Entry #2

Currently my wife dislikes me. "Dislike" is probably too strong a word in this context. So I'll weaken it: currently my wife is very upset with me. The problem with that, most recent of locutions, is that it doesn't capture how fear, resentment, and chagrin commingle, undoubtedly, in her; and how what I have, and haven't done have exacerbated her moods, not to mention mine. You are required a bit of a backstory.

In entry #1 I wrote that problems in work life and problems in home life have conspired to bring me to this point. They leave visible, tangible marks. In my anger or frustration some months ago, for example, I took it upon myself to create a dent in our wall with my fist, an unfortunate memorial and a fine piece of performance art, a paean to fools and blameless wives everywhere. Visible traces of anger like these lightly dot our apartment, but they have subsided for the most part and in the most recent months. The problem now, it seems, is not that I am not angry, nor that I don't express it willfully and with voice (Bravo, Contrabbasso!), but that the traces I leave are no longer visible. I have never hit her. But by, for loss of better locutions, gorging myself on yells and screams, I have obviously made her afraid of me. This to the point today, where we stand, somewhere between redemption and loss; in her own words, a breaking point.

I suppose not even that's true. My anger shows up most visibly not on our walls and what-nots, but on her face and in her expressions. We have been emotionally distant for months, sexually distant for even longer. Around November or December, our sex life became less than what I had imagined it would always be (conveniently forgetting that she is my wife, and I am her husband—marriages are not Euclidean spaces, constructed to keep something out or keep something in; they are topologies to which we give the form). It began because of her, stress, hypochondria, maybe something else or many other things to which I'm no longer privy. (Mostly) concretely, we went from a healthy sexual life to one in which our sexual contacts became less frequent. Around March or February the infrequency began to consume me. An awful, but recoverable, time at work stepped in. In June the simmer rose to a boil. In July I exploded. In August I evaporated.

The previous paragraph gives the impression that actions on her part may have caused our contemporary currency. But this is false. Sexual distance begets its emotional cousin, and for all the ways I have blamed her with respect to the former, fingers pointed for the latter metric must be pointed at me. When what we need most is to sit up in bed with one another, reading, either to one another, or to ourselves; when what we need is for me to be soft and gentle, focussed and intent on keeping close, I lost focus, I stewed. I obsessed over one part of our lives together. I forgot about the other parts.

Currently my wife is afraid of me. Currently her trust in me is battered and bruised. Currently it's my doing. I would like to end the post by flatly refusing to admit that because of me she might end it, and soon. But I cannot. Rather, I can, but the refusal of admission would be insincere, a Freudian's dream.