Do You Have The Time To Listen To Me Whine?

I feel particularly disconnected from my kink. Granted I'm busy: caring for ill, separated-yet-undivorced wife; running a business in two cities; dealing with trying financial realities; recognizing I'm not ready to meet Mistress Right. But for the first time in a long time I feel cut off and sort of lost. Even fantasy eludes me. Why can't I just sexualize all this stress? I used to do that all the time and it made difficult times so much more fun.

I went out on two semi-kinky dates the other week and wasn't even inspired to write about them. Desire suppressed infects my creative juice to write about exploits, such that they were. Maybe it's just coming to terms with the idea that if I like her well enough to play, then it's a "relationship". That connection will vie for the time I have to spend with my terminally ill wife. While I feel no need to tell her I'm still going on dates, I'd feel compelled to tell her if I found someone I really liked.

And that would really devastate my wife, even if I were clear that she came first. I've already ended or cut short more than one promising connection over just not knowing how to deal with the knot.

It's ironic that I feel more protective of my marriage in separation than I did when we lived together. Funny what a terminal diagnosis does.

It's pretty clear I'm going to have to move back in with her. Even getting dressed is an exhausting event for her. I dread it, but it is the right thing to do.

With all this going on, no wonder I'm feeling less than libidinous. Perhaps I should expand my on-line dating profile. I'm an attractive, athletic, man; anxious, lacking in libido, and virtually unavailable. No wonder I'm feeling disconnected. Who wouldn't?

Twenty Plus

When my computer boots up it automatically opens to MSN. Invariabaly there is some vapid top ten study that I get sucked into before I go about my web surf. Something like, "The Top Ten American Cities For Beautiful People". Oh yeah, major league intellectual stuff.

So this morning I sign on and there's a top ten study about lasting relationships so I'm scrolling through the amazing insights. One entry claimed that the intensity of couples "in love" actually increased once you hit 20 years. Yeah right.

And ten minutes later as I am getting ready to leave for Miami I can't help but cry. I don't cry much in public or to anyone who doesn't really, really know me. But I thought that the idiot MSN study got it right. Okay, my wife is terminally ill. But somehow even if she weren't, I think I'd still feel an increasing depth of feeling. Everything is colored by the tragic unfairness of her illness. But there's just something that's right about the power of time. Even if it's not perfect. Even if there are significant holes there's something irreplacably valuable about somebody who has been right by you for twenty four years.

Then again, a little kink is a fine thing...