The last of the vacation updates

date: 06/21/2007

 

 

Sad, funny and pathetic.

 

 

This is how I would describe the intimacy Arwyn and I have.

 

 

When we go on vacation to our families, our sleeping arrangements are a bit altered e.g. NORMAL. The inverted position less common, although she did resort to that here at the cabin on the lake. We tend to go to bed closer to the same time and get up at the same time or closer to it.

 

 

The upside is that I do get more sleep. The downside is that it is all too easy to highlight the pathetic nature of our physical intimacies or lack thereof. I like to snuggle, especially in the morning. Plus I’m not against groping around even if naked fooling around isn’t possible or on the menu. A host of intimacies can be shared just by caressing, touching and exploring surreptitiously under blankets even with kids or parents close by.

 

 

But not with Arwyn. As I move my hand around, she is deftly blocking and redirecting my hands. This morning I decided to be much more aggressive than usual since I’ll be heading back to Iowa for a few days and will meet up with her and the boys later for the final leg of the vacation back to Georgia.

 

I walked up her shorts and explored a bit with my hand. She was fairly tolerant of me being around her backside as long as I didn’t get around her crack at all. But I would occasionally push things a bit and the slapping/pushing/redirecting of my hands would commence.

 

 

But her breasts are definitely the most guarded and precious area of all. Getting anywhere near a breast resulted in some almost wild gyrations and pushing. I persisted a bit more than usual and it was an almost comical display of her defensiveness. Almost comical. Almost. If it weren’t so sad and pathetic how doggedly and viciously the woman defends her breasts against the touches of her husband. That’s not the attitude of one who is in love or really has anything less than contempt and distrust.

 

In all fairness, my advances were more in jest than love. I was in the mood for some fun and it was at her expense. I knew she was not up for this sort of thing, but I pushed anyway. This is probably not going to make her more open to my touch anytime soon. But probably not less, either. I basically took a more confrontational approach, or as much of one as the time and space allowed. We weren’t going to have a knock-down drag-out on the hide-a-bed in this little cabin with her dad and the boys right there. So basically we had this silent little pathetic half-fight going on.

 

 

I finally tired of this and got up and dressed and packed. After saying good bye to Arwyn, the boys and my father-in-law, I made the 5 hour drive south.

 

 

FFFFRRRREEEEEEDDDOOOOMMMMM!

 

 

That’s how I felt, anyway. I even bought a pack of smokes. Okay, not good, but I had already bought a pack just before we left during the pretrip hostilities.

 

 

 

06/27/2007

 

 

I’m back. We (me) drove straight through and made it back in 19.5 hours, which included potty stops too numerous to mention and only one such accident. I’ll take a potty accident any day to one with traffic. At least my insurance rates won’t go up!

 

The trip back was fairly uneventful. Not a lot of talking, mainly because the kids were right there. There were times I wished we had some sort of plexiglass shield to lower between us and them. The boys do get along well, and most of the noise was the two of them playing happily with each other but it was still loud-ish. I can discuss many things with Arwyn, with religion being the favorite and politics being slightly less so as she doesn’t keep up. We can discuss relationships as long as they are other people’s.

 

And so it was we were able to talk a bit more about her dad.

 

 

I had a chance to briefly meet her 72 year-old dad’s girlfriend who happens to be all of 43. Arwyn is 45. This did not at all go over well with her. At all.

 

 

This girl is very attractive and built! I found myself sort of rooting for him. He is still waiting for his second divorce to be final, but says he is not at all interested in getting remarried. Famous last words.

 

 

We talked about how Arwyn felt her dad was being taken advantage of. I pointed out that he was most probably getting something out of this relationship and Arwyn said she didn’t think it was a fair trade. And therein lies the problem.

 

 

Arwyn doesn’t understand or appreciate the value of what this younger woman is giving her dad. At 43, she’s no spring chicken but she still looked very good. Arwyn attaches little or no value to sex, so she doesn’t see how her dad would be silling to spend some money towards wining and dining this gal for that. Arwyn also underestimates the validation the younger gal offers her dad in the way of looking up to him, respecting him and simply acting like she is attracted to him. This is the thing a lot of older women do not get. They devalue admiration and affection and then wonder why their men leave or why they can’t find one.

 

 

So I pointed out that I couldn’t blame her dad for not wanting to be with the blue hairs his own age. The ones who want to complain about their various ailments, who want to gossip and who simply don’t want to have fun have nothing to offer him. She agreed to that, and I’m sure she made no connection between herself and the blue hairs. Fact is, Arwyn likes to do some things, but she constantly complains about some physical ailment and her sexless attitude is decidedly post-menopausal.

 

 

All is not so fresh and lovely in her dad’s dealings, tho. He picked up this girl at the same place he picked up his 2nd wife; at his AA meetings. This is known as “13 stepping” where the recovering drunks pick each other up. On one hand, I can understand his point about being with someone else in recovery. It helps to have a common background and a common experience. Everyone has some form of dysfunction they are either doing or recovering from. My problem with AA is that they are so fixed on the alcohol they lose sight of the rest of their psychopathologies at times. So while this younger woman shares a history of alcohol abuse with Arwyn’s dad, there’s 40 years of other experiences and histories that she does NOT share. There’s a lot of other things surrounding that one behavioral topography of drinking.

 

 

Arwyn has some issues surrounding the concept of this younger gal becoming her step-mom. And that does sound like a ridiculous concept. Whoever heard of a stepmom being younger than the kids? At that point, the whole “step mom” concept just doesn’t work, even in a paradigm like Cinderella where she is evil. When the kids are adults and themselves parents, the whole stepmom concept doesn’t work. The woman simply becomes “Dad’s 3rd wife” or something similarly nonthreatening or loaded. I also would not recommend “Daddy’s Little Golddigger” at least in front of him.

 

D.