Thursday, December 28

[gottawonder]

Today I am grateful for:

Kitty snuggles. My little critters are often the best part of my day.

I called sister E again today, even though I talked to her yesterday, because I still feel so upset about the whole "trying to get something done on the house" crap that never ends.

Half of me being upset, is how much it hurts to have an argument about it. I'm sure none of you are strangers to how much it sucks to have an argument with someone, and how it brings out all of our feelings that we've been suppressing for the sake of keeping the peace. My husband also reacts to these discussions by just blowing right up with huge amounts of defensiveness and deflection, and most of the time we never even get to anything productive about the talk until we've hurt each other so badly that it was hardly worth it at all.

Sure, he often eventually does agree to do something, but why does it have to be like this? He literally just turns it into some knock down, drag out fight where he's literally saying that I must not love him anymore because I want him to work on the house.

He can't seem to figure out that me needing to see progress on the house is NOT a rejection of him as a person. He takes the whole thing personally, like somehow I now hate him and I think he's worthless because we need to figure out how we're going to finish something.

He really thinks that domestic bliss where he comes home from work and I have supper ready for him, and he just eats and goes to bed is the only appropriate state. Expressing displeasure around him is the same as declaring war or mutiny, and he reacts as if the whole world is coming to an end.

I asked him if he ever saw his parents fight, how did they resolve their problems, and....he says they never fought at all that he can recall. Well. That does tell you something, doesn't it.

Anyhow, at least he's calmed down enough that life can go on, but you know...I am exhausted. It takes too much out of me to have these fights where he acts like a cornered wild animal clawing for survival.

I shouldn't have to feel that every time I try to have a productive argument with him it's going to be like this.

My sister E was not a bad person to talk to about this, as her husband is pretty much exactly the same way. I know that she has to have a big fight with him pretty much any time she has to have a serious conversation with him about things like when they needed to move to town this summer, and downsizing their belongings, and when they needed to move his Mother to a care home, etc.

This really can't just be all men, can it? Are there men out there who can deal with hard issues without just having a giant melt down where you instantly become "the enemy" because you require them to do something they don't want to do?

I mean, I have to give medication to cats sometimes, and that's EASY compared to this.

I feel like I'm going to need to hire a professional facilitator the next time I need to talk to my husband about the house.

We were invited to a visit with D from pottery, so we went there after my husband got home from work.

We had a very nice visit, she had turkey soup that my husband enjoyed, and we got the tour of her home.

Her home is so nice it made me want to cry. D and her husband built this place together (he is now passed away), and it is ALL FINISHED.

It's lovely. Every room is finished nicely, with lovely colors and baseboards that all match, and nice fixtures, and no holes in the wall or cracks, or peeling ceilings, and a lovely bathroom and every last bit of it is finished and lovely. It is even clean. Not a single dust bunny, not a single pile of weird crap that looked like it didn't belong there, no tools sitting on the floor, no heap of recycling waiting to be taken outside, no pile of old mail on the table, not even something like an old hoodie tossed in the corner, nothing. ALL CLEAN AND ORGANIZED.

She has art on every surface, most of it things she has made herself. Sculpture, pottery pieces, paintings, crafty things. I recognize some of it from pottery class.

She took us to the basement (also every last bit of it finished) where she had an enormous room (that you accessed through elegant glass French doors) about half the size of the main floor of our own home that was an entirely dedicated area for painting and crafts that had storage cabinets and book shelves all around one end of it, and several big tables in the middle with things in progress, and then display shelving of her finished work all around the other walls. This room was likely about 400 square feet.

THEN she took us to another room, that was a room just for doing stained glass. It was much smaller, like a small bedroom.

THEN she took us to ANOTHER ROOM that was....a full pottery studio with a kiln in it. About another bedroom, maybe a bit bigger.

She also had another room on the main floor that was a bedroom she recently converted to an office for the sole purpose of being a quiet place she could write in. A WHOLE FREAKING ROOM JUST FOR HER TO SIT AT A DESK AND WRITE AT HER COMPUTER!!!! It is a beautiful, bright room painted a cheerful yellow, and one entire wall is a mural (one of those printed pictures) of a mountain range or something. So she has something nice to look at while she writes.

THEN she took us out to her garage to show us her WOOD WORKING SHOP!!!

She was "apologizing" for the "chaos" of her craft rooms, even though they were just nice spaces that were obviously being used for creativity.

Well. I don't know if I feel better about things after seeing how nice her house is, but it was nice to get the tour and see how other people live. She's not the least bit pretentious about her home.

Overall we did have a good visit with her. I like her very much as a person.

She showed us an event coming up in January in the city that she really wanted to see, and it looks interesting, so we're all going to try and see it together in January. She has a female friend that might like to come too.

So, I feel a little weird about her seeing our house in the state that it is in, with my clutter and mess that is simply who I am, and it probably smells like cats pretty strongly, after seeing her house.

Now I have to process this, and maybe just try to have some kind of hope that one day our house could be a little more like hers.

We went to get groceries on our way out of town. My husband wanted to get almost nothing, like he always does, and I managed to kind of fake it out and actually get what we needed by just going "oh, we're right here, let me grab this on our way by".

He literally wanted to get eggs and leave the store as soon as possible. I managed to get enough groceries that we won't have to make an extra trip this week, since I didn't go for groceries on Monday, and I'm not planning to go back to town until next week.

Sure, we COULD waste another day and have to go to town again, BUT WHY? WE WERE RIGHT THERE ALREADY.

Sigh.

He never seems to remember that we live half an hour from town, and that every extra trip wastes a whole afternoon. He still thinks like he is on a job site, where he lives in an apartment and every night he can pick up two items for supper on his way home from work.

I learned about the meaning behind the colors of the Irish flag. I did know that it was green, white, and orange, but I didn't make the connection to their religious turmoil.

From Wikipedia: The green pale of the flag symbolises Roman Catholics, the orange represents the minority Protestants who were supporters of William of Orange. His title came from the Principality of Orange but his power from his leadership as Stadtholder of the Netherlands, a Protestant bastion from the 16th century. The white in the centre signifies a lasting peace and hope for union between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland.[8] The flag, as a whole, is intended to symbolise the inclusion and hoped-for union of the people of different traditions on the island of Ireland, which is expressed in the Constitution as the entitlement of every person born in Ireland to be part of the independent Irish nation, regardless of ethnic origin, religion or political conviction.[8][13] (Green was also used as the colour of such Irish bodies as the mainly-Protestant and nonsectarian Friendly Brothers of St. Patrick, established in 1751.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Ireland

Comments

[cf2princessawnw]

First, big big big hugs to you. I'm so sorry for all the term well and ache I can hear in your writing. You asked a very good question to him about had he ever seen his parents fight. If he didn't, then yes every conflict must feel like something horrific because it's not part of a marriage he ever experienced and it probably scares the crap out of him. Especially since he probably sees it as his fault and his inadequacy. I'm not sure if I will ever understand why men especially, although sometimes older women do this too, but men in general if you approach them with a problem, they always feel like it means they're not enough. And in your mind it's that they're not doing enough for this one project or in this one area, and could they please kindly do that. If they weren't enough you'd walk away from them duh. But that's not how they see it at all! They really and truly have far more fragile emotions than we do. That said, no, there are men that can handle things like this in a different manner. But the few that I know that are that way, actually went to counseling when they had marriage problems, and when the wife did not want to continue with the counseling because unbeknownst to everyone she was already cheating, they continued with the counseling and learned amazing skill sets. The one guy I have in mind especially, I have never in my life seen anybody that handled conflict resolution so well. I've heard counselors say time and again that conflict is great in a marriage if you know how to get through it, because it's actually something that can strengthen your marriage and glue you together even stronger. But oh my goodness, just learning how to have conflict resolution between two different people with two different backgrounds and two different expectations of how to resolve things or how problems are going to be handled, and then they're man and woman on top of it all, yeah, that's incredibly rough.

I wish I had answers for you, but all I can say is that my heart goes out to you with a big hug, and at the very least you know that he loves you to pieces. Or all of this wouldn't threaten him so badly. He cares what you think about him so much that he can't take something about it because it scares him of whatever his deepest fear would be, but from the person he cares the most about in the world. And meanwhile, all you want is your dang house to look beautiful! Or at least be finished!!!! I agree that you can't keep having knocked down drag out fights either one of you or for your marriage as a whole. There have to be other practical Solutions you can both agree to and how to handle arguments or conflicts. Would he be willing to read a book with you about conflict resolution? You each get a copy and read and can discuss it? Or would that become a problem? Wishing you the best

[gottawonder]

This is very accurate. Whenever I'm upset about the house, he takes it as striking at the heart of who he is as a person, and it goes straight to "nothing I ever do is good enough, and you don't love me".

It makes it impossible to be constructive about the issues, and then it really shakes me up inside because what I wanted to be a talk about getting the house done starts to feel like questioning our whole relationship.

In these times, it really feels awful. He cannot be reasoned with, and yet, what do I do? Just meekly apologize for ever bringing it up and pretend I just had some kind of a hysteria attack due to hormones, forgive me?

The worst, is that it is unlikely to make a permanent change in how we approach the house. Yes, he might work on the house a bit, but it's not like he's going to magically change into a person who self-motivates to do things that are unpleasant.

Yes, we love each other, and I would say most of the time we're a good team who is very supportive of each other. When we fight like this, it's usually me starting it by being angry over something that he wasn't doing or dealing with (because his way of dealing with things is just to not care enough to bother talking about it), and usually by the time I get angry, it's because nothing happened when I brought it up fifty times before in less aggressive ways.

I've talked to him LOTS about the window frames this winter, framed by asking "if John can't come, is there another contractor we can find?" or "is this something we can do ourselves if we get the right stain from John", or "can we work on installing the shower stall doors over Christmas holidays" or "can we do anything to move the bedroom floor project ahead". Over and over again we have these nice, civil conversations where I ask and he says something non-committal in return, and then another week goes by and nothing at all happens.

By the time I get angry, it's usually because a month or two of me talking reasonably and calmly has not yielded any results at all.

Thank you for your thoughtful and insightful response.

[cf2princessawnw]

Is it accurate to note that neither of you would have seen your parents argue growing up? Or more importantly see them resolve conflict to work together? Conflict as you know happens in any relationship of any kind, but somehow it feels the scariest when it's in a romantic long-term relationship.

As you say, the housing project is going to be a long one, so I do wish you both away through all of that. If he gets upset with you when you're angry, are you able at all to calm down the moment (now that you finally have his attention) and simply say well then what would you like me to do, honestly how do you want us both to solve this (whatever the particular housing situation is). Can't really offer more advice than that, but lately with two different guys, I've realized you can talk at them all day long and make incredible sense and it's pointless. At best they just indulge you. The light bulbs only go off when you get them to think. And process. And that's perhaps the hardest part because guys won't naturally process their own emotional upbringing and backgrounds. Sometimes women won't either, but anyway best wishes to you. Truly.

[gottawonder]

I considered what you said about the parents too.

My Mom's way of being upset about something (like if we made a big mess or wrecked something) was to be blustery and loud, but then it was over once it was dealt with.

I also remember yelling right back at her when I thought she was being unfair, and she would actually consider what I had said. I guess if nothing else, we would express ourselves loudly and very bluntly.

Unfortunately, she also wasn't otherwise affectionate or good with telling you she loved you, so it's not like she would ever come over later and hug you and let you know it was all okay. Basically she got loud and told you to clean up your mess or whatever, and then life went back to the usual afterwards.

According to my older sisters who saw my parents fight all the time, they yelled and fumed and fought like animals, and then Dad made some kind of stupid joke and they laughed their asses off and life went on. I think it was no secret that there were always "things" in their marriage that were irritating problems that never went away.

Mom talked to me about how she hated that Dad would go to farm auctions and buy junk pieces of non-working farm equipment and tried to fix them, but most of the time they sat in rusting piles all over the farm and wasted their money (that they didn't have to waste). When he died, the first things she did is call a junk hauler who bought metal to come and take a bunch of it, and I still remember as a kid there were piles of crap all over the yard that bit by bit got hauled away as Mom could afford to pay someone.

I think the take-home message there, is that marriage isn't all perfect all the time, but if you're lucky enough that a person is honest about the parts that really bother them, maybe you get a chance to work on it to make the marriage better, instead of letting it be the thing they hate forever. Maybe you can even work on it together, or maybe you can find boundaries or limits to make it easier to deal with.

I don't think that ANY relationship is without it's issues. It's how you deal with them together that matters, like if you are willing to do something to make it better, it feels like they actually care about your well-being.

According to my husband, he can't recall his parents ever being angry with him ever, so I guess...what, he grew up with the illusion that he was perfect?

Yes, generally after my initial outburst, I do try to get to the point of just problem solving.

Today I tried to talk again about how we need to move away from feeling like this is a personal attack on him as a person, and to problem solve instead.

At this point, he's now being a baby. He's saying "You're just going to be angry forever until the house is finished". Well, to some degree that's true.

I also said that it's not like I can't still live a normal life and enjoy being with him while we do the work, but there is a strong need for me to always see some progress being made so I can relax.

So, he's all butthurt, but I think at this point, it's what he's choosing.

No, I can't do more than that. As you say, if he's refusing to accept any responsibility for how things are going with the house, is not willing to separate my need to see progress from it being a personal attack (as in, I can love him AND want the house finished at the same time), then his hurt feelings are his choice.

Yet, he is working a bit now on the bathroom door, and he is trying to get on with life, so we'll just keep trying, I guess.

[ratunderpaper]

I mostly know "my way or the highway" types (who say they are not lazy, which means, hm... are they controlling?) or kind and efficient types who, conversely, seem to take pleasure in pleasing those close to them; they don't need to be wheedled or cajoled.

It's hard not to envy being around the latter type. There's less doinkery afoot.

[gottawonder]

My husband actually takes great pleasure in helping others, and does often do thoughtful things for me without me asking.

They are also generally smaller, simpler tasks or items purchased that are shorter term.

SOMETIMES we can have calm, civil conversations about working on the house.

Then, what happens, is we have a stretch where things stall in the work. I can try to have "productive" conversations, and I am met with vague, procrastinating responses that lead me to feel that if I don't get serious about it, the lack of movement could become months and months of stagnation (as has happened before) because he's hit a difficult spot that he doesn't want to deal with.

Sometimes, instead of working on the more difficult thing, he will pivot and just start something new. Like now, we're talking about installing a wood stove, which means he can avoid dealing with the wooden floor in the bedroom, or finishing the window frames.

Thing is, that wood stove area might not get finished either, if he hits a tricky spot with it. Then, he might pivot and do something easy like put up some drywall in the basement.

In instances where he feels pressured by my specific demands to start dealing with the things that are harder and will mean slow, less fun gains, he just loses it because he DOESN'T WANT TO DO THE HARD THING.

Yet, I'm like "what, don't you ever want to be using the big bedroom we could have, or the big bathroom we have planned? None of this is for you at all, only me?". Well, I guess he doesn't care if he ever has a bigger bedroom or bathroom, or if he ever gets to make a nice rec room in the basement.

I'm just so tired of working on the house, and tired of having to "motivate" him to do something that he should care about too.