I need to be in my own private space with my own private misery. I only have 81 days to my retirement date. I had to move it back to allow extra time to pay off medical bills and push up another little pile of money. It's not a great length of time but still seems longer than I can bear.

I'm especially miserable today because of some private life events. J gave me a promise ring,  and when I asked him what he was promising, he replied that he promised to marry me. Considering the fact that in all the 7 years we've lived together I've never pushed the idea of marriage, his answer was slightly underwhelming. I liked my son's answer to the same question better. When  he gave his girlfriend a promise ring he promised to always love her. Well, that was then and this is now. They married in May, 8 months later they had a fight and Christian told her he hated her and wanted a divorce. After giving her the silent treatment for four days he apologized and said he had no idea why he'd said such an awful thing. Why do we hurt the ones we profess to love?

I came home last night to find the dishes still piled high despite the fact that J had the last two days off work. I resolved to ignore that and have a nice evening together. I just sat down at his computer when the PornHub site popped up. It discombobulated me, but I rebooted the computer and thought no more about it. But when we sat down to watch Trevor Noah on the big screen, guess what popped up? PornHub again!. J's immediate reaction was WTF, and then he said it must be malware causing a glitch. I said nothing about the same site popping up  just an hour before on his computer. While watching Trevor Noah, I reached over and companionably patted him on the knee, but when I did he instinctively shrank away from me, almost as if he found my touch repulsive. We have had sex exactly two times in the last 2 years. I've tried to come to terms with the fact that we're both getting older and that J's libido isn't very lively. Since J had committed weeks before to filming the B-Movie Monsters at a neighborhood bar I had some time to myself. As soon as he left I polished off a bottle of wine at a pretty rapid clip, and then the tears started flowing. I went to bed and cried myself to sleep, and in the morning I thought, Good I'm done with all that, but I'm really not. I am hurt. I just don't understand. What does he want from me? Does he just want the security of being married and having a more financially stable base (Yeah, I'm not paying the  student loan bills he incurred before I ever met him.) Does he just need companionship and think of me as a friend? It breaks my heart and makes me weep.

So far this year, I've had surgery and had to push my retirement date back, I've refi-ed my house, suffered the nervousness of submitting the final paperwork for retirement and it's only February. I still have my tax return to file and I'm just unwilling to make any more major life decisions right now. I just want to go home and hide my head.