Envy and jealousy aren't the same. (Sometimes I get annoyed that I can subdivide these so finely in English but I need to borrow from Greek to discuss love.) Jealousy would be a situation where I did not want my wife and the new guy to be happy; because I felt she was mine, or because I was not. I think I feel relatively little jealousy. I can hope that I'm wrong about how bad he is for her. I can think of several guys I'd be reasonably happy to see her with.
But Rogue Bambi in comments to the Forgiveness post made me realize that envy is where I have the bigger problem in this case. One of the things that had bugged me in our marriage is that I could not get her to wear costumes she wore at conventions at home for me. But she will apparently wear a slave collar for him.
envy (noun) 1. Resentful desire of something possessed by another or others (but not limited to material possessions). (Definiton from Wiktionary.)
I feel resentful desire for what she will do for him but wouldn't for me. I believe that would have changed everything. I have to face this down in myself.
I also have to face down her part, so I can forgive her. And so I don't exaggerate my own fault in the breakup, which I am prone to do. Because that sort of withholding in marriage is behaviour that I find wrong and contemptible; I would accept no such thing in myself, and I explained before we were married that I would not respect any such attitude in her.
Things like the costume thing have also always made it difficult for me to accept what she said about how hard she tried. There were a good number of things she did for me; they just were not what I asked for. Perhaps she was trying to get me to accept the real her, without being told that was the choice before me.
If I don't face her faults, if I just gloss over them and pretend they never happened, I cannot forgive them.
Showing posts with label Greatest Discussions in Comments. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Greatest Discussions in Comments. Show all posts
Monday, December 20, 2010
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Confessions
Here's some ways I actually think, sometimes, deep down, that I'm ashamed of and might try to explain but certainly won't defend. They're hard to get over and I think quite a few men think this way, so for reference:
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The other day my wife called me up to ask me for help moving something; she was receiving a new iron bedframe with headboard and footboard, made of recycled iron fence, (probably pretty cool looking though I didn't get a chance to see it), shipped in a wood box about 6 feet by 6 by 2, and she didn't find out until too late that she had no means of moving it from the lobby of the complex to her apartment. She knew I was out of work and might be available to get it shifted. I headed straight over to her place (about 1/2 hour drive), and got it into her apartment. We chatted for a short time and she seemed very grateful and happy; I excused myself quickly due to my cat allergies (when she got cats is when I really knew it was over), and headed home. Frankly I felt pretty good about myself that I'd cheerfully on a moment's notice do that for the woman that was divorcing me, expecting nothing in return.
That night I had a dream that we reconciled; it turned sexy. So was I really expecting nothing in return? Maybe I was; maybe seeing her and having her be so friendly just raised old feelings. Maybe I wasn't; maybe somewhere in my subconscious I was motivated by the "do nice things for the sexy woman" motive.
Whichever it was, the dream showed me that the old training of my imagination is still in force; she's still the sexiest woman in the world to me. Probably a good thing; there's still several months before the divorce will be final, and I don't want to be seriously looking around yet (hard as that is).
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I don't so much think, or fear, that women don't like sex, that they're the "no sex class"; I'm more likely to think that they don't like sex with men. I remember how Melissa Etheridge used to affect me; of course songs like "The Way I Do" were her singing professionally, but her marvellous presentation made me think that perhaps there was some real meaning to it. Then she came out as a lesbian, and that depressingly resolved the mystery in my mind; there was real feeling, but it was about other women. Deep in my heart I thought, Of course. Now it makes sense. When looking on the Web for women who talk about liking sex, I found lesbian or bi women first. Sometimes women seem to me to be the only sexually attractive entities in the universe, even to other women.
I KNOW this is wrong. I haven't had any particular shortage of experiences that demonstrate the appeal of men in general or me in particular. And there are plenty of women on the Web doing a good job explaining all about the appeal of men. It's flat-out ungrateful of me to continue to feel this way. But still, I know women like men in my head but not my heart. (That, BTW, is what faith means to me; faith is when you know in your heart as well as your head.)
After writing this part, I happened upon Hugo Schwyzer's "Of Never Feeling Hot" via Rogue Bambi's "Vital Bodies" section. There's a lot more said there. Interestingly, I get more compliments than any of the men in my friend group, and making the point much better, Hugo was apparently rated as "America's Hottest Professor". But we both have this deep, difficult to shake feeling that we cannot be truly sexually desireable to women because we are men. I have, like one of the commenters on Hugo's post, felt sexually desireable to a bi man; I have felt valuable to women (as in the frame-moving thing), but never so desireable as when that bi man hit on me.
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Ugh. This one is going to get me in trouble. It's EXTRA wrong. But I'll still explain it, because I think it's a valuable admission.
But thinking about what I said above, I realized that I'm actually sometimes somewhat jealous of women, of what in my imagination is women's privileged position in the world. I feel like I can never be as desired as a woman is. I will never be treated with the kindness and politeness that I offer women, and that doesn't mean just pretty ones. I will always be treated by strangers with the reserve and automatic suspicion designed for the potential rapist (which I totally support and think is the right way for women to behave, in a world full of acquaintance rape).
I've often thought how nice it would be if I could do my life over as a woman. (Virtually all men apparently would like to come back as man.) Now, I feel like a man down to my core. Saying I sometimes feel like a woman in a man's body isn't something that would be a problem here, but I don't feel that at all. There's a big difference, that I think gets lost occasionally, between "It would be great to be X" and "I feel that I am X". Though sometimes I think being a woman would be easier and better, I never think I am or should be one.
------
Me saying that I know I'm wrong about some of these isn't meant to muzzle people. If you feel like telling me why I'm insane to be jealous of women's desirability, please go ahead. I expect I'll agree with you; it's a confession not a manifesto.
------
The other day my wife called me up to ask me for help moving something; she was receiving a new iron bedframe with headboard and footboard, made of recycled iron fence, (probably pretty cool looking though I didn't get a chance to see it), shipped in a wood box about 6 feet by 6 by 2, and she didn't find out until too late that she had no means of moving it from the lobby of the complex to her apartment. She knew I was out of work and might be available to get it shifted. I headed straight over to her place (about 1/2 hour drive), and got it into her apartment. We chatted for a short time and she seemed very grateful and happy; I excused myself quickly due to my cat allergies (when she got cats is when I really knew it was over), and headed home. Frankly I felt pretty good about myself that I'd cheerfully on a moment's notice do that for the woman that was divorcing me, expecting nothing in return.
That night I had a dream that we reconciled; it turned sexy. So was I really expecting nothing in return? Maybe I was; maybe seeing her and having her be so friendly just raised old feelings. Maybe I wasn't; maybe somewhere in my subconscious I was motivated by the "do nice things for the sexy woman" motive.
Whichever it was, the dream showed me that the old training of my imagination is still in force; she's still the sexiest woman in the world to me. Probably a good thing; there's still several months before the divorce will be final, and I don't want to be seriously looking around yet (hard as that is).
------
I don't so much think, or fear, that women don't like sex, that they're the "no sex class"; I'm more likely to think that they don't like sex with men. I remember how Melissa Etheridge used to affect me; of course songs like "The Way I Do" were her singing professionally, but her marvellous presentation made me think that perhaps there was some real meaning to it. Then she came out as a lesbian, and that depressingly resolved the mystery in my mind; there was real feeling, but it was about other women. Deep in my heart I thought, Of course. Now it makes sense. When looking on the Web for women who talk about liking sex, I found lesbian or bi women first. Sometimes women seem to me to be the only sexually attractive entities in the universe, even to other women.
I KNOW this is wrong. I haven't had any particular shortage of experiences that demonstrate the appeal of men in general or me in particular. And there are plenty of women on the Web doing a good job explaining all about the appeal of men. It's flat-out ungrateful of me to continue to feel this way. But still, I know women like men in my head but not my heart. (That, BTW, is what faith means to me; faith is when you know in your heart as well as your head.)
After writing this part, I happened upon Hugo Schwyzer's "Of Never Feeling Hot" via Rogue Bambi's "Vital Bodies" section. There's a lot more said there. Interestingly, I get more compliments than any of the men in my friend group, and making the point much better, Hugo was apparently rated as "America's Hottest Professor". But we both have this deep, difficult to shake feeling that we cannot be truly sexually desireable to women because we are men. I have, like one of the commenters on Hugo's post, felt sexually desireable to a bi man; I have felt valuable to women (as in the frame-moving thing), but never so desireable as when that bi man hit on me.
------
Ugh. This one is going to get me in trouble. It's EXTRA wrong. But I'll still explain it, because I think it's a valuable admission.
But thinking about what I said above, I realized that I'm actually sometimes somewhat jealous of women, of what in my imagination is women's privileged position in the world. I feel like I can never be as desired as a woman is. I will never be treated with the kindness and politeness that I offer women, and that doesn't mean just pretty ones. I will always be treated by strangers with the reserve and automatic suspicion designed for the potential rapist (which I totally support and think is the right way for women to behave, in a world full of acquaintance rape).
I've often thought how nice it would be if I could do my life over as a woman. (Virtually all men apparently would like to come back as man.) Now, I feel like a man down to my core. Saying I sometimes feel like a woman in a man's body isn't something that would be a problem here, but I don't feel that at all. There's a big difference, that I think gets lost occasionally, between "It would be great to be X" and "I feel that I am X". Though sometimes I think being a woman would be easier and better, I never think I am or should be one.
------
Me saying that I know I'm wrong about some of these isn't meant to muzzle people. If you feel like telling me why I'm insane to be jealous of women's desirability, please go ahead. I expect I'll agree with you; it's a confession not a manifesto.
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