Why I don't put my foot down . . .

( . . . as someone has advised):

First of all, we're long beyond my putting my foot down in our relationship, outside of some very specific circumstances that we don't really seem to encounter anymore. Our marriage doesn't work like that, and didn't even when I thought it did. That was part of all the control issues I had to work on in the process of our building a healthier life together when we were preparing to reconcile as a family.

Secondly, I think we're addressing on our own the things I have found most frustrating, if gradually. The thing we've probably needed most is for me to communicate my feelings with you better, but I think we're making progress, as evidenced by our both checking in with each other before pursuing separating choices in our daily lives. This communication has been really helping me over the past week, and I hope we keep it going.

Then there are the matters of a) encouraging changes in you for your own sake rather trying to impose them on you, and b) accepting and loving you for who you are rather than trying to make you someone else for me, even (especially) under the guise of it being "for our sake."

But there is another big reason of a very different sort: in recent years I've discovered a part of me that, frankly, even I found more than a little scary, at least as I was figuring out my balance on it. I suppose I'd tried to deny it for the longest time, then looked for and have learned how to accept it without indulging it. Still, it would doubtless intimidate and frighten you - unnecessarily so, since a) there is nothing to be done about it that wouldn't hurt you, and I'm done with hurting you, and b) if you ever became not scared about it, you'd want, for my sake, for there to be some outlet for this aspect of me that also honors who we are, and there never can be. (Okay, enough a's and b's, and run-on sentences of every sort, for one post.)

So the bigger truth of this last thing is that the part of me that I've long been embracing and expressing in our life together is far more important than this more recently discovered part. Accepting this has helped me with that other area I've struggled with for so long, which you asked me about last night. In some relationships, the honesty of sharing it with you would be the most important thing. Maybe I'm deceiving myself to think it isn't for us, too. But it isn't as if no one in the world knows, though I have kept it pretty close to the vest. I've only told one person outright (not who you might think), who pretty much agrees with how I've been handling it. I will talk about it with you if you ever ask, and I think I've given you enough of an opening that you could if you want, but I'm not going to bring it up to you or force the discussion on you in any way.

Meanwhile, I think it's better to just keep giving myself to you in the ways in which you're comfortable, and not making you wonder about the rest. And really, there are other, more basic and central parts of myself that we're finally figuring out how to accommodate.