her was that she received the gift of life, and that is not a small thing.

She had a fiance who loved her and gave her two daughters. But first her fiance was taken from her, and then her girls.

She suffered for years from a terrible disease, but one day her doctor delivered two blessings: not only had her disease gone into remission, but her disease was one which, if it went away, it never came back.

This was an especial blessing because she was still young enough to have another child, now that she knew she would live long enough to raise it.

She had a boy, and then she learned that the disease which would never come back, had.

D.G. had another man, and he said he would marry her, but when it came down to it, he let her down.

She had a profession which brought her satisfaction and money, but there came a time when she could not work at her trade, so she worked at jobs which gave her too little satisfaction, and far too little money.

In the end, there were only two blessings which would not be taken from her:

First, her son. Even death would not separate them, because he would love his mother forever.

Second, all suffering eventually comes to an end.

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Maybe it's been a long year for you. A hard one. A disappointing one.

Maybe you lost someone -- to death, or circumstance, or estrangement.

Maybe you didn't do something you wanted to. Maybe you didn't stop doing something you shouldn't do.

Maybe you are far from home, or someone close to you is far from home. Maybe home doesn't feel like home anymore.

Hang up a string of lights anyway. Listen to happy music. Or if you can't bear to, at least listen to something encouraging.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g4lY8Y3eoo

The year is ending. A new year is coming. It's going to be different from last year, one way or another.

It Wasn't True

I looked at an old post today, and was shocked by what I saw there.

I wrote about how it was that, when it seemed there was no chance I would ever be reconciled with my wife, she asked me to come back and try again, and how my abrupt decision to give her a trial hurt other people.

What I wrote back then was an attempt to paint a gentler picture of what happened, out of a desire to exculpate myself for going back on my word, and to scold someone else for what I perceived as going back on hers.

What I said simply wasn't true, and I think I knew even then that it wasn't.

I was really a mess back then, but that is not an excuse for the many ways in which I hurt the people around me. Having figured out that my mind was confused and disordered, I should have withdrawn from human relationships as much as I could until I knew who I was and what I wanted. Instead, I rushed about in all directions at once, causing harm all around me.

And then I distorted and misrepresented what I had done.

I shouldn't have done that, either.

Life Can Be Hard -- Don't Make It Harder, Anton

Well, let's see: my father is still very frail and needs regular assistance. My aunt and uncle were in an accident on Saturday and I'm helping to look after Uncle (who is uninjured but is frail and has Alzheimer's) while Aunt (too badly injured to carry out her usual role as his caregiver) is hospitalized.

And then there are a couple of other obligations that I won't even go into here.

And on top of all that, whenever someone says something complimentary or encouraging, or inquires solicitously how I am holding up, I feel as though I am somehow being insulted. Not a good attitude to take, I really must work on it.

I Can See (A Little More) Clearly Now

I can see, more clearly than before, at least, that my biggest problem is and always has been my own image of myself, my own harsh assessment of myself.

When I first met Mrs. Psycho, I was 23 and she was 46, she had been married, she had lived all over the country, she had raised four children, &c. I wanted her but I felt totally outclassed by her.

And now, 26 years later, older myself than she was back then, and having raised four kids my own damn self, I find...that I still feel inferior to her. But now I can see that it's just me.

I also see how much of the misery I have lived with for most of my life really has been my own fault. Not all of it, no, but a lot. And I see how all of it would have been easier to take if only I had been on my own side then whole time.

I have other problems in my life, and not all of them are inside me, but I feel a lot more confident of being able to deal with them now.

I Should Be Happier Right Now

I got to do two of my favorite things today, and didn't have to do anything terribly unpleasant.

Yes, my father is still dying. And yes, I am still pathetically without a decent career, or even a solid job. And the other things.

Still, I don't know what else to do besides keep moving forward.

And bear with this misery in the hope that I will feel better later on.

News

News about me: My injured back is feeling much better, thanks to physical therapy and regular exercises.

News about my father; He fell and injured his hip, and he is going into a nursing home.

News about my son: After being out of contact for over a year, without even the unpleasant updates provided by police and rehab centers, I had begun toresign myself to thinking of him as dead. Then the other day my daughter called and said she had seen him, that he looked reasonably healthy and did not show any obvious signs that he was either drinking again or homeless again.

There is news about a couple of other people in my life, but maybe I will save that update for later.

Reflections

If I had it to do all over again, how would I do things?

If I could rewrite my life so that it did not include the pain I caused to my wife, and to R, and to N, and to others . . . .

But in that case, I would not have had so many good, rewarding experiences, ranging from the birth of R-boy to the simple good times I had with each of my lovers.

So I am in the position of feeling terribly guilty over actions by which I benefitted immensely, some of which I simply could not wish undone.

So what does that make me?

Maybe just...an American.

Uncle C, Contact Me

Uncle C, please e-mail me at dr_psycho1960@hotmail.com

I think each of us could learn things that are useful to us.

Now What?

I have always said, "There is a way", but what if there isn't?Perhaps I have put myself in a position from which there is no honorable way to move, no way to avoid a choice that breaks the heart of at least one person I would rather die than hurt.But to choose death myself would only cause still more pain than any choice I can make. So what then?

I have no idea.

Has This Blog Outlived its Usefulness?

Or am I even asking the right question, given its presumption of the blog ever having been "useful"?

Problem is, my wife has objected to things I have posted here, especially since some of our friends have also been reading it.

I have a lot of things to say about the subject at hand, but I've been writing them elsewhere, mostly.

Maybe I should just post more LOLCunts.

Bad Man

No matter how this ends up, no matter which woman I wind up with, I will always look back on this time in my life with contempt and self-loathing, because I know that this long period of delay and indecision is causing pain to both women in my life.

Each of them is torn by uncertainty and ambivalence. R has passed up job opportunities in order to remain in the Willamette Valley area so that I would not have to decide yet, and also so that I would be available to my wife so that as my ex-wife, she would not be deprived of my assistance when she needed it.

Big joke: when my wife finally heard about this, she told me bluntly that once I left she would not want to see me any longer.

Christ's bones.

New Perspective

At feministe, quoting from http://collegecallgirl.blogspot.com/ :

One of the cruelest tragedies of the sex industry is that it attracts girls like me who already have skewed ideas about sex and self-worth and then completely reinforces all our secret fears. The men you meet, the whole lifestyle, whispers to you that you were right all along, that all that really matters is being desired.I still struggle every day to change my thinking. It makes me almost sick to my stomach to meet new people whether in a personal or professional capacity, because I worry they will not think I am pretty. Most of my friends are men with whom I have had former dalliances because I just do not feel comfortable around people who I don’t know with certainty find me sexually attractive. In my head, my worth is completely tied up in my appearance and sex. As a result of being abused at a young age, my thinking is fucked. There is something wrong with my brain. No matter how logically I know that who I am is more important than how sexy I look, I have internalized the lesson that it is my sexuality that makes me lovable.Of course, this is a trap that will keep me perpetually insecure because not everyone is always going to be attracted to me. When you feel that perfectly normal fact as a deep blow to your self-esteem, it’s impossible to ever really feel confident.

Fuck.

I wonder what my therapist will say when I show her this and say that Friend Call Girl speaks to my condition? My wife and I joked once about my working as a gigolo. Fuck.

Well, I had already decided that, whether with my wife or with R or with N or on my own, I was going to change some things.

But fuck.

Fuck.

Letting Go of the Past, For the Moment

"Let us call a halt to discussion of the recent past, for some reasonable time.

"Let there be no mention of recent events by speech or by writing, to one another or to other persons or to public postings, with the sole exception of discussion with our respective personal therapists.

"We will leave the past be for now, and return to past issues that still require consideration only when we are both satisfied that enough time has passed and we are ready to discuss it."

Still Driving Myself Crazy After All These Years

Why do I find it so hard to choose between a woman I have been married to for 23 years, and a woman I have only known for a couple of years, and with whom I was only supposed to have a light and easy relationship, with no string attached?

Why do I find it so hard to choose between a woman with whom I have raised four children, all of them now grown, and the mother of the only biological child I have ever fathered, a beautiful little boy not yet a year old?

Why do I find it so hard to choose between a woman who has shown me a love I would never have thought myself worthy of, over a woman who has shown me a love I would never have thought myself worthy of?

Why is it that having three amazing, intelligent, talented women so profoundly in love with me makes me feel so miserable?

Why is it that with two clear and obvious courses for the rest of my life ahead of me, both good lives full of happiness and bright challenges to be embraced with joy, I feel as though I would rather just fucking die and get it over with?

I remember the MRAs who were harassing me on my old blog, and how they snickered and sneered, anticipating the unhappy future I was so obviously creating for myself. But they supposed that I would wind up with three women hating me, and living in poverty while I paid child support to an ungrateful bitch. Pretty much the opposite of what actually happened, but the life I have now is making me feel so much worse than their scenario would have.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

What the fuck do I do now?

Rings, and the Symbolism Thereof

"So, have you really been married that many times?"

"No. These two gold rings are the ones which my wife and her first husband bought together. They're identical plain half-inch bands, rather unusual in a woman's wedding ring. When they had a quarrel, she took off her ring, and never put it back on. When they broke up, he gave her his. Years later, she brought the rings out and we put them on together.

"Not long after, we were at the Fall Festival and saw plain half-inch silver rings that matched ours perfectly, so we bought a pair of them for our right hands.

"And this one in the middle? One of our kids made this for my wife in art class, as a lost-wax project. See how it says 'MOM'?

"When my wife's arthritis reached the point where she couldn't wear her rings on her fingers any longer, she wore them for years on this cord around her neck. At some point, she just put it away.

"A couple of months ago, she walked up to me and snapped, 'Take off those rings and hand them over!' Horrified, whimpering, I began taking them off. It barely even occurred to me at the time that neither law nor custom obliged me to give them to her. I just did it, while she barked, 'Hurry it up, quit your whining!'

"If she'd just come to me some other way, if she'd said something like, 'If we're going to break up, you shouldn't still be wearing those rings,' quite possibly I'd have given them to her and said nothing more about it. I still don't really know why she chose such an in-your-face approach.

"Only days later did I finally go to her and say that her behavior had offended me, and that I thought she should have handled it with more sensitivity, to say the least. I pointed out that she had repeatedly accused me of showing disrespect to her, and suggested that she might try showing a little respect to me, especially in the context of our marriage and its possible continuation.

"An hour later, she tossed the cord, with all five rings on it, on the table in front of me and walked away without speaking.

"So I took the cord and put it around my own neck, and I've been wearing it ever since. Note that I haven't put the rings back on my fingers, out of respect for her feelings, but I'm carrying them next to my skin, out of respect for my own.

"What will become of the rings next? Well, if my wife and I do in fact break up, I'll give them to her, and if we definitively get back together, I'll put on a pair of the rings -- I don't now know which were hers and which were mine, but I'll put on the ones that fit me best -- and give her the others on the cord to wear or put away as she pleases.

"Either way, I'll put the cord in her hand, because wedding rings are important and should always be handled respectfully.

"Of course, so should marriages...."

Why the Hell Did I Do That?

Today, I rode around with my wife, and we didn't talk much, but what we did say was pleasant.

This evening, we tried meditating together -- something she hadn't done in years, something I had never done seriously, something we had talked about doing together lately.

Later still, I read a e-mail she sent me and replied in an egregiously insulting fashion -- seemingly just because the opportunity presented itself.

Why the Hell did I do that?

Just Barely Hanging On

A few days ago, I was making plans to break up with my wife of 23 years. I felt sick and lost and fearful, with maybe a little bit of exhilaration at the prospects for a whole new life -- although really it felt a lot more like being in an out-of-control car skidding on ice, than it did a roller coaster.

Right now, I think I'm going to be reconciled with my wife. And I'm in a state of mind that has been all too familiar over the course of my life: Just Barely Hanging On.

One thing that is different: I'm noticing that my wife is also just barely hanging on, and that in the past she has been a lot closer to the edge (physically and emotionally) than I have ever been.