The Power of Perception

Standing here, looking at the smoldering ash of our d/s dynamic, and wondering if the core of the relationship can be saved, it's easy to wonder how things got so out of hand.

The answer to that is, quite simply, perception. laerie and I used to pride ourselves on being effective and efficient communicators, though in retrospect it appears that we are anything but. Over the last six months, as stress has mounted from graduate school and wedding planning, things have gone from bad to worse and then some. I've tried everything I can think of to keep the peace, but my results have yielded nothing but abject failure and our relationship is on the rocks for it.

I suppose I might as well tell my side of the tale, though I'm not sure it will be to any avail. Things were great at the beginning of summer when we were fresh out of classes. They faded to good and ok as laerie's summer classes came and went and we started wedding planning in earnest with the fall semester looming on the horizon. The ok period only lasted about a month, before we started to head into bad territory.

Graduate school quickly overwhelmed laerie and she spent most of her time stressed about schoolwork or working at her three part time jobs. Despite being swamped with my own dissertation work, I did my best to pick up the pieces behind her and soldier on. Over time, I found myself doing more and more of the work around the house, until it was all on my shoulders. I largely stayed out of her schoolwork unless she needed help, but as her panic mounted, assignments took longer and longer to do, leaving us with even less time to spend together at night. Eventually, it got the point that she would be nearly catatonic with stress due to the pressures of work and school, so any time that we could salvage to spend together, she didn't want to do anything but stare at the idiot box or idly browse the internet.

I tried to step in and take the reins a few times over the last few months, but perhaps it was too little, too late. I thought she'd be appreciative of everything I was doing at home and realize that I was trying to step up to the plate and handle more and more, to ease the burden off of her. Admittedly, I did at times encourage her to cheat on her diet or stray from her goals in order to get her to do something fun and put some life back in her eyes. I thought that if I could get her to follow my orders and do something fun, then she'd be willing to follow me when it came time to doing the hard things as well. I had grand plans to train her to handle pressure better and develop a sense of grace under fire, but first, I thought I had best get her out of the depression.

Unfortunately, that never materialized. After reading laerie's recent blog post and discussing it with her, all she saw were failures on my part. Rather than appreciating my efforts to clean as taking pressure off of her, all she saw was an inept man "half-assing" things. I have to say I found this personally insulting. While I do take many shortcuts through life, I have never done anything but my best as far as laerie is concerned. Any failings on my part were a result of ineptitude and idiocy rather than a lack of purpose. Sadly, all that she saw were the apparently piss poor results of my efforts instead of seeing the value that I thought I was putting into the actions.

So here we stand today, at the edge of a precipice. Our very relationship hangs in the balance and I'm honestly not sure if we'll be able to get past the bitter resentment and frustration, coupled with the continued pressures of work and school for both of us, to do what is needed to save this relationship. I have no idea if truly embracing the d/s relationship, for better and worse, which we've never been able to do, would help us. Or maybe we're better off shelving it for now and existing as two separate entities for the next few weeks until the semester ends and we can better assess our future. Personally, I believe that a strict d/s dynamic might be the only hope we have of beginning to make ourselves functional, but until we can find a way to address (and from my perspective, correct) the fundamental misperceptions that have run rampant through our relationship, that road holds nothing but more problems.

I'm not sure what I hoped to accomplish by writing this. On some level it's cathartic to let out the emotions. On another, I'm hoping that laerie can take more from my written words than she has my impassioned pleas to help make our reality different. At the very least, this will stand as a testament that hope remains for a better future if we can change the way we see the past.

I wish I had some wise words to end this post with, but I'm tired inside and out. I'm struggling to keep the fight alive.

And it's time for pizza.