Not today.

It's too bad you can't get him to understand that cancelling your anniversary trip to be with a bunch of guys who will spend (at least part of) their time oogling cheerleaders greatly decreases your ability to care about his comfort.

Of course, lol - and I truly do mean this to be funny- he might retort your inability to keep the house to his standards only reinforces his desire to cancel the anniversary weekend.

Did you care to elaborate, HHH?

So this morning was awful. Today is our anniversary. I got my present from him last week, so I wasn't expecting anything today. It was a really nice present, too. I have an uncle who is an artist, and on the promo flyer for his current show there was a painting I absolutely fell in love with, so H bought it for me. Very nice! I was not so generous with him, he did not want anything, but I got him some little things anyway, two of which were bags of his favorite candies to replenish the canisters I'd gotten him for Valentine's day for his desk. I put everything on the kitchen counter in the middle of the night with his card on top.

So, I was still in bed as he was leaving and he didn't look at me at all, just stood at the door staring at the ceiling and said, "Bye." I said, "It's our anniversary, can't I get a hug and a kiss?" Nope! He just walked out and left his untouched gifts on the counter. I jumped out of bed and grabbed the candies and ran them down to the garage, held them out and said, "I got these for you to have at work." He took them from me and threw them down on the workbench and said, "Give them to the kids. I don't want them." I burst into tears. He left.

And then...a few minutes later he was back, saying he hadn't meant it, and hugged me and kissed me, but then proceeded to chew me out for 'never doing what he wants to do.' I told him it was hard when he gets stuck on wanting to do the things he knows I don't like. I told him I could see him being upset with me about the hunting thing if it was something he did while we dated and I was fine with up until we got married and then made him quit, but he wasn't doing it at all. He retorted with, "Well, when we met I didn't know that you drank." lolol...my reply? "We met at a BAR." Really? What was it that gave him the idea that I didn't drink? Was it the way I was dancing on a table with a beer in my hand? lol. That was the very first time he saw me--me and a girlfriend were up on the tables dancing. I must have been giving off a real "I don't party" vibe, eh? I saw him at the bar several times after that, but we didn't start dating until after one night when a bunch of us left the bar at closing time to hit the lake house, where we stayed up all night drinking and talking. Yeah. I can see how he missed the whole drinking thing.

Anyway, it got a little better after that, so I asked him if he wanted to go grab some sushi tonight. He said he'd have to see how he feels when he gets home. I cleaned out the fridge, but am unenthusiastic about cleaning anything else. The floors are a wreck, I may do those if I can do it without hating him for it.

Oh, I forgot this part! During this morning's conversation, he said, "We are so blessed, I don't know why you have to get hung up on nitpicky bullchit." (referring to our anniversary weekend)

I wanted SO BAD to say, "Oh really, Mr. Chair? *I* get hung up on nitpicky bullchit?" I refrained and said, "I know we're blessed."

(if anyone reading along doesn't know, my H used to come home and chew out the entire family for a chair in the living room not being in the correct spot, by less than an inch, but stopped doing that after Steve Harley told him to get evaluated for OCD, and I offered (okay, threatened) to nail it to the floor)

{{{{CWMI}}}}

I feel so hurt about that candy thing! I can't imagine the pain you are feeling!

Thank you for your empathy, Daisy.

We had talked about that this morning, too. Wow, we covered a lot of ground in fifteen minutes. He was talking about my complaints, how I am always telling him what he's doing wrong. I told him that I complain to him so he can fix what he can, and I'm just looking for compassion on the things he can't do anything about. He does not get that at all. So I used the event this weekend. It's a charity thing for kids with cancer. I asked him if he felt anything for those kids. He said yeah, he felt bad for them, but he can't imagine what they're going through. I told him to imagine then if these kids showed up, after signing up for this event which is being put on out of compassion for these kids, and H yelling at them to not bring their effing struggles to him, it's not his fault they have cancer! He wouldn't do that, it's horrifying to him, yet that is how he treats me, his wife, when I bring my struggles to him. And my struggles ARE from his actions.

Sorry to leave you hanging, had class all day, then had to sleep so I can go to work all night.



So... was your statement there meant to talk about your reactions and dealings with everyone except your H?

In general. I tend to consider more with my H, just because I've learned so much, and now I know he responds much better to certain things, such as: he likes it if I tell him not to get mad before I tell him something that will make him mad. Like if the kids broke something, or something unexpected happened. If I just blurt it out, he hits the roof, but if I tell him, "Now, don't get mad, but..." it somehow prepares him to hold his temper.

I can relate to you on that one. My wife can get pretty upset and when she gets upset, she's very outspoken about it. Teh other day they had the pool closed when it should've been open.

She had been looking forward to taking hte kids swimming when she got home. I knew she'd be upset and didn't want her to have that surprised anger.

Soooo...I jokingly texted her "before you get home and start yelling and cursing and throwing the coffee table through the living room window, thought I'd let you know the pool isn't open.

...before you get home and start yelling and cursing and
throwing the coffee table through the living room window...

Coffee table? You mean you don't have a caber laying around
for her to toss? You gotta start living up to your psuedonym, KT!

So...today is the event. My best girlfriend and her family are coming over later for a cookout. I don't resent cleaning up the house for them. :p

Somehow I got an alert on my iPad from H's boss about the event. It went to me and all the employees. I didn't much care for the reminder, especially after H told me yesterday that he asked around and none of the employees were inviting their family. At first I thought since the iPad came from his work, the date was pre-loaded in it, but nope, there's my email addy in the header, it was sent directly to my google calendar. Hm. Not sure what to make of it.

We did end up going out Thursday night. It was fun, we had a good time. He apologized for being a jerk that morning. I told him to stop apologizing and get to a point where he just isn't a jerk to me. Apologizing and then being a jerk again is not an apology, it's empty appeasement.

Well, I've got some prepping to do for my company. At least I'm busy...

Look, I get it. Wife beaters apologize all the time.

However, the guy extended an olive branch, and you smacked his hand for it.

How about accepting the apology, and requesting that he continue to work on himself?

He's been extending olive branches for years, HHH, and then repeats the behaviors. He once told me that if I was not currently complaining about something he'd done in the past, he assumed that it meant that I would be okay with him doing it NOW.

I told you we had a good time, right? It's not like I beat on him all night and refused to enjoy it. I told him that apologies without a change in behavior were empty, and I don't accept empty apologies. There HAS to be true remorse, and that is shown through change of behavior. It does neither of us any good for him to be a jerk, apologize, and then continue being a jerk.

In my smelly-hippy, tree-hugging, biologically altruistic way, I really want to help you...

I don't know how, though.

It seems you have a deflective remark and comment about your husband's behavior for every piece of advice you get.



I get it. H is being a jerk. You don't really like the guy.

I can't do ANYTHING about that. He ain't here. Nobody here can do a thing about his actions. All we can do is read your reactions, and try to help you shore up your end.

Don't know why, but stumbled on this and thought of you and your H;

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110406123013.htm

hahaha! I just noticed this. We do have a bang of cabers lying around but they're in the storage area of the park we throw at. Once or twice a a year a group of us throwers get together, chain saw some trees down, remove the bark, sand, and get em weighed.

It's pretty cool. There's usually 10-12 or so guys with our wives and kiddos making cabers, grilling, having drinks.

Oh, yeah, we've already discovered that physical touch makes verbal communication easier. We found that if we're having a difficult conversation (which is usually me attempting to gain empathy for my pain and encourage him to, er, stop causing it), he calms down enough to actually hear me if we're holding hands. If we're facing each other or side by side or on the phone--it doesn't work. He jumps right into defense mode, and does not hear what I'm saying at all. But if we're physically touching, he shows signs of real empathy! He understands that I'm not attacking, but informing him of the effects of his actions! It's weird.

The difficult thing is getting him to sit and hold my hand before I open my mouth. He's refused to hold my hand before, I was all, "Is that really how you want to act toward me?" He finally did it and it went well from there, but (DJ alert!!!) sometimes it's like trying to reason with a 2-year-old in the throes of a temper tantrum. Even if you can calm them down, you still can't reason with them.

Good news! RC is on an upswing...we bought a pool table from a neighbor who is moving and doesn't want to take it with them. H and I both enjoy shooting pool.

So we got it set up yesterday, and problems commenced! First of all, my H was acting like a know-it-all, and on our very first game he 'corrected' the way I racked the balls. Not in a nice way, either. I'd finished racking and he cued up, then sighed, put down his stick and said, "That's not the way to rack the balls, they go like this, see, striped, solid, striped, solid, get it?" and proceeded to rearrange my rack. I said, "There was nothing wrong with my rack." Oh yes there was! He thought I knew how to shoot pool, how could I shoot pool and not know how to rack balls??? Well, he was wrong...I would not have corrected his rack unless it was something egregious like putting the 8 ball in the top, but the lighting into me about mine, the unnecessary criticism, had me consulting the rule book, which I showed him to defend my knowledge of how to rack a freaking set of balls. His method puts two stripes in the bottom corners of the rack, which is against regulation. But we shot that game his way.

There were more 'rules' he proceeded to 'teach' me throughout the evening, and again and again he was WRONG. I could totally take it if he said something like, "I think the rule is blah-blah-blah, what's the book say?" instead of telling me I was wrong when I wasn't. To me, it was simply a friendly game of pool, I wasn't watching his every move to see if he was doing it right. Boy, he was watching me and ready to pounce on every perceived misstep, which drove me nutz.

And then there was the pool stick issue. He brought out his mother's pool stick, and in the bag was his pool stick, which he proceeded to go on and on about how he'd had it since he was a teenager, the places he'd shot with it, etc and so on...and it hurt. It hurt because I HAD a pool stick that I'd had since I was a teenager that I'd shot a lot places and had a lot of memories attached to it etc and so on and LOST it when HE traded in my car without my knowledge and it was in the trunk of it. It was his car, as in his name only, but he'd given it to me for my daily driver when we got married and 'borrowed' it that day 'just to get an estimate on trade-in value'. I'd asked him if he'd at least gotten my stuff out of it, he said there wasn't anything in it. Yes, there was, I wanted him to get my stick. He'd traded it in where he worked, so I said, get it for me tomorrow when you go in. Problem! The car was already sold.

He never did anything to make up for that, didn't even try contacting the buyer about it, I'm still sore about it nine years later and him going on and on about his teenage-years stick that he STILL HAS ticked me off because I thought it was insensitive and told him so. On the upside, his stick is actually broken so it's really no better off than the situation with mine--neither of us can play with them any longer. lol.

Well, we ended up playing for a while, and I think we reached an understanding that any questions of rules will be referred to the very good guide we have, and if he starts arguing with me instead of doing so, game over. And leave the broken stick in the bag or throw it out, I don't want to see it or be reminded of the fate of my own at his hands.