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Hungry for More Than This Adventureless Marriage

After a decade of marriage, birthing four mini-me’s, and turning into a SAHM, I am beyond hungry. Starving, actually. My appetite has become insatiable and my cravings unsurmountable. Yet, it isn’t food that I am in need of to satisfy these hunger pangs. Not in the least.

I am hungry for passion. Intimacy. Emotional stimulation. I am desiring the sex life of my wildest fantasies come true and then some. I want to reawaken the woman inside of me. The one I laid to rest in order to transform into the selfless caregiver I must be to meet the demands of my roles as a mother and a wife.

My identity has been robbed blindly, over the course of time. Looking into the mirror, I no longer recognize the reflection staring back at me. She’s always in a state of frazzled dishevelment, looking more than ready for a year long nap in a stark white, padded cell. Nothing like the well-put together, fresh as a daisy femme fatale who used to flirt back from the other side of the glass. My given name even sounds foreign when I hear it spoken on a rare occasion. No one has referred to me as anything but Mom or Mrs. Hammer since dinosaurs were roaming the earth it seems.

Day after day, I am mindlessly going through the motions expected of me. Dressing, feeding, bathing…cleaning, washing, wiping butts…chauffeuring, chaperoning, counseling…trapped in a Twilight Zone of perpetual Groundhog Days. By nightfall, my tank is so empty I can hardly find the energy to make it to my bed before falling asleep, let alone take care of my personal needs- sexual or otherwise. It’s a struggle just remembering to shower frequently enough, let alone to find the gumption to feel like the carefree, sexy vixen of bygones past I once was.

I struggle to construct tangible thoughts outside a PG-rating regarding interests which aren’t shared by the cartoon watching, cereal slurping, booger eating heathens I bore from my aching loins.

It certainly doesn’t help matters any that my relationship with my husband has fizzled dry. We’ve settled into the steady rhythm of reliable familiarity and conventionalized routine kept in-tune by familial responsibility and the sanctimony of marital commitment. Not only have I disconnected from the woman I used to be before having kids, but I also feel like I’ve been forced to disconnect from my husband, too, just to keep our lives running smoothly and efficiently.

Motherhood and marriage have devoured my sense of self like a savage feasting on its sacrificial lamb.

I can’t help it—I want more. I need more. The empty void left in my soul grows larger by the day.

I miss feeling the intense charge of electricity running through my body like I did when I could live my life without restraint. I miss getting carried away in a spontaneous moment of lust and rendering myself powerless to the racing hormones rushing into my bloodstream as my husband works his magic with my body. I miss the adventures intimacy brought into our lives, alleviating us from the monotony of the daily grind. I miss being needed for reasons other than providing for and raising my children 24-7 and feeling desirable in ways I have to repress around the tiny humans I created.

There is more to me than the subservient homemaker I have become to fulfill the duties of my chosen roles. Parts of me that have fallen to the wayside, slipping away through the cracks of time to the basement recesses of my core personality. I am more than simply a mother and a wife. I am a complex woman with feelings, ideas, interests, and dreams, just the same as everyone else.

Behind the warm smiles, comforting hugs, and home-cooked dinners, I long to express myself without inhibition once more.

Doing for everyone else is only making me jaded and I’m tired of sitting on the back burner for the sake of my sanity. I have shovelled away my own personal wants and needs in order to make room for those of the family I am responsible for holding together for far too long now. Yet, even with the kids being a bit older now and allowing me to find some breathing room, I have no clue how to bring back what’s been lost. This hunger inside me must be fed because I am more than the roles I have taken on along my journey through life.

Before all else, I was, and still am, a woman.

There has to be someway to balance these two very different dimensions so I can find my happy place. So I can find myself again. So my insatiable appetite for passion and adventure can be quelled. Because I deserve to be awake and feel alive just as much as anyone else, no matter who’s wife or mother I am.

This post originally appeared on Sammiches and Psych Meds. It has been reprinted with permission.

Kristina Hammer aka The Angrivated Mom, is a Coca-Cola guzzling, go-with-the-flow SAHM of 4 on her way to insanity and beyond. A writer by nature, blogger by nurture, and a poet at heart, she spills her heart onto the screen. She has been featured on sites like Scary Mommy, The Good Men Project, and Mamapedia. You can follow her personal blog at The Angrivated Mom or her column, To Insanity and Beyond, over at Sammiches and Psych Meds for more of her writing and you can follow her on Facebook and Twitter so you don’t miss out on the daily crazy in between.

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