Thanks, Aquarian. I really appreciate your thoughts and comments. She has been sick the last two weeks with the flu, then a cold, so I have tried to give her some room. We had a nice day yesterday...painted the living room, went on a walk, had my mom over for dinner. Then, I was on my way up to be and walked up to her and said, "Can I have a hug?" She looked at me with, what I would almost call disgust. You see, when I ask for something like this, she says I use a "whimper-y" voice, and it really turns her off. Of course, I think I'm asking in a normal, modulated voice. But why should this make a difference anyway? I am asking for something I want, and is it so hard to provide a hug?
She says she should be able to say "no" and I should respect that. It's not even that she said "no" (which she didn't), it's the look of derision she gave me. If she had said, "no, I still feel kind of sick and don't feel like hugging right now," that would have been fine. It's okay to say "no," just do it politely, if at all possible.
When she came to bed, I was reading. She said the "I should be entitled to say no and have you respect that" statement, and told me I was asking for a hug like a small child, and that I should have just come up and given her a hug, and if she felt like hugging me back, then she would have. I told her that, if I had just come up and hugged her, isn't that forcing myself on her, like some sort of rape, because I didn't have her consent in advance? (I know this sounds stupid, but she has actually brought this up in the context of more intimate touching). Plus, I said, I didn't just want to hug her, and have her be hugged like a lump, I wanted a mutual hug. She said she was sick and didn't feel like hugging. I told her that sometimes it was difficult to be her husband, because there were so many wrong ways to approach her. She asked me to turn out the light. I wasn't done reading, so I took my book into the extra bedroom, and ended up sleeping there.
This morning I left for work without saying goodbye. She called me on my cell as I was pulling out of the driveway, accusing me of being passive/aggressive and punishing her by not saying goodbye. She said I need to be okay with her saying "no" to things, and get over this need to punish her. I told her I just didn't feel like saying goodbye and that I wasn't aware it was a marital obligation. (Okay, so I was being passive aggressive. Is that really so bad? Why should I feel obligated to say goodbye to her when I don't feel like it?)
On the good side, she has shown a bit more affection lately, and I mentioned this and told her I appreciated it. She said that we had had a nice day, and that I was letting her refusal to hug me ruin it, as if all the affectionate things didn't exist. I denied that. She ended up hanging up on me...can't remember exactly why.
