Tell me exactly what I did wrong.

[Lillieperl]

Thanks, Lou and Kett. I am trying to remove myself from the equation as much as possible-- I do think that's a good course for now. Of course, on Monday when I have my ankle surgery, I'm going to spend a couple of days at his mom's apartment so he can help me. And I have had other friends ask if they can go shopping for me. People have a mental block about coming to my house because it is so far from town. I do not want to add to the pressure he's under, partly for his sake and partly for my sake.

you're not even married to this guy to start with, so, not sure why you're posting in "the sex-starved marriage" forum about this

I have two responses to this:

1. Would you explain what my not being married has to do with anything?

and

2. Lil puts thumbs in her ears, wiggles fingers, blows raspberry

If you dont "demand", yet harbor all the resentment and entitlement of a "demanding female" without even saying what you want... in some ways, it's WORSE.

Dom, if you'll read my post carefully, you'll see that I'm not resentful about his not coming out here. I fully understand why he's not coming out here. He's worried to death about his 89-year old mom and her cancer. He's doing everything he can for her, to make her comfortable, to make sure she's eating. I absolutely understand that and I endorse it. It's a beautiful thing. He's in a difficult spot.

What I resent is that he is rude to me. As Kett said

Sounds like he knows damned well he's treating you shabbily but at the same time feels totally overloaded with trying to respond flawlessly to his mom's needs/demands and is frustrated because he feels caught in the middle and overstretched. Even though you're NOT being demanding, you get the sharp end because you are one of the things he's feeling pressured about, so you're involved in his guilt/martyr complex whether you want to be there or not ... and he'd rather get snappy with you than his mom.

I think this is absolutely correct. And I understand it.

I just don't like it when he's rude to me.

Did you read this part:

If he were gracious about it ("It's no trouble. I don't mind. I hate to think of you sitting out there all alone eating peanut butter crackers. If I can make it, I certainly will," etc.), but he's so businesslike, no-nonsense, martyr-ish, and frankly, what I call rude.

There's not much kindness in his approach. He feels like he's too stressed to be kind to me. He as much as said this the other day.

if you were married to this person, then I would think that the best response to "are you ok? do you need anything?" would be, "well, I was actually looking forward to, and kind of expecting, that you were coming over with leftovers today."

That would have been the nice, no blame, yet communicative way to handle it.

Instead, you chose the "no communication, yet still allocate blame to him" route.

This is a very good observation, and with a normal person who's not on a hair trigger, it would probably work... but he's hyper sensitive to anything with the slightest aroma of a demand.

So while saying, "I was looking forward to seeing you and to having leftovers," is exactly true, my past experience is that this would lead to explosive defensiveness on his part, a la, "I'm SORRY! I've got too much to do! I can't please everyone! yaddayaddayadda."

So I just held back. Like I said, it's not his not coming that bothered me, it was the rude way that when I did him the favor of NOT making a demand, he reacted by hanging up on me.

When I said I didn't want to add to his to-do list, I would have liked something like, "Oh, I appreciate that... I DO have a lot to do today. I'll be sure and come tomorrow with leftovers." Instead he hung up on me.

THIS is the situation: When I try to make things easy on him, he seems to resent it. When I express my demands, he resents it, too. He likes it best when I'm around, don't say anything, and appreciate whatever he does without expecting anything and without wanting any adjustment to what he chose to do. THAT keeps the peace.