Walking the path to my own happiness

[mamabird]

It is so cool you have begun to recognize this, but it was not an arrow. You got an Act of Service and you didn't even realize it.

Yes, it was nice of him to make breakfast, but the truth is I had asked him the night before to take care of breakfast today (for S). If he hadn't left any, it would have been horrendously rude. Sure, I was in the wrong to ask him about the eggs. Now THAT would have been an Act of Service. To me, Acts of Service are doing things that are not asked or helping on projects, not family chores. Something a little extra just to make my life easier. For instance, I asked him to wash the dishes today while I went to the grocery store to buy food for dinner. He said "no problem" and he did it. Is that an Act of Service? In my book, it doesn't qualify. It's a chore that needed to be done and we both live here.

There's actually a little more egg drama in our past. Just before BD, I was making breakfast for the kids on a weekday and they asked for eggs, so I made them eggs. I didn't ask H if he wanted any because he never ate breakfast with us during the week. But that day he stormed downstairs and called me a hypocrite (yelled at me) for not asking him if he wanted eggs. Because once, a long time ago, I got upset at him for making breakfast for himself (on a Sunday) and not for me. We have breakfast drama!!! Now I always make sure to ask, even if I think he's going to say no.

I guess I struggle with these things because I perceive and handle them soooo differently. If the situation had been reversed, first of all, I probably wouldn't have taken it personally. But even if I had, I would have said, "Sorry, no eggs today, and you're welcome." Maybe that's not the sweetest thing in the world to say, but it definitely gets the point across that the other person was missing the bigger picture. But then, I forget all about it.

Even if you get in this situation and you don't like what's coming out of your mouth, stop it. Even backtrack and say " you know, that came out wrong. Let me start again." And start again with a different dialogue.

That's a great suggestion. There have been times when I've caught myself starting to complain and then just said "Nevermind." I will try to remember that. The problem that I have is that sometimes I will say something that H will perceive as offensive without me realizing that it is offensive (to him) so I can't stop it.

An example: we were driving today and we drove past my mother's boyfriend's daughter's apartment. So I said, "that's where M's BF's D lives." The backstory here is that she is going to NY for a while and wants to sublet her apt - maybe to H - so it was apropos to bring it up since he could potentially be living there. He didn't really get upset but he told me not to bring that up in front of S9. S9 has no idea about this and it was such an innocuous comment, but H takes it to the next level and gets in a tizzy over nothing.

I heard a suggestion about taking inventory over your emotions when conflicts arise in a R. The suggestion is, "File a police report." This means, go over what happened and explain it back to yourself without using emotions. In other words, if the scene were videotaped, could someone else see what happened? The incident in the car with me pointing out the apt. clearly doesn't fit that bill.