Many Different Levels of Bored...

I know that it is rare for me to post twice in one day, but I feel like now is the perfect time to write about another thing that has been complicating things for me lately - boredom.

For the past few months, I have been crazy bored in several different ways, and it is really beginning to cause some tension here between me and C.  Now, don't get me wrong - I am very happy in my marriage and I think that C and I really do have a pretty healthy relationship 90% of the time.  Infertility, however, has brought one of our little tensions to the surface and has really inflated the issue so that it is beginning to cause some problems.

Since the beginning, I have always been hyper-social and I really enjoy being in the company of family and friends as often as possible.  Just to illustrate, I think of the dorm arrangement in college as being my ideal living situation.  I used to leave my door open just for people to pop their heads in and hang out, and I was one of only ten seniors who chose to live in a multiple occupancy room with two friends.  (Nearly everyone opted for singles.)  Of course, I do enjoy spending time with just C often, but I really like to socialize.

C is very different.  He finds social situations stressful sometimes and is very happy to spend most of his free time at home.  He has several hobbies that mostly relegate him to the basement family room of our house, including video gaming and bass guitar.

Sometimes, this arrangement works really perfectly.  We have time together, such as dinner, social occasions and some of our silly TV shows together, but we also have separate hobbies that keep us sane.  Lately, however, the balance has been lost and it is causing me some real stress, as well as some really stupid arguments in our relationship.

I feel like I am bored on two levels.  One way is that which I have already addressed - the boredom of having nothing to do.  While C is happy hanging out in the basement, I am going stir-crazy upstairs.  This problem is intensified by some recent changes in our lives, like my summer vacation, our strained finances and a few friends moving away.  Work has been rolling in a little more slowly at C's shop and I don't really have tutoring clients over the summer, so we had to cancel some of our planned outings this summer.  I also had a few friends move away to begin graduate programs this year, many of my friends are new moms, and it seems that most of my social circle that is left is not as sociable as I am.

On top of this surface level boredom, I feel like I am just bored with the trajectory of our lives right now.  I really thought that we would be parents by now, and even a year ago when we began treatment, there was some excitement and hope about what the future held.  I feel like our treatment options have stagnated and I am stuck here with nothing to do and not much to look forward to.

Obviously, I feel like we are ready for a child, not just in our relationship but even time wise.  I understand that there is no way to anticipate the actual responsibilities of parenthood, but I really feel bored and unchallenged without it.

Each day, I get home from work nearly three hours before C.  There is only so much cleaning and scrapbooking one can do before the boredom becomes overwhelming.  Aside from weekly dinner at my mom's house and my Zumba class, my life has become so dull.  I felt like every moment of mine and C's life together was leading up to something so far - finishing college, finishing grad school, finding a job, finding an apartment, buying a house, planning a wedding - and now we're just...  here.   We're not progressing.  We are working towards something, but we're no closer now than we were two-and-a-half years ago.

I am reflecting on what I have just written, and I am not even sure that it makes sense.  I am literally bored, as in C didn't want to watch a movie tonight and he didn't want to leave the house.  I haven't been out with friends in weeks.  But I am also "life-bored."  I am still crazy-in-love with my husband and I look forward to our time together, but I just yearn for being a mom and socializing more.   I know that it is ridiculous to attach all of my problems to infertility, but these feelings are just so not me.  I just want to be a busy mom...