Ok, I have no idea why this bothers me and I don’t even know what to call it. My husband is a “come here” guy. Something he thinks is interesting and wants to show me - hey, come here! Nuclear apocalypse - hey, come here! Why the hell wont he just tell me why he wants me to get up, trudge to wherever he is, so that he can reveal the surprise like some sort of performative art ? I never know if it’s going to be legitimate, a disaster, or something stupid. The walk to wherever he is is insanely stressful because the whole time I’m running through all possible horrible scenarios (we’ve had a lot of issues at the house lately so I never know if I’m going to find water in the basement or raccoons in the attic or a hole in my foundation, or just him looking at a funny cat video). I’d rather he say “hey, babe, something is happening wherever/whatever, come see this.” Instead I have to have the whole performance and reveal and I fucking hate it. Anyone else know what I’m talking about or am I just mental ?

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    fedilink
    21 year ago

    One thing about benign intent - it does not always matter.

    One of the things about the female experience is that there are a lot higher instances of people treating you like a child or a dog. The more you are subjected to a disrespect the shorter your fuse between the incident and the emotional response. OP has stated that this is not her first time broaching the issue with her husband. Moreover women are constantly conditioned to ignore their own feelings because people’s actions “aren’t coming from a bad place” and told to “consider the feelings of the other party.” Less often are they given space to just lay out the unvarnished reasons being what they think about something and request solidarity and understanding without the moral filter of “well that’s not very nice!” applied.

    The question was not "Why is he doing that? " the original question here was "why does this bother me?/ Am I alone in feeling this way about this thing? "What is actually being requested is a sounding board for her feelings, not a defense of the husband’s intent.

    If she thought it came from a bad place she likely would not be trying to rationalize her own feelings to help meter her response or be trying to explain her needs more accurately.