Yeah, so this is my first ever blog and Leroy Kirk is a pseudonym, so if you thought you knew me back in school or something, you didn’t. That’s not my real name. I don’t know what people usually do on these things, but maybe I’ll say what kind of things I do with my life, share some feelings, thoughts or comments about random stuff. So anyway, a few months ago my wife and I decided to shift back to the town where I grew up, to start a family. Being a mum is something that she’s always wanted to do and I realised after thinking for a while that as the man in our growing family, it was my job to make decisions like this. So I gave up (temporarily at least) my career as a programmer in New Zealand’s budding game development industry to move back to Hamilton, and try and find a “real job”.
So I kind of initially greeted the whole being a dad thing with a little excitement, but mostly dismay. Like, recently I decided that I didn’t want to force my wife to do anything that she didn’t want to do, and I knew that I had been holding her back from having kids. I knew it. So finally I was like, look I can’t make you take your pill, and she went off it straight away as though I had been making her take it. Big deal, anyway this whole thing brings me to why I had a lot of dismay about starting a family. Commitment.
Now I think I’m probably in the same boat as a lot of guys when I say that commitment scares the shit out of me. Maybe that’s wrong for me to say that. Are guys allowed to talk about their feelings when they are scared? I don’t know. Anyway I love my wife, she’s great. What scared me is that she would somehow use having kids to compel me to do something I didn’t want to do, or stop me from doing something that I did want to do. I’m really honest with her about everything, especially about sex. It’s the biggest thing in my life right now.
I read somewhere that guys on average think about sex about once every six seconds. I don’t know where this figure came from. I do like women though, and I think about women a lot. Anyway this comes back to the whole commitment thing that I was talking about a moment ago, my personal view is that guys don’t want to commit to a single woman. It just seems totally wrong in my bones. While I love my wife, the idea that giving up every other opportunity to have encounters with other women just seems wrong to me.
I look at it this way, I’ve always been good, I never hurt anyone, I never try to force my beliefs or opinions on anyone, or make anyone do something they don’t want to do, mainly because its one of my strongest values that people should be left alone to do their own thing as much as possible, provided they aren’t hurting anyone else.
Now the point of contention for most people is that If I was to say sleep with another woman, someone other than my wife I mean, is that it would hurt her. But this isn’t the kind of hurt that you get when someone hits you in the ribs with a mallet the size of a football. It doesn’t hurt like a bee sting. It’s a kind of visceral, emotional hurt, which isn’t exactly tangible, but it still hurts like a motherfucker. Now this is the hard bit, because If I want to be loved for who I am – which I believe that everyone needs to be, then I have to be seen accurately. It’s a fact. If I want to be loved for who I am, then I also have to be honest about everything about me. And I love my wife. And I want her to love me. So I’m honest.
But it hurts. And it’s real fucking scary. Telling a woman that you love honestly and sincerely that you want to pursue other women is really hard. Partly because you need to be seen accurately, and loved for who you are. And if you’re honest about who you are, and it hurts them. Then you could get rejected. Hard. Just for being honest about what you want to do with your life and your time.
Anyway I just thought I’d put that out there.
