Me and H have had a pretty rocky relationship from more or less the start. We have had good moments and we have two young kids who are everything to us but more and more feels like they are the only reason we stay together.
there are so many things I could write to show the bleakness of our marriage but this just happened and I feel like I’ve clicked that I don’t want to be married to him anymore.
I’ve had the conversation several times with him that I would really like him to say thank you when I serve a meal. I make 95% of the meals for our family and I want it modelled to the kids that they say thank you when they are served. He has probably successfully done this…10% of the time, hence several conversations where I’ve said it’s important to me.
he sometimes says nothing when served and sometimes will say ‘this is good’ or even ‘this is delicious’, but to me it’s just not the same as ‘thank you’.
tonight I served something new and he said ‘this is good’ and then ‘where did you get the recipe’. I told him where and we carried on with the meal and rest of the evening.
in evenings he’s either out in his shed or he’s in the house on his phone. He doesn’t ever seek me out to spend any time with me. I sent him a link for something we needed to buy and then he acknowledged it out loud from where he was sat on the sofa. I went over and we talked about it a bit and then I said, can I say something…I know I’ve said it before and maybe I should just drop it, but I would really like if you would say thank you when I serve your meal.
he got mad immediately and said he did say thank you. I put my head in my hands because I didn’t hear anything (and I would have caught it if he’d said it) and because I’m so exhausted from the instant defensiveness at any sort of comment like this that he takes as criticism.
I said I didn’t hear him, he said he had said it twice but I mustn’t have heard him over the noise of him putting our toddler in his seat, and then he was cringing to himself that he was even thinking about it.
I walked away and said fuck you under my breath. Then he starts calling after me, being nasty and having a problem with me bringing it up. He finally says that I ‘expect too much for what I do’.
it’s just … pathetic really. A grown man can’t take feedback from his wife that she’d appreciate him saying thank you when she puts a meal down in front of him. Wouldn’t most husbands take that on board and do it for their wives? I just despair.
like I said I could write so much more about what’s wrong. I feel like even though I’m terrified about the damage it may do to our kids, this stupid pathetic thing has really made me see that I don’t want this for the next 40 + years of my life.