Worst Week Ever

This week has been so hard.

First of all, the presidential election has sparked so much anger, sadness, and ugliness across the nation.  Friends are fighting friends, and Facebook is literally exploding with news of protests, racist backlash, and fear.  The silent Trump supporters who kept quiet before are lashing out, and there are a lot more friends who were for him than I knew.  I voted for Clinton.  My husband didn't.  I felt conflicted about that, and he may have heckled me a bit on my very general I Voted post in which I didn't say for who.  I know he has his reasons and it's not an issue between us.  It can't be.  We're married.  Other people made judgy comments against him, and I actually ended up deleting the whole post.   

Second of all I still can't sleep.  I had exactly one good night of sleep over the last four weeks.  I felt like a million bucks the next day.  I felt human, but it didn't last.  It seems to have shifted from laying in bed all night to eventually falling asleep and then waking up at 2am or some other such early ungodly hour.  On the weekends, if I wake up at 1:30am I just get up and watch TV until I feel sleepy enough to try again, but during the work week I feel like I need to rest and stay in bed.  This morning I was awake around 3ish and gave up around 6am.  I went to bed with hunger pangs for some unknown reason even though I had enough calories.  I was really hungry so I got up and ate breakfast.

The biggest thing making this feel like one of the worst weeks of my life is that I finally got around to asking my husband if something was wrong or if he was mad at me for any reason.  We talked the first weekend after Hawaii but only because I called after not hearing from him all week.  After that, it was very few short texts during the week and no talking for two weekends.  Two Sunday's ago I broke down and had a good cry about it, because it hurt so bad.  I went another week without saying anything, until I asked and finally got my answer.  He's upset about me not coming for Thanksgiving and rather than tell me how hurt he is by that he chose to distance himself from me.  He says he was going to say something when he came home.  Next month.  In the meantime I was basically just going to be ignored without any explanation.

We texted back and forth about it.  I was at work, and then because I hated having all of this done via text I went to my car and called him.  I told him he needs to communicate.  How can I do better or fix something if I don't know that you have a problem?  He says I knew he really wanted me to come, which is true, and that after he kept asking he gave up.  He says I prioritize work over him and anything else it has bothered him for a long time.  He is the one who always has to stay home for house repairs.  Granted, he was able to work from home in the beginning, and has a more flexible schedule.  He gets off earlier and can arrange his hours as needed but I'm straight 8-5 with no exceptions, but it's still true.  I like to hoard my paid time off.  Also, while we're at it he is also upset that I don't initiate sex often.  He mentioned it about a year-ish ago and I did better for a while and then it fell off.  Why am I just hearing about this again after a year?  Because if he says something and it doesn't get change he gets tired and tells himself why bother.  Instead of telling himself those things he needs to tell me!  Initiating sex is awkward and hard for me for whatever reasons, and if it makes him feel bad and it's happening more often, he needs to speak up.  I am not a machine.  I am not perfect.  If I fall off, and slip into old habits I need to be reminded.  How many times have I had an issue and had to tell him more than once?  Over and over and over.  When he was playing Destiny for 8 hours per day, I told him and he scaled back.  You would think he would understand that I actually wanted to spend time with him for more than the 10 minutes while he was falling asleep before bed, but he didn't so I had to tell him.  He got better for a little while and then it started up again so I told him again.  I don't like wasting precious time feeling upset and distant from him, plus it's just too upsetting for me to feel that way.  If he gets tired and just lets it fester all of that frustration builds up until there is a breaking point and that is exactly what has happened.  When you say nothing about bothersome issues you are giving up on the situation and ultimately the relationship.

After we talked, I accidentally left my lights on in my car when I got out.  I was so flustered, I don't even remember turning them on.  My car wouldn't start and I had to get a battery jump.  That was the icing on the cake that was election day.   

I wanted to go.  I knew he really wanted me to come.  I can't argue with that, however he did not verbalize to me how it made him feel that I wasn't coming.  I just thought it was a disappointment for both of us not that he was disappointed in me.  That he felt he wasn't a priority.  That I choose work over him, and didn't want to waste time coming in the winter.  That he felt spending time with him wasn't important enough to me.  I don't blame him.  It was wrong of me not to come, but I really didn't see any way out of it with work and also I didn't think it mattered that much to HIM.  There was no question that I would be devastated if he didn't come to Hawaii because I told him so, but I didn't realize how affected he would be by not having me.  He is so cavalier about so many things.  He does his own thing, he is generally unaffected by things, and is pretty much whatever about almost everything.  I know he loves me, but at the same time his lack of emotion combined with my low self esteem makes me feel that he doesn't care, so while I felt bad about the situation I figured he's a big boy.  He doesn't need me.  He'll be fine.  He will find something else to do and it's no big deal.  That was my assumption.  He assumed that I knew just how important it was to him and how it made him feel.  I didn't.  

So when he asked me to come for 11 days I said I only have 5-6 days max including travel time it broke down from there.  In my mind it doesn't make sense to travel internationally so far, spend all that money on such a tight window during a time when flights get cancelled right and left.  I would see him just two weeks later.  I accept that like it or not having a job limits me from doing what I want when I want.  Being practical and sensible trumps all, and I have a responsibility to work.  That's life.  I don't get to jet across the world at will and I have to make financially responsible and sensible decisions.  It is how I'm wired, and I couldn't see beyond that.  My husband doesn't see it that way, and instead of telling me how that kind of attitude made him feel he shut down, and here we are.  I did something hurtful.  He became distant.  I react to his being distant and back off as well and we are in this horrible cycle of negativity that chips away at the relationship.  If this goes on for too long whatever problem you had gets bigger and it may be too late to fix.  And that's the thing.  All of these things are fixable.  We are both reasonable people who we want to have a good relationship.  We are capable of making an effort when we are asked to, but if there is no communication there is nowhere to go but down and it doesn't have to be that way.

I broke down the next day and texted him that my heart was so heavy and that I was emotionally exhausted.  Because of me?  He asked.  Yes!  It affects me deeply when my husband ignores me.  He says he just gets distant when he's upset (which I know) and that it actually means he cares.  The thing is, that behavior sends just the opposite message.  I literally have to block him out of my head because how distant he has become is hurting so much.  It hurts that he is not interested in my well being.  We don't speak/text and that when I'm excited about something or sad about something or just want to tell him about my day I don't because his behavior literally tells me that he doesn't care.  I want to know how he's doing but I don't ask because it hurts too much when he doesn't ask about me.

I said if we could find a flight that wasn't super sky high I will screw over my job, take the extra stress, risk leaving shit undone at a very critical time, and come anyway because he IS more important. The only way I can see it happening is if I work on vacation, and we aren't supposed to do that.  My boss would have to look the other way, if I decide to tell her.  It probably won't work out, but it is the best I can do at this point since I can't go back in time.  At least he knows that he knows that telling me how he felt made a difference.  The price was about 1,200 when I originally looked in August and now it is about $1,500 if I want to have to spend the night in a hotel during overnight layovers and have it take 2 days there and back or 1,900 just for a flight with 2 reasonable layovers.  He said he'd check on base for better prices.

I'm not blaming him at all.  I could have just been the better person in the first place and agreed to go.  Had we had these conversations a month ago while we were in Hawaii or better yet sooner things could have been very different.   I hadn't booked my trip to my parents in Vegas yet.  We would have had time to look into it.  He asked me to come in August, and we didn't talk about it again.  All of the communication about it was via text, which probably didn't help matters either.

I am sad.  I've been crying a lot.  I'm feeling depressed.  I will probably spend most of the 3 day weekend in bed not sleeping.  I have no desire to do anything.  My appetite is off and on.  I don't even want to go see my parents anymore because I feel I deserve to be punished during that time for hurting my husband.  There is a lump in my throat and a pit in my stomach every time I think about him, and what I've done, and how I am quite possibly ruining the best thing in my life with my need to control and be sensible.  I behaved selfishly, and I can only hope that he will be able to forgive me and that we can move forward.