So yesterday me and my wife decided to watch a movie. We'd had a rough time the night before and that morning, rehashing some old discussions that have been hot points between us. So much so that I slept in the basement in my own hide-a-bed. We kind of talked it through and it seemed to be going alright during that day though, so we were able to do our regular Saturday stuff (cleaning, groceries, and we had her parents over for diner).

Well, the movie caused something pretty awful to happen. It was "Running with Scissors", a 2006 movie that's absolutely messed up. If you haven't seen the movie (recently), there is a secondary character called Agnes, who is married to a psychiatrist and lives in a big pink house (almost a manor) with him and a couple of adoptive children. This lady is, for all intents and purposes, a very accurate portrait of my own mother. She doesn't take care of herself very much, doesn't take care of the house so it's full of crap everywhere and there are a couple of days of dishes on the counter. You need a shovel just to clear the kitchen table to eat. She also spends her days watching TV and eating dog kibbles (well, my mother doesn't do that last part). She is a loving mother however, in the sense that she does two actions to help the main protagonist (Augustin) in his quest for quasi-normality in life, once to give him a book that would help him in his journey to become a hair stylist, and another to give him her secret money stash so he could make a new life in New York.

So as I said, Agnes is basically my mother. But after the movie, while me and my wife were talking about what we got out of it, I tried to make that parallel between Agnes and my mother and how this is why I both hate how she raised me and how she is, and yet still love her. But according to my wife's words, "Agnes was a good mother. Yours was just negligent and will never be a good mother in my eyes."

Because my mother's been a subject that's come up over the years and almost always leads to conflict, this just made me blow up inside. For my own wife not to see how she was being disingenuous by accepting this fictional character as a good motherly figure, and yet rejecting my own mother, who is so similar, made me so absolutely angry, I simply could not take it and went down to the basement. Text messages sent by my wife a few minutes later were answered swiftly with very strong words and a threat of leaving if I heard another peep from her. This may sound like an absurd overreaction, but the pent-up emotional baggage that I have with my mother, when confronted with my own wife's utter inability to accept and forgive my mother as I had done myself, is unacceptable to me.

I needed to vent this so I tried to go on a chat, first I opened mIRC and went to Susan's chat where I was unfortunately met with a reaction that boils down to "You had a fight with your wife over a movie? Seriously?.... Hey, speaking of which, anything good on TV right now, other person in the chat?". Needless to say I'm not going to go there when I feel conflicted anymore. I then joined Laura's Playground chat where I did get some acknowledgement and support.

Now the weirdest thing happened to me during the night however. I very rarely remember my dreams and when I do they are either too weird to make sense, or are very vivid one that marks me forever... This was the latter. I was in my current body in the dream, but I was in bed not with my wife, but with the main character of the movie (Augustin), who is gay. And, well, we had sex with him penetrating me. When I say vivid, I mean that I actually felt it as if it was really happening. I told him to go slow and he did, it didn't hurt but it didn't feel that good either. I know, it's a little TMI, but it's just a dream, remember.

I'm weirded out by this dream and I wonder (on top of seeking reaction to opinions on the previous subject) if any MTFs has ever had this kind of dream. I'm sure regardless of anything you guys have to say, my sex therapist will have a ball with this one...

I'm not an MTF, but some of what you said resonated strongly with me--like the way you dream, and seeing a movie with a character that reminds you of your mother.

I'm sorry that the chat was so frustrating. I'm wondering if the chat people really understood the fight. I hope you can cut 'em a break--maybe try again when there's a different mix of people.

In the summer between high school and college, I went with a friend to see a new movie, Ordinary People. I had never read the book, although, weirdly enough, I remembered a TV advertising campaign for it a few years earlier. Anyway, I didn't know much about it and probably would have given it a miss if I had known. The parents in the movie were basically my parents, especially the mother. I was rigid through that whole movie, and shellshocked when we came out. It still kind of does a number on me. My friend, who had never even MET my mother, was saying, "Mary Tyler Moore really reminded me of your mother!" I guess my descriptions of her had been pretty vivid.

It seems odd to me that your wife is the one who won't forgive but you have forgiven. Back in the day, I had a relationship that was basically the opposite--I couldn't forgive, but my then-boyfriend thought I was overreacting.

Movies can be powerful triggers or powerful echoes of our own lives. Your movie spoke to you and emphasized a fundamental and disturbing conflict between you and your wife. I'm not surprised it evoked an argument. But I hope you can work it out someday.