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| little_imp |
Fundamental rule of poly - don't compare your partners; it's like comparing apples and oranges.
I value both my partners for their individual selves. They couldn't be more different from each other, and the relationship I have with each of them, couldn't differ more, either.
At the moment though, I've got the right arse with my husband, and am having to lean heavily on my boyfriend to get through, and feel supported rather than alone with my difficulties. I love my husband, he is sweet-natured, gentle, childlike, innocent, carefree, untouched by the cruel and harsh world we all live in, but which seems to mostly pass him by. I celebrate his innocence, want to protect it, but sometimes that seems at a high cost to my own sanity and happiness.
He is trying very hard at the moment to do the right thing, as am I. I'm trying to find the right balance between discretion, and brutal honesty. It strikes me that (see previous weblog), my boyfriend is able to internalise in me a sense of feeling beautiful and desirable, through play. While my husband is able to internalise in me a sense of being ugly and undesirable - merely through conversation. Again, must repeat after self: apples and oranges, apples and oranges.
It's hard sometimes though, you know? I need an outlet for these feelings, and although I've stepped up to a whole new level of Telling Him How I'm Feeling Even When That Might Make His Sad, sometimes I just need to vent, too.
Saturday morning my husband and I were sitting down to tea before he left for work in the morning, having a cuddle as is our own little morning ritual. He was a bit down and I was trying to make him feel better. Then we started talking about sex, and our sexual relationship. I won't go into the horrific details of it, but suffice it to say that after talking, he felt better about things, and I just wanted to cry and cry and cry, pull the covers over my head, and wear a burkha for the rest of my life. He didn't mean to, he had no intention of making me feel that way. He just spoke honestly - but he does not desire me, or find me attractive. He didn't say it was because there was anything wrong with me, or that I'm not attractive to him. He didn't say he desires anyone else - I don't think he desires anyone really. He just doesn't *think* when he speaks, because sex is so unimportant to him.
But regardless of his intentions, or whether it is personal to me, or a general thing about him - that kind of stuff has a fairly profound effect on a girl's ego. Whenever I found myself in front of a mirror for the rest of that day (which unfortunately, was quite a lot, with a party to attend that involved a lot of dressing up), I swear to GOD I was actually, really, much less attractive than normal. And yes, I know I should be confident enough that other people's opinions of me shouldn't change the way I view myself. So then I get into that kind of headspace where I'm a failure as a person, too.
I so wanted to be on top of my game that day, as it was my darling little sister's Debutante Ball. My boyfriend met me there, but I just didn't have my mojo on that night, and we slunk away relatively early, to spend the journey back to his place with me in tears. Fortunately he was able to restore my confidence. But that's another weblog in itself!
So - husband behaving appallingly at the moment, making himself ill etc, expecting me to clear up his mess. Boyfriend being supportive above and beyond the call of duty, clearing up the emotional mess of me, my husband has left behind. Poor boyfriend 
The last time I leaned on someone even half this much, they let me fall, and I hit the ground very hard, shattering into a thousand pieces. I was very very ill for a while, and my husband was just not there for me. I had to claw my own self back together, on my own. I get so scared, sometimes I feel so alone, and I have to remind myself that I'm not alone any more.
But! Repeat after self - apples and oranges, apples and oranges...
