Merry Christmas.
The boys are playing with their various Christmas presents and are having a fine time. Grandma is also here helping to keep them entertained.
I get along with Arwyn’s mother just fine. Many men grouse about their in-laws and I suppose I could find fault if I looked. But I’m not looking and we do just fine despite no longer having that bonding experience we formerly shared of smoking together in the garage. Yes, smoking was as much a social thing as a physical/behavioral thing. I may yet crumple under and grab one. Or simply pluck a part of one from the ash tray.
Yesterday morning, Arwyn took the boys and her mother to her new church. I elected to sleep in. Arwyn and I did later talk a bit more about her favoring this other church and I now get it a bit more. It’s more to do with children’s Sunday school and its unfriendliness towards autistic kids than anything else. That makes some sense and I guess I didn’t pick up on it before. It’s something I might actually have a greater degree of control over, although not gladly.
In the evening, we went to the candelight service at the Methodist church. We survived another year wothout burning the place down! I’m always amazed that there aren’t more fires with that many open flames. But it happens all over the world every year.
Then we came back from church, ate dinner and proceded to the gift opening. Doing this Christmas eve does keep the boys up later but it has really and truly worked out for us. While the boys know all about Santa Claus and are huge fans of the movie The Polar Express they are unplagued by all the uncertainties and problems a visit from Santa represents. They know who their presents are from, and still enjoy them immensely. We aren’t threatening them with a lump of coal if they aren’t good. The locus of control is squarely within our house, not on the whims of some other fellow who breaks into our house.
They get their pictures taken with various Santas, both white and black but its just like getting a picture made with a giant bunny at Easter or that giant rat at Chuck E Cheese. There just isn’t a whole lot of myth wrapped up in this one character.
Arwyn and I both grew up in the more traditionally Santa-centric Christmas holidays. We both grew up waking up and finding our stuff under the tree. And there is a lot of magic and wonderment surrounding that tradition. But within the world of childhood, and particularly with autism, there’s already some notable problems distinguishing reality from fantasy. It’s cute when little boys and girls get all excited about Santa Claus. It becomes less so when it’s an adult in their 20’s, 30’s and 40’s. And letting go of things is not a strong suit for folks with autism.
Anyway, it’s become our tradition and it works. Our kids are just so indifferent towards Santa (he’s cool but not too awfully much looming large) that they aren’t wrecking Christmas for other kids by revealing “the secret” or spilling the beans. They are fine going along with the other kids or not. They’ll write letters to him the same as everyone else.They just won’t require an extended post-Santa transition.
Sheesh. I never meant to drone on so long about that! I guess I feel a bit outside the mainstream in that we’re not going along with everyone else Arwyn and I have differring reasons for opening gifts on Christmas eve.
Arwyn hates waiting and hates surprises. So she’s fairly impatient and actually had the boys open their first present earlier in the day. The other things I’ve mentioned are simply secondary benefits she enjoys. So she just wants to dive right in, and waiting until Christmas morning is too much.
My biggest reason is that I don’t want my boys’ first big crisis of faith to be all about Santa Claus. They may have other issues, and in fact are guaranteed enough other dysfunctions in their lives. Why heap on another one?
Back to the narrative…
We played with the various toys until well past the boys’ bedtime. We finally got them in their jammies and put to bed. Arwyn and her mother stayed up a bit later while watched some TV. MIL went to bed while Arwyn was fiddling with pictures on the computer.
I lay in bed wondering; would the odometer flip tonight? Or be reset?
Finally, Arwyn came in the bedroom. She went into the bathroom and came out without her panties! She ceremoniously tossed them into the clothes bin, came ’round to her underwear drawer which happens to be on my side of the bed.
I was frozen like a deer in the headlights. I could neither move or speak. I merely wondered. Her naked bum flashed beneath her sweatshirt whilst she found another pair of bikinis. My heart was pounding in anticipation.
Arwyn scurried to the foot of the bed and around to her side.
Anticipation.
Peaked.
And…
well…
wasted
365.
She jumped into her panties, put her shorts back on and went back to the living room. When she finally came to bed a couple hours later, she gave me a kiss, wished me a Merry Christmas and was out with her head at the foot of the bed, wrapped in her own blanket.
Thus my longest sexual dry spell since the first time I ever had it.
D.
Reality & Redemption 
I’m sorry Digger, I would classify that as “cruel & unusual”…
happy holidays!
I’m so sorry Digger, really truly sorry.
You are amazing. There is no way I could of let a opportunity go by like that and not have gotten the shits and threatened retribution.
On the other hand part of me would have been lying there waiting for the milestone to be past just so I could say its been a whole friggin YEAR!! the next night…..because if you said DARLING its BEEN A WHOLE YEAR that night you can guarrantee that her memory would suddenly come back and she would say, no it hasn’t dear its been 364 days!!
I can’t go there with the dry spell there is just nothing appropriate to write in comments when it comes to 365 freaking days without sex, jeez.
But I enjoyed hearing about your sons. As one of the parents who didn’t understand that my 15 year old would still LOVE Barney I can definitely appreciate the Santa thing. And as someone who has found it very difficult to continue to go the her childhood church because of her autistic son I can also appreciate your wife’s opinion. Sometimes it is not even overt, but it is still very hurtful.
Without going into too much detail, I’m seeing a therapist about many issues, one of them being my lack of interest in sex. You know what she told me?
As a Christian woman it is my duty to take care of the needs of my husband, not as a woman doing ‘chores’ but as a woman who loves her husband and wants to please him, satisfy him, and complete him. It’s biblical and in my heart of hearts I know it’s right.
I won’t say I’m sorry… I’ve said that aplenty to my man. The only thing I can say is “in His time”. My prayers are with you.
As one who has suffered through some long dry spells, I know that there is a paradox: You’d think that you, i.e., Digger, would take advantage of such opportunities; you might even wonder why you’d let them slide by instead of “wasting” the moment.
But…
After a certain number of times of being rejected, one feels unattractive, shot down, even humiliated. And yes, one develops a martyr-ish attitude that takes a perverse pleasure in thinking “That’s nothin’, let’s make it 366 days!” And we file that awy in that little spot in the back of our brains, ammunition that we may never use on our partner, but useful to justify our own feelings of agner and resentment toward them.
Tom Allen
The Edge of Vanilla
I, too, am thinking about 365 days of built-up bitterness and resentment.
Surely you feel like confronting her about this? Even a simple statement like, “Do you realize it’s been an entire year since we had sex?”
Thanks for the thoughts and all. I feel like I need to be perfectly honest in saying that I have made a substantial contribution to said dry spell by my own inertia. I’m just trying to be fair. And no, I have not adequately registered my displeasure.
Funnily enough, to her it probably does not seem like it has been that long. In fact, she might consider 1 year as “Just having had it” in her LL word.
Tom sort of hit on the martyr complex that I’m wearing like some sort of stole around my neck which isn’t too helpful.
I’m a little intrigued about your own bitterness and resentment, FTN. That’s not your usual schtick. You trying to work MY side of the street?!?
D.
Sorry, Digger, perhaps that should have read
“I, too, am thinking about your 365 days of built-up bitterness and resentment.”
I just meant… That’s a long time to be avoiding something that important. If it were me, I think that would build up a lot of difficult anger and resentment in me if I wasn’t talking to my wife about it.
This reminds me of a post I did a while ago (October, I think, called ‘Boogie nights’) and I’m wondering if Arwyn was testing you. Was she giving you the opportunity (season of good will an’ all) and wondering what you’d do with it? Why DID you freeze?