Sunday, February 15, 2009

"Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there." Tomorrow .

OK, "tomorrow" is an addendum, by me. Without the "tomorrow", that is a beautiful quote, by Persian poet, Rumi. I have been happily married for 18 years. Our marriage is not perfect, but in general, I would say we have something very special. Some things about out marriage are a little unconventional, but we do what works for us.

One thing we don't do is celebrate greeting card holidays, so we don't celebrate Valentine's Day. I don't think we ever have. I don't remember discussing it or anything, but we just have never celebrated it. (Well, except for maybe the first V day we were together, which was the first time we had sex.) I don't consider it unromantic or anything, but it just seems like a superficial kind of holiday to me.

It's a good thing we don't traditionally celebrate it I guess, because I was mad at my husband this Valentine's Day. I won't go into details, except to say I was right and he was wrong, and I was mad. But not celebrating V day also means you can't play that card of "and on Valentine's Day, of all days you did this!?!"

I normally am very quick to forgive and try to live by the Rumi quote. But I was very upset all V day. (The offense happened very early in the morning, way early, when I had not had any sleep the night before.) So I moped around in an angry funk until it was time to go to work. I tried to think of some way to demonstrate how angry I was, and decided to eat the Green Premium M&Ms I had gotten him. (He had told me he thought the mint ones sounded good, so when I saw them on sale for $2 and had a $1 off coupon, I thought of him and bought him a package which he had set on the baker's rack.) I sat at the table eating the M&M's until he came in, and then I announced, "I am eating your M&Ms". He had forgotten I had got them AND said he didn't know I had gotten them for him. Somehow, then I felt even more mad and upset, but I think lack of sleep can really exasperate emotions.

I am just not good at being mad, or staying mad. I am not good at expressing my anger. I finally just had to say in a non dramatic way, "I want you to know I feel really angry with you." He apologized, saying he was sorry that I thought he did something wrong. That didn't help much either. He did clean up a bunch of branches and things in the yard that I had asked him to. So I think that is his way of trying to make peace. So I think I will just let myself feel this anger. And then let it go. Tomorrow.

1 comment:

Sarah's Blogtastic Adventures said...

Wow he got off easy I probably would have stayed angry for a week telling him every second I saw him how pissed I was at him. probably why I'm not married anymore. : )