I Keep Forgetting I'm Burnt Out

The birds are starting to chirp in the morning more, that spring is coming chirp. It relieves my stress when I hear it, shifts my focus, I exhale.

Work is still boorish, brutish, garish and I need to find a way to let go and traverse the growth while maintaining the parts of what got us here that need to stay because they will impact how we cross the first finish line. It is the heart of what we want to create for the many people that depend on us.

And me, the burn out, is the only one that is left to get that message across - or so I feel.

I'm depressed. As in: the weight of my burn out is squashing me. Yet, I love what we are providing people and I want to make it all the things. But:

• I often have no interest, motivation, energy to get dressed
• I have sub zero energy in being sensual or sexual
• Work is so all consuming that I don't have enough breathing room to gauge if the above is due to depression or if I've met the relationship's capacity for growth
• Also, sex - orgasm -  is so much fucking work. Ugh. Can we just not? Why is this so important? 

It's the intimacy, the connection, the attraction that's important - and sex - orgasm - is what comes out of that, it's just a fun result. And sure, fine I'm not as attracted to my partner as of late. I'm physically attracted, he's very handsome. He's just also not very manly. He appears to veer towards infant like cuteness as an application of love more than he did in the beginning? He kinda likes to be swaddled if you will. Not actually, but metaphorically. How do I tell him that's a turn off? How do you say "I need you to be more of a kind, loving man, less of an excited, smothering child"? That sounds like something that would hurt to hear.

I feel like this might be something that happened naturally if he was prouder of himself as a man and work for him right now is not a place where he would feel that.

Maybe this place - that has always inspired me and elevated me (and pays me really well) - has become unhealthy for me, for him, and then for us.

Maybe too, he has always hoped that he could cuddle me into submission; perhaps he thought, given time and persistence, he could "break down my walls." They're not walls, they are the roots of my heart and soul. I am very naturally and happily a frank and inward person and I value small amounts of physical attention - small amounts make me happy.

I do want to be the woman in the relationship, I want you to pet my head and tell me I'm pretty, kiss the nape of my neck softly, seductively. I do not want to be a mother. I feel the need to repeat that, so repeat. Sometimes I feel like a mother to him. So awkward.

Also - ALSO - ....

Preface with: I watched my friend go through this with her current partner. She was likely his first serious long term relationship, and he wanted to dream/plan about their life together "we'll get a little home; you'll garden, I'll mow the lawn" and romanticize the ideal, and she was repelled (strong word perhaps but you get it) by it. She'd been through it, we've both done it, we've lived that life and there's not one fucking romantic thing about it. Not a single one.  The thought of gearing up for the fantasy is fucking scary. You don't want to live the lie again.

I feel sometimes that my partner (and me!) begin to fall into that and then I get a shock of reality and I start skittering backwards slowly, as if not to wake the dragon I just stumbled upon. Total fear. I really get what she was going through then.

My partner though, he's really never had this - he is fucking 31 - he should have his own experience with this. I feel like I'm taking something away from him if I say, "So about this life we're about to share... there's nothing glamours about it, it's not exciting, it's just fucking day in/day out. We wont have babies, we wont build anything because I've already done that and I don't want to do it again, it's all for not. I found that out."

But really, only half of that is true. We could build a life style: a house, a home, a love. We could. But he would be giving up a family in the conventional sense. To his credit, he's very aware of this and asks himself this question all the time. He's seen his mother and fathers unhappy relationship, he's seen his brother's marriage disintegrate. He has studied the reality of this conventional life, he knows his choice is unconventional, he has decided he wants to be selfish and not have the responsibility of kids, he sees himself growing old with me. 

But, I guess, in part, I don't trust that he's fully aware of 1) what he's getting into (like, I'm too fucking experienced to care about a lot of things that appear to need caring, and I want to be selfish now too) and 2) deep down, he wants to be with someone he can build a family/life with and have that experience with someone who is at a similar stage of life.

He keeps saying that I can be selfish but then it doesn't feel like I can. We had a chat where he did say that he's actions weren't matching his words. Maybe this is something we can grow through.

I do love him. I can imagine a long life with him. Grown up him though.

Which begs the question, is he imagining a long life with the cuddly, huggable, loveable, swaddling version of me? 'Cause.. that's never going to happen.