Susana (5) - Stay the Night

[susana4]

Journaling here, comments welcome if anyone can be bothered to read such a long update

Lost my cool a bit this morning. :S

I had the best night's sleep I've had in awhile. Still a little hard to sleep through the night due to ADs.

H came back early this morning and was acting completely normal, like nothing had happened. Which annoyed me a bit! Illogical, because my plan had been to act calm myself, but I was thrown inside and annoyed he didn't seem to be, too.

We had a good conversation about his day yesterday. He talked a bit about his fear of missing out and his fear of saying no and how he's started saying no to things, and I validated and complimented him on working on this and learning to say no. He really appreciated the movie & snacks (woo!) I made yesterday and his friend LOVED the cookies I made. But overall he seemed very distracted and down, when I asked him if he was tired or something he said he was just worried about money. (He's always worried about money)

I started to get frustrated, and I knew I was reaching the end of my tether. Should have really left at that point.

I was just sat there thinking "do I really want to be with this man? Why am I trying to save my M? What is the point?"

Then he announced he was going to Starbucks to spend the afternoon on his laptop. Now, I had been planning to go to Starbucks (but he didn't know this). Potential awkwardness. I obviously didn't want to invite myself along (pursuit) but i thought "how weird is it going to be if I turn up at Starbucks?"

So I made a joke - "hey which Starbucks are going to? Let me know because I was going to go to Starbucks too, so I'll go somewhere else I don't want you to think I was stalking you or something."

He got really annoyed and defensive and was like "why? you can come to the same Starbucks with me... Well, I don't care what you do, do whatever you want, I really don't care."

I realise this is nowhere near the level of spew many people on this forum receive, but my H does NOT do angry and this was level of anger was shocking to me. He wasn't shouting (if he had I would have left the room), but the level of anger in his voice was the sort of thing I'm only accustomed to hearing the one or two times a year he explodes.

And I lost it and started crying. Not good. This seemed to make him angrier and he was like "why are you crying? are you coming with me or not?" And just started flip flopping between asking me to come with him, and saying I shouldn't, and complaining that this was a ridiculous argument (it really was, but if I'm doing a bit of mind reading I'd say both of us were letting out some pent up frustrations).

Eventually I thought to myself right, I have 2 options here:
a) tell him to just go to Starbucks and I'll go somewhere else, and then act completely upbeat tonight when he comes home
b) try and resolve this argument

I went with option b because H is deathly scared of conflict/arguing and my DB coach said it's important to show him the conflict can be dealt with in a healthy way and guide him through it.

So, I said I was going to calmly explain my side (180 for me, being calm in an argument) and explained that I had been joking about going to a different Starbucks to avoid stalking, and I got upset by his angry response. I also said I didn't mind if he didn't want me to come but I hoped he'd be honest with me. He said he hadn't realised it was a joke and thought i really wanted to avoid him. I asked him how this made him feel and he said "nothing" (sigh. H has trouble identifying his emotions. Maybe he honestly felt nothing but then why did he get angry and defensive?)

Then he asked again if I wanted to come, followed shortly by "well maybe you shouldn't" and proceeded to go back and forth. I asked why he didn't want me to come and he said "because we just had an argument and now it will be tense. I don't want it to be tense".

Tried to recall what my DB coach had said about "leading" through arguments, and I said "it's OK to argue. People can disagree about something, and still get on." He nodded, and asked if I was coming, then (seriously wtf, make up your mind). I was of 2 minds on this, I thought:
a. it might be best to diffuse tension and let him have the afternoon to himself
b. OTOH if I went and things weren't tense, that would prove to him arguments don't have to result in tension.
Also, I wanted a freaking Starbucks.
So option B won.

I went to gather my things, and H sat morosely on the sofa staring at the floor, looking like he was about to cry. Now maybe this wasn't the correct DB approach but I sat down next to him and gave him a hug. He smiled and looked a bit less down.

On the walk to Starbucks, I didn't feel any tension, and we had a good chat. I decided when we got here I wouldn't start any conversations. He's started a few convos, and I keep catching him staring at me but I am just sitting here calm, collected, not tense and hey! if he wants to be tense he can (his issues, not my problem) but I'm just going to enjoy my latte.