Tomorrow is a New Day

[hopefulinga]

Hi KD,

I am still trying to ignore bad behavior. Got a little bit last night, but I am not going to let him draw me in right now. He's still all over the place with his attitude towards me. He used to tell me "It's not what you say, it's how you say it". I wish he would take his own advice. On the bright side, the D word has not come up in over a month.

I do wonder how much is my personality and how much is my job. H often tells me to stop cross examining him, but I know that part of my communication style is to question if I do not get enough facts to understand what is going on or to make a decision. And that my questioning comes off as attacking. My dad said that he can completely see me "challenging" my H, which is one of H's biggest complaints.

Would I like H to be a little more in charge? Yes. 3 years for the lamp was beyond reasonable to wait. Some of the pictures were 5 years. I feel like I get in a Catch 22. Ask and nag, or get it done myslef at some point. I start to feel like we are not a priority at home. He also has more unfinished projects than I can count.

I think sometimes he likes the take charge personality, but not all the time. He likes knowing that I can get things done on my own because then it is one less thing he has to worry about and go about his business with his hobbies. But does he then look like a failure? I don't know. I had a discussion with my IC a few months ago about an issue I was waiting to see if H would handle. I cannot remember the exact issue. Whatever it was, H did not do it. If I recall, H said he was going to handle it, didn't and then I did. I can choose not to continue this pattern. H promised to the cable up to D's TV months ago. She continues to ask, it is still not done. She told me last night that H told her he would do it soon. I will not fix that, so if he doesn't do it, she won't have cable.

Another issue IC thinks we have is that H can't see me as a person independent of himself. H got mad at me one day when we went to D's school to register her. We were in separate cars. I did not grow up in this town and I knew of one way to get to the school, which was behind the building in a large parking lot. H called and asked where I was. He was in the front in the driveway of the school. His comment was something along the lines of "See, we can't even get to the school the same. We are so different we have no business together." Really? I told him that I didn't know how to get to where he was. He gets frustrated if I am different than him and don't completely agree with his ideas and opinions. I feel like I get snuffed out as an individual.