Barrybran IV - Three Years Forward, 30 Years Back

[Barrybran]

Another quick journal:

The distance is bugging me a little this morning. I want to send her a text to reach out, let her know I've noticed her distancing and to let her know I'm available to her any time she needs to talk. I won't do it because I know I have to act and not speak. ie. I have to listen and wait for her to believe the change rather than saying I'll listen and expecting her to talk.

I've been doing well with the patience thing recently. Knowing what I'm in for has made it easier to deal with but I calculated the time since the argument (three weeks Tuesday) and it's not nice feeling as though she can't talk to me. I get it though; I've shown her a person who doesn't listen so it'll take time to show her a person who does.

I miss the good time we had in January. I know a lot of it was her trying new things but it also felt natural. I understand her frustration that she felt we were sweeping things under the carpet and that she was initiating everything that happened but I was still firmly in DB 101-mode and had no idea how to handle the sudden change in her actions. Now, I'm hoping she'll just smile again around me.

The positive about the January experience is that I know things can turn around. It will require some effort from my wife and that decision isn't in my hands so I understand that I can only work on me at the moment. Our hands are tied with money at the moment which makes things a little more complicated (neither of us can do GAL activities; takes away any choice she has to stay/move out). I'll be delving deeper into our budget to try and find some extra funds so we can have some fun (individually) and hopefully make things a little easier and lighter at home.

I do have an issue about money I'd like some feedback on though. My wife firmly believes the issue lies in how I shop for food. I go down to the shops once a day to buy things we need. In the past I have bought a couple of things for the kids and/or I but since she brought it up I kept it to only what we need. My wife believes we should shop once a week and top up bread, milk and vegetables as required. My issue with this is that I have little knowledge in how to defrost meat effectively at short notice so I prefer to take it out around lunch time so it's ready to cook at dinner time. My wife doesn't know what she wants until around 5-5:30pm so I either have to guess and defrost (bad idea), use the microwave (no idea) or buy fresh meat when I know what she wants. I have tried the 'cook what I want when she can't make up her mind' idea but it backfired because she thought I wasn't taking her thoughts into consideration.

Is this type of thing worth bringing up? She's not my biggest fan right now and I feel a discussion about what she thinks and what I think should bring about a solution but I also understand logic doesn't exist right now... and I understand most people probably don't even know what they want for dinner either :p