3 Days Before Quit Day

I've got 3 days left to smoke. Thank goodness, I am enjoying it less and less, smoking less frequently, and have definitely cut down. I smoked 6 cigarettes yesterday, even though I wasn't consciously limiting myself. I'm also beginning to smoke less of each cigarette, throwing it out about 3/4 of the way through.

I was disappointed in myself for "caving" and buying more cigarettes, but if I am following the Chantix plan, I was trying to stop too soon. Sabotaging myself.

I went to get my annual mammogram done this morning, along with an ultrasound due to calcifications and a resulting biopsy they had performed last year. I got the results right away, and the news is all good. Nothing alarming, no further tests/biopsies etc. needed, which means I can go back to the girlie doctor (O.K., we're all grownups - the GYNECOLOGIST) and get started on HRT so that I can start enjoying and having sex again.

Yes, folks, this is a Quit Smoking Blog (at the moment, anyway) and I am talking (or writing) about female problems, specifically gynecological/menopausal difficulties.

Because, this has been a huge issue in my Recovery.

Part of my motivation to quit smoking is that my husband absolutely cannot STAND the way smoking makes my breath, hair and skin smell. If we're going to be physically intimate again, I have to quit smoking if I want to desirable to him, and I do want that.

For a long time, I didn't know if I did.

The resentment and anger I felt toward him -- that I thought I had completely dealt with, worked out, and was now in the past -- was actually still there, buried deep inside, and the way I expressed it was in choosing not to do anything to confront and deal with my physical problems that were making intimacy impossible.

So, now, I'm ready to move on, to really, truly forgive, and to accept forgiveness.

And I want not only physical intimacy, but the emotional and spiritual intimacy that seem to grow as a result.

I seriously could go without having sex the rest of my life, and it wouldn't bother me.

At all.

But, I know for him, it's not the same, that he doesn't feel that way. And by selfishly choosing to withhold what he desires, to not do what I need to do in order to make intimacy possible, I am rejecting him and making him feel unloved and unappreciated.

And that's not what I want for my marriage.

I expect so much of him, yet I've been unwilling to give. It has to be a 2-way street.

I can't change him, but I CAN change those things about me that make loving me more difficult. And that's where it has to start.

With me.

Now.