Sex, drugs, and shitty family. You know the drill.
The 7-year itch is real. I’m feeling it.
My Crohn’s is in full remission. I spent my birthday last year in the hospital and when I came out I switched from Humira injections to Remicade infusions. Humira was working but because I couldn’t dose if I had even a hint of any kind of infection AND it weakens the immune system, I was not able to be consistent with weekly injections. Remicade infusions are every eight weeks and I started them in September. By December when I had my annual butt scope my doctor was able to confirm I am in chemical, symptomatic, and physical remission. FUCK YEAH!! Eight years later.... Remicade has made me gain about 40# since August, and I’m right at 230# now. I’m not happy about it but there are other things to be happy about.
After several years of medically-induced asexuality I have a libido again. And it’s already a problem. It’s forcing me to address the only soft spot in my marriage.
I was already sick when Patrick and I met, and my desire for dick was already on the decline. I was sort of relieved by this, and for the past few years I think I’ve been able to build a much stronger bond with my husband because I have not been distracted by anyone else. We both were also in such desperate need of each other after being alone for so long that seven years of uninterrupted togetherness has been critical and nourishing for both of us. We spend all of our non-working time together, and while I feel that has been a major strength for us through the years, I’m feeling a bit claustrophobic at the moment.
This has been a year of major changes. I’ve essentially walked away from my mother and all of her family. I’ve never liked my mother’s husband. He’s been degrading and emotionally abusive my entire life. I hate how he treats my mother. When this last fucking election happened I was horrified by the creature put into office. The pussy-grab footage and the disgusting entitled misogyny of it all brought back a lot of nasty memories about different men. My step-dad was one of them.
I shared with my sister an incident where my ex and I were naked in the hot tub at my parents house and my mother’s husband came out and tried to get her to stand up and show him her boobs. I shared how violently angry and ashamed I felt that I didn’t leap out of the water and strangle him for making someone I loved feel degraded and threatened right in front of me. No one who loves and cares about you does something like that. And my sister’s biggest concern was immediately that our mother never find out. I don’t feel like she ever really offered any kind of comfort. Telling her about it and her non-reaction sort of got lost in the haze of my shifty memory banks, and I ended up emotionally re-telling her the story a few weeks later. She dead-pan interrupted with, “You already told me this.”
I felt so sad in that moment. My sister and I have struggled to connect with each other, but I felt we were both really trying our best. When she came back at me like that with zero support as I’m pouring out my secret shame and horrified emotions to her, I knew I’d never try with her again. She only loves our mother, no one else. There has never been enough actual room in her heart or in her life for me. She builds a lot of fantasy around things and tried to manufacture a lot of moments for us. I never needed moments. I needed someone to not dismiss my experiences in order to shield others. I needed someone to care about my damage, not add to it. I desperately needed a connection with and understanding from someone who loves me. She has never been that for me.
I recently reread my journal and was sort of shocked by all of the effort I put into being close with my family, and how little it ended up mattering to them all. My sister in particular has really always been like this. Dead-center focused on her relationship with our mother and no one else. I’m not sorry I gave up on them. I am sorry I didn’t do it sooner. I never developed deep friendships with very many people because I always devoted more time to family. I always felt really alone in life but also mostly sure I should stay close to my family, because they’ll love me no matter what, right?
So wrong. I wrote my mother a letter around Thanksgiving after the election and while I didn’t tell her about the hot tub incident, I did tell her I felt her husband had been the biggest negative influence in my life, and that I was so angry at him I wanted to punch him in the face every time I saw him. I had a lot of other things to say and said them all. I sent it. She read it. And then she fowarded copies to my sister, step-brothers, and all their SOs apparently so everyone could read how I felt. I guess I was supposed to feel shame.
I didn’t find out she’d done this until February when my sister-in-law told me I’d have to ask my step-brother to see my niece for her birthday. I got into an argument with my step-brother about my feelings on his father and I guess still on the shaming-theme he decided to CC our parents and siblings and their SOs on his next response. He also told me that he didn’t feel it was safe to let his kids around me because of the violence in the letter I wrote my mother that she let everyone read. My other step-brother chimed in probably trying to help, but essentially no one had the same experience as I did growing up so they all decided to gaslight me by saying the things I’m upset about never happened and I should be thankful for what has been done for me all my life.
Fuck that shit.
I’m not going to spend my Christmases with a person who is supposed to be a father-figure yet decided it was ok to sexually objectify and threaten my friend while knowing I was also naked and vulnerable. Run your fucking sick dick power games on the other women who will put up with your nasty ass. If they’re ok with you staring at their boobs and asses while they swim in your pool with your grandkids, who am I to fucking judge ya’ll? I just wanted out, and now I am.
My mother last visited me for about an hour right after my hospital stay in August. It was awkward as fuck and neither of us enjoyed it. I sent her a text on Thanksgiving around 9am and she waited until the very end of the day to respond. I commented on someone’s post that I hoped everyone had a nice Christmas, and I was ignored. My sister deleted her Facebook account so that tenuous connection is gone. She never responded during or after the email exchanges with our step-brothers, not even to tell me she disagreed that I was a threat to the kids because I’m violent. Really? Nothing?
In the end, it made it REALLY easy to walk away from those people after all that. As soon as I was cast as violent for being honest about how my justifiable rage makes me feel, I was done. I’ve never hit anyone in my life. I use words to hurt, not fists. And I’ve certainly never been the type of person to speak badly about another adult around children who care about them. You learn how that feels as a child of divorce and you don’t want to go spreading that around. I’m not even going to dignify that kind of argument with a fight. No one wants to reconcile. They either want me to submit or get out. So I got out.
And holy fucking shit, I walk the fuck away from that shitstorm family fuck-fest and months later I’m in full remission. If you assholes think I’m ever coming back to that abuse, keep on dreaming. You need to find another scapegoat/punching bag.
So with the core family unit disintegrating, and my grandmother and aunt being so pro-Drumpf they resemble 1937 Germans in passionate love with der Fuhrer, whatever I had as far as family support or what passed for it is history. My circle got really really small. It’s half relief, half panic.
This brings me back to my marriage. We’re heading for a shift. There’s essentially some major imbalances going on and the end result is I feel like I’m just drifting like a untouched fish in a glass bowl. Ok to look at but without purpose and connection.
My husband’s family is so good to me and they love me so very much. My mother-in-law has been so quietly and stoicly loving and supportive of me as my husband has told her about my family issues. She never mentions anything she’s been told and we don’t discuss it, but Patrick tells me they’re both horrified by everything that’s gone on and feel deeply sorry for me. I’ve always had a great relationship with them both as individuals but they’ve both been just a touch more parental and concerned for me this past year. And I’m very close with my sister-in-law. I finally have a sister I can tell things to and she actually responds with compassion. We like spending time together and we see each other for dinner at least once a week. She’s fun and I love her.
I love and appreciate my in-laws very much, and it is mutual. But they are still my in-laws. There’s always going to be that tiny sliver of imbalance because they’re HIS family. That makes me feel very insecure.
We have a massive friend imbalance. I have a handful and he’s got dozens. I have made my own friends within his circle, mostly with women, and that has been healthy for me. But the imbalance is still there, and it makes me feel very insecure.
And then there’s our career imbalance. His has really taken off and he’s on a fantastic path. He loves what he does and he’s good at it. I don’t have that either. Illness and lack of direction keep me in wage work that isn’t the best fit, even if I do it well. That makes me feel like I don’t have a calling or productive purpose. I’ve always struggled with this. Gonna be 40 this year. Still struggling.
The emotional effects of these events in addition to my freshly reblossoming libido have left me feeling desperate for passion and connection and feeling good at something. Unfortunately my sex life with my husband is really difficult. Physically we can only effectively fuck in one position, and I am flat on my back. I’m so much taller and he’s so round that this is the only one that works for us. When we do finally get naked and intimate, it’s great. We connect, it feels fantastic and it’s passionate and fun. But I want so much more.
I asked him about his fantasies only to discover that he’s never really had any. He was a virgin when we met and to cope with the pain of that he never put himself into a scene to fantasize about anything. Totally understandable. We can slowly work on fixing that trauma through gentle experimentation. But ultimately in all of the ways he exceeds me in family and friends and career, I am light years ahead of him sexually. I am into things that would scare the shit out of him if we ever talked about them. He’s too gentle and too loving to understand my need to be choked and spanked and throw-down fucked. I don’t want him to even try. I think we’d both end up uncomfortable and embarrassed because it would be such a sham. He can’t best me in bed. It’s not even a contest. I don’t want it to be. I like what we have and I don’t want him to try to be what he thinks I want. I know he can’t become who he is not. I knew this when I married him. He knew I was wild and into open relationships. Somehow we’re gonna have to figure this out.
I want to bang other people. I don’t want to date. I just want to make a dude friend who matches my energy so we can meet up a couple times a month for frantic rage fucking. If I can make a great weed connection in the process, because the two have always gone well together for me, so much better for all of us.
We’ve talked about it. He’s extremely hesitant and afraid, and I get it. But he’s also being fair enough to recognize that with the return of my fully active sex drive there is this huge part of me that is utterly repressed and lonely and it’s eating away at my emotions. Because of the way I’m wired, once I’m actively engaging sexually, it’s like opening flood gates. I’m horny all the time and I crave risk and variety and power struggles and kink. I look at consistently engaging in our vanilla bean banging and I know it won’t fill my tank enough to be constant with just my husband. It would be to his absolute advantage to slip this leash and let me go because it would keep my drive high, and me interested and engaged. He knows this and I’m not pushing him yet. But I’m also not fucking him either. He’s enough of a feminist to get that I don’t owe him anything, even though I love him more than anyone.
We had a weird sort of catalyst that bumped a similar issue to the forefront of our lives. We ate some mushrooms with some friends and it resulted in a pretty emotionally intense connection, as shrooming will do. There was a bit of group discussion about feeling those emotions out some more, seeing where they all go. It wasn’t sexual but it was very loving. I’m interested, but I’m well-aware that just because you have an amazing drug experience with people it doesn’t have to mean much more than you had an amazing drug experience. So we’ll see. It gave me a glimmer of a possible future where we could build a family with other adults we now consider only friends. Co-habitating, working together to support each other, filling in all the gaps a monogamous marriage can create. I shared the idea initially, but it was picked up by someone else and made much bolder and more powerful than I was ready to admit interest in. Intoxicatingly so. Apparently a call went out months ago and I answered it without knowing what I was actually starting. It’s been a major distraction, but a welcome one from the confusion of my stirred-up sexuality.
So I’m over-stimulated and under-utilized and sort of going crazy because of it. Apparently my sex-vibes are rippling through the ether because I’ve gotten a couple of random messages from past partners looking to check in on me. (What’s up, guys?)
I put out my own feelers and got a good response. I also tested how long it might take me to hook up at random with someone new. Not long at all. It was sort of bad ass to send a message to someone you haven’t seen or talked to in years and receive an immediate response back that hell yes he is DTF, when? Not yet. But maybe soon. We’re working on it.....
I’m extremely uncomfortable in my marriage and my own skin right now, but I’m also excited as fuck.
My Crohn’s is in full remission. I spent my birthday last year in the hospital and when I came out I switched from Humira injections to Remicade infusions. Humira was working but because I couldn’t dose if I had even a hint of any kind of infection AND it weakens the immune system, I was not able to be consistent with weekly injections. Remicade infusions are every eight weeks and I started them in September. By December when I had my annual butt scope my doctor was able to confirm I am in chemical, symptomatic, and physical remission. FUCK YEAH!! Eight years later.... Remicade has made me gain about 40# since August, and I’m right at 230# now. I’m not happy about it but there are other things to be happy about.
After several years of medically-induced asexuality I have a libido again. And it’s already a problem. It’s forcing me to address the only soft spot in my marriage.
I was already sick when Patrick and I met, and my desire for dick was already on the decline. I was sort of relieved by this, and for the past few years I think I’ve been able to build a much stronger bond with my husband because I have not been distracted by anyone else. We both were also in such desperate need of each other after being alone for so long that seven years of uninterrupted togetherness has been critical and nourishing for both of us. We spend all of our non-working time together, and while I feel that has been a major strength for us through the years, I’m feeling a bit claustrophobic at the moment.
This has been a year of major changes. I’ve essentially walked away from my mother and all of her family. I’ve never liked my mother’s husband. He’s been degrading and emotionally abusive my entire life. I hate how he treats my mother. When this last fucking election happened I was horrified by the creature put into office. The pussy-grab footage and the disgusting entitled misogyny of it all brought back a lot of nasty memories about different men. My step-dad was one of them.
I shared with my sister an incident where my ex and I were naked in the hot tub at my parents house and my mother’s husband came out and tried to get her to stand up and show him her boobs. I shared how violently angry and ashamed I felt that I didn’t leap out of the water and strangle him for making someone I loved feel degraded and threatened right in front of me. No one who loves and cares about you does something like that. And my sister’s biggest concern was immediately that our mother never find out. I don’t feel like she ever really offered any kind of comfort. Telling her about it and her non-reaction sort of got lost in the haze of my shifty memory banks, and I ended up emotionally re-telling her the story a few weeks later. She dead-pan interrupted with, “You already told me this.”
I felt so sad in that moment. My sister and I have struggled to connect with each other, but I felt we were both really trying our best. When she came back at me like that with zero support as I’m pouring out my secret shame and horrified emotions to her, I knew I’d never try with her again. She only loves our mother, no one else. There has never been enough actual room in her heart or in her life for me. She builds a lot of fantasy around things and tried to manufacture a lot of moments for us. I never needed moments. I needed someone to not dismiss my experiences in order to shield others. I needed someone to care about my damage, not add to it. I desperately needed a connection with and understanding from someone who loves me. She has never been that for me.
I recently reread my journal and was sort of shocked by all of the effort I put into being close with my family, and how little it ended up mattering to them all. My sister in particular has really always been like this. Dead-center focused on her relationship with our mother and no one else. I’m not sorry I gave up on them. I am sorry I didn’t do it sooner. I never developed deep friendships with very many people because I always devoted more time to family. I always felt really alone in life but also mostly sure I should stay close to my family, because they’ll love me no matter what, right?
So wrong. I wrote my mother a letter around Thanksgiving after the election and while I didn’t tell her about the hot tub incident, I did tell her I felt her husband had been the biggest negative influence in my life, and that I was so angry at him I wanted to punch him in the face every time I saw him. I had a lot of other things to say and said them all. I sent it. She read it. And then she fowarded copies to my sister, step-brothers, and all their SOs apparently so everyone could read how I felt. I guess I was supposed to feel shame.
I didn’t find out she’d done this until February when my sister-in-law told me I’d have to ask my step-brother to see my niece for her birthday. I got into an argument with my step-brother about my feelings on his father and I guess still on the shaming-theme he decided to CC our parents and siblings and their SOs on his next response. He also told me that he didn’t feel it was safe to let his kids around me because of the violence in the letter I wrote my mother that she let everyone read. My other step-brother chimed in probably trying to help, but essentially no one had the same experience as I did growing up so they all decided to gaslight me by saying the things I’m upset about never happened and I should be thankful for what has been done for me all my life.
Fuck that shit.
I’m not going to spend my Christmases with a person who is supposed to be a father-figure yet decided it was ok to sexually objectify and threaten my friend while knowing I was also naked and vulnerable. Run your fucking sick dick power games on the other women who will put up with your nasty ass. If they’re ok with you staring at their boobs and asses while they swim in your pool with your grandkids, who am I to fucking judge ya’ll? I just wanted out, and now I am.
My mother last visited me for about an hour right after my hospital stay in August. It was awkward as fuck and neither of us enjoyed it. I sent her a text on Thanksgiving around 9am and she waited until the very end of the day to respond. I commented on someone’s post that I hoped everyone had a nice Christmas, and I was ignored. My sister deleted her Facebook account so that tenuous connection is gone. She never responded during or after the email exchanges with our step-brothers, not even to tell me she disagreed that I was a threat to the kids because I’m violent. Really? Nothing?
In the end, it made it REALLY easy to walk away from those people after all that. As soon as I was cast as violent for being honest about how my justifiable rage makes me feel, I was done. I’ve never hit anyone in my life. I use words to hurt, not fists. And I’ve certainly never been the type of person to speak badly about another adult around children who care about them. You learn how that feels as a child of divorce and you don’t want to go spreading that around. I’m not even going to dignify that kind of argument with a fight. No one wants to reconcile. They either want me to submit or get out. So I got out.
And holy fucking shit, I walk the fuck away from that shitstorm family fuck-fest and months later I’m in full remission. If you assholes think I’m ever coming back to that abuse, keep on dreaming. You need to find another scapegoat/punching bag.
So with the core family unit disintegrating, and my grandmother and aunt being so pro-Drumpf they resemble 1937 Germans in passionate love with der Fuhrer, whatever I had as far as family support or what passed for it is history. My circle got really really small. It’s half relief, half panic.
This brings me back to my marriage. We’re heading for a shift. There’s essentially some major imbalances going on and the end result is I feel like I’m just drifting like a untouched fish in a glass bowl. Ok to look at but without purpose and connection.
My husband’s family is so good to me and they love me so very much. My mother-in-law has been so quietly and stoicly loving and supportive of me as my husband has told her about my family issues. She never mentions anything she’s been told and we don’t discuss it, but Patrick tells me they’re both horrified by everything that’s gone on and feel deeply sorry for me. I’ve always had a great relationship with them both as individuals but they’ve both been just a touch more parental and concerned for me this past year. And I’m very close with my sister-in-law. I finally have a sister I can tell things to and she actually responds with compassion. We like spending time together and we see each other for dinner at least once a week. She’s fun and I love her.
I love and appreciate my in-laws very much, and it is mutual. But they are still my in-laws. There’s always going to be that tiny sliver of imbalance because they’re HIS family. That makes me feel very insecure.
We have a massive friend imbalance. I have a handful and he’s got dozens. I have made my own friends within his circle, mostly with women, and that has been healthy for me. But the imbalance is still there, and it makes me feel very insecure.
And then there’s our career imbalance. His has really taken off and he’s on a fantastic path. He loves what he does and he’s good at it. I don’t have that either. Illness and lack of direction keep me in wage work that isn’t the best fit, even if I do it well. That makes me feel like I don’t have a calling or productive purpose. I’ve always struggled with this. Gonna be 40 this year. Still struggling.
The emotional effects of these events in addition to my freshly reblossoming libido have left me feeling desperate for passion and connection and feeling good at something. Unfortunately my sex life with my husband is really difficult. Physically we can only effectively fuck in one position, and I am flat on my back. I’m so much taller and he’s so round that this is the only one that works for us. When we do finally get naked and intimate, it’s great. We connect, it feels fantastic and it’s passionate and fun. But I want so much more.
I asked him about his fantasies only to discover that he’s never really had any. He was a virgin when we met and to cope with the pain of that he never put himself into a scene to fantasize about anything. Totally understandable. We can slowly work on fixing that trauma through gentle experimentation. But ultimately in all of the ways he exceeds me in family and friends and career, I am light years ahead of him sexually. I am into things that would scare the shit out of him if we ever talked about them. He’s too gentle and too loving to understand my need to be choked and spanked and throw-down fucked. I don’t want him to even try. I think we’d both end up uncomfortable and embarrassed because it would be such a sham. He can’t best me in bed. It’s not even a contest. I don’t want it to be. I like what we have and I don’t want him to try to be what he thinks I want. I know he can’t become who he is not. I knew this when I married him. He knew I was wild and into open relationships. Somehow we’re gonna have to figure this out.
I want to bang other people. I don’t want to date. I just want to make a dude friend who matches my energy so we can meet up a couple times a month for frantic rage fucking. If I can make a great weed connection in the process, because the two have always gone well together for me, so much better for all of us.
We’ve talked about it. He’s extremely hesitant and afraid, and I get it. But he’s also being fair enough to recognize that with the return of my fully active sex drive there is this huge part of me that is utterly repressed and lonely and it’s eating away at my emotions. Because of the way I’m wired, once I’m actively engaging sexually, it’s like opening flood gates. I’m horny all the time and I crave risk and variety and power struggles and kink. I look at consistently engaging in our vanilla bean banging and I know it won’t fill my tank enough to be constant with just my husband. It would be to his absolute advantage to slip this leash and let me go because it would keep my drive high, and me interested and engaged. He knows this and I’m not pushing him yet. But I’m also not fucking him either. He’s enough of a feminist to get that I don’t owe him anything, even though I love him more than anyone.
We had a weird sort of catalyst that bumped a similar issue to the forefront of our lives. We ate some mushrooms with some friends and it resulted in a pretty emotionally intense connection, as shrooming will do. There was a bit of group discussion about feeling those emotions out some more, seeing where they all go. It wasn’t sexual but it was very loving. I’m interested, but I’m well-aware that just because you have an amazing drug experience with people it doesn’t have to mean much more than you had an amazing drug experience. So we’ll see. It gave me a glimmer of a possible future where we could build a family with other adults we now consider only friends. Co-habitating, working together to support each other, filling in all the gaps a monogamous marriage can create. I shared the idea initially, but it was picked up by someone else and made much bolder and more powerful than I was ready to admit interest in. Intoxicatingly so. Apparently a call went out months ago and I answered it without knowing what I was actually starting. It’s been a major distraction, but a welcome one from the confusion of my stirred-up sexuality.
So I’m over-stimulated and under-utilized and sort of going crazy because of it. Apparently my sex-vibes are rippling through the ether because I’ve gotten a couple of random messages from past partners looking to check in on me. (What’s up, guys?)
I put out my own feelers and got a good response. I also tested how long it might take me to hook up at random with someone new. Not long at all. It was sort of bad ass to send a message to someone you haven’t seen or talked to in years and receive an immediate response back that hell yes he is DTF, when? Not yet. But maybe soon. We’re working on it.....
I’m extremely uncomfortable in my marriage and my own skin right now, but I’m also excited as fuck.