I talked to him about it.

I thought of a way I could bring this sore subject up with him.

I started off by saying ~"I'm sorry that you feel so defensive when I bring up anything negative to you ..." and then I talked about how 90% of the time, I know whatever it was, wasn't done on purpose. I talked about needed to talk about these things though, as if something was just said, it may not ever be an issue again - it's how we can grow.

He asked "If you already pointed it out, why do I have to say anything at all? It's obviously already out there, so I don't see why it needs to be said again". And I said ~"It's because I need you to acknowledge it. When you don't, I feel like I'm your mother. I feel without the two way street, it's me nagging and you saying 'okay'. I need you to acknowledge your roll in something, even if it wasn't something you meant to do"

He went into the ~classic~ retort of "Well, it's the way you say it." So just to appease him, I said "yes, and I need help in how to say things so you won't take it badly, because I've been trying different ways of saying things for 8 years now. I explained how when I'm pissed about something, yeah, I'm going to have that immediate reaction, but that's such a minority of the conversations.

Then I went into simple examples of appropriate responses instead of "okay". (ie: I had one of something and he eats it. When I ask "Did you eat such and such? I was saving that for me!". If he could just respond with "Yeah, I did eat it, I'm sorry - I didn't know" instead of "You didn't tell me, how am I supposed to know?". I explained that even though I know he didn't do it on purpose, I am the one without such and such and his response turned the tables on how it was somehow MY fault and I'm in the wrong.

I then brought up "Like this morning, I was obviously wanting someone to be in post op for me and when you called 45 minutes later ... " and he cut me off. He got visibly pissed off and said that he didn't even KNOW he had to pick me up. He said he was with the kids, getting them ready and suddenly a nurse calls him out of the blue." I explain how I DID talk to him about it, at least 3 times, even right before I left. He just said "well, I don't remember that. I thought you were going to drive yourself".

Oh. My. God.

And that's when I walked out of the room and cried. Um, his wife was having SURGERY! Just because I've done this 4 times doesn't make me an old hat at recovery. He thought I would drive myself? WTF? It broke my heart. It's like he didn't care that I was doing all of this for US to have a baby. Like I just went in for a massage for myself or something. It was terrible.

He comes in and starts being really nice (this is the way he works. He first has to stew about it. Then he'll be nice. Then he'll come in and talk sanely about it, usually with an apology). So he's being nice and then a few hours later, he comes in and says he was sorry about this morning. That he should of been there and it should have been important to him. I started sobbing, telling him how it just broke my heart that he didn't care. he just sat there and hugged me.

So this was good. I was able to talk about something that's been bothering me for 8 years. The hardest part was it was bring up to how he responds badly to anything negative, which was negative in itself. I never knew how to bring it up, but after blogging last night, I knew I had to do it, since it was obviously a big issue for me.

And he'll be better. Although he doesn't take in through right away, after the whole "stew-nice-sorry" cycle, he ends up actually working on whatever it was we talked about. I couldn't ask for anything more really. It will get better now. What a weight off my back.