Looking backward...but only to move forward

[sage]

Hey LL and Jennifer --

LL, you KNOW your advice is welcome anytime!! but I hear ya on not putting it out there as often.

Jennifer, yah, I'm learning...It's so hard for me to GET IT -- "are you feeling better" sounds loving and concerned to ME but I can see how it would feel controlling or invalidating to others...

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Had a good night last night and an interesting observation on communicating with h.

I spent the afternoon with my sis playing with her older daughter (2yo) and helping out a bit with the new baby (5w). I got home around 6pm, quickly checked work e-mail and then h said he wanted to "air out" by going out someplace for dinner. We had a quick bite, came home, hung out on the couch watching T. Despite being very sick still, h was very snuggly and loving.

Onto the insight...

I've noticed lately that I'm having a hard time feeling positive when talking with h about "my" stuff -- I'm not talking about R talks or emotions, but even just everyday conversations with him about work or school or my sister or whatever. I end up feeling like screaming "just forget it" to him actually pretty soon after the conversation starts. I haven't been clear on why until now. One thing that was interesting to me was that it rarely happens when we're talking about HIM or his stuff so I was ending up feeling like conversations were good when talking about him and bad when talking about me and that was making me

So...last night...light dawns...here was the conversation that clarified what I think is going on.

(Background - h and I are going to a "wine tasting" this weekend at a friend's house. It's 5 couples -- we get together every few months and try out a bunch of new wines and have food. Usually it's on a Saturday night but this time it's on Sunday afternoon.)

ME: I want to be really careful on Sunday not to drink too much. I want to avoid that hungover feeling that comes when you spend six hours drinking small amounts.

HIM: Wait! Are we going to be there six hours?



Do you see what happened?

I wanted to talk about being nervous about being hungover. The key point in what I was bringing up was that I had a concern and wanted to chat about it. Instead, h latched onto an off the cuff detail (the HOURS) that wasn't even representative of the meat of the discussion. In fact, I wasn't even saying we would be there for that long...I was only using it to make a point.

I realized that I think this happens frequently.

I'll say "I had a really tough day at work today; people were in crabby moods" -- I want to talk about ME and my tough day and h will say "why were they crabby?".

It's kind of liberating to finally see what's happening because for a while I've been feeling really blaming of h for not being interested in ME...now I can see that he's just very literally latching onto other pieces of the conversation that I'm throwing in for color but he's seeing as pertinent.

I think that makes it easier for me not to personalize it and it probably gives me an opportunity to modify the way I talk to him (stop using compound sentences? don't get irked when it does happen but be more clear about what I consider the main topic to be, etc?)

h just called...he's definitely feeling BAD! I found it very, very hard not to jump into "are you OK?" mode but I kept more quiet than chatty and kind of let him guide the conversation. I did say "tell me more about how you feel" after he told me he was still feeling sick...better than a question, I think.

Sage