In a previous article I wrote about some behind-the-scenes drama I’ve been enduring with the big changes in my marriage. Drama that could have threatened it even this early on in our new arrangement–-if I’d let it.
I’ll get to the part about the salvation strategies I employed in another article, but first I’ll give you an idea of why I needed to call on them at all.
Honeymoon’s Over
Today marks a week and a half since my mom and I returned home. (Well, to my existing home and what is becoming her new one.)
The first few days of the first week were polite ones. Everyone was being extra sensitive and considerate to everyone else. Wayne and I relinquished all rights to the television and watched whatever shows my mom likes. (It helps that we have that DVR. Wayne knows he can catch up on all his favorites so he truly doesn’t mind turning over the remote.)
But my walking schedule, writing schedule, volleyball schedule, house cleaning and errand running schedule, cooking schedule, even playing with the pets schedule all had to be amended. I felt overwhelmed, off track, and hopelessly behind. By Saturday, when I learned my laptop had completely fried and all my revisions to my latest novels were lost, I was beyond distraught.
Tantrums and Text Messages
I purchased the laptop on my own without consulting Wayne. It was a bad buy. I knew it. (After the fact.) Wayne knew it right when he saw it. It came as no surprise to either of us it had fried so fast. (I just bought it last year.)
Even if it’s still under warranty, it’s better to get a new one. I didn’t get enough memory and it runs super slow. Saturday morning I marched in as Wayne was getting out of the shower and demanded he help me find a new laptop.
Most people don’t respond well to people demanding something of them and Wayne is no exception. Especially when I was being so insolent and overbearing. He responded in kind (you get what you give after all) which incited my temper even more.
We didn’t speak to each other until lunch a few hours later.
After lunch my sister started text messaging me. Even though Wayne and I had made peace by this time, I noticed him getting edgy again. By that night he let me have it.
It’s Not Okay
Our lives have had to change dramatically with very little warning or preparation. Wayne does not resent my mom for this. He does, as I’ve stated before, resent my sister’s attitude about shirking any responsibility and expecting us to shoulder it all just because we’re married and Wayne makes a fairly decent living.
Wayne, as I’ve also alluded to time and again, works his rear end off. His job is excruciatingly demanding. Most people are lucky to last a year doing his kind of work. He made it almost two and a half the first time and it’s why we almost moved last year.
He chose to go back to it, but he does not want to feel trapped. Which he does now that my mom is here. He feels even more guilty about the long hours, the travel, and leaving me alone to handle even more duties. Again, he wants to help my mom and is happy we are in a position to do so, but he does resent my sister. (There is even more of a history of crap things she’s purposely done to not only me but to Wayne. How she’s acted this time, however, is the final straw for him. He can not find any more forgiveness in his heart.)
And because he can’t, he can’t understand how I can. He does not think it’s okay I’m being nice to her. He does not think it’s okay for me to text her as if everything’s peachy and normal.
Saturday night he made this clear. After a few heated words between us, there was no goodnight parting before he went upstairs, and certainly no goodnight kiss. Sunday morning there was no good morning kiss either.
Worse, the tension had intensified. He wouldn’t look me in the eye and wore a perpetual scowl. He very, very, very rarely holds a grudge longer than overnight. Likewise, I can count on one hand the times he’s avoided me like that.
“Things are bad. Very bad,” I knew.
Dire would be a better word. In my heart I knew they were. And as I found out later Sunday morning, things were as bad as I feared.
But they weren’t entirely doomed, as I’ll explain in the final installment of what has turned into a mini-series.
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