Boundaries and Seeking Validation. -The Geek

I have long known if not really acknowledged that most of my online activities have been an attempt for some external validation. This is not at all because loving support, praise and acceptance are in anyway lacking at home. Rather it is pathological, childhood rooted, and on balance, unhealthy.

About a year ago the conflict for my quest for this kind of validation and her unease with how I went about it was in a place where once again it could have come to a head. At that time we as a couple were in a pretty good place. Secure with each other and for us pretty open. She chose at that time to embark on a grand experiment in trust and openness. As she explained it it wasn't at all ever for her about the activity or the imagery or words but rather my need to be secretive. IN her words if I had simply said from the start, "Hey, I'm a grown-assed man and I'll do what I please on line!" that she wouldn't have that constant suspicious dread about where and with whom I forayed into the depths of online depravity. It was my constant promises that I'd abstain and then relapsed that struck co-dependent chords with her. By shifting her paradigm, she found that she (at the time) very much enjoyed sharing with me my virtual travels.

her words at the time:

"My hubby and I, while both enjoying great kinky sex with each other, have frequently found ourselves on different pages sexually. It was never that the sex wasn't good. It has always been good. But sometimes, being human has caused us to not communicate our desires to each other as well as we should. Or, more likely, it has caused us to not see and hear what the other is thinking and feeling. I think that is probably pretty common in long marriages.

Lately, we have been on the same page. Maybe even worse, we are turning those pages together and turning them awfully quickly. We are getting to chapters that we never thought to reach. This blog is one example.

Hubby has wanted me to post pictures/video/stories for some time. He has wanted me to join him in his internet sexploration. Because of interpersonal issues, I was leery of getting out in the great beyond with him. Today, as we blurfed the sex blogs, I smiled at him and asked him how long he had been waiting for me to do this with him.

"All of my life", he said.

I feel a little silly in hindsight. He was going to do it whether I was leery of going with him or not. So why not just join in and share this with him? Was I afraid of where we might go in the long run? About how far the kink would take us? Probably. And I probably still am. But, there is something inherently intimate in giving one's self up and allowing the possibilities to happen. It takes a level of trust that is almost frightening to give. By giving myself to him in this way, by sharing secret parts of ourselves without guilt or recrimination, we have reached a level of closeness and intimacy that we hadn't yet reached in our blankety-teen years of marriage. It's nice and very lovely...if such a word can be used to describe what we have been trying sexually.

So now, I am thinking to myself, if he has been waiting all his life for me to go down this path with him.....I, equally, have been waiting all my life for our marriage to achieve this closeness. In a contrary manner, I have been avoiding and running, and decrying, and blaming, and just generally bitching about the thing that would have brought me what I wanted all along.
(snip)
Because we love each other."

During these heady times of such freedom and trust, I felt very open and honest and credited this blog and some of the other activity with bringing us closer. I think, in hindsight that I had that backwards. Only through our carefully cultivated closeness was we able to take such huge risks. Its much like couples that successfully negotiate the dangerous shoals of poly and casual multi-partner couplings. In only works for those that are very secure in their love for each other.

In the past year I moved away from home, and was only able to visit for a few days at a time roughly every two weeks. This is not a recipe for closeness. Absence does not in fact make the heart grow fonder. It makes living by oneself comfortable and sudden intrusions into established routines jars. We have moved back in together in quite cramped quarters with 4 of the 5 children and the re-adjustment has been brutal.

I get the impression that she has the impression that in my absence I have taken the license granted and gone on grand online adventures during the scant hours I am not working. I confess I tried mightily, but just as real life living breathing relationships need time and attention so do online friendships and more. I have been grossly unsuccessful in such pursuits, but not for lack of trying. IN fact my efforts to me have taken on an air of desperation and it shows I think.

The frenetic pace of the project that employs me has finally ceased defying economic gravity and has come to a screeching slowdown. Recently it was harder to get overtime and now overtime is abolished.

It is going to be catastrophic financially, but I am looking forward to the overtime now available in repairing our strained friendship.