June 11, 2014


Wednesday - Cloudy and now rainy

A horrible, horrible day.

F took today off work today and "graced" me with his presence.  He was a huge jerk all day, wouldn't let me get on with the stuff that I needed and wanted to do, and kept whining about wanting to go to the new aquarium.  

With my workshop coming up next week, I really wanted to get a lot of work done, but I wasn't able to do it.  I have no wish to go to the aquarium…yes, it is new, but so what?  He would say that he'd go by himself, I'd tell him that was fine and then he'd get mad at me.  

This basically went on all day. 

I scanned my cards from last night then ran them to the post office.  While I was there I deposited some of my coins and also bought some new stamps.  Yay me.

After I came home I tried to talk to F but only made it worse.  He is annoyed that I never go to bed before midnight (actually he said 10:00pm) and that I don't get up with him in the morning.  But honestly, why should I?  All the TV that I like to watch is on after 10:00pm, and I'm a night owl.  

I am now in the process of deciding what I want to do.  
I took myself out for a cheap and not great dinner tonight too.  I went cheaper than yesterday. I don't want to spend all of my money before my break.  

Neither of us talked to each other after I came back.  I am just heartsick.  I don't understand what is wrong with us.  We had such a lovely weekend, really lovely, and the week has been just awful.  

That's it for me.  I can't write anymore.  Tomorrow I hope he'll go back to work and leave me in peace. Night.

4 comments:

Crafty Tokyo Mama said...

I don't have any advice, but commiserate with your situation. You have the patience of a saint. I applaud that you at least try to talk things out. Too bad DH just yells back. Sheesh. I hope things get better soon.

Helen said...

Thanks. They haven't yet. :-(

Orchid64 said...

You can take anything I say with an enormous boulder of salt, but, after reading your blog for a very long time, there seems to be a pattern of behavior on F's part which says, "you are not adapting to my lifestyle in the way I think you should." You said some time ago that he remarked on your eating Japanese food twice in one day (and doing so with surprise). He would only remark on that if he felt you weren't interested in Japanese food. You also said he seemed surprised when you said you missed Canadian food. It seemed as if he felt you'd have forgotten it and learned to love Japanese food by now.

Could it be that he expects you to behave more like a Japanese wife and adapt to his preferences because he's the breadwinner? That is, cook the food he likes, watch the shows he likes, and get up and go to bed according to his schedule (and do it all without complaint)? He seems to regularly get upset at you for not conforming to his expectations and wishes and, instead of telling you straight out, he gives you the silent treatment, storms out or off, etc.

I don't know if he'll talk to you about things (it doesn't seem he will) or that he'd even own up to things if you talked about his problems. It might be helpful to negotiate some sort of compromise such that each of you gets a bit more of what you need without all of the difficulty? If you hammered out an understanding, then maybe he wouldn't get so mad as both of you would be acting in accord with some agreed upon way of doing things? It's just a thought... but, again, this is a very uninformed bit of feedback. I can't really know what things are like and this is guessing.

I really feel for you because living with that daily tension and mixed signals must be so difficult. I hope that things get better soon.

Helen said...

Thanks Orchid...From reading my blog myself, I realized that this has often been a problem in June...it seems to go in cycles. It could be with the advent of the rainy season, his back hurts more than usual and I'm the convenient scapegoat to take it out on.

I don't want to say too much here...but other options are being thought about and looked into. Nothing firm yet though.

Part of this may be the whole thing that Japanese people like to criticize their family members/co-workers/team members...He might feel that he's trying to improve me, but of course that isn't what I take it to be. Besides...how can you improve on perfect ;-) ?