I've been keeping track of how (in)frequently V and I have sex for some time now. It's not just for libido-tracking purposes, it's also because we are supposedly trying to conceive a child.
The statistics are weird. My maths may be off.
Since I began keeping count (February) we have had penis-in-vagina sex 14 times in 168 days.
The average would appear to be once every 12 days. How can this be? Once every 12 days seems like a sex heaven to me now, even though I would gladly do it every single day, at least once, given the opportunity. It certainly doesn't feel like every 12 days.
The shortest gap is two days, in June, when we managed to get it on a whopping three whole times (whoo!). This, along with the odd five-and-six day gaps, must have brought the average way down.
The longest dry spell, broken last Friday at my absolute insistence, was 45 days. Of sheer hell. I would have thought that this would push the average back up again, but the bog-standard two-or-three week gaps seem to have cushioned the blow.
What's got me mathsing it up is my ovulation. Having just been knocked back for a lunchtime baby-making quickie, seeing as we are both off work at just the right time of the month, I started thinking about how many chances I actually have left to get pregnant.
At a generous estimate (and assuming I am healthily fertile and not due an early menopause or any similar fertility-scuppering nasties) I have five years of reasonable fertility left in me. As I now know (yeah, thanks, sex ed, for not making this clear until I actually needed the information), there are only about two days each month when pregnancy is likely to occur.
Five years x 12 periods/year = 60 chances to get pregnant
60 periods x two fertile days = 120 days in which to get pregnant
Every time he denies me sex at a fertile time, he robs me of one of those 60 chances that I have left to be a mother.
I've just laid out the mathematical facts to him. He says that's not a helpful way to think about it. Not helpful to whom? Sure, it's not helpful to me in that when I think about it I want to cry. It's helpful in that I know what I'm dealing with.
It's not helpful to him because if he knows the facts, he knows that he can't deny that he is robbing me, not only of my right to a healthy sex life, but of my dream of being a mother.
But even that, it seems, is not motivation enough for him to get off his arse and fuck me.
Tuesday 25 August 2009
Wednesday 19 August 2009
Illogical thoughts from a supposedly logical man.
Two conversations, throughout both of which I sobbed uncontrollably.
Conversation one:
V: Every time you're affectionate with me I feel like you want it to turn sexual. I worry that you don't actually love me, you just want me for sex.
B: If I just wanted you for sex I would have left you a long time ago.
::pause::
V: I suppose.
B: It's precisely because I love you so much that this is so difficult. I'm still with you because I love you, I want us to stay together and I want to fix this. I want to have a sex life with you, because I love you.
::pause::
V: I suppose.
::pause::
B: To me, when you love someone, you want to have sex with them, because that's what bonds you together, that's what makes it a relationship rather than a friendship. In refusing to do so, it feels like you're telling me you don't love me, you are pushing me away, telling me you don't love me, and destroying the bond between us.
::pause::
And if we split up because you won't have sex, you'll wind up telling yourself you were right all along about me just wanting you for sex. You'll tell yourself you've proven yourself right, even though the reason I am still here is because I love you so much, not because I'm just after sex.
V: I suppose.
Conversation two:
B: I feel like I've been duped. You pretended you wanted me, you pretended you wanted sex with me, you pretended you loved sex. You enter into a monogamous relationship with someone with the understanding that you will have a sexual relationship with them. It's part of the deal. And now I don't have a sexual relationship with anyone but myself.
::silence::
What can I do? Is there anything I can do to help?
::silence::
Do you want to have sex with other people?
V: No.
B: Can I?
V: I wouldn't feel comfortable with that. If you want to have sex with other people we should probably just split up.
B: But I want to have sex with someone! I want it to be you! And you won't do anything! It's like having something blocking an airway, like I can't breathe. There's a whole part of my personality that can't be expressed without you letting me express it. It's cruel.
V: I know. I'm sorry.
B: I know you're sorry. But what are you going to do?
V: I don't know.
Conversation one:
V: Every time you're affectionate with me I feel like you want it to turn sexual. I worry that you don't actually love me, you just want me for sex.
B: If I just wanted you for sex I would have left you a long time ago.
::pause::
V: I suppose.
B: It's precisely because I love you so much that this is so difficult. I'm still with you because I love you, I want us to stay together and I want to fix this. I want to have a sex life with you, because I love you.
::pause::
V: I suppose.
::pause::
B: To me, when you love someone, you want to have sex with them, because that's what bonds you together, that's what makes it a relationship rather than a friendship. In refusing to do so, it feels like you're telling me you don't love me, you are pushing me away, telling me you don't love me, and destroying the bond between us.
::pause::
And if we split up because you won't have sex, you'll wind up telling yourself you were right all along about me just wanting you for sex. You'll tell yourself you've proven yourself right, even though the reason I am still here is because I love you so much, not because I'm just after sex.
V: I suppose.
Conversation two:
B: I feel like I've been duped. You pretended you wanted me, you pretended you wanted sex with me, you pretended you loved sex. You enter into a monogamous relationship with someone with the understanding that you will have a sexual relationship with them. It's part of the deal. And now I don't have a sexual relationship with anyone but myself.
::silence::
What can I do? Is there anything I can do to help?
::silence::
Do you want to have sex with other people?
V: No.
B: Can I?
V: I wouldn't feel comfortable with that. If you want to have sex with other people we should probably just split up.
B: But I want to have sex with someone! I want it to be you! And you won't do anything! It's like having something blocking an airway, like I can't breathe. There's a whole part of my personality that can't be expressed without you letting me express it. It's cruel.
V: I know. I'm sorry.
B: I know you're sorry. But what are you going to do?
V: I don't know.
Thursday 18 June 2009
It all comes down to what you're prepared to live with.
That's what my counsellor said to me today. God, it was a hard session. Although I started attending counselling for a completely different issue, the last few sessions have been almost wholly about my relationship with V. The situation between us is deteriorating rapidly. I feel like he ignores me much of the time, staring at his computer screen from home time till bed time, then at his book till it's time to go to sleep. When you love someone, surely enjoying spending time with them should be your default setting, but I am last on his list of things to do, wedged in after reading 1001 blogs and a 200-sub Twitter feed, plus Favotter, or whatever the hell it is. The resentment I feel towards him generates in me a constant inner dialogue which makes it hard to enjoy any time we do get to spend together. He avoids me for whatever reason, I avoid him because I'm petrified I'll blow up and scream and scream and scream at him like I did last weekend.
When I cry, he sits passively, then promises to change, promises action. It's all lip service. He never actually follows through with the plans. There's always some excuse.
My counsellor and I have gone around and around trying to work out what could be wrong, why he could be withholding from me like this. In the end we realised that unless he is willing to talk about it himself, there's no way of knowing and, without knowing, no way of fixing it. And as she says, "It all comes down to what you're prepared to live with." Am I prepared to live with such infrequent sex and such poor communication for as long as it takes for him to be ready to explore whatever it is that's holding him back and make the changes necessary to save our relationship?
I don't know.
Probably not.
I am on the very verge of asking him to leave. He knows it, and still he does nothing. I'm running out of options, and I can't control what he does.
I'm going to ask him tonight about attending couples' counselling, and sooner rather than later. It's becoming increasingly clear that we can't - or won't - work this out alone. He agreed to this course of action a while ago. But he's not keen on "airing our dirty linen in public" (ie actually talking about it), so he wanted to try a couple of other things first... then totally failed to do them. Perhaps, as much as he says he loves me and wants to fix this, he's not interested in saving this relationship. Some days from where I'm standing, it looks as though he's doing all he can to wreck it, and to take me down in the process.
If he won't come to relationship counselling, with me or alone, I am going to have to reconsider the whole situation. I can't take much more of this. It is poisoning my love for him.
When I cry, he sits passively, then promises to change, promises action. It's all lip service. He never actually follows through with the plans. There's always some excuse.
My counsellor and I have gone around and around trying to work out what could be wrong, why he could be withholding from me like this. In the end we realised that unless he is willing to talk about it himself, there's no way of knowing and, without knowing, no way of fixing it. And as she says, "It all comes down to what you're prepared to live with." Am I prepared to live with such infrequent sex and such poor communication for as long as it takes for him to be ready to explore whatever it is that's holding him back and make the changes necessary to save our relationship?
I don't know.
Probably not.
I am on the very verge of asking him to leave. He knows it, and still he does nothing. I'm running out of options, and I can't control what he does.
I'm going to ask him tonight about attending couples' counselling, and sooner rather than later. It's becoming increasingly clear that we can't - or won't - work this out alone. He agreed to this course of action a while ago. But he's not keen on "airing our dirty linen in public" (ie actually talking about it), so he wanted to try a couple of other things first... then totally failed to do them. Perhaps, as much as he says he loves me and wants to fix this, he's not interested in saving this relationship. Some days from where I'm standing, it looks as though he's doing all he can to wreck it, and to take me down in the process.
If he won't come to relationship counselling, with me or alone, I am going to have to reconsider the whole situation. I can't take much more of this. It is poisoning my love for him.
Saturday 16 May 2009
OK, I take it back.
They have just had an exchange which can only be construed as indisputably flirtatious.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Jealousy. And, probably, total irrationality.
V has become addicted to Twitter. So have I, truth be told, but my addiction is nothing like his. A few weeks ago he had an idea to use it as a kind of self-marketing tool, to get to know, charm and eventually ingratiate himself with the local Twitterati prior to starting his business - drumming up a little network.
Though he never said this, I assumed he meant people in the same business as him. And of course, I watch his tweets, and most of the people he tweets back and forth with do indeed seem to fit that category. But there's one or two that just don't fit. And one in particular who sticks in my craw.
She has nothing to do with V's career area. She's not funny. She doesn't say anything intelligent or insightful. She tweets meaningless drivel every two minutes, most of it conversational stuff aimed @peoplesheknows. She uses "lol " all the time. He hates lollers.
From her Twitter name, I can assume that she's in her late 20s, and she's local. Her picture is a cartoon of a young woman wearing a ball gag and an expression of, to paraphrase my parents' Joy of Sex, "erotic surprise". As far as I can see, there is nothing apart from these two qualities that might endear her to him.
She does "hang out" on Twitter with some of V's career peers, so I suppose there is that - perhaps he needs to read her stuff to know what's going on. Perhaps she's just one of the popular Tweeters around here (though fuck knows how she's swung that) so he wants to stay on her right side.
But it's driving me crazy, and it's the ball gag that's doing it. When V and I first got together, one of the catalysts was a shared interest in BDSM. Our pre-RL-meeting cybersex was full of the stuff, and on the Sunday afternoons of our first few weekend-long dates, he would tie me to various pieces of furniture and spank me. That seems like a distant memory now. Two different people. Back when I was hot and he was hot for me.
He once told me, while we were still doing the online dance of the seven veils, that "it's hard to treat someone like your fucktoy when you respect them". Of course, I thought "Oh, it'll be different with me". But it's not. We couldn't get any more vanilla. We're so vanilla there's actually no flavour at all. If he's unable to get his freak on with someone he loves, is he dipping his toes in the idea of even thinking about someone else?
I suppose half the problem is that we're such homebodies that I've had very little exposure to him having exposure to other women. It's comforting in a way to cocoon ourselves like that. But without testing those boundaries, I have never built up a resistance to jealousy and a confidence that he only has eyes for me. Of course, these days he rarely shows signs of finding me attractive, much less wanting to treat me like his fucktoy, so it's not really surprising that I'm paranoid.
There is no apparent flirtation between them. Of course, my paranoia reminds me that Twitter has the capacity for private messages. Goddammit. Shut up, paranoia.
Though he never said this, I assumed he meant people in the same business as him. And of course, I watch his tweets, and most of the people he tweets back and forth with do indeed seem to fit that category. But there's one or two that just don't fit. And one in particular who sticks in my craw.
She has nothing to do with V's career area. She's not funny. She doesn't say anything intelligent or insightful. She tweets meaningless drivel every two minutes, most of it conversational stuff aimed @peoplesheknows. She uses "lol " all the time. He hates lollers.
From her Twitter name, I can assume that she's in her late 20s, and she's local. Her picture is a cartoon of a young woman wearing a ball gag and an expression of, to paraphrase my parents' Joy of Sex, "erotic surprise". As far as I can see, there is nothing apart from these two qualities that might endear her to him.
She does "hang out" on Twitter with some of V's career peers, so I suppose there is that - perhaps he needs to read her stuff to know what's going on. Perhaps she's just one of the popular Tweeters around here (though fuck knows how she's swung that) so he wants to stay on her right side.
But it's driving me crazy, and it's the ball gag that's doing it. When V and I first got together, one of the catalysts was a shared interest in BDSM. Our pre-RL-meeting cybersex was full of the stuff, and on the Sunday afternoons of our first few weekend-long dates, he would tie me to various pieces of furniture and spank me. That seems like a distant memory now. Two different people. Back when I was hot and he was hot for me.
He once told me, while we were still doing the online dance of the seven veils, that "it's hard to treat someone like your fucktoy when you respect them". Of course, I thought "Oh, it'll be different with me". But it's not. We couldn't get any more vanilla. We're so vanilla there's actually no flavour at all. If he's unable to get his freak on with someone he loves, is he dipping his toes in the idea of even thinking about someone else?
I suppose half the problem is that we're such homebodies that I've had very little exposure to him having exposure to other women. It's comforting in a way to cocoon ourselves like that. But without testing those boundaries, I have never built up a resistance to jealousy and a confidence that he only has eyes for me. Of course, these days he rarely shows signs of finding me attractive, much less wanting to treat me like his fucktoy, so it's not really surprising that I'm paranoid.
There is no apparent flirtation between them. Of course, my paranoia reminds me that Twitter has the capacity for private messages. Goddammit. Shut up, paranoia.
Saturday 25 April 2009
Resetting the clock.
At last! Fucked and fucked good and proper. Last night I asked him if we could have some kind of sex today. He says "Yeeeesss" with the mock-irritated tone of a henpecked husband being nagged to mow the lawn. I asked if he realised that it had been three weeks since we'd been intimate in any way. He had no idea.
This morning, we cuddled together with coffee. He laid his head next to my breast in the crook of my arm and body. I whispered in his ear that I had felt him up in the night, one hand in my own knickers, one hand stroking his growing cock as he slept oblivious. Aroused, I began to toy with my own nipple, and soon he followed suit and joined me, stroking it and pulling, pinching, watching it harden and soften as we varied our touches.
He hauled himself over me, pinning me down, straddling my hips. Through the material of his pyjamas and my knickers I could feel his hardening cock resting between my pussy lips, and I wriggled against it, moaning. He kneaded both my tits firmly, and when my hands went above my head to grip the headboard, he slapped them both at once, full on the nipple, and I screamed.
Then things got a bit crazy - hair-pulling, face-fucking crazy, the best kind of crazy there is. Damn, the man can be good when he wants to be. He stood and pulled off his clothes, grabbed me by the hair as I knelt on all fours on the bed, offered up his cock in his other hand to my open mouth, then jolted my head towards it, giving me no choice. Flashbacks of our first few BDSM-tinged months together... ahhh, memories. We've never again quite reached those intense, uninhibited, lusty heights, but I'm thankful these days when he loses control for just a few seconds and slips briefly back into the master role. Or maybe it's more that he gains control and forces himself to do what he really wants, but feels he can't, not to the woman he loves, no matter how much she wants him to?
Fuck the psychoanalysis, right now I don't care. Whenever there's a semi-spontaneous fuck even half as good as this morning's, I luxuriate in relief. I feel like I've been through a series of expensive spa treatments, my body steamed, scrubbed, stretched and rubbed with precious oils. My mind feels reset - ten years of therapy might last longer but the glow of serotonin that flooded my body today could light up a room and should have me ticking over nicely for a few days.
Oh, the sweet relief! Thank God!
This morning, we cuddled together with coffee. He laid his head next to my breast in the crook of my arm and body. I whispered in his ear that I had felt him up in the night, one hand in my own knickers, one hand stroking his growing cock as he slept oblivious. Aroused, I began to toy with my own nipple, and soon he followed suit and joined me, stroking it and pulling, pinching, watching it harden and soften as we varied our touches.
He hauled himself over me, pinning me down, straddling my hips. Through the material of his pyjamas and my knickers I could feel his hardening cock resting between my pussy lips, and I wriggled against it, moaning. He kneaded both my tits firmly, and when my hands went above my head to grip the headboard, he slapped them both at once, full on the nipple, and I screamed.
Then things got a bit crazy - hair-pulling, face-fucking crazy, the best kind of crazy there is. Damn, the man can be good when he wants to be. He stood and pulled off his clothes, grabbed me by the hair as I knelt on all fours on the bed, offered up his cock in his other hand to my open mouth, then jolted my head towards it, giving me no choice. Flashbacks of our first few BDSM-tinged months together... ahhh, memories. We've never again quite reached those intense, uninhibited, lusty heights, but I'm thankful these days when he loses control for just a few seconds and slips briefly back into the master role. Or maybe it's more that he gains control and forces himself to do what he really wants, but feels he can't, not to the woman he loves, no matter how much she wants him to?
Fuck the psychoanalysis, right now I don't care. Whenever there's a semi-spontaneous fuck even half as good as this morning's, I luxuriate in relief. I feel like I've been through a series of expensive spa treatments, my body steamed, scrubbed, stretched and rubbed with precious oils. My mind feels reset - ten years of therapy might last longer but the glow of serotonin that flooded my body today could light up a room and should have me ticking over nicely for a few days.
Oh, the sweet relief! Thank God!
Wednesday 22 April 2009
Hah! Hormones.
Having just read my last post, from just a minute ago, I can't help but wonder - how likely is it that starting my period just a few hours ago has had some effect on how I feel?
I don't really think of myself as a slave to my hormones. I don't really get PMT... at least not like my mum, who once threw a toaster at my dad in a hormonal tizzy. Perhaps my concept of what constitutes "affected by my hormones" is a little higher than most people's.
I'm not pregnant. That sucks.
But... a fresh, clean womb, a fresh, clean start. Mm-hm. Interesting.
I don't really think of myself as a slave to my hormones. I don't really get PMT... at least not like my mum, who once threw a toaster at my dad in a hormonal tizzy. Perhaps my concept of what constitutes "affected by my hormones" is a little higher than most people's.
I'm not pregnant. That sucks.
But... a fresh, clean womb, a fresh, clean start. Mm-hm. Interesting.
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