H has always been a worrier. I think that is why he talks to himself so much. It makes it hard to know whether he is paying attention when someone is talking to him. He can be looking right at you. Since I know that his mind is on something else so much of the time, I can't tell if he has really heard me unless he responds in a way to let me know. He used to get mad at me when I would ask him if he heard me. Now he doesn't and he makes some kind of comment that lets me know that he heard. Or he says, "I'm sorry, I didn't hear what you said."
Things have been more stressful for h in the last couple of years. He is a VP at his company and has to deal with a lot of troublesome employees, s has moved out, his mom is getting more and more difficult, and all the problems between the two of us. Some of it is getting better. He and I are getting along better. S may move back over the summer--unless he gets a job in the town his college is in. One particularly troublesome employee has been replaced with someone who is so far an excellent employee. The other guy did very little work and mostly went around stirring up trouble.
H misses s. They have gotten close since s moved out. They enjoy talking during his short visits on the weekend. H calls s once or twice during the week. H doesn't think s will be able to find a job in his college town. He says it's too small. I don't know if h is hoping s will move back home or if jobs really are that scarce in s's town.
First off, I'm not sure if you are thinking that the 19-year-old son in my signature is the one who raped his sister or not, but that is not the case. The rapist is now 27 years old. The two times he visited us, he was 14 and 17. D was 4 and 7. I don't know if it happened during both visits or just one. I am pretty sure it happened during the first visit. D was sitting in her dad's lap and started wiggling around in a sort of sexual way. H set her down and said something to her about not liking that. It was the only instance we noticed, so we didn't think much of it until all these years later.
There isn't much we can do about my son. I didn't raise him; my aunt did. He had grown up and moved out of my aunt's home by the time we knew about all this. I contacted police in his state. I thought they should do something to make sure it wasn't still happening. They couldn't do anything because it happened too long ago. He was married to a woman with two young boys. He also had a kid or two by a previous gf. My mom talked to her sister (the one who raised my son). I am unclear as to how much my aunt knew. But I do know that she knew about s molesting my ex's son. I am also unclear as to when that happened and what, if anything, she did about it. I also found out that s had been raped repeatedly by a neighbor boy. S was 5 years old at the time. He said it happened for several years. My aunt knew about it. According to my mom, my aunt said, "Boys will be boys." She did a pretty lousy job of raising him.
Something that really bugs me about this happening is that it happened to my ex's kid. He knew about it, my aunt knew about it, but they didn't tell me. I don't know when it happened; but they could have warned me. As soon as I found out my s had raped d, I looked up my x's phone number. I hadn’t talked to him since we divorced. I felt it was my obligation to warn him. As I was telling him about what I had learned about d and s, he interrupted to tell me he did it to his s, too, and had caught him in the act. I was very nervous talking to him in the first place. Add in being stunned about this happening and me not being told. I was so dumfounded, I just said, "Okay, I just wanted to warn you to watch for signs in your kids, just in case." He said he was sorry my d was going through all this and we hung up. There are so many questions I wished I had asked him. When did this happen to his s? Why the f...didn't he tell me?!!! Why didn't my aunt tell me?!!
As for D, we got her into therapy right away. That was a few years ago. We just discontinued the therapy last month. She is doing much better. There is no sign of depression anymore, other than a quick temper. She left the friend that was a negative influence and is getting much better grades. Now if she would only make some new friends. She left her friends that she knew from preschool. Maybe she’ll get back with some of them next year. All she has is her bf right now and he is graduating this year.
At the time that we found out about this, H and I were seeing a marriage and family therapist anyway. We dealt with our M problems as well as how to help D. Luckily, s19 was unaffected. He is a very well adjust young man. He was sympathetic to what his sis was going through and helped us watch for further signs of trouble.
But, anyway child molestation is such a serious thing, I hope cj, he is getting help so he can stop this behavior, or honestly I hope if he does it ever again, he will be put in a place where he will never do it again.
VC,
I don't know if he ever did get any help. My aunt said she had him in and out of therapy several times. S says he never had any therapy. Maybe he had therapy when he was very little and doesn't remember it.
We also wonder who else he molested. We talked to his x-gf. She said she didn't believe that he did. D said that her cousin, my bro's daughter, told her that S had molested her. D doesn't remember when she had that conversation with her cousin. The cousin is the same age as my D and lives in the same area as my S. He used to visit at their place a lot. My bro's wife (ex) has a S who is the same age as my S. I told my bro what my D said. He asked both of his D's if my S ever molested them. They denied it. Bro said he thinks my D was just trying to take the spotlight off of herself. But now, his D (the one my D spoke of) has run away from home. Bro found out that she had been promiscuous, doing drugs, drinking, cutting, and is very depressed. He still won't believe that she could have been molested by my S when she was very little. She ran away last fall. She was found twice, but ran again before she could be returned to my bro.
We had a very nice Mother's Day weekend. S came home Thursday night and stayed until Saturday evening. He didn't have any classes Friday, so he did some job hunting. Saturday was H's bday. S and his GF, D, H and myself went downtown to see a play. It was a surprise for H. He enjoyed his surprise. We all enjoyed the play and we went out to dinner afterwards. I gave H his final bday gift at bedtime. We don't usually use sex as a gift, so he thought it was cute when I told him.
S got his dad a cute little stone hedgehog and a nice card. S's GF gave H a small tower of boxed candies, cookies, and green tea. I got a cute Mother's Day card from S.
On Sunday, H made me breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and did most of the dishes. He likes to cook, but rarely makes breakfast. He has occasionally made lunch and occasionally barbecues something while I make the rest of dinner. He cooks or buys something for dinner on the one weekend day I work every weekend and makes me lunch when that day I work is Saturday. (When I work Saturday, I work 8-5; when I work Sunday, I work 1-5.) I usually get left to do the dishes even when H cooks. This time, H did all of it. The only dishes I did are the ones I was still using while he was washing the rest. This was quite a treat to not have to prepare any meals for a day or have to do any dishes.
I had to work Sunday. When I got home, D had bought me a hydrangea and H had bought me a new vase. D wants me to plant the hydrangea outside. She knows I like flowers, but wanted to get me something that would last more than a few days. I don't do well with plants, so I hope I do okay with this one. H is the gardener. He said we would have to wait until next weekend to plant it. He'll get some mulch and help me dig the hole. I read on the internet that hydrangeas wrapped in foil don't do well. They get rootbound in the pot they come in, but they aren't bred for planting either. I'll try putting it in a bigger pot for the time being--in case we don't get around to planting it next weekend. I hope we can keep it healthy after we plant it in the ground.
We have bookshelves on both sides of the fireplace in our family room. H wants to get rid of some of the cluttery stuff we currently have there and replace some of it with prettier things. That's is the purpose of the vase. It is very pretty.
H and I went for a walk after dinner last night. While we were walking, I asked him if he had read his note yet. I was a little worried about asking him because I didn't want to pressure him. My fears were unfounded. He was glad to tell me that he had read some of it. I told him that I liked the new way he was touching me when we ML the night before. He said he got that from my list. He said that he would read the rest of the list a little at a time. I said that was fine and that I don't expect him to do all of it at one time--at least night right away. He said he'll memorize my note.
My main goal in my M is for my H to become more flirtatious. I long for a caress, a kiss on the neck, a foot or back rub, or some eye contact when we are in the bathroom together getting ready for the day or getting ready for bed.
I am happy with the improvements that have been happening recently. There was one instance of playfulness, he has become a better listener and he has been helping around the house more. We are working on making sex better. But there hasn't been much to indicate that he is becoming more affectionate. Am I hoping for too much? Is there anything I can do to get him to move in that direction without losing what we currently have?
My main goal in my M is for my H to become more flirtatious. I long for a caress, a kiss on the neck, a foot or back rub, or some eye contact when we are in the bathroom together getting ready for the day or getting ready for bed.
Jeez, I wish my wife was like this!! - she would definitely get more attention from me if she was. I'm someone who loves the long slow romantic buildup of sensuality, the right settings, right mood, very passionate foreplay and sex etc. This makes the moment ultimately means so much more to me then just sex. My wife is all about the crazy animalistic 10 minute frenzy sex, where I end up covered in bruises and bite marks hahaha. Now granted, I will play along on occasion and give her what she wants - but no matter how much I communicate to her - she just isn't into what I want (except maybe once or twice a year.)
Thus, I'm reading through these SSM threads, partially because I feel like my wife suffers alot of what you ladies are going through, because I simply am not that motivated to have sex with her anymore. It's become too predictable and I have many other interests that I'd rather be doing - which I know is the absolute wrong way to be feeling - when it comes down to having sex with my wife.
....One of these days I'm going to figure out what i'm doing wrong
Maybe there is no right or wrong - ever think of that?
Heywyre
M - 57 H - 65 1st A-bomb - Nov 27/02 2nd A-bomb - Dec 13/06 together 21 years *************************** Insanity is doing something over and over and expecting different results (Albert Einstein)
That's an interesting concept, but because I'm not entirely satisfied with this type of interaction, and long for a more consistently romatic situation, it leads me to believe that there may be a right or wrong involved here.
I agree with Heywyre. I don't think it is a matter of what is right and what is wrong. People just have different likes and dislikes. What can be right or wrong is the way you communicate your likes and dislikes to your spouse. Figuring out what you need to change about yourself to get your spouse to change is tricky. Sometimes the desired change happens. Sometimes you have to change yourself in a way that you can learn do without whatever change isn't happening in your spouse.
So far, I have seen a lot of positive changes in my H since I have changed some of my ways. He has become a much better listener, for one. I was able to talk to him about the possibility of trying antidepressants last night. He didn't agree with me, but he didn't get mad either. We talked about it in a very civilized manner. I mentioned that going on ADs could make our relationship a little better. He said, "I thought you were happy!?" I said, "I am happy; but I do still want those same things I've talked about through most of our marriage. I just don't focus on them as much." He said that he understood, but he was reading e-mails at the same time, so I let it go. I hope the message still got across.
Is there anyone out there who has a spouse who wasn't as affectionate as you would like but has become so?
Blackfrost, have you read any of Michelle's books, yet? How about Five Love Languages, by Dr. Gary Chapman?
Tom has a meeting at lunch today, so he didn’t need me to make him a lunch. I have been putting notes in his lunch box. I put a note on his seat in his car instead. I got an e-card from Bluemountain.com today. It said that he loves the things I say and do. I should have been able to click on it to see the whole thing, but it wouldn’t play. I got an error message. I went to bluemountain.com and found the one he sent. I can watch the whole thing that way, but don’t get the personalization, if there was any. There would probably at least have been something saying who it was from. I’m sure it was from Tom though. It made me cry. I love that he sent it. He has never sent me an e-card before.
Why didn't my aunt tell me?!! 
