Jeez...

OMG, life IS a minefield!

My boss is stressing me out. No, not about work... she's great. But her personal life is freaking me out. We are friends and she's my boss.

So, she's got a little friend in a different city. I call him Jew-boy. He's orthodox, and I think he's great. We're gentiles.

They are in what might be the beginnings of an affair. He's been married for something like 22 years, and she's been married for something like 11. Her husband has been an asshole for the last year or so, but he's been doing a lot better lately. His wife is appearantly fine... and his relationship is fine, except that he's in regular contact with my friend.

Their career fields overlap a bit, but they don't have official occasion to see each other more than twice or three times a year. That means that there is no real incidental contact. Every conversation, every visit has to be engineered.

He told her he'd like to tell his wife about her, but he doesn't think his wife would understand... uh... DUH.

She is a very self-controlled person who is not into destroying families - her own or anybody else's. What worries me is that sometimes our hearts are bigger than our heads - and she's never experienced that before. Neither has he, I don't think.

I have. I had an affair when I was 20 with a 35 year old pastor who had three kids and who's church membership numbered in the five digits. Neither of us meant to - we just fell in love. We tried to stop, we aren't like that normally...

The things she says and does sound a lot like the things the pastor and I said and did.

But, to be honest, I know that life is rich. I'm not somebody who says that once you're married all attractions stop, or that you're cheating if you happen to be attracted to somebody besides your husband. I don't even say that affairs are always bad. I also don't think it's somebody else's job to protect my own marraige - meaning that if my husband has an affair on me, it's HIS fault, not the other woman's, b/c it's my husband who has a responsibility to protect his own marraige - that's not some outside woman's job.

I'm pretty liberal about it all in theory. I believe in the right to choose, but I can't imagine choosing to have an abortion myself. I believe that sometimes affairs can be good, but I can't imagine having one myself... Actually, IMAGINING is fine... it's the DOING that I don't ever want to do to myself or my husband...

But my stomach is in knots.

My favorite thing ever is "the ways of boys and girls together." I don't know how else to put it. I love gender issues, sex issues, language and its interplay with culture, etc. I really believe that the question of whether or not culture comes from language or language comes from culture is interesting.

I know that our society has limited words for love and a limited number of ways to categorize relationships. I know that very often reality is much more complex than our language provides words to describe, so we often want to put limiting lables on things - good or bad. We want to classify friendships as affairs if they seem to close, or as homosexual relationships if they seem too close, etc.

I'm trying to leave room for all of that, but I'm getting stressed, and it's not even any of my business. It's possible I'm jealous. I do think he's pretty cool, from what I know of him. And I'm envious of anybody who finds great attraction in our boring day to day, but I'm pretty sure that's not what my stress is about.

I do wish I could be his friend - a real friend, not an affair. I don't know any Jewish people personally. I think his religion is interesting... and I'm interested in the fact that he's chosen it - his parent's are Christian - Jews by heredity, but Chrisitian by practice.

The Jewish rules and order and mystic view of God are appealing to me. He's funny - I asked him about what I thought were called "phylactories" (prayer boxes) and at first he didn't know what I was talking about. But I said "nevermind," and he persued it b/c he said it sounded like a Greek word. I described what I meant and said that I'm sure it is a Greek word b/c I grew up going to Christian church all the time, and they have a penchant for liking the Greek rather than the Hebrew. I think his word was "perfillim" or something like that.

Anyway - he sent a text to my friend asking her if she thought I'd like him to tie me up with them, and I loved that. It seemed so sacriligious and naughty - it was just fun.

He's well educated and interesting, and I don't blame her for liking him... I don't BLAME her for anything... I just feel anxious.

He sent her the most amazing Christmas gift ever. She's had a crush on a regionally famous personality for a few years now. He somehow managed to get the personality to send her an autographed picture with a personal message thanking her for the work she does. It just came in a big envelope to her, hand addressed by somebody with the return address of the organization this personality is with. No explanation, no nothing.

She asked Jew Boy how he was able to do it, and he said they're from the same tribe. We went today to the custom framing shop where she plunked down a hundred bucks to have it framed.

It's none of my business... I'm just trying to get it all out so I don't think about it anymore - at least for a while until she tells me too much info again.

She used to have to travel every week to another state, stay S-T, and come back to our office on Friday. She passed through his city to get to the other state, and he made her a care package. Homemade soup, hummus and chips, wine... Told her she needed somebody to take care of her while she was gone.

Eeek.

Whatever. I'm sure I'm just jealous.

12/03/07

Life is still a minefield.

I haven't been able to get Ted out of my head. I'm supposed to be working right now...

I have this weird attraction/repulsion thing going on. I don't find him physically attractive, but I can't stop thinking about him, and my stomach is in knots.

I was sure he "liked" me when we were talking on Saturday, but now I think I might have blown it all out of proportion.

I want to just dismiss him and not go see him anymore.

I think he thinks I "like" him now, and that he'll try to discourage me. That's not a true perception all the way. I do like him. Alot. But I'm also married and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I'll honor my marriage. I just want to go along for the process.

Maybe I'll be vulnerable and transparent during the process just to see if I can do it. It doesn't seem healthy to just assume now that he's going to want to avoid me.

But maybe he will. I'm obsessing.

I'm probably just a jackass that should be shot.

12/01/07

It's funny that life doesn't turn out to be what you expect. While it's true as far as what most of us do for a living, etc, what I'm really talking about is how the experience of living life isn't what you expect.

Somehow we grown up with some ideal in mind, this vague thing of getting to be grown up, and marrying the right person, and living happily ever after.

Nobody tells you that your husband might turn out to be a pothead who spends all your money on weed. Or that soon after you're married you'll spend time in the bathtub missing your old boyfriend. Or that something strange will happen inside you and you'll be incapable of enjoying sex. One person I read wrote stories like that - Madeleine L'Engle's adult fiction is that realistic. But pretty much nothing else is as you're growing up.

And nobody tells you that the flip side of those things - the good side - is that you'll grow in cool ways. Like, you'll learn to be poor together, that you're committed to your marriage and you'll decide that the pot isn't worth leaving him over.
You'll figure out that life is full of Plan A's. Meaning that some good things are mutually exclusive, so when you choose one, you necessarily exclude the other. And that's okay. There is no absolute right path - many paths are good, and all paths seem to have some kind of drawback. You'll learn that some people have sexless marriages - and they are still marraiges. That you can love somebody, and be loved, and not be capeable of that act without distress.

And while you see grown ups in life, and most of them put on weight - you're always sure it's not going to be you. When I was 20, I'd never have allowed my belly to be soft the way it is now. You know, somewhere in yourself when you're young, that they day is going to come when you're not 18 anymore, and your tits aren't 18 year old tits, and ass just isn't quite in the same spot it used to be. You know it, but it isn't real. Then you hit my age and men just don't look at you the same way. You become an attractive woman, rather than a young hottie.

I always said I'd grow old with a gracefully spirit toward aging - that I wouldn't die my hair, and I'd be happy for my crow's feet... I just never knew what it would be like to look in a mirror and have the image seem off in some way. Your eyes look older... You put on eyeshadow and the lids wrinkle softly away from the applicator.

I'm not sure it's that nobody tells you about it all, or that you simply don't have the context to get it. Some of both, I'm sure.

The religion of my youth just didn't leave room for GRAY things. One of the weirdest things about growing older is learning about the gray. Like, what I think about in the bathtub, and who I masturbate over and what I'm imagining are my business. Nobody told me there would be room inside me for those things - the private things.

Nobody told me I'd grow into a woman who finds my supervisory role at work largely one about humility.

Nobody told me that every day would would be a lesson in something.

I guess we can't tell our children about these things because their brains aren't fully formed. Because they can't have the perspective until LIVING these things creates the neurons in the our brains that lets us experience them.

Nobody told me I'd be full of guilt and insecurity, but that I'd be strong and independent and interdependent all at the same time.

Nobody told me I'd love my husband with all my heart, but that I'd have a sexual adventure talking with a 63 year old retired scientist in his living room - while taking no action and committing no sins.

This just isn't what I thought life would be.

I don't understand it. It gives me anxiety.

An old (insightful) lover once told me that I was ambivalent about men, and that I probably always would be. He was right. I'm constantly pulled toward and repelled from men. And I don't mean in turn - I mean at the same time.

I had a wonderful evening, full of laughter and thought, delving in and that repellant feeling I get when I share too much.

And I do mean repellant. Some kind of repugnance, some kind of something propelling me AWAY from Ted at the same time the gravity center in my chest seems to push out against my diaphragm and ribs from inside there someway - pushing me toward Ted with a physical thrust - all while I'm sitting there feeling distaste over our intimacy. Him in his rocking chair and my sprawled out on the sofa.

I know I'm not representative of all women - that I'm a little fucked up in my own special way - but that gravity field that pulls me towards his gravity field in a downright physical sensation is so at odds with the knot in my stomach and the repugnance I feel in my throat.

That's so weird. That's enough of hanging with him for at least a week or two.

Then I come home and masturbate to a literotica rape story and have my little pre-orgasmic moment that I've never gotten beyond.

Then I come on here and type some jumbled garbage about how odd life is...

I'm well and truly fucked - I'm sure of it.

There's another things that keeps happening here. By here, I mean in small-town USA where my husband and I moved back in May. I'm beginning to make friends, and I'm not comfortable with that. With friendship comes responsibility, and I don't like that. I'm prone to failure in that regard. I say that my father destroys all of his relationships, but I do it too - just in a different way.

Work friends are great, b/c I work with them every day - we have friendships based on what we do, the 40 hr work week, the way we talk and the things we think are funny. But mostly, it's because of the time together - and the fact that we are not choosing to be together. We don't need a BASIS for friendship other than work.

But these friends here are different. I feel more weight. There's the bright, funny, affectionate cook who took a joke about us being BFFs a bit too seriously, and now I have a BFF that I'm not sure I want b/c I don't want to be responsible for her. I enjoy her company. She's great. The only drawback is that I feel responsible to her - to her feelings and her wellbeing.

And Ted. We talked the way I used to talk to my friends in my late teens and early 20s - exhausting conversation with intense subject matter and self revelatory side notes... I'm too old for that shit. I haven't done that for a decade, maybe. He said he's never had a conversation like that before - and I told him that I have. He said people of his generation only talk like that to real friends. I told him that I cheapen his experience b/c the kids of my generation talked like that all the time (but that I hadn't done it in a decade). But it doesn't change the fact that he only talks like that to real friends.

Does that mean we have some kind of connection now? Am I responsible for him?

Is that TWO people that I'm responsible for? My arms physicallay tingle in fear over that. I'm not capeable of that kind of intimacy. I fail under that responsiblity.