-Emotional Support:  I need for her to allow me to aid in our relationship but not totally take control over it all.  When I come home from the rig I would like to help her with everything else involved in life, but not have to do it all myself like I have been in order to, "take care of her," because she has to do it all while I am away.  It is like I go to work and fuck off for three weeks, when in all actuality I bust my ass really fuckin hard for three weeks then have to come home and bust my ass to take care of the house and pets, and odds and ends for her so she doesn't have to while she does little to nothing.  It is infuriating.  There is an imbalance in the relationship due to our vulnerablity and it is in constant struggle.  But I need her to support me when I come home instead of fade away and let me/make me take care of her.  We need to take care of each other.

-Sex:  No, I am not saying I need more sex from her.  I need more from her during sex.  We need to close that intimate cushion we have.  I want to feel sexy, needed.  Like she yearns for me.  I need to feel desired.  I also want to be touched like she loves it, loves to hear me whimper.  I just need more from her in the bedroom.

-Compromise:  We are almost polar opposites on a lot of things concerning everyday life.  She is a night person and I am a morning person.  She is messy (for her own personal reasons, she is not a dirty slob) and I prefer it clean and sterile and hospital like.  In our relationship we either have it my way or her way, there is no middle ground in which we meet in the middle to each other's liking.

This is the list I created a month ago about the things I needed from her in order for me to be able to stay with her until eternity.  I am here tonight to reevaluate my needs based upon the newly found knowledge gained over the last week.  This new knowledge is the idea that I use her emotions to control her and create a feeling of worthlessness for her in order for me to play the tragic hero. 

Lets start with the first one, trust.  I agree still with the last part of this entry.  Everything needs to be laid on the table so that communication can commence and things between us can be hammered out together instead of each of us going through our own therapist to help ourselves fix ourselves.  The begining is troublesome in the new light.  I said I needed her to not look at me as if I was the enemy out to get her like her father.  With my new found enlightenment, I am just like her father.  Her father used everything her could to control her: money, emotional manipulation, physical manipulation, and mind games galore.  I use Ragen's emotions against her in order to control her and make her feel like she has to be with me and make her feel like she has to revolve her life around mine.  The very thing she received as a child from her father, on some level, is the exact same thing that I do to her on a daily basis.  I don't beat her, or use money to control her but I do control her emotions and manipulate her that way.  So, I can't ask her to trust me completely and look at me in a different light, when I don't deserve to be looked at differently from her father.  I am the enemy in her eyes and it is a war between us, a war of wills.  My will and manipulation against her inner strength and painful memories.  So far she has succumbed to me for the most part on that battle front for there are many fronts to this war.  How can I ask that of her?  Isn't trust gained?  How can one ask for trust?  I can earn the minimal amount and once I have proved myself with that little bit then more can be added, similar to responsibility.  I have to chalk this one up to still trying to emotionally rob her of all that she has.  She doesn't have much with me but she has those things to herself that only she can claim, those memories and ideas that only she knows and only she thinks about.  She owns those, something not to be given away lightly like secret intelligence not to be divulged to the enemy.  I can't blame her, I haven't given her anything to trust. I am not trust worthy.

Emotional support is something I still feel strongly about and I don't initially believe it to be manipulative.  I feel we should share the responsibilities of the house when I get home.  She does cook and the likes, grocery shopping and taking care of the finances.  Mostly she takes care of my lazy ass and supports me in all my emotional needs which are totally in existence because I am trying to illicit these repsonses because to me they prove that she still needs me, and they are not really feelings or emotions just coy ploys to get her to do things that make me feel a little better.  That is not what I need from her in this part of the needs list.  I need her to let me take care of her and not make me take care of her.  I guess I haven't really proved myself the best at that in the past, like when I don't change the cat litter and they pee in the house.  I guess the essence of it is that I would like her to be more "house wife."  Now, let me justify that.  She takes every other role in the house when I am gone.  I am only the bread winner.  That is my title and I love that, but I would like to have more titles than that.  But it is more than that, this is getting deeper.  I want more respect than what the only title I have is getting.  I work really hard and when I come home it would be nice to be.....well babied a little.  Well, not babied, but just treated like I have been at work for three weeks straight every day working for twelve hours a day.  Is that so wrong?  Now I do see where the incongruencies are at in this "need."  I ask for these things and to be treated this way and I have no doubt she would love to, but the problem lies in the fact that all she wants is for her feelings to be her own and valid and to be appreciated.  Just like I want to be appreciated more.  I used the word respect earlier.  Respect is a two way street and I have always believed in that wholely.  I haven't given that same respect in the ways she wants her respect.  I have given her appreciation and respect for things like the finances and taking care of everything while I am gone, which is why she feels that that is all I care about with her so when I come home she has to say she did all those things while I am gone in order to illicit a respectful response from me to get things done for her.  She uses things against me, just like I do her.  But I see now why.  I do the same things to her, and I don't give her the respect that she wants/deserves.  I give her respect but not in the fields in which it matters to her.  Ragen wants respect in the sense that she is her own person, she wants to be appreciated as a person, respected as a person of her own being, cared for naturally with the intensity she knows she deserves.  Respecting her feelings and emotions and what little nuggets of "life," she has left after my devestating blows.  She wants her inner being loved and respected and I am sure she would be more willing to indulge that same inner being of mine that wants to be nurtured and taken care of if only I could give her that respect that I want too.  This is goes down as a halfer. 

Sex is something I can't manipulate.  That is her territory.  If any woman is not getting off and doens't enjoy sex then the man is doing something wrong.  It may not even be the sex, it hardly is.  It is the things outside of sex that affect the intimacy and the way things happen in the bedroom.  A woman who is happy and feels loved, and is respected and feels appreciated and all of her needs are taken care of emotionally is more than happy to open herself up to you in the bedroom and give all of herself to you.  I don't deserve Ragen's all.  I don't deserve for her to give all of herself to me.  Right now there is a lot she has held back from me, and then there is a lot I have lost the right to over the last years that have changed her attitude towards me.  I may still be sexy to her, and she may still be attracted to me but the loss of feeling in her touch when she runs her fingers over my chest is entirely my fault.  I don't feel needed because I don't deserve it.  She doesn't feel like she needs me because she doens't.  She doesn't need the guy who has been treating her the way she has been treated lately over the last years.  If I am not needed it won't translate.  It hurts though to give what you feel is your all to her and receive nothing in return.  I have tried and have given a lot there in that manner, but that is not the place in which I need to focus my attentions.  But I still have to admit it hurts.  Intimacy will come in time as she receives the things she needs from me as a partner in life, a friend, a lover, and a man.  This one is totally selfish.  I do need these things desperatly but my call to attention this need of mine is only a ploy to illicit sympathy and probably a half assed attempt at these things when I don't deserve them in the first place.  I am taking the easy way out instead of earning the intimacy on my own merits.

Compromise will come with time and sharedness.  I can't get mad anymore.  It is all about her right now. Not completely but, most of what I need in this relationship would be there in full if only I had treated her like she deserves to be treated.  And yes it has been a war, and it has been either my way or her way and no compromise but like I said earlier it has been a war of wills and on some fronts she is stronger than I and knows it so she has to take what she can get.  I know what fronts I am strong and take those when I can knowing she is going to take what she can on the one's she is strong.  It is terrible.  Compromise will come with time, communication, and with correct treatment.  This is just unacceptable to tell her I need compromise from her for me to be able to handle this relationship.  Uncalled for.  The things that she needs have to be met too in order for compromise to work and that has been the furthest from happening ever in the last eight years as of late.  It has been a war of atrophy (not attrition).  Dilapidating everything we ever have had.  Fight after fight, struggle after stuggle, pyiric win here and there for both sides.  A too slow learning curve for yours truely.  I will get what I need when she gets what she needs, period.

There it is.  I am ashamed.