Relationships

According to my other, I've been in a bad mood for a few weeks. She thinks I'm going through early menopause. Me, I don't know what to think.

All I know is I don't understand the rubber-bandiness of relationships. She and I have been through a few good shouting matches lately. I've been yelling that I'm not getting heard. She's been yelling that I'm not expressing what I want.

I then look back and think, I AM expressing what I want. But what I'm discovering is what one culture thinks of as expressing, another thinks of as mentioning in passing.

I come from a culture of where it's deemed impolite to come right out and ask for something. To do that indicates many layers of rude behavior. Now intellectually, I totally understand that this was a way to keep people subjugated, that with *THAT* big of a population, a society means had to be begotten to keep peace.

What started all this? I told her at 3:30 in the afternoon I was exhausted, that I couldn't deal with getting dinner and I just want to come home. I asked her if we could order out, or if she could cook. Sure, came the response.

At 5:30 I came home. She was playing. She asked numerous times what I wanted for dinner, at the same time saying she was hungry and at the same time letting me know she accidentally got on a "quest" that involved 14 dungeons and she was only in dungeon #3.

I took that to mean, she's busy, she's hungry and she wants dinner. I wouldn't answer her when she asked what I wanted for dinner. She named off several foods, none of which sounded good to me. Finally I knew she was hungry, and she liked pizza so I said okay to that. I'm not sure what happened next but I made the mistake of following my culture in being polite and asked, Did you want me to call?

Yes she said happily, if you don't mind. Well, I did mind. I TOTALLY resented even having to say Did you want me to call, cause I had told her how tired I was.

This led to a huge brouhaha. I was upset that she wanted me to handle dinner, she was upset because all she felt she did was say yes to my offer.

BANG! Culture clash. If I had said nothing and didn't offer, my mind would've tortured me all night saying your partner is hungry and just cause you're tired, you're not going to make sure her tummy is hurting? See, I felt I could see what was coming. She'd hold off on ordering food until the quest was over, then her tummy would've reacted badly to that, then she would've been too sick to be there for me... and instead I would've been there for her.

I had the whole scenario mapped out and I WAS PISSED!

And I was wrong. I should never have anticipated the future... especially since we're both trying to change and therefore I should've given her the benefit of the doubt.

And she was wrong. I did ask, but she didn't hear me. She did apologize by the way.

As we grow with each other, we're still learning to hear each other. But I'm scared. I'm really really scared that we will test the resiliency of this relationship until the tension and the snapback is gone and we will be limply going through life. I do know that this is a direct result of what happened to my parents, that my fear is that we'd end up like them, leading separate lives but still tied together to an anchor of a marriage that was kept afloat only by a fierce fear of hell.

I'm so tired of being afraid.

Filed under Bloodsport, err Relatives and Reveries & Paranoias.