I had a session with Tillie, then Bob and I sat down for a long talk this afternoon. I talked about how ashamed he could make me feel and how often comments he made hurt my feelings. How he needed to keep these things under consideration because we were raising three girls who were looking to him as to how men were supposed to act towards women and would think that his example he set was the right one. When it wasn’t and hadn’t been for a long time.
I don’t know how much headway I made. He went back to that was how he was raised, etc. and how teasing was just a way to communicate and I said “In your family I understand that. I’m saying that in my house, where I live, I’m not going to live like that on an everyday basis.” WE talked through a lot of things–I told him how I had realized that I had been conditioned to think that love meant abuse and abusing feelings was something that people did when they loved you and how I realized that that was not right. That was not how to treat people you love.
I said I wanted to show him I loved him by doing for him but that it was not just how the world worked but a CHOICE I made to voluntarily do things for him. And that he needed to respect my choice and appreciate it and not think that what I did for him was just his due as the breadwinner. He said that he didn’t mean to downgrade me and I might be putting too much into his words. So we will see if things change some around here.
Pray for us as we sort this out.
Not Quite Right 