I Was Almost Believing Her

(originally started May 13 around 11am) - only posted as background - things have moved on since this...

Mrs_C has had me believing her lines about not doing enough or being supportive enough over the last little while. There are a number of instances where the case she made was reasonable enough to get me to walk that road for awhile.

Friday I taught for the whole day (got the day off my regular job even though it's peak season). Our router went down and my boss asked me to stop and get us up and running on my way home fromteaching. I did.

When I got home Mrs_C had a coniption fit on me that I was late (I was home at 5:30, my usual time home). I finish teaching at 4. I had called her to tell her I was going to have to kick the router. She said sure at the time.

I guess she was overwhelmed by having to get the kids ready for the dance festival that night. She hadn't mentioned she wanted help (we usually do it together but have both done it individually).

This upset her a lot. She described it as another example of me being off doing whatever i want to do and leaving her in the lurch having to cover everything with the family and the household. I disagreed with that version of events vehemently and told her that she was both overreacting and misrepresenting events. She had her crying, yelling, sobbing fit in front of the kids - especially in front of daughter whose hair was being done at the time.

We actually yelled right in front of the kids. That is a pretty rare occurance. We settled it out enough to complete the job and get to the festival.

Later that night I apologised (just us) for not being there when she was getting the kids ready and asked her to just tell me if she needed help in the future. I also said the she must not realy on telepathy as a communications tool!!! I then said that, yes, I should have picked up on the clues in our conversations on the phone - But I didn't and I tried to underline that if I didn't pick up on hints, she does need to be forthcoming - especially since we had mutually agreed to be forthright with our communication and requests of one another.

I realise that from a "positioning" standpoint, it was unwise to agree that i should have been more senisitive, or that i should have been better at picking up clues, but I am not in the marriage as a positioning exercise. I honestly bleive my own shit about mutual sensitivity, and even if Mrs_C is not prepared to go there, it means a lot to me to be accurate and acknowledge my own shortcomings when they are real.

Mrs_C agreed she should have told me she needed help.

She told me she was really mad at me for telling her to "just get your shit together and deal with reality".

She said her family said that to her a lot when she was living at home when she would get weepy or teary.