New All Time Low

[MJontheMend]

I should add that it is very much the case that my H's issues with his job have to do with his way of relating to other men. For instance, he was annoyed with one of his co-workers for, as my H put it, "half-*ssing" a job and thereby putting extra work on my H's plate. So my H wrote him a note. The coworker wrote back to him and started his reply "Don't get your Irish up..". When my H related this to me, I couldn't help myself, I just started cracking up along the lines of "'Don't get your Irish up' that's a good one. Why didn't I think of that? ha,ha,ha.". The weird thing is that my H doesn't really understand that he is coming off as ill-tempered and combatative much of the time because he is feeling "put upon" or defensive when he behaves in that manner.

His job does have a certain element of danger. So when he was down in his dumps one of the things he said to me was along the lines of "You don't even worry about me out there do you?". The subtext clearly being "and therefore you don't love me.". The fact of the matter is I don't worry too much about him getting hurt on his job but it doesn't have anything to do with "love". I'm just not much of a worrier to begin with and I guess I just don't feel like it's "right" most of the time to worry about other adults out doing their adult things even if they're the primary other adult in your life and even if what they're doing is kind of dangerous. So what I said to my H was "I don't worry about you because I expect that you will do what you need to do to keep yourself safe.". Which, in the case of my H's job, means sometimes having to assert himself with his coworkers and his boss without losing his temper to the extent that he needs to quit. His job is "manly" to the extent that he could definitely lose his temper to the point of, for instance, swearing in an ill-tempered fashion without being in any danger of getting fired. Such behavior will simply result in him being persistently "ribbed" about his red hair.