I stopped fencing in part so she could do her hurling. (She doesn’t know this btw… but fwiw there were other reasons I stopped having to do with the newbie-friendliness of the fencing club, so I’m not claiming pure selflessness here.)
And her hurling is mostly paid for by her monthly spending budget and some extra money she pulls in doing some babysitting.
Don’t pretend you know all about how other people “can” spend their money.
Yay, another doper who doesn’t read for comprehension. The line about the book (which was only half serious anyway fwiw) was talking about a hypothetical situation in which we aren’t dealing with kids.
Thanks, I do understand it a little better now than I did yesterday morning.
To me it was hard to see how she could ask, or even hint, that we all arrange ourselves around her personal thing, because I don’t think I’d want people to do that for me. (If they did I’d actively dislike it.) But in part this was because I didn’t really comprehend why she wanted me there in the first place. Some posts here have reminded me of the reasons why that makes sense.
Hi there. This is a false statement, as should be clear, if not from the OP, but from the rest of the thread, as evidenced by the fact that I go to the games. That is because I care enough to see it.
As long as you go, and sigh and grimace through every miserable second, and offer her halfhearted encouragement, and start a thread to ask why she selfishly demands your attendance despite your obvious displeasure and desire to be anywhere else, that’s really all that matters.
Really? Because it sort of feels like you are fencing with us now.
I mean come on. Haven’t you ever seen one of those films where the main character is in the big game or big recital or whatever and looks into the stands to see if his father/mother/wife/girlfriend/mentor/Chuck Norris decided to show up? And then they get said because they aren’t there, but then they show up at the last minute and it turns the game around?
I get it: I want the person who’s nearest and dearest to me in this world to share the moments that are the most important to me.
OTOH, I think that desire should take into account what a burden it might be under certain circumstances for the other spouse to be there to share those moments. The fact that, in your case, sharing such moments means mobilizing four kids as well as your own self, means IMHO that your wife needs to be a lot more selective about using that phrase than if it were just you and her.
In this right-now instance, if the kid with the fever is well enough to go by game time (and isn’t hurling or anything ;)), you pack up the kids and go.
Then some night later this week, after the kids are in bed, you have a talk with your wife about putting some limits on this.
But I’m not imagining things, dude. You wrote this:
Please don’t accuse me of making false statements when I’m simply responding to statements you’ve made, as is evident in posts of yours that I’ve directly quoted.
So I repeat myself, this time with feeling since it seems you wanna play the misunderstood martyr game. *Have you told her that you don’t care to see the games? * Of course you haven’t, and you know damn why you shouldn’t. What that reveals is that this whole “I don’t get it” is increasingly looking like passive aggressive obtuseness on your part.
I think you are over analyzing this. Assume he is operating in good faith: he accepts that this is important to his wife, and intends to give her what she needs without understanding. However, he’d like to understand, as well. He’s curious why she feels this way, because he doesn’t share that frame of reference. But he can’t really ask her, because to do so suggests he has reservations about the whole accept/support thing, which he does not.
So what would you have him do? How could he gain insight to something that doesn’t make intuitive sense to him without being accused of passive aggressive bullshit?
If he can understand–on an emotional, emphathetic level–why it would be hurtful for her to know he isn’t interested in seeing her games, it doesn’t require a leap in social cognition to understand why his presence at the games are meaningful for her. They are intimately related concepts. To be able to understand someone’s feelings sometimes means being able to deduce certain things from other similar things.
I don’t know how old his kids are, but they will likely expect him to inconvenience himself to see their performances too. Will he “get” why this is a natural desire in their case, but not his wife’s? Because again, if he can understand this in his kids, extrapolating this empathy to his wife is truly a no-brainer.
Frylock would do well if he could stop with the combative defensiveness, and actually listen to the opinions that he has voluntarily solicited. I mean, I can understand he wouldn’t enjoy hearing that he’s selfish or self-absorbed, but if he’s going to react to any and every thing that offends his self-image, he has come to the wrong place for advice.
There’s no doubt that because I have read other threads by you about your spouse, I’m reading this op differently than if it had been written by someone else.
Having said that, I’m wondering, is there a hobby that she could have that you would enjoy supporting?
I’m coming into this not really remembering much about your personal situation, but with the “bring the kids” aspect, and as somebody who’s about to have her identity devoured by motherhood, I suspect that having the kids see her do something for herself, that only she does, that’s her own personal interest, might have a lot to do with it. Even when men participate equally in parenting, I think it’s women who tend to get their identities absorbed into the whole thing. My husband and I have talked at length about how important it is to us to have our kid see us have our own stuff as individuals and also our own relationship as a couple, not just as parents.
Also, I mean, I know I’m just echoing what other people have been saying, but yes, to most people it means something when you go see or help them do the thing they do. Or act interested in it. Or help out, or whatever. I promise you, I had other things I could have been doing a few weekends ago than hauling my pregnant ass up to Charlotte to help my husband man his Dark Shadows fan table at a convention. I’ve helped out with his website in the aspects that I’m actually interested in - I do a podcast with a friend on old movies, I’ve contributed film essays to his books, but I care, like, 2% of my life cares about Dark Shadows. The thing is, my husband cares a lot of his cares about it, he’s put a tremendous amount of work into his website, he’s won awards for it, etc. It means a lot to him, and me helping out or just listening when he goes on about it or whatever means that I care about the things that are important to him.
Look, I went to a midnight show of the Tim Burton movie with him, and a) I am way too old to go to midnight movies on work nights, and b) that movie SUCKED. But I knew it was going to suck and I couldn’t let him face it alone. We put up a unified front. You know, “for better or for worse”, that’s what we vowed.
Actually, where I have been combatively defensive, it has been where people have offered unsolicited opinions, i.e., opinions about things I didn’t ask about. This was made worse by the presence of unfair assumptions that are not supported by the OP.
Alot of the helpful posts in this thread have served to remind me of things I kind of know on reflection. But the above is something I honestly hadn’t even considered. Thanks for that. She often worries about how our kids (our daughter most especially) will understand the role of women based on our familial arrangement. That that could have something to do with this I hadn’t even thought about, but it’s completely plausible.
You’ve been around the block a bit, so you should know that when you open yourself up for analysis in a public forum, people will often color outside the lines in uncomfortable ways.
My mom stayed home with me, and looking back I think it was really healthy that she dragged me along (because she didn’t have a choice sometimes!) when she’d go to play tennis with friends or volunteer in the hospital gift shop, because that was Her Stuff - not my dad’s stuff or kid stuff or family stuff.
The inconvenience is the whole point.
Think of it like jewelry. If all jewelry meant was just shiny metal you could use aluminum instead of silver or platinum. You could wear your shiny baubles for a fraction of the price and use the rest on something you would enjoy. In fact aluminum at one point was very expensive and was used in jewelry. Then a way to make it cheaply was found and rich people stopped using it for jewelry. The expense is the whole purpose, it shows you care a lot when you give jewelry because it costs alot and you don’t spend money on people you don’t care about.
Likewise, the more a hassle it is to see your wife play, the more it means you love her. Because you obviously would not sacrifice for someone you don’t care about the more you sacrifice the more it means you care.
I didn’t mean to indicate I was surprised by any of it.