I'll do whatever you want.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

Oh, come on, man. I post about one disagreement, and you immediately assume the entire marriage is dysfunctional and doomed. Read the third paragraph of post #35 again.

I’m starting to wonder if I want to re-up. There’s been so much of this lately, everywhere on the boards. People talking past each other, hearing what they want to hear, making assertions based on nothing. It’s frustrating as all hell, and I don’t understand why people reply just to say, “No, everything you said is a lie, even though you were there and I wasn’t.”

And for the record, my husband has never hit me. Never.

42

My parents, for all their faults, have been married for 53 years. To me, they have lived in a continual fight my entire life. My mother yells and nit-picks, my father goes days without speaking to her until he blows up every few years and leaves home. There is absolutely no way they should still be married being as miserable as they are.

Thing is, they’re not miserable. :confused: In their own passive-aggressive/co-dependent way, they’re happy. He always comes back to her, and she eventually finds a new topic to harp on. It works for them. It drives me crazy, but for them, it’s normal.

Now I’m not saying that **Rilchiam’s ** marriage is anywhere near as horrible as my parents. I’m saying that *it’s *Rilchiam’s ** marriage. Each marriage is a set of compromises. We each have to choose what we fight over and what we let slide. I don’t think it’s a bad thing that they’ve decided who does what in their home. It works for them.

And she has every right to come in here and blow off steam. It’s good to be able to grumble sometimes to your friends. If she ever decides that her situation should change, I’ll support her. But right now, what works for her, works. I think we should respect that.

43

O.K., the cables suspending my disbelief just parted with a twang.

For what it’s worth, Rilchiam, the part about him loving and caring for you – appearing as it did, for the very first time only in your two most recent posts – could hardly be the part with which I’m having trouble, now, could it? Since all the alarm bells I described were ringing already?

As far as I’m concerned at this point, your husband could be an ogre, or he could be perfect in every way. I don’t know, and I’m not sure what part, if any, of your testimony can be trusted on this point. The only thing I’m not willing to do is what you apparently want: for me to believe he’s both, one at a time, depending on your whim. I’m leaning toward thinking you’re smart enough to mimic slavish devotion to an unrelenting fiend, just to enhance the sympathetic response, but that’s just my guess. You could be as abused and browbeaten and defeated as you seem to be in this thread. Or not, as you also portray yourself.

Your husband’s being mean, you’re complaining about it, and you’re stacking the deck by playing the part of the Grateful Slave. When you get sympathy, you then attempt to erase the original complaint, because martyrs never complain. I half-expect a thread in a day or so describing your amazing/disappointing birthday celebration (Happy Birthday, by the way), but I probably won’t read it.

I might of course be wrong. But please remember that every word I’ve written is sympathetic to you and your well-being. Even now, my advice is not to work for money for the same person who isn’t satisfied with what you give him for free. That has nothing to do with any interpretation of anything you’ve said on either side of the issue (and there’s been plenty of both): it’s just good sense.

DeVena is right that your marriage is your own. As a matter of fact, probably no one should have even read the OP, much less tried to respond to it.

44

What was I supposed to do? Compose an OP that said, “I’m upset with my husband but other than what just happened, he’s a great guy who shows his love in a zillion different ways”? You would just have started calling denial earlier.

So far today, he’s wished me a happy birthday, told me I’m probably the best-looking 37 y/o in town, told me he’ll get my birthday cake on the way home, and gone over plans for what we’ll do on Saturday. He does not have a history of leading me on and then letting me down. I know he’ll do what he’s said he’ll do, because he always has before.

And you seem to be accusing me of scamming for sympathy. If so, you are really reaching. I posted about one thing that happened, not about my entire marriage. Other people jumped to the conclusion that there is a problem with our marriage, and I hastened to dispel that notion. Is that supposed to make me a flip-flopping attention junkie, or whatever you’re saying I am? I posted here because it was too late to call a friend. Next time I will call a friend.

There was a time when my fretting in the OP – “I never thought he’d turn into one of Those husbands” – would have been met with cautious reassurance. “Well, are you sure? Is he like this all the time? Has this been going on for a while?” Now, people just leap to condemn. “He’s an asshole! Make him scrub the floor! Your worst fears and beyond are all TRUE, even though we don’t have enough information yet!” WTF. And you accuse me of starting trouble? No one should have read my thread? More like, people should check themselves before they get out the pitchforks.

45

This is an example of what I mean.

Freud wouldn’t split a hair that fine. Because I said “the nagging control freak” instead of “a nagging control freak,” which was a choice of words that carries no more weight than “redd up,” you take it for granted that there’s a designated “nagging control freak” in my and Mr. Rilch’s relationship at all times? What I was thinking of, when I said that to him, was the stereotypical Jill Taylor kind of wife, which I never want to be. See? A hypothetical NCF, not a role that always has to be filled in our household.

You know, the funny thing is, and I know you’re going to land on my like a ton of bricks for this, but I might as well say it for the benefit of anyone else reading, as if my posts are worth the bandwidth you think they’re wasting…Anyway, what I got out of this is that I might actually be projecting too much. Letting my mom live in our house, figuratively speaking. I should not have let that specter creep in when I was dealing with the situation at hand. I mentioned her twice, and there was a time when people would have picked up on that. That’s really what it was, IMO: I was reacting to something that wasn’t even happening.

And I assure you, I am not lying, to you or myself. I am not in this to get attention, or play games. I thought I could post about something that happened to me; I never thought I would have to defend myself for being upset about one incident.

46

Maybe next time you should just post the responses you want from people like crib notes at the bottom of the page just so we don’t make any mistakes. Everyone I saw except maybe one person who went slightly over the top, but I can even see where he/she was coming from, was responding in good faith to either your first post only:

Where you come off as disgruntled but pre-stepford wife.

Or your first post and your subsequent post-stepford wife missives where he apoligises and is lovey-dovey and all is forgiven (left out for brevity) and we are a bunch of a**-holes for criticising the saintly husband who only wants to buck up the little woman’s esteem.

To many this seems like the typical verbal abuse two-step. Hopefully YMWV.

Color me purple. :confused:

47

Rilchiam, there are a lot of regular posters whose personalities and backgrounds are not firmly fixed in my mind, but I believe you do normally speak well of your husband. And your later posts were perfectly clear that his rough patch at work carried over to home, and that’s not his usual style and he’s apologized.

Happy birthday! and I hope that when he comes home with a tasty birthday cake, you can give him a big hug and kiss. He really does sound like a sweetheart who had a couple of bad days.

48

Rilchiam, with respect, those of us who don’t know you know your husband only as you describe him. And frankly, in your OP, he sounded like an asshole, not to mince words. And you sounded a little too step-n-fetch-it – moving boxes so that he could work out, resolving to dust every day – and I think a lot of people felt you were not describing a healthy relationship.

You feel you’ve clarified. Some people are unwilling to accept those clarifications. Take those refusals with a grain of salt, recognizing that they don’t know you, they don’t know him, and choosing to believe the worst of him after you’ve tried to clarify says more about them than it does about you or your husband. You didn’t ask anyone to sit in judgment on your marriage, and IMO you should consider ignoring those who would presume to do so.

But that all said – if you want us to agree with you that your husband is a great and loving guy, then you probably should describe him that way. Your OP did not describe a great and loving guy. And, yeah, other people will post to complain about what their spouses have done to bug them and it is seen as only a one time event, not a general comment on their relationship – but those “geez, my spouse annoyed me yesterday” threads don’t include the sort of “I’ll do better! I’ll dust every day! I know I can please him!” attitude that was IMO sort of jarring in the OP you posted here. Does that make sense?

49

Yes, it does. But as I said above, having thought it over, that was my projection. He never said I have to dust every day, or up the ante in any way. He never held any threat over my head, saying I have to please him, with some kind of “or else” attached.

Something just happened Wednesday night that paralleled a typical day with my mom. And she was impossible to please, and never appreciated anything, and constantly tantalized me with the hope that if I could just be good enough, someday she would love me enough. It’s not like that with Mr. Rilch, but something in his manner recalled hers so exactly that I was transported right back to 1983, and reacted as I did then. And then when he pulled the “I don’t want to talk any more,” that was the final straw for me, because that’s exactly what she did. But as I said, I discussed this with him, and he’s definitely not her. Unlike her, he cares if I’m upset. She only cared about herself. But Mr. Rilch does love me enough, whether I dust or not.

50

Nobody said he did. The “I can please him, I know I can!” attitude was yours, not an expectation of his, and it just struck some as Stepford-ish, to use a term already used by someone else. Stepfordish: Man says something crabby or insensitive, woman resolves to do better next time. That’s how your OP reads.

Now, as far as I’m concerned, you don’t have to explain any further that, no, that’s not really the case, it was too simplistic, it’s just how you were feeling at the time, whatever. I get that. I’m just pointing out that the tone of your OP justified people’s initial reaction. After you clarified, however (and you have clarified), if some posters choose to disregard the clarification and speculate that their initial reaction was the correct on – well, maybe they’re just jerks, you know? So forget 'em.

And happy birthday. :slight_smile:

51

On my wedding day, my mom took me aside and gave me a piece of advice: “Never tell me when you and your husband fight. You will forgive him. I never will.”

I think the same may be true about message boards. Without the context of all of the good stuff in your marriage, one bad story which casts your husband in a bad light can be enough to convince others that the guy is just no good.

52

That’s great advice. I never told my mom about my problems with my first husband, and my daughter has finally stopped bitching to me about her boyfriend.

Rilchiam, it sounds like your housecleaning standards are fairly high. If it’s becoming a burden to maintain those standards, maybe they should be a bit lower. Do you move beds and clean under them every weekend? I’m thinking a couple of times a year would be plenty. Hell, I haven’t cleaned under mine for a couple of years. (Dust bunnies don’t scare me.)

I’m hoping he’s asking you rather than telling you when he wants something done. Most of us don’t like to be told – that’s for parents and employers, and even then, some consideration is necessary.

53

Yeah, my father’s never hit my mom either. He just very calmly told her he had thought about killing her when she became “too religious” by going on retreat. He became horribly jealous of her friendship with her best friend because he was a guy. He holds all the money and she has to ask for it and bring back exact change and a receipt. She’s all-but-dissertation because even though he supported her going back to school, his meddling made it impossible for her to mingle with colleagues without him embarrassing her, so she left the program. He sometimes doesn’t even call her name, but beckons to her to come where he wants her to go.

But hey, they’ve been married over 40 years and it must work for them.

54

This is meant as sincere advice: Get a Livejournal if you want to vent about fighting with your husband and don’t want to read the posts that comment about what an asshole he’s being. Your OP and your defensive posts since then are really just sad and private stuff like that maybe belongs in a phone call to a friend or a small group; perhaps sharing with thousands of people online isn’t the way to go. You don’t want people to agree that he’s being an asshole, but you want people to feel sorry for you that he has been treating you shitty? Or did you just want to vent your spleen and get no feedback. Probably a huge messageboard isn’t the place for that kind of post.

I’ve been on here since 1999 and I don’t know much about you or your husband- all I have to judge is what you write, and as Jodi said, you didn’t paint a very nice picture. You can hardly be mad that people think he’s a jerk after you described his jerky behavior.

55

For what it’s worth, I think I disagree with the first part of this advice. The forum we’re in is “Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share,” which to me is a perfect place to blow off a little steam about an isolated fight with one’s spouse. I would expect someone with serious marital problems to choose a different forum; why shouldn’t this be an appropriate place to just say, “You know what, my husband/wife/whatever pissed me off today? No big deal, but I’m annoyed.”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the OP was / would have been fine with posts saying “your husband acted like an asshole, or was an asshole,” or whatever. It does seem kind of strange that so many people seem ready to posit an entire pattern of behavior based on a single anecdote told by a person who is explicitly denying the existence of that pattern.

56

the problem everybody is having isn’t even really his attitude in the situation described, per se; the problem is that people look at her attitude of giving the impression that she’s trying so hard to please him and making the inference that he needs her to act in this way, which would qualify as abusive. The fact that the subsequent defenses weren’t included as a qualifier in the original posts raised further suspicions; often abused victims have exactly that sort of attitude. They are convinced that the relationship isn’t abusive and that everything is fine and dandy and loving, and furthermore rationalizing as personal problems what are really the partner’s abusive issues. I think several more people drew that inference after the defensive posts. (Abusive here not meaning physical)
Whether or not this is an accurate description of the situation is difficult to discern, especially after the Charlie Foxtrot pile-on of Mr. Rilch, which IMO was justified based on the OP. The nature of the defense of Mr. Rilch did very little to quell the original sentiment (as I explained above) and possibly fueled the fire.

All of that said, I certainly hope that your defense is accurate and that you are in an equal and loving relationship: as I said in another thread on relationships, the nature of love is such that you never feel as if you have sacrificed, given up, or been compelled to do anything, even if you are changing your habits and compromising, that you are truly gaining from the relationship, not merely “in it”

57

If I had been writing this scene, I would have tried for:
“Why didn’t you fill the humidifier?”

“I just did.”

“Yeah, but why did you wait until I was going to bed to do it?”

“Well I was lugging up a 5-gal can of gas to burn you and your fucking bed down to cinders anyway and I thought to myself, ‘What the hell. Maybe I can save the rest of the furniture after he fries if I have a source of water handy’.”

58

AuntiePam: Yes, he asks; he does not tell. No, we don’t move the beds every weekend; that was just what we did last weekend.

gigi: No, he doesn’t pull any of that crap.

Everyone else: Think what you like. I’ve learned my lesson: never post about my personal life again.

59

Rilchiam: Given your thread title: I’ll do whatever you want.

Your first post, quoted before. Your second post below:

Especially the last paragraph where you don’t come across as being particulary eager to “be working for him soon.”

The start of your third post:

It just seems to this outsider on a message board that he’s being a jerk and you’re bending over backwards to please him. And generally being a victim.

That followed by the reasurances that he’s really, really a great guy, and work is really tough, and it’s really cold out and he’s a better house cleaner than you, but you’re going to do better in the future. Just came off to some of us as, well, what engm4tic said way better than me.

I’m sorry I misunterstood the situation. It’s your life, you know the true situation. Why quit posting about stuff because a couple of strangers misinterpreted your situation based on snippits of your life posted on a message board?

Signing off, good luck, have a good one

[jerk]sinjin[/jerk]

60

If you’re referring to “long story; don’t ask,” what I meant by that was that I didn’t want to explain the nature of the work or what he and his partner are doing right now to court clients.

Really? Because I thought a victim would merely have stayed out of his way and hoped he got over it soon and that the victim wouldn’t do another dumb thing. What I did do was address the situation while it was fresh and tell him that I would not tolerate that kind of talk. Hardly bending over backwards, IMO.

Because as BoBettie pointed out, this board now has a very large membership, much larger than when I joined. Nowadays, not everyone here is familiar with my postings, and some people enjoy stirring up strife far more than they enjoy a discussion. No one’s obligated to care about what I post, certainly, but there was a time when no one would have felt obligated to claim that they “didn’t know what part of [my] testimony can be trusted, if any,” and accused me of “trying to enhance a sympathetic response,” either. So there’s nothing to be gained, and quite a bit to lose, from posting about my personal life.