Contradictory

     Writing helps me, but a hindrance it has the potential to be.  I'm in this place again.  I thought I was moving forward.  How do you do that, carry on normally, when relationship questions are posed continually?  Have I waited too long to "come around"?  It has been a year since I attempted to "step out of the ring" as I truly was convinced was his desire.  He had the most beautiful change.  Although I was hardened so firmly that I wasn't moved emotionally by it, my mind told me it was a miracle and that respect for such, as well as his hard work, was in order.  To be brutally honest, I'd have to admit that I come under attack with flashbacks and "what ifs" when I'm not on guard; particularly tired, hormonal, or sick.                          
     I thought 2011 would be a year of squaring things up, getting it together, overcoming.  Having Manuel and Sebastian here was a dually agreed upon undertaking.  In some maybe "twisted" way, the needs of children have always brought us together.  The boys are gone now and "we" unknowingly "wained" through it.  I'm afraid our own children are used as pawns now.  Last night was almost more than I could withstand.
I really never mind admitting my wrongs.  I really never care to "win" a fight.  I DO care to be understood and that's something that is difficult to accomplish right now.   The meanings of my words are misconstrued regularly.  This is where the proving grounds are - whether prayer lives are alive and well - both of ours.       
     Maybe I didn't know what I was getting into when I got married, nor did he, but I do know his ups are adventurous, keeping the fun around, and his downs leave me with no words to explain.  (No, he's never laid a hand on me. Emotional warfare is arguably as bad.)  Now, he says that he feels "nothing" just as I did last year; he's tired of being "alone"... when I was given his grace, only a few months ago, that I had as long to recover as the time he ruled in mind games.  I'm not much of a fan of games to begin with, much less those that toy with or sarcastically impose underlying messages.  Shoot it to me straight.  Today, he did.  He's lonely and believes I'm "staying" to enjoy this place and my life with the children.  I have to ask myself, "Is it true?  Am I back to being afraid of the unknown?"                                                                                        
      I've read enough books, and even verses in the Bible, to know that what is to the mental state of a woman is to the physical state of a man.  I've tried to explain that I've never been "right thinking" in intimacy, long before I met him.  At an early age, I learned the advantages (not wise enough yet to see the disadvantages) of being desired.  When I went into our marriage, I'm sorry to say that sex was probably just a "thing" to me.  Then we stupidly fell for the "spice things up" ploy and you can guess where that landed us and sent us on a bent road for years.  You'd never guess how many women, whether it was their idea or not, become addicted, perhaps pretending to be what they think they'll never add up to.  Satan is horribly clever.   He was also in the temptation I yielded to early on.  How easy it must have been for me to "get saved" a few months later, make an admission, and go on my merry way; leaving him with a burden that he thought he could forgive but has carried all this time.                           
     So, this whole getting "physically fit" again has a tremendous role, I believe.  In my delay to get to a place where I'm confident again, it has only been to him a push away.  Too, it's hard to be easily intimate before a friendship has renewed or even ever found.  He's probably tiring of resistance as much as I am of dutifulness.  This is where we are... two people who would do the right things but searching for answers based on things we've never been, blinded by each other -  from something that is quite possibly the beginning of our spiritual bond after almost 23 years of simply living in tolerance of each other.   I don't know that forgiveness is so much the issue as the awkwardness of breaking old habits is.  Simple common courtesy makes him feel like a stranger.  False affection makes me feel cheap.  As his victory continues and our children grow older, Satan is loving ever second of every day we lose to strife and the licking of our wounds.  Maybe this is my new battle; didn't care to have one so soon; but then again, in it I tend to flourish.               
     Am I bad to reveal details that innately involve another?  If you've been with us long, you saw what was laid out on Facebook last spring and summer.  Selfish I may be to set the truth out again, but selfless I gravitate toward when I see my part in what previously appeared one-sided to me.   Anyone with experience in this realm is very welcome to communicate your personal story to me.  I think I may have become too wordly in my new found freedom, suddenly in this same season last year, given "permission" to say my piece, express my preferences without repercussions.  Maybe I gained too much independence, forgetting that I am still a wife.  The biggest paradox of my life has happened:  all the things I needed in my husband for all those years found no place in my heart when he tried to become them.