all my friends are having marital issues too

Got together with a mate for a beer & dinner at the pub last night.  This fellow and his family go to church.  We are good friends with them and their kids.  Amongst other things, we chatted about our marital issues.  Turns out his wife and him have been having troubles too.  Shouting matches. 

It was helpful for me to talk about my relationship issues.  He did say at one stage that my wife never talks about anything deep.  He gave an example of when there was a bible study group that he and my wife were at a few years ago. 

For the uninitiated, this is kind of like a book club.  Usually get together and read some passage from the bible and read a few commentaries by experts and discuss it.  Historical perspective, cultural differences between when it was written and today and what it might mean for us individually or as a societal group.

Anyway, his comment was that my wife would only contribute superficially with the "Sunday school" answer.  By that I mean, the stock answer or 'idealised' answer.  If in doubt the answer is "Jesus".  This way she did not have to take any personal risk.  No sharing of feelings and risk of criticism.

At home,

I tried wearing a nappy last night.

Objective being too try to avoid waking in the night and consequently not getting back to sleep and then getting angry and waking my wife.

Not successful. 

Fail - it leaked.

On the plus side I did sleep more solidly.  I suspect a combination of:

a) our relationship being a bit better at this instant.  

b) We had pre-agreed to effectively no intimate stuff (snuggling, touching, groping...) for the Mon night through Thursday morning so my expectations were already 'in check'.

c) I suspect that not having to wake up enough to walk did contribute.

Anyway so some plus and enough minus to have to look for an alternative approach.

Of course there is the negative that an old man wearing a nappy and wetting the bed is pretty unattractive.

There is another advantage of the nappy is that it means my penis is encased in the nappy and therefore not able to be stroked.  This helps with the abstinence in a mental way because it cant be stroked then it is not wanting to be stroked.

Noon Update - Was musing that I have now not had release for about a week.  In moments of connectedness, my wife has mentioned that this will be a 4 week abstinence.  So far today, I have felt the tense shoulder feeling that I have felt before when going through abstinence.  I have had some ache in my balls that has come and gone.  But no hard on errections.  Normally reading blogs and so on or even thinking about abstinence makes me turned on.