Oh sh!t

[haphazard]

H and I seem to somehow have got ourselves to the brink of D.

Last week I was away in France with the kids, my Dad, my sister her BF and her kids. We had a nice week. H stayed home and puppy-sat and worked from his home office.

Since we’ve been home I did not really feel particularly welcome and H has been distant.

On Monday evening (which is normally a night when H will put the kids to bed for me) the kids and I were home a bit late as we had been out. I know H doesn’t like it if we are late back when it is his turn as he prefers to get the bedtime routine out of the way and get on with whatever he has planned for that evening (usually some work-related activity). So I apologised for being late and suggested we do a swap so he could do it Tuesday instead.

Tuesday (yesterday) rolls round. The kids and I do usual afternoon stuff. Afternoon turns to evening – no sign of H. At around 8 I finally call his cell-phone it goes to voicemail. I can’t be bothered leaving a message. I pack the kids off to bed.

When H gets in I am in bed. He gets into bed. I ask him “Did you forget?”. He doesn’t know what I mean so I said did you forget that we swapped nights. He denies that we swapped and says he thought I just offered to do it for him. I said “why would I do that?” He replies in deeply offended tones “yes why WOULD you do that?”. Unfortunately things started to escalate into a shouting match from there. With him slamming doors and shouting at me. (Remember he has been out drinking all evening). His gripe is that I don’t recognise how hard he works and I never help him out. My gripe is that he works that hard for his own egotistical reasons, that he has always worked that hard it has nothing to do with providing for his family he would do it whether we existed or not and I have boundaries on how far he can continue to get me to “rescue” that behaviour. After the shouting match he went outside to smoke, and I went upstairs. After a while I came back downstairs. I put it to him that I no longer want to live with a workaholic/alcoholic who organises his life around these things and has no time for his wife and children. He started shouting at me again so I went back upstairs. I heard him calling as if he thought I was still downstairs but ignored him. After a while he came back up. Didn’t say anything.

I said “Why are you still here?”
H: What do you mean?
Me: You’ve never liked me enough to want to spend any time with me. After the first couple of years together you just started spending all your time in front of the computer and acting irritable if I talked to you. Why do you continue to hang out in a house with people you don’t like.
H: Well why do you think I’m uncomfortable here?
Me: I’ve no idea, I’ve done my best to help with that, but nothing I do is good enough. At the end of the day if you don’t actually like me then that’s fine, you’re entitled to your opionion but I’ve grown up enough not to accept existing on crumbs anymore. I’ve spent a lot of effort and taken a lot of knocks to my self-esteem trying to be someone different. But I am who I am. If you don’t like that person why don’t you just admit you don’t like me and leave.
H: I am uncomfortable with someone who is so unbending, so unyieldling, someone who can never put themselves in someone else’s shoes.
Me: <silence> (there’s no point me saying that I find him exactly that way, there’s no point me denying that I am that way)
H: So that’s it then. Dumped? You’ve rejected me.
Me: I have come to the conclusion that after so many years of being rejected on a daily basis by you that I no longer wish to exist on so little. That the sorry state of my self-esteem has come about by putting up with that.
H: Where do we go from here?
Me: I don’t know, I haven’t thought that far ahead.

More silence.

H: Well before we finish can I just say something else.
Last week you were on holiday. I haven’t had a holiday in a year. You were on holiday. I stayed at home, I looked after the dog, I looked after the house, I worked from home. I had to let a few clients down. You came home exhausted after your journey so I looked after the kids that evening. The next day I looked after the kids some more. Then on Monday evening I came home with more work to do, I worked til midnight. I thought you had kindly offered to take care of the bedtime routine for me. I went out this evening for the first time in over a week to have some fun. And I get back to you whinging. I would just like some sympathy – ha! About anything.

Me: I have sympathy. I have spent a lot of sympathy on you over the years. And all the time I have picked up the pieces of your life for you while you work harder and harder and justify yourself by that fact that it is “work”. You get more and more stressed and you blame your stress on the lack of support from me. It’s like watching someone banging their head against a brick wall and crying “ow, ow, come and help me” and all these years I’ve been rescuing you with the ice-packs and the arnica etc. Now when you say I don’t have sympathy it’s because I am watching you bang your head and my unsympathetic response is of a person who is thinking well maybe if I don’t keep bringing the remedies, just maybe he will notice he’s banging his head on the wall and maybe he’ll stop.

H: OK fine, tell you what we will split everything, EVERYTHING, exactly down the middle. I will do half the childcare and half the housework and you can bring in half of the net income of this household (the almighty lucre – his trump card).
Me: No (about to point out to him the ludicrousnous of basing a so-called fair exchange on earning power. Especially in a relationship where I started off by earning way more then he and brought over £20,000 into the marriage when he brought nothing. Especially after 7 years of being SAHM and out of the workplace, having suggested to him before DS was born that we split the income earning and household responsibilities down the middle and him not even contemplating that idea).
H: Him (suddenly very angry again). NO, NO I give you a deal and all you can say is no, with you it’s just “my way or the highway” isn’t it? <storms off> shouting I’ve come up with a deal and you’ve rejected it, now you come up with something.

I came downstairs after a few minutes.

Me: Here’s the deal: You work the same hours I do and we split the household chores. (His rate of pay is in the region of £100 ($150) an hour.

H: <angry again> You know it doesn’t work like that, you know I can’t let clients down or I wouldn’t have any.

Me: If you have say 4 clients and you work a 40 hour week what happens when client number 5 comes along? Do you turn them down or do you work a 50 hour week. Then client number 6 appears and you work a 60 hour week. Tell me at what point do you say to the next client, sorry there aren’t that many hours in a week. Tell me why you can’t say that now and actually save some hours to have a life. What are you doing it for if you’ve got no life?

H: I don’t have that many clients now.

Me: I was just saying the numbers for the sake of example. What I mean is you need to cut your coat according to your cloth. You are not an infinite resource, and I am not your background resource. I am willing to be your background resource, and I am your background resource up to a point but I am drawing a line in the sand and saying enough is enough and you need to do the same thing.

H: So it’s all my fault is it (very typical refrain of H’s)

Me: All I am saying is that you need to get a grip on your life. I am not having my life trashed the way yours is by you berating me and putting me down for not handing over my life to the money god and the work ethic god.

H: But you don’t even support me – whenever I shout loud enough to get any of my needs met around here you do it ungraciously and badly and then it peters out. I yell and scream at you to do something. A few days later you start doing it with no acknowledgement that I was right and then you stop doing it.

Me: What has right or wrong got to do with it. You put it to me that you would be a happier person if I do X, Y or Z. So I start doing those things – what am I supposed to do – say: look H you were right, I am submitting to your control by doing your bidding because you know best. The very fact that I do the things you ask for, surely, is the response why does it need to come with an extra garnish of obsequiousness? And then when I do those things I get no acknowledgement for it from you. You set up some hoops for me to jump through, I jump through them and you are looking the other way, I jump a bit more – slightly less enthusiastically since you aren’t even looking and the hoops fall over so I stop jumping and go about my business. How much would you continue to do something that was getting absolutely no feedback? I want to do things that will make things better for you, but when I try I get nothing in response.

Anyway, we went to bed after that. Fell asleep with no further words.

This morning he said we needed to talk some more tonight. He's right we do.



Fran