The Worst Way to Miss Someone is This Way

It’s worse having a partner who won’t participate in sex than not having a partner at all. The temptation is close. It makes an illusion that promises opportunity. Rejection destroys it over and over again. There’s nothing worse than sleeping close to a lover’s body without being able to access it or have it return touch.

It’s torture when they’re there, and you can’t have them.

What can be done?

Firstly, check to make sure that your advances aren’t being misunderstood. Love-language signals can get mixed up and even lost during translation. So make sure your partner knows how you feel.

Open conversation is always a solution. Communication is the key to understanding. Once a discussion has taken place, things should improve; if not, it’s a perfect opportunity for you to expand your communication skills further. Perhaps a clearer sexual signal should be installed in the relationship. I once remember friends used a doll as a device to express their interest in sex. The doll sat on their mantelpiece and when one of them was interested, the doll was tipped on its side, if the other one wasn’t up to a roll under the sheets, the doll was uprighted. This visual cue left no doubt about what was going on in anyone’s mind.

Visual signalling isn’t entirely foolproof, though. For some couples, using a flagging device like this could appear threatening or unromantic, turning couples even further away from the bedroom. Fair enough, but it’s a start. Perhaps a real underlying issue needs to be exposed and discussed more. In any case, the doll concept is a good thing to bring to the relationship table because if it exposes such a problem, professional counselling may assist with a lasting repair job.

What if better communication doesn’t work?

That’s a good question. Sometimes it doesn’t. There are no guarantees.

My situation went like that. Communication didn’t work at all. No amount of talking or professional counselling helped us. In the end, I had to remove myself from our marital bed to reduce the torture affecting me and stop the free fall into insanity. Moving into another bedroom solved these two problems almost immediately. I felt a hundred percent better. One week into it, I was sleeping through the nights again. A month had passed, and I had a dream, the first in many years.

Yes, things were THAT bad, and the move created new problems for my wife. The bed was empty at night, and her husband chose not to be with her. She slept alone. Ordinarily, I’d be concerned for her, but I had a shipload of my own problems to wrangle. It was self-preservation. Removing myself from the problem was paramount.

She didn’t approach me about it. There was never a time when curiosity got the better of her. I guess the truth was too awful a topic for her to broach. It was like a wall covered in razor wire with no way to get through.

Fourteen years of wandering in a sexual desert isn’t standard for anyone. Logical and stable thoughts are hard to maintain when confronted with an undying thirst and consecutive mirages that promise a watery oasis. Unfortunately, the journey never went there. The mirage kept lying to me, moving further away with every step I took. I just had to close my eyes, turn away, and start writing a book about it.

And that’s why this is the worst way to miss someone.

-Michael (author).