Regression

At some point, I started to handle my relationship with My Husband like a grade-school girl. I think that I reached an extreme level of discomfort without really allowing myself to admit that I had. I began to cringe any time he complemented me (Although this is something that he did often, and not always in the most appropriate of ways. He'd say things like, "Damn, you look good in that shirt." in this lascivious tone that I can't convey in words.), I began to react with a violent "NO!" when people asked if we were romantically involved. I started feeling horrible about the fact that he just kept paying for everything and for the fact that I let him help me out so much (not monetarily, but through friendly favors and gestures). I began to hate the familiarity with which he addressed me and the way that he acted like he knew me oh-so-well. I now know that part of that has to do with my general fear of and discomfort with intimacy in general, but some of it was quite specific to MH.

Of course he noticed. Of course it hurt his feelings. But I was too selfish and too dismayed to pay much attention to how my behaviour and the relationship in general were affecting MH. At some point, it must have been too much for him, because he blew up.

We were on the phone, I remember that I was working at Starbucks at the time and I was talking to him in the back room just before my shift started. This was only 6 weeks or two months after the debacle with the secret-telling. I can't remember at all what set him off, but he just started laying into me. He said that I was inconsiderate, that I treated him like crap, that I was disrespectful whenever we were in public. I was indignant; I got defensive. I see now that he was half-right. In the light in which he envisioned our relationship, I was being disrespectful. But in my head, I was just treating him the way that I treat my other guy friends. Flip and The Figa Master don't get offended if I'm checking out other guys while we're hanging out. They don't get mad at me for mingling in a social situation instead of focusing all my attention on them. But My Husband did. Although he knew that I wasn't interested in him romantically, he still wanted to simulate a relationship when he was with me.

Neither of us had any interest in trying to understand the other's viewpoint. We both believed that we were right and we were the one that was being wronged. I think that we both said, "Fine," then hung up. We didn't speak again for nearly three months.

Lyrics of the Day

"This will all fall down. Like everything in the world, this too must end. And all the words we said we can't take back." Matchbox Twenty Last Beautiful Girl