God, where are you?

Tonight, I feel lost and alone.  My wife and I are going through an almost dai­ly cycle of fight­ing fol­lowed by rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, for­give­ness, and decent con­ver­sa­tion fol­lowed by more fight­ing.  It seems like I am hav­ing a very hard time allow­ing things to stay calm.

I was lis­ten­ing to the radio today, and a series of ads came on.  The first was a beer ad, with its typ­i­cal tac­tic of describ­ing what a “real man” does in his spare time, of course includ­ing drink­ing said beer.  The next was an ad for some­thing that’s sup­posed to boost testos­terone in men over 30.  It described symp­toms that implied that all men once did not have them, like low mus­cle-mass, low dri­ve to exer­cise, and a low sex dri­ve.  I thought about these ads, and I real­ized that I could­n’t relate to either of them.  I don’t do the things that the beer com­mer­cial sug­gest­ed, nev­er real­ly want­ed to.  I nev­er had any mus­cle mass to speak of, and cer­tain­ly no dri­ve to exer­cise.  I think my sex dri­ve is healthy, but it is, admit­ted­ly, low­er than the “aver­age”, at least as soci­ety seems to think it should be.

My wife says I’m too emo­tion­al.  Is it relat­ed?  Have I always been less of a man?  Is it why I don’t have a good rela­tion­ship with God?  Is it why I don’t have any good friends?  Is it why I don’t get along with women?  Is it why I don’t seem to under­stand that I just said some­thing that was hurtful?

My wife loves to stay up late and talk.  It does­n’t mat­ter if the con­ver­sa­tion is pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive, it nev­er ends good.  Eventually, some­thing in me clicks, and I’m done, and I start to get impa­tient.  My mind starts to wan­der, I start to make com­ments about going to bed.  I start to feel like my needs aren’t being met (or even noticed, some­times), and I get increas­ing­ly frus­trat­ed.  After a while, I say some­thing that’s insen­si­tive, and boom, the night is shot.

God, I pray for patience and under­stand­ing.  I pray for the sta­mi­na I need to make it through the hard times, as well as the good.  I pray for my wife’s patience and under­stand­ing as well.

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