The thing where Lui almost left

Friday night, after Barbie's rehearsal dinner, Lui wanted to make love (his words, not mine), and I wanted to go to bed. But I decided to be a good wife and give in, and we were standing there in the room kissing, and then I realized: we were standing there, and we were kissing. And Lui is a good 10 inches taller than I am, so standing up to kiss for prolonged periods really hurts my neck. And I've told him this, several times.

So we very quickly went from kissing to fighting.

And because I was tired, and really just wanted to be asleep, the fight was meaner than it should have been, and more brutally honest. I mean, I told him I'm not at all satisfied with our sex life. I told him I was waiting for him to leave because I wasn't going to be the one to do it. I told him I was unhappy, and, through my silence when he asked, let him believe that I don't love him anymore.

He was in the closet, sobbing, pulling on his jeans (we had been in pajamas already), when I caught him in a hug. I convinced him not to go just yet - he wasn't leaving, just going out for a while to clear his head, but still - and we talked for real: he's thought about leaving, even went so far as to ask his mom what if he came home (she told him he wouldn't be welcome, that he was married now and had to stick it out even in the rough times); I do still love him, but am at a place where I have a hard time seeing it right now; I feel like, since our relationship has always functioned with one care-taker and one dependent, we don't even know each other as adults. And we made some plans: we're going to employ the "Be, Do, Have" philosophy to our relationship - act the part of the happy couple, believe it, become it; the next morning while I was with Barbie getting manicures, he researched some options to fix his sexual problems (although what I haven't told him yet, but have alluded to in conversations with Irish, is that my emotional limitations may be having as much if not more of a negative effect on our sex life as his physical ones), and decided that, if all else fails, he's open to the idea of circumcision; I told him that I sleep better when he's next to me, and that he's my favorite pillow, and so convinced him to put his pajamas back on and stay. Then we made love, no standing involved.

The next day was great. Barbie's wedding was beautiful, and Lui and I had a great time dancing together and being together. My "walking buddy" kissed me on the cheek in one of the photos, then later went up to Lui and said, "How's it going, man? I kissed your wife." And Lui just laughed (he already knows & likes the guy), and was not the crazy jealous person he sometimes can be. And today we went to Disneyland and got those "Just Married" buttons from Guest Relations and wore them around the park all day - we think they even helped us get walk-in seating at the Blue Bayou.

I mean, it hasn't been a complete 180 - the problems are still problems - but the Be, Do, Have thing seems to be working pretty well. (It's very The Secret of us, don't you think?) I explained it to Irish when we went for coffee yesterday (more on this next post), and his reaction was, "The way I see it, there's two options: either everything will get pushed down and bottled up and one day you'll both realize you've been pretending all along and it'll end in an explosion... Or else it'll work." He was silent for a minute, looking at me. "I think you're going to be ok," he said.