From: pt@geovision.gvc.com (Paul Tomblin)
Subject: My turn?
Reply-To: pt@geovision.gvc.com
Organization: Not officially GeoVision Systems Inc., Ottawa, Ontario
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 14:19:39 GMT

I guess after lurking for a little while it's time.  I honestly don't know
where to start - I have so much angst, and so little time.

Two and a half years ago, my wife and I adopted two children.  They're
wonderful children, and I love them very much.  Unfortunately, we both
realize that we were using the lack of children in our marriage as an
excuse, and that we weren't any happier together after adopting the children
than before.  As a matter of fact, we seemed to talk even less with each
other, and after the children went to bed, we just sort of retreated to
opposite ends of the house and ignored each other.  It'd always been a bit
strange in our marriage - about 1 year after we got married, I noted that
Shani (that's her name) didn't love me any more.  She denied it at first,
but later admitted it was true.  (I guess the fact that we suddenly went
from making love 8 or 9 times a week to once or twice a month was an easy
tip-off.)  This situation continued for 7 years - me still loving her very
much, and she sticking around because (she says) she still liked me as a
friend.  I have this nagging doubt, and I probably never will be satisfied
one way or the other, that this wasn't her only reason.  You see, even
before we married, I knew she had this hang up about not being a complete
person because she was infertile.  She blames that for the failure of her
first marriage, and a long term relationship she was in after that (both of
which were abusive, so I think she's _lucky_ she didn't have children to
keep her in these relationships).  So less than a year after adopting the
children, I came back from a short business trip full of ideas how we could
revitalize the marriage, and she was convinced that I should leave.  So I
did - I've been a child in a broken marriage that didn't break cleanly, so I
didn't want to put my kids through that - so I left quietly, and determined
to remain friends with Shani - in spite of the pain of loneliness and
longing I feel everytime I see her.

In short order, I was involved in another relationship - with a co-worker,
which is probably a big mistake when you consider what happens to the
atmosphere at work if it breaks up.  In the unlikely event that any of my
co-workers reading this _don't_ know who I'm talking about, I'll call her
Kris (not her real name, of course).  My company sent me to England for 6
months, which I thought was a good opportunity to take stock and make a
clean break in my life.  It didn't quite work out like that - my wife and
kids came to visit her mother (my company pays for your family to come with
you if you're out of town for more than four months - I bent the rules a
little).  Shani and I got to talking, and arguing, and the next thing I
know, we were having sex again - better than any time since the first year
of our marriage.  So we decide to try marriage counselling - which we start
soon after I got back from England.  Of course, this news hurts Kris very
much, and makes me feel pretty scummy - because my relationship with Kris
was a lot more open and honest that it had been with Shani, so I'm honestly
wondering to myself why I'm doing this.  I guess it's mostly that Shani and
I have had a lot more history behind us, which is both a blessing and a
curse - a blessing because we have a lot of happy memories, and a curse
because we have a set pattern of behaviour to overcome.

Anyway - trying to make this incredibly long story short (ha!), the marriage
counselling didn't work - we're both too stuck in our ways, I bended and
didn't see _any_ change in behaviour in Shani, so on the counsellors advice
we stopped it.  Meanwhile, all this time, Kris had been sending me cards and
letters urging me to give our relationship another chance, or asking for
``right of first refusal'' if things didn't work out with Shani.  So
naturally, I expected that I could pick things up with Kris - not
immediately, or right back to where we left off - I expected there to be an
element of mistrust, and I expected it to take time to reestablish a
relationship that the first time proceeded so quickly.  And so it appeared,
until a few months ago Kris told me that she didn't think it was working
out, and it was time to LJBF.

A long time ago, I read of a word, I believe it was ``limerant'', although I
can't find that word in my dictionary, that meant something like ``addicted
to the feeling of being in love''.  I guess that would describe me - I fell
in love with Shani very shortly after meeting her, and we married 6 months
after meeting; and I fell in love with Kris very shortly after we started
seeing each other as friends.

So there it stands - I don't have a girlfriend as such, I'm not getting
anywhere with the women I know locally, and the closest thing I have to a
relationship right now is to a women whom I've never met in person, and who
lives several thousand kilometres from here - but we do have some fun email
and phone conversations.

Maybe I'll share my job angst some other time - like when I get an anonymous
account somewhere else.

-- 
Paul Tomblin, pt@compass.gvc.com (I don't make or state policy for this company)
"Thanks to Hurricane Andrew, people found out what it was like to have no home,
no car, and no possesions without actually having to go through a divorce"
  - Royal Canadian Air Farce.
Newsgroups: alt.angst