The Cold Bed

It’s not that I’m not attracted to him.  Objectively, he is attractive.  Everyone agrees.  You know how much I talk about him.  It just seems like I want him more when he isn’t there.  I think about him all day, every day, but when it’s time and I know he’s waiting for me, I can’t seem to get in the mood.  I can’t figure him out.  What does he want from me?  Sometimes I go to bed and wait for him, and who knows what he’s doing, because he’s sure not there with me.  Sometimes I wake up at night and he’s gone.  Other times, the sun comes up, and I know we’ve spent the night together, but I wasn’t fully present.  It’s never as good as I want it to be.  I wonder if maybe I’m just impossible to satisfy.  But then I think it’s him again.  Are we not a good match, or do I have commitment problems?
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It’s my on-again, off-again relationship with my old boyfriend, Morpheus, the god of sleep.

He says I’d rather stay up complaining about our relationship than come to bed.  He says it’s like I’d do anything to avoid spending time with him.  He says he feels like I care more about playing games, watching movies, or reading than I do about him.  I never put him first.  In spite of all our problems, in spite of the fact that we have the same argument over and over again, I want him to change first.  I want him to be something he isn’t.  I hang too many impossible expectations on him.  I’ve done things to try to impress him, but not anything that would really mean something.  It’s like I want to check off the boxes to prove that I’m trying and everything is really his fault.  If only I’d listen, we could turn to each other and find each other again, somehow, one dark night.

I wish we could just be together without second-guessing each other all the time.

Remember that trip to Cancun?  We would stay in the room scandalously late every morning.  Then we’d fall into bed for hours every afternoon.  We’d make excuses and go to bed early.  We couldn’t get enough of each other.  When we went home, I felt ten years younger.  It felt like a whole new beginning for us.  Within three weeks, though, we were back to normal.  The honeymoon couldn’t last, could it, not with alarm clocks and commutes and laundry.

Maybe that’s part of the problem.  The bedroom.  It’s not exactly a romantic hideaway.  I’m tired, okay?  Lots of people keep piles of clean and dirty laundry in their bedrooms.  Lots of people have a TV they can watch from the bed.  Basically everyone goes to bed with the phone or the tablet or the laptop or the e-reader.  It is not just me.  I need some downtime, all right?

I can hear him saying he’s got better ideas for how I can spend my time in bed.  It’s like that’s all he ever thinks about.  Sleep, sleep, sleep.  He thinks he’s god’s gift to women.  Okay, maybe that’s true.  I do always get into it if I can stop mentally multi-tasking for five minutes.  Why does everything have to be about him though?

I’m probably being unfair.  I just needed to vent.  I’m not going anywhere.  We have a lifelong commitment, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.  Sleep, baby, come back to me.  I didn’t mean it.  I love you.

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