Throughout the four ½ years of therapy, Danielle was often tired and stressed due to her job, her mom, her responsibilities, etc..  Danielle had only so much bandwidth at the time and she wanted to add another person into the mix with our open marriage.  It seems counter intuitive to add someone new when you’re dealing with all this.  It’s not just your stress also, it’s my stress because my thinking about this all the time impacts my ability to focus on my ability to work.

Now on vacation, Danielle would often be able to shed these stressors and enjoy herself both on the vacation and romantically.   This is why I wanted us to go on so many weekends and on vacation.  I would look forward to our getaways not just for the getaway, but for the increased possibility that we may have sex.  Looking back, that kind of sucks.  Forget the kind of.  I want to fuck in my bedroom.  Make love in my kitchen.  And lay the pipe in the bathroom.  My house should be a safe space for my partner and not the source of stress that subjugates sexual desire.  But I digress.  Back to vacations. 

This is where Danielle was at her best and most happy and I loved seeing it.  It was a reminder of who she was and who I fell madly in love with.  The bad thing is that when we came back from vacations, she would be stressed and less likely to be intimate.  Another way to have Danielle let loose is for her to get high.  Now this isn’t easy to do with a young child in the house so we had to pick and choose when we could do this.  The last time we did gummies together, Emily was spending the night at a friend’s house and Danielle and I went for a hike.  We did some gummies, saw an immobile rattlesnake that we were afraid to walk around, and had a great time.  We went into the hot tub and just held each other in there for a long time.  She actually initiated physicality with me which was shocking and fucking magical.  On the opposite end of the spectrum, Danielle took too many gummies at the Don Felder, Styx, and Reo Speedwagon concert at the Greek and I had to hold her up for the entire concert while she was passed out on my shoulder.  Not fucking magical.  I hope that Danielle is able to find this joy of life without drugs.  Life is hard.  Work is hard. Having elderly parents is hard.  Stressing about all that all the time is not a way to go through life and I hope this allows her to finally just relax without the vacation or the gummies.  She deserves it.