Chances are he just wasn’t thinking, and just wanted to play computer games, and didn’t realize that he was hurting you.
Regardless of how many times you’ve discussed it in the past, it’s up to you to tell him that you need to be snuggled when you need to be snuggled.
Marriage will be a lot easier if you communicate with him before you get angry, rather than afterwards. What seems obvious to you will not seem obvious to him, and vice versa.
If, on the other hand, you say “dear, I need to be snuggled”, and he responds, “no, I’m going to play WoW”, then you’ve got problems…
Yeah, but if you tell your husband, “When you do X, it really hurts me,” and then he forgets all about it and does X again, I think that’s a legitimate complaint. It’s not like remembering to take the trash out on Thursday, after all.
He forgot, for whatever reason. We don’t know what was going through his mind. Give him the same courtesy that you’d give one of your girlfriends if they forget…remind him, by just gently saying “dear, I need to be snuggled” at the first sign that he’s going to leave the room. It only 2.1 seconds to say those words, and think of all of the complications that it avoids.
I’m not saying she shouldn’t speak up. But, in that situation, even if I did speak up, I’d still be hurt that he didn’t put the necessary effort into remembering. And I don’t think that’s so terribly unreasonable. I make a special effort to remember it when my loved ones tell me something important like that, and I would consider myself a jerk if I forgot all about it.
My question would be what the relevance of being married last Friday has on the situation.
Scenario 1) This problem has exsisted for a long time and you thought that once you were married things would somehow change.
Somewhat common flawed thinking (not necessarily by you) but women sometimes think marrige will somehow change the man and solve certain behavioral problems. Men see marriage as commiting to how things have always been.
Scenario 2) It’s rare that he does this and it threw you that he chose to do it so soon after being married.
Be patient. You just got married and if you believe it will last you have 365 days per year for the next 50 years to snuggle, fight, make-up over and over and over.
One act disappears rather quickly when you spend so much time together.
Men still need alone time even after being married. Even if it means letting him go shopping by himself, letting him play video games, letting him go hang out with his friends. He’s still going to sleep by your side every night for now until forever right?
He just went through a two week “flurry of activity”. His alone time should be allowed to not include you especially when it’s only for less than an hour.
We are. But we’ve only been married for almost two years (tomorrow is our anniversary :)), and we hadn’t even known each other a year when we got hitched, so I think you’re probably better qualified to give advice! Because, really, do you feel like your relationship is much different since the vows than it was before? I’m sincerely asking, because Skip and I didn’t even have time to shack up before we got married (though I wouldn’t have had any problems with that), so I dunno, but I’ve always imagined that living together is a lot like being married (except maybe without health insurance benefits and so forth, but emotionally pretty much the same).
Now that I’ve said that, I realize that I’m just assuming you were living together before the marriage; I mean, isn’t that what all the kids are doing nowadays?
But none of that helps you, does it? OK, advice, advice . . . well, the best advice I ever heard regarding marriage (besides “Carry a big stick”) is that when you’re in a disagreement, you should always stop and ask yourself if it’s at all possible that the other person is misunderstanding something . . . or if you are.
That, and watch the cheese consumption close to bedtime.
I’m pretty sure we’re still married, but each night is a surprise, so let’s tune in later this evening when we both get home and see what happens.
As for your husband: as others have said, communication is the best way of handling it. The way I see it (even if I don’t always practice it) is that you need to tell him when you’re feeling slighted. Sure, there’s temptation in keeping it to yourself for a grand ol’ time of righteous anger (or righteous irritation if you’re not all that angry), but in the end, the only way for this to be resolved is for you to bring it to his attention.
As much as I’d like for auntie em to read my mind, it just doesn’t happen. What’s obvious to me isn’t always so obvious to her–and vice-versa. It’s important for any person in a relationship to recognize that; if you find yourself getting upset numerous times because he’s not attending to your needs (and yet he’s normally a wonderful, caring fellow), then it’s possible that he’s just not picking up on your hints.
And sometimes, yes, the partner forgets or doesn’t comprehend the level of importance a particular issue has to the other person. In case like that, where the forgetfulness is not malicious, then patience and communication are again needed. But if you keep it to yourself, you’re just going to let it fester and get out-of-hand.
Moreover, I think it’s important to remember that your partner probably wants his own alone time. I love being married–she’s the best thing to happen to me (even better than peanut butter cups)–but even just two of us living together in a big house makes it seem crowded at times. When you’ve just had company over for an extended stay; when you’ve been endlessly hanging out with friends or co-workers and haven’t found the time to stop and relax; when dealing with high-stress situations such as weddings and party-planning, that’s when the subtle or not-so-subtle cry for “alone time!” results in him playing on the computer, or either of you reading a book without paying attention to the other. Being able to be by one’s self is important; try to take that into consideration, because if he feels that you’re trying to take that away from him, his resentment might flare up, too. And at that point, when you’re both feeling slighted and misunderstood, you’re probably not communicating as much as you’re just throwing words past one another.
Well, none, really, other than that it means that we haven’t seen much of eachother at all in the last two weeks, what with his family staying with us for the whole week prior to the wedding, and being in another state until just that night. It’s not the wedding itself, particularly because as Auntie Em points out above, we’ve been married for a long time before saying the vows publicly. It’s just the fact that we really hadn’t spent any time together in a while.
Maybe a little of this. He has never actually done this prior to the long talk we had about it the first time. But you’re right, and it’s one of the reasons I got over it pretty quickly. For the record, we discussed it the next morning, I told him why I’d been so upset, and he agreed that it was a poor choice of timing. We do have the whole next two weeks to do nothing but WoW, after all.
Oh god, of course he does. I hope it doesn’t come across that I’m demanding every second of his time and attention, I just wanted a few minutes of post-sex snuggling… you know, at least until my respiratory rate returned to normal
Clearly you’ve never played an online, massively multi-player RPG. A World of Warcraft session means he’s not surfacing until at least two am… which is completely fine with me --I play, too-- except that he could have given me ten minutes, first.
