Whilst it may seem that things are going great on the surface, the reality is often something totally different. All signs point to the house sale going through without a hitch and she is very excited about this move. But beneath this veneer of wonderful unity, she is really pissing me off.
I talked to her today about us spending more time together. Every night for the last week or so, she has been in bed before nine. Sometimes earlier. Last night, half past seven. I’ve moved my main evening entertainment from the PC upstairs to the laptop or kindle downstairs so as to be able to spend more time in her company. I’ve never been a big lover of Emmerdale Square or Eastenders Street, but I still sit through them, pay cursory attention so that a conversation can occur, and I’m either twittering, facebooking, or generally fooling around on the internet; or reading. All healthy pastimes. Even if I do say so myself. I can’t play Age of Conan on the laptop because graphically it cannot handle it, so I forego my Hyborian Adventures and opt instead for something slightly more sociable. But it isn’t enough. Not only do I need to be in the same physical space, it would seem, but I also have to be engaged in the same activity; even if this activity is something as banal as keeping up-to-date with the latest baby-killing-plane-crashing-gay-bashing escapades of a fictional London Borough. I’m not interested.
Despite this effort on my behalf to spend some time together, she’s still heading up to bed as soon as the final episode of Weatherfield Farm has finished leaving me to my own devices. I am beginning to wonder why I made the effort to move my evening entertainment downstairs. I prefer my widescreen beast of a machine to the laptop. I’ve taken a hit for marital unity and it’s not being appreciated.
So, today she told me the reason why she is going to bed so early is because she is tired. There’s a no brainer if ever I heard one.
And, the reason she’s tired is because (and allow me to embellish and paraphrase to a degree):
I am a lazy, boyfriend who does nothing around the house meaning has to do every thing and is therefore always tired.
Ahh…
Let’s for moment forgive the blatant inaccuracies in this statement. My chief concern isn’t around the overlooking of what I do actually do and instead is related to why this wasn’t raised before. Why wait until I try with a positive statement of intent (I want to spend more time with you) to drop a negative statement of objection (you’re rubbish and I hate you)? By all means, if you feel that you’re getting bogged down with housework then tell me about it, but can you tell me about it before it becomes too much of a problem? Maybe I should just know. Maybe I should be able to look around and see that things need doing. Maybe I do, but they’re just not as important to me as they are to you. As long as things are tidy I’m not anal about clean. This is the nature of things when you have a young family. Stuff gets messy. You learn to get over it, or you wear yourself out trying to keep up with it.
I guess I’m just pissed off that my bold attempt to spend more time as a couple in the context of full-time work and full-time family has been turned from something that could have been good into a bitter argument about who does what. House work is dull. That is the brutal and obvious truth. I’m not adverse to it, I just prefer to avoid it as long as possible. When that becomes an issue it needs to be discussed rather than hiding away from the subject and hoping that it will go away.
Of course, I’m not perfect when it comes to discussing things that bother me. But I do try to make an effort to fix them. More on that another time.
