by Band Back Together | Jun 15, 2016 | Help With Relationships, Loneliness, Marriage Problems, Video Game Addiction |
Look at me, tear your eyes away from the screen. Just for a day, understand why I’m upset when you say you’re going to bed.
Weekends? They come and go, with you sitting there, asking me to play with you, sit with you, talk to you.
I don’t want to anymore.
I keep thinking how I want time with you, how I craved you when we were states apart, for so long. Now we’re here, and we don’t even spend the weekends together. Sometimes you come to me, and you leave. Desperate to play.
You don’t see this, but I do. And I feel like it’s wrong for me to feel this way. I refuse to nag any longer, or mention it.
It’s created a distance and loneliness I can’t describe.
I wish you’d understand, I wish I could also understand.
If I ignore it, it doesn’t matter or hurt, but some nights, it’s very clear that you prefer a Saturday night playing online with strangers than with your wife talking, cuddling, and maybe watching a movie.
When was the last time we watched a movie together?
I don’t pressure. I wont complain, you’re not a bad husband.
But some nights like this, it hurts to realize that we don’t spend time together unless I sit beside you while you play. That sometimes I have to pick up a game to be near you. Please, stop saying that I’m avoiding you if I am not sitting next to you.
Sometimes, I am uncomfortable with the situation. How we talk, and you game, looking at the screen instead of me. Us spending time together is basically on your terms, but you don’t realize this.
It hurts to realize that tonight we have been in the same house, but in two different rooms, only because I don’t want to sit on the couch while you play away the night.
I know we met on a game, but please, realize our relationship has moved past video games. We have a family to care for, we have each other.
Why don’t you approach me to stay, to do something else, like watching a movie? Why don’t we spend time together like the couples on the street do? Talking, walking, sitting outside to look out and cuddle. Why don’t we do something outside of watching what you want to watch, and playing video games?
But I wont mention this to you anymore, the times I’ve tried, it’s only made it worse.
I wish you’d understand how it hurts, that you don’t want to watch a movie with me, not just one night, but the next, and the next …and as the time just builds up, I just end up watching it alone.
by Band Back Together | Jun 8, 2016 | Fear, Help With Relationships, Love |
I know he loves me. He’s told me that plenty of times. But this past winter, when he was having a really hard time in his life, I pushed him too hard. I asked him for too much. He wasn’t ready for it then.
I wasn’t in the best place either, and I pressured much more than I should have because of it. I wanted him, like he’d wanted me all those years I had him firmly stuck in the Friend Zone. I wasn’t shy about telling him what I wanted for us. I thought it would make him feel better.
Instead, it made it all worse.
First, he unfriended me on facebook.
Then he sent me that horrible email, telling me that we’re never going to be together.
And then he got himself a new girlfriend.
I’ve come to realize that for all of my pushing, I’m really not ready for us to be more than just friends right now. I want to date other people and play and explore my new area. I think he should date, too. It’s good for him. In a year or two, maybe we can be more – like we’ve both wanted for a long time.
But I’m going to see him, in just a few weeks. I’m traveling hundreds of miles to go home for a week. We always used to surprise each other – showing up without warning, just to make each other smile. I’m going to attempt it.
Part of me is really confident that he’s going to be thrilled to see me. He’s had a few months to cool off. I’ve quit pushing. I tell myself, “He loved me for more than 20 years, he’s not going to just stop. He still loves me. He still wants me.”
However…
I’m terrified that he really meant it when he said we’ll never be a couple. I’m scared to death that when I see him, he’ll still be so mad at me that he’ll laugh in my face. What if I’m wrong, and he really has written me out of his life for good?
The thing is, with him? It’s worth trying to find out. He’s worth everything. I love him more than anyone else in the world.
I just wish I’d seen it sooner.
by Band Back Together | Oct 8, 2015 | Breakups, Depression, Help With Relationships, Poverty, Economic Struggles and Hardship |
I haven’t written on here for a long time and I realized that I should have. I consider it my therapy since it’s free.
Life has been such a roller coaster. I had a relationship a year ago but that completely ended on a rather embarrassing turn of events which I’ll share another time. Followed by that I was in a huge financial situation I began to wonder if everything would ever be better.
I’ve been battling depression silently (only one close friend knows). It’s kept me from doing things I love like working out (it’s my other form of therapy). It also kept me from attending school again. Finally after pushing myself I got back into school to become a personal trainer while working a full time job overnights and going to school for four hours four days a week. However I am struggling in one of the classes I’ve failed each test given so far, I cry on my drives home after that class feeling like I’m a total failure.
My job has been stressful too I work solo on my jobs so I get the back lash of the drama that goes on I feel like I’m back in high school.
I know I need help with school but I need to get home (it’s a 45-mintue drive) to sleep so I can go to work at 11pm. I wish I could quit my job to focus on school or find one with suitable hours that I could still find time to make things work out.
That’s the problem with being a 30 something single girl. I have nobody to support me but myself, so quitting is not an option. My apartment looks like a tornado hit it and the dishes pile up. I keep asking myself is it worth it?
My depression looms higher as I see all my friends happy in their lives and I’m still not happy. I used to have such a positive attitude, but somehow after my relationship ended I lost that. I don’t recognize the girl I was (yes even though I’m in my 30’s, I still refer myself to a girl) she was so happy and full of life. I struggle to smile or to laugh now.
I need to get that happiness back, but I don’t know how. I need to find some balance between life, work school and trying to better myself that isn’t so overwhelming, but I don’t even know where to begin.
by Band Back Together | Sep 9, 2015 | Depression, Help With Relationships, Jealousy, Loneliness, Marriage and Partnership, Marriage Problems, Romantic Relationships, Sadness, Therapy |
One year ago, September 8, you kissed me. You think it was so innocent. Just a momentary lapse of judgement. I wish I could tell you this. You have no idea the damage you caused.
I was content in my marriage, content with my life. I love my husband (I guess), but we never had any sexual chemistry between us and we haven’t had sex in years. He said it was because I was frigid, and I thought I was because I never felt any attraction to him. Over the years he has lost all desire for me, but still, he is a good man and we have built a comfortable life. He’s a reclusive intellectual and a bit depressed, like I am, so we spend a lot of time in silence. he silence, like the sexless marriage, has become unbearable.
Then YOU came along… you are fun, energetic, full of life and we talk and joke constantly when we have lunch or a drink. You remind me of everything I gave up when I got married, including spontaneity, humor, fun, and passion. I am not frigid; that one kiss proved it. The arousal and feeling of pure joy in that one kiss are indescribable and it still haunts me every day. I was not expecting this, not looking for this, yet it happened.
When I see you with your partner I get so jealous. Her laughter is a knife in my soul. I don’t laugh with my husband, we don’t have fun. I laugh with you though, and whenever we part, I go into a deep depression for days afterwards at the thought of not seeing you again for a while.
I feel you would never leave your partner for me – it’s far too much a miracle to expect from Life. And I’ve never, ever wanted to cheat on or leave my husband. So what am I to do? I feel like I’m dying a slow death from a neglect that I never realized was happening until you kissed me.
I have no valid reason for leaving my husband, he’s a good person and he tries. I feel like I’m the one who’s screwed everything up, that he should have married someone who could love and appreciate him better and was attracted to him. He says he loves me though and if I leave ever him he’ll be crushed. It’s cowardly of me, but I wish instead he would find someone better than me and leave me for her so I could try again in life. I would want to try with you, but as I said, it’s far too big a miracle to expect and probably more than I deserve.
My therapist hasn’t told me to stop seeing you, and for that I am grateful. He understands you are the only bright spot in my life, even though it depresses me so whenever we part. He acknowledges my feelings and agrees this is all so tragic, but so far we have no answers. This is all such a mess.
All because of one …little …kiss.
by Band Back Together | Sep 3, 2015 | Anger, Depression, Help With Relationships, Loneliness, Romantic Relationships, Self-Esteem |
When I was seventeen, I was kind of a heavy kid. My largest weight was 240 lbs, weighed by the scales of the United States Navy. The recruiter was very interested in getting me to join, on account of my having a very high score on their tests. He introduced me to a master chief who was in charge of recruiting people to work on the nuclear power plants aboard naval ships. They tested me and found that I was smart enough to enlist as a nuclear power specialist.
The only bar was my weight. I had to get down to at least 180 pounds. The next year was full of jogging, eating salads and wrapping myself up to sweat off the pounds. It didn’t work fast enough. I still had around ten or fifteen pounds to go.
The date came nearer and nearer for my final entry. My recruiter, who was a first class petty officer, had me drink a laxative for a couple days before my last medical exam before basic training. It was awful. I ate nothing but salad and laxatives, but I came in at exactly the cutoff weight. I was sick enough that I didn’t really feel that I had accomplished anything.
I left for basic training that September. The days were long and the nights short. I was at NTC Great Lakes. Then came the time for psychological testing. The only two specialties that had this testing were those who were aiming to become SEALs and, yep, nuclear power specialists.
Honest answers got me disqualified from service altogether. I wasn’t fit to be in the service. I was angry, disappointed. This was supposed to get me out of the town I hated and into a new life. Why didn’t they test like this before I got all the way to NTC Great Lakes? I was shuffled into a ‘separation division’ the very next week. I read a lot, and I met people from all over the world there. There was even a recruit from Nigeria!
I stayed in the seps division for a week and a half. The petty officer in charge told us about his struggle with depression, and how the Navy was providing the help he needed because he had finished his training. He thought that it was kind of messed up that they didn’t screen earlier too.
I arrived home via airplane. Chicago’s O’Hare airport is HUGE! I bought a pack of smokes and walking what seemed like a mile from the gate to the smoking area outside, while waiting for my flight home. I was depressed. I thought that I must be the biggest loser ever to have come all this way just to be sent home.
My parents waited for me at the gate in SLC International. My mother was an awful mess. She was spiraling into another one of her episodes, brought on by my leaving home. My father was stoic as usual. The ride back to the shitty little town I grew up in was not fun. My mother had only a tenuous grip on reality. Great.
Days later, my mother lost it completely. She was screaming that my father was Satan. I said, fuck this and left with my cigarettes into the hills. Dad took her to the hospital. Again. I was shunted to the side. Ignored. What about me? Mom had to have attention and I couldn’t burden the family with my trouble, right?
I still had a bit of money from the Navy. I had earned nearly two thousand dollars while there. My friend introduced me to crystal meth, so I spent that summer in a haze of drugs. It made me feel GOOD. I’d never felt like that before. The novelty wore off after a while, and I put it down because I saw that the humans around me were becoming less and less human from that drug. I didn’t like the days after a binge either, feeling unwashably dirty and depressed.
I was finally arrested at a drug party, nearly a year after I came home from the failure in the Navy. I was lucky. I didn’t have any drugs of any kind on my person, but they still charged me with ‘internal possession’ from a dirty UA. I took a plea in abeyance and got a job.
For the most part, I kept my nose clean. I paid rent to my parents, paid my dad back for the lawyer he hired to defend me, and drank beer nearly every weekend with my friends. I wasn’t happy. I felt inadequate and like I was a failure. Certainly, philosophically I’m glad I’m not a sailor. The thought of being responsible for killing other human beings isn’t something I enjoy contemplating, even if they are enemies. Yet, I cannot help but wonder what might have been.
I think back to that young man. He wanted to be someone important. He wanted to be part of a group that accepted him as he was. But he was met, yet again, with rejection. He was pissed off that, when he came home in such a state, once again, he couldn’t count on his family to help.
I hid away from the world and my family after that. After so many years of rejection by peers and social groups in school, the separation from the Navy was like the cherry on top of a shit sundae. I was a fucked loser for dreaming anything at all.
I don’t exactly hate the town I’m in, yet, all the things that I do value in life are of little consequence to the people here. They don’t consider deep questions. They get the easy answers from their religious dogma. Those who deviate are, of course, shunned to the greatest degree of shunning possible. Its like you’re invisible to these people.
I’m a long hair, a hippy. I have a beard and I wear t-shirts that I’ve bought at rock concerts. I read philosophy and science books. I read mystical stuff too. I’ve read the Bible cover to cover, the New Testament several times. I’ve familiarized myself with many schools of religious thought. I’ve studied psychology and read several books on the subject. The purpose of all my studies was to bring me closer to understanding myself and those around me, has but created a great divide. I feel that I cannot share my deep perceptions with any but a few. It’s as if the gulf between me and other humans, which I hoped to bridge using knowledge, has only widened with my efforts.
Society is so shallow. It’s been disappointing enough that I just don’t go out anymore. Perhaps I need to find a dating service like the skit on MAD TV: Lowered Expectations. Maybe my desire for an intellectual match has to be tempered with the fact that not everyone is interested in the questions of existence.
I’m just so damned lonely. I have friends to be sure, but I don’t have a lover. I have material prosperity, yet no significant one to share it with. All of my resources are hoarded for my kids. I have so much to be grateful for and to be sure, I certainly am. Many do not have what I do, yet I envy those who have someone with whom to share their burdens. I am not Ebenezer Scrooge who counts wealth as the sole measure of human value. I am not satisfied with this solitary existence, nor do I think that Scrooge truly was with his either. Yet, the missteps and missed opportunities become the regrets of old age. Is that my fate? To be an old and lonely man, regretting that girl in high school who would light up when we would meet. That girl who always seemed to be so happy to see me, yet I couldn’t see that she liked me until years had passed.
Going to bars is soooo awful. I really don’t like it at all. Karaoke is the sole exception. Grocery stores? Church? I want to scream out loud I’m so frustrated in this quest for companionship!
I just hope and pray the theme of my youth peters out. I hope and pray that failed liftoff isn’t simply an oracle showing me the dismal future. I know that there are many, many people in my same situation, dying for a friend, longing for a lover. Hopefully I can find someone who wants to build a new rocket together, one that will launch both of us into greater heights than either of us thought possible.
by Band Back Together | Aug 28, 2015 | Anxiety, Blended Families, Breakups, Depression, Divorce, Help With Relationships, Infidelity, Stress |
Well, it’s been a long while since I’ve revisited this, and rather a lot has happened…
When last we met, dear readers, your hero was making it work, and getting by. So much change …so much upheaval.
When I left off, I mentioned that I was married, but we need to go back to the beginning of that relationship, as the background is important. I hope you’ll all bear with me again; getting these stories out is much like excising vital organs for me. It’s a painful process, and I’m very protective of them, and by extension, of myself.
My divorce from the wife in the first story was final in 2006. Around that time, I became reacquainted with an old friend, Becca. We caught up over the course of a couple of days, and later had dinner. At the end of the evening, she kissed me. This was confusing, as she had always been fairly …”butch,” for lack of a better term. We had a conversation about it, and she told me that her sexuality was uncertain; she was still figuring it out.
We continued to see one another for a few months, and anytime things would become more intense, she’d slow it down. This was fine with me, as I was still pretty vulnerable from my marriage. We had a good time, and I always had a sort of unspoken understanding that we were going to end up together.
Things changed.
Eventually, it came to the point that she was just using me for “stuff,” and I distanced myself from her. All well and good, but it was still hurtful.
In 2007, I met a woman who changed everything. Long distance again. (Yes, I know.) She was intelligent and well-educated and fun. We would visit one another around every other weekend. Lots of activities, and the intimacy was there, too.
Then, she started shopping for a home in my hometown. It meant so much to me that she was willing to uproot herself so that I could be near my family. We found a wonderful fixer-upper for a good price, and started working toward buying it.
Those of you who have bought a home know that it is a very stressful process, and the stress took its toll on her immensely. She wasn’t the fun-loving Jen I had gotten to know, anymore. Still, I stuck it out, but eventually, I wanted the “old Jen” back badly enough that I told her to let the house go. She did, and I hoped for things to go back to normal.
Shortly after that, her father became seriously ill, and she was heavily stressed over that. Still no good old Jen. I was right beside her through his surgery and recovery, still hoping for a return of what we used to have.
She bought a house in her hometown, which stressed her out even more.
I proposed to her in 2009, and she said yes. Surprise, surprise, planning a wedding is very stressful as well. I was at wits end by this point, but I was committed to giving this relationship the best possible chance.
We married in 2010, and my daughter and I moved into the house she had bought. Stress. I was in a new city, in a job I hated, with no friends, and nobody to talk to but the woman who was increasingly frustrated with me. She had never lived with anyone before, and had all her ducks firmly in a row, and suddenly she had a husband and a stepchild, in her space, all the time.
We enrolled my daughter in the private school that Jen had gone to as a child. The people there were horrible and elitist, and my daughter acted out. The intimacy Jen and I had went away. First, Jen started sleeping on a mattress on the floor in the bedroom, because she said it was better for her back. Later, she started sleeping in the guest bedroom, because she couldn’t stand the sight of me. She worked nights, and I worked days, so we managed to barely see one another. I would come home from work and do my best to drink myself into a stupor, and she would constantly berate me about the things she needed help with.
I am not a smart man. If you want me to dust the dining room, just say, “medic77, dust the dining room for me,” and I will do it. If you want me to clean the guest bathroom, just say so, and it will be done. Jen, however, believed that I should be able to see what needed done and take the initiative. It wasn’t an easy concept for me, but I won’t make excuses.
She would catch me in the middle of a project she had given me, and ask me to, for instance, mow the lawn. Ten minutes later, once I had gotten to a stopping place in project one, I would go outside to find her mowing the lawn herself, and mad about it. It made me crazy. She was a therapist, so she KNEW it made me crazy. I turned into a “yeller.” I’m not proud, but we would have epic screaming matches while my daughter cowered in her bedroom and wished for it to be over. Jen threatened to have me committed.
In February of 2011, after living under the same roof for less than nine months, we separated, and I came back to Ohio. Jen later told me she was mad about that, too. She thought I should have gotten an apartment where she was. It just wasn’t possible. I didn’t have any savings, and I had only worked my current job or a few months. It just wasn’t possible.
Back in Ohio, I went back to work, and got a second job with state benefits, which eventually became my only job. Jen and I weren’t interested in communication at that point, so I was very low.
We went through cycles of talking and silence. I had friends, but Jen always suspected me of being in secret relationships with the female ones. It was just another lack of faith. A couple of years ago, after we had been separated almost longer then we were together, I met a girl at work, Lorrie, and we started a relationship. I was happy.
One night, Lorrie and I were laying in bed talking, and I heard a noise. Suddenly, Jen was standing in the bedroom. It was as bad as it sounds, but it could have been worse. At least we were clothed and only talking. Still, not long after that, our divorce moved forward and was final.
I am still with Lorrie, but our intimacy is gone. We haven’t had sex in months. She says she loves me, but she just isn’t interested in sex. I feel as though I did something to cause it. She doesn’t touch me. She doesn’t kiss me unless I initiate it. She SAYS that if I want sex, I should just say so and do it, but it doesn’t feel right to me. I feel like sex should be a union; a collaboration. Not just, “Hey, hold still a minute.”
I know I’ve got depression and anxiety, but I can’t help wondering just what it is that makes me so forgettable. Why I can’t seem to find anyone who just WANTS me.
So, yeah. I’m surviving, but just.
