Desire. Ask. Believe. Receive.

I'm sick to death of feeling like I can't live up to John's expectations. For the longest time I've carried around this feeling of inadequacy, like I'm lacking because I don't keep the house clean enough or work out enough or cook the right meals or spend little enough money or have the right sex drive for the right people; and don't get me wrong, these are all good things, but honestly, at a core level, I'm pretty happy with the way I live my life and I'm so very tired of feeling like it's not good enough. Like if I could just change this one thing maybe he'd be happy enough that the other stuff could slide for awhile. I'm just coming to realize that it's never going to be enough.

Well, I suppose it might be enough if I got a new job, worked harder at it, kept the house much cleaner, stopped buying dresses and makeup, never drank unless he was in the mood, had eyes only for him, had a killer sex drive, and got rid of the dog. Maybe then it would be enough. Doesn't sound that hard, does it? Maybe I could work on it more. But that's the thing--I have been working on it, for years and years and years. Sometimes I'm better at parts of it than others but the fact is that I'm constantly working on improving things about myself that he wants improved. I'm so tired of it. I'm so tired.

I mean, to be honest, I'm tired for other reasons too. I'm getting up an hour and half earlier to take care of the dog and work out--which minus the dog he's wanted me to do anyway so I'm not sure why he's not happier about that. And I do get that it's an emotional strain on him that I've got a new guy in my life and that's pretty much a given for me, at least from time to time. I absolutely get that something like that would be challenging for a person; but I don't know, I feel like it's also just one more thing for him to grab onto and be unsatisfied with me about.

He's so depressed. He's so unhappy with his life. Some of it's his fault. Some of it's mine. But how responsible am I for his happiness, especially when his happiness comes from my working my ass off to be a different person. I mean, I want to keep our life together but if he wants a different person so bad then maybe he should find one. Cause it's really horrible to be constantly reminded that you're not it.

I made a mistake--a mostly honest mistake--based on assumptions and lack of communication; we talked it through and I think we're at an even better place than before. Isn't that the best part of a good relationship? 5 hours of sadness and anger over an issue that could have broken up many couples and we came out better than ever. Minus one cheap plastic bucket that was sacrificed to the god of anger. But I can live with that.

I'm still not sure where our relationship is in terms of open or not or whatever, I mean, we never really said "let's have an open relationship" we just kind of decided to keep the whole thing fluid. I'm comfortable with that, you know, if I want to get tipsy and make out with a cute musician at a wedding it would suck to not be able to do that anymore. Yeah, the bottom line is that being in strictly closed relationship would be incredibly difficult for me. To be honest it's more than likely that I would end up cheating and I sooo don't want that.

What I need is just to make John trust me again. It's just been so long since I've had an interest in anybody outside that I just handled it so badly.

Blah, I keep saying the same thing over and over again. The bottom line is that things are fine, we've just got a lot of talking ahead of us.

In non-relationship news (well, essentially everything is relationship news but that's just splitting hairs) I'm getting a dog on Sunday!!! Yea! Have I mentioned this yet? Her name is Madelon and she's an 8 year old rescued greyhound. So pretty, so deserving of a good home. I cannot wait to meet her. I'm nervous as hell but so grateful that John is willing to go along with my latest attempt at wholeness. God knows I'm as aware as anyone that a dog isn't going to fill the unexplainable chasm in my soul but god love him for placating me once again.

It takes a real special person to cheat in an open relationship. Real special. And that's me--I'm the special one. To be fair, it's not like I meant to cheat. I just didn't mention the details of what was happening. I felt sure that John didn't want me to go ahead with my intentions and I didn't want to hear it. Perhaps this was an unfair assumption. As he pointed out this morning, and as I can see in hindsight, he was practically begging me to talk about it and fill him in. Whether that means he would have been ok with the situation is unclear, but regardless, the fact is that I should have mentioned it--I was supposed to mention it--and I didn't. I had so many good (and bad) reasons for not talking about it but fear and pride and will kept me from doing the right thing. I feel horrible. John feels betrayed and pissed off and sad. I feel like such an loser. I mean, open relationship 101--talk about what the fuck you're doing.

I guess underlying the whole thing is the fact that John just isn't comfortable with the open thing. For a lot of reasons probably. It's frustrating though, I mean are we in an open relationship or not? I broke the rules by not talking about it and I completely understand his feelings, but if I was that scared to bring it up for fear of upsetting him than what kind of open relationship is this?

And what's crazy is that I haven't even been with another man since before Suzie was born until this week! And I wasn't even with this guy in the sense that you might be assuming--we just talked and listened to music and made out a little. As guilty and bad about the whole thing as I feel, I'm still feeling like there's a double standard as to who's allowed to do what and with whom. I mean, he sees people occasionally and I rarely give him any trouble about it, and he's done some stupid stuff that has brought more than his share of drama into the relationship. Not recently, mind you, but neither have I--minus this one stupid incident.

I guess the fact is that if he's not comfortable with an open relationship then I really need to look at that and we really need to talk about it. But god damn I'm not good at monogamy. I think that's what's the hardest for him. Like, John, he could really take the whole thing or leave it. I mean, he's a guy, of course he likes the opportunity to score other chicks, but I think if he could just have a great sexual relationship with me for the rest of his life he'd be more than happy--at least for the forseeable future. I, on the other hand, NEED a connection with other men. Not too often, but occasionally, and seriously. I start to get depressed and bored with life if I don't have active, energetic crush happening ever so often. It's totally different and I can absolutely see how it would be tough for his ego.

So I don't know. I had a really good week flirting with this new guy. It was fun to feel that energy again, but I was carrying around this constant feeling of discontent because I knew I needed to be talking to John about it and couldn't seem to bring it up. Anyway, I'm not going to keep flogging myself. I fucked up, I apologized, we discussed. He's got hurt feelings and that's not going to change probably for a while. I guess I've just go to learn from this and move on. I'm not sure what direction our relationship is going to turn at this point.

It's just all so irritating. When I envision my perfect life it's soooo Little House. Me and my big family working hard and loving each other to peices. It's hard to reconcile that with getting drunk and making out with musicians. I mean, I feel like I don't want to have put myself into a little box, but want to be just me--happy with whatever decision I make.

I need to work a little more now.

Who knows, maybe the praying worked. Or maybe the stars have aligned. Or maybe my intentions are better. I don't know. I think I'm going to keep up this praying thing in the meantime though. Things got better pretty quickly soon after I started. Last night I was awake with insomnia in the middle of the night. My stomach was feeling tighter and tighter and my thoughts were racing. I tried meditating for 20 minutes or so and then thought maybe I should get up and journal. Laziness kept me from getting up though and instead I decided that instead of ruminating I should just journal the words into a prayer. It seemed to work, I slept soundly after about 15 minutes and this morning feel no pressure to continue stressing over what now seem like very trivial issues. Pretty cool I guess.