General bitch session, part 1: Last week, about this time, we bought a six-pack of cigarette lighters to cover our needs. There are two of them left, and I'm not anxious to use either of those. See, one of our friends is known for pocketing any lighter he uses. Even your Zippo if you let him. He makes no pretense about it, chuckles when he's busted, it's an old habit that is hard to break. But he's not the problem now. The problem is my partner. I just don't get her behavior. Last night I found that I had two of our lighters in my pocket. I put one on the coffee table next to some things that she would take with her, and the other on the dresser next to me where I sleep. Both are gone this morning. And it's not like it's convenient for her to just reach over and snag the lighter off the dresser; she actually has to negotiate the mess of laundry she dumps on the floor that I can't keep up with, though that did get picked up this weekend, so it was a clear path to my side of the bed to search for the lighter. I once scattered three lighters intentionally to make sure she couldn't take them all because, once you get all six going around the house, it's just hard to keep up with them, and you end up losing them faster. The lighters were in three separate rooms. One of them was actually partially hidden. She took all three. And that's just the thing that's getting me stirred up at the moment. I cannot describe this woman's impeccable timing; it's enough to suggest clairvoyance and insane and subtle cruelty. But since the beginning of our association, I've thought it strange how she never sees this or hears that even though it's right in front of her. And then one day I noticed .... In the modern, she wonders why I never want to watch movies with her. Frankly because movies don't get watched. But the simple thing is that she refuses all influences affecting anyone. It's the most bizarre lack of trust I've ever seen. Once upon a time, when I was more enthusiastic about movies, she asked me about my favorites and why. So I would show them to her. She wouldn't pay attention. And that's when the pattern truly showed itself. "Tig--this is the scene you were asking about. Watch." Now ... count it off ... one, two, three, four--"So anyway at work today everybody was confused but I managed to fix everything and they told me how cool I was." (How the hell does she do it?) If there is a legendary line, an important moment, something of meaning, she will divert her attention and attempt to distract everybody else in the room. It's amazing. She just seems to know that something important to others is about to happen, and it's unacceptable to her that anything important should occur in the attentions of the people in her immediate vicinity. It's impeccable timing. Interpersonal dynamics are shot: it's like she listens for that little breath people take right before they start speaking. It's almost Pavlovian: she hears that breath and she just splatters words without thought. I missed an opportunity to take my daughter to the zoo with my cousin because Tig and I couldn't get our heads together on it. Every time I began to mention it, I got a five minute story about stupid Hispanics at her work, management without a brain cell, and how smart and cool Tig is because she saved the day again. And today ... I woke up without the prompting of my daughter pulling my hair. I cased her in safely on the bed and crept toward the door, thankful that I could, for once, get a couple of things taken care of while she's still asleep. Bad move. Never say, think, or otherwise acknowledge it. My foot picked up off the bedroom carpet, and crossed the visible line to start its descent toward the hallway carpet when the phone rang loudly. Not only had Tigger put the phone in a new location that rang directly into Emma's ear, shocking her awake, but once again, Tig had pulled off some mystical-seeming timing. Fucking fine. Now I'm denied my morning rituals thanks to her pointless call--seriously ... there was no fucking reason to be calling ... and if she wonders why I'm in a foul mood, there will be no point in telling her. The impeccable timing phenomenon was not something I held against her. In fact, she asked me one day what a look on my face was, and I made a mistake in telling her. I just didn't understand it, I said. It's not like she was trying to disrupt everything and everyone, right? But that's not enough. She doesn't believe the phenomenon exists at all. Of course, she also thinks that "we" are having problems getting together in the bedroom. Sorry honey, that one's all yours. But she has responded to me on the issue before. If I'm not mistaken, the appearance of the phenomenon of her impeccable disruptive timing is my fault. I make a mistake in wishing to accomplish anything. As far as the "war of the sexes" goes ... guys, you have no reason at all to give a damn about women. F--k 'em and leave 'em fast. Believe me, a child is not a problem. Waking up beside the same horrible person every day is. The woman at your side will never be honest with you, and it does all women everywhere disservice if you come to let that woman represent all women. But it's amazing: her parents are arriving in about a week. I'm going to have to tell them that the reason I don't give a rat's ass about their parental advice is that, judging by the result manifest in their daughter, they're the last people in the whole world that anybody should be taking parental advice from. Ah ... I hear the door click, feel the chill spilling down the hall. The Ice Queen has arrived. :m:, Tiassa Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Oh God, I can't wait for part two. You know, you sound like you have gotten the classical "my wife is an evil demon from hell who wants to drive me to suicide"- psychosis. I have encountered that particular psychosis several times... Women are not evil, men are insane. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Oh...my...god! I seriously think I would have gone insane or blown up in an hour. How do you do it? Are you superman? I'm serious, are you? Maybe she has a shrine devoted to the lighter god? I'm sorry to say this but your problems are most entertaining. I couldn't help but laugh. I rarely laugh at peoples problems. Sorry. But yeah, roll on part two! And that last paragraph, oh man, I'm really tired and I really didn't need sore sides Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! :bugeye:
Does any one else hear divorce coming on???...I would be great to hear her take on this failing (or failed marrige). I still recommend therapy but that seldom works for the couples on your level. It would seem you cannot stand the "Ice Queen"...so the question really comes down to this; Which is more important to you? You daughters feelings in the future or your mental happiness now...happiness which seems to be more pertinent at this moment in time?....divorce now, your daugher seems young so she shouldn't feel any negative consequences at all.
Well, having a baby puts enormous strains on people. Many couples divorce within the babys first year, because they are stressed out and tired and since they can't take it out on the baby they take it out on eachother. I would suggest couples counselling.
Tiassa, what the hell is going on???? Too much pott or lack of or something? Easy on your wife...It's obviously all in your head. First, as far as laundry, help her dude, the house doesn't get cleaned until everyone is participating. Second, as far as the lighters, I think she is intentionally trying to get you to quit....If I were her and I love my husband at all, I would be very concerned with the smoking and I would try to make you quit. Third, you are not an easy person to understand Tiassa......Take this advice from an intelligent woman like me. You are one of these people are border line genius and crazy, so only you will understand what you are saying 90% of the time. If you can find a woman to understand 5% of what you say, I'd say she's a keeper. I agree with you as far as intimacy issue. We are not ready or in the mood for sex 80% of the time and men are ready for sex about 95% of the time, so try to catch her in that 15% window. No divorce here, just some venting on both sides and lots of working out to do.... Other posters, take this thread for what it is: an incoherent scream.
I would also but i'd be lying if i said that i think it had a chance from what he describes. She seems to be attention hungry and proud from what he describes and people of such nature seldom change their ways from just advice and therapy.
Entertaining read Tiassa Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Ah, I have similar experience with some of these situations (the movie thing is truely a thorn in my side...my wife simply cannot sit down and watch a movie). I have no real advice as I am still perplexed by these seemingly universal qualities in women. I am interested in seeing what you do about this in part II!
It might be...failed to look at that point.... Yes that's true..i iron clothes, do half the laundry, cook etc etc Umm..yeah.... Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! True...but i interpreted his scream differently than you did Flores...however you do strike different chordes in the argument and make good points.. BTW..nice move calling yourself intelligentPlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
part 2 stormy night howling winds power outage creaky trees bitching tig ice pick horrified scream b/w the eyes blood silence peace happiness mexico
hehe I think many people accidently steal lighters, you really don't think about it. But I know this guy that plots and schemes to steal lighters. Sometimes he will steal a lighter off someone that only has one and then he will leave and they just won't have one or any way to get one, then the next day he will get abused by said person and laugh it off like other people do when they accidently steal lighters. He doesn't see the difference and because many of us have accidently stolen lighters off him before he pays us back by maliciously stealing our lighters at crucial moments. Grrrr he's so annoying, we have actually all taken the time to address him on the issue in a serious manner and tell him that "this is no joke" and "seriously, don't fucking do that anymore" but he just doesn't get itPlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Tiassa, Start a blog. Seriously man, I'd read it everyday. You could be an internet celebrity just like Jenna Jameson... Well, you wouldn't get creamed on like how she does. Oh, and smoking is bad bad bad. Your going to hell for that one mister.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
At one time you probably thought it was good that she had something to say. Looks like you've changed & she hasn't.
Tiassa, While i can't say that i know what you're going through (being very very inexperienced with females), I really do hope things work out between you two. Also, if things got to it, and you decided to split up with one another, a mutual decision..how would that work? I know it's none of any of our's business, but are you two married, engaged, common-law marriage, or simply live-in partners?
Bebelina said; "Women are not evil, men are insane." She's wrong! From my experience its "men are sane, women are evil"
Intermezzo General notes - First, as far as laundry, help her dude, the house doesn't get cleaned until everyone is participating. (Flores) The laundry on the floor is dirty. Frankly, I just don't understand the amount of dirty laundry she generates. Is this true of all the women I've been with? No. Only on Friday and Saturday. - On lighters We can debate the ethics of substance another time; I'm well-known for my pot-related pronouncements. But we both smoke. We're trying to quit cigarettes (necessity of parenting and economy), and we both advocate marijuana use. So what happens is that she steals all the lighters, and then loses them at work. During the winter, when I keep a lighter in my 15-pound leather jacket (not good for summer heat), I keep lighters until they die. And I mentioned one of my friends: I even reclaim lighters from him because he's just a stoner that forgets it's not his lighter in his hand. But ask any smoker: there's a difference between putting off a cigarette by choice and putting one off by necessity. Ask any stoner: lighter wars are a difficult issue to resolve. - On intimacy The irony that bugs me most, that has actually damaged my health trying to work around, is that I can't win either way. Acknowledging her lack of desire is offensive to her, and what can one do to acknowledge her desires when those expressions of desire are lies? I can only be led around by a carrot for so long. But given the amount of deliberate deception she fosters regarding other, more mundane issues, there's really no other way to phrase it: I'm tired of being lied to about sex for any reason. You want it? Good. You don't? That's fine. But stop telling me the one when reality is the other. Seriously, how many times can I put up with, "When the baby's asleep, let's take some time together ...," when the reality is that she would rather do housework after the baby's asleep? I remember one day recently the baby went down for a nap. On her words, I was waiting in the bedroom. I got the hint when I heard Tig outside with the weed-eater. Seriously, I can deal with the lack of desire: I've got the internet and my hands for when it comes to that. But her behavior so fits several misogynistic stereotypes that I'm simply horrified by it. - Flores ... you have it exactly. An incoherent scream. - Bebelina ... there are, in fact, people who are prone to believing that my partner is, indeed, hellspawn bent on crushing me. I tend to think it's just a coincidental result of her priorities, but I can't even discuss that with her on any civilized level. She goes from the suggestion of misaligned priorities to self-destructive behavior in less than two-seconds. She's actually very bright in her own way, but she's nearly unhinged. Technically it's the result of a traumatic religious upbringing, but her pathological inability to trust anyone or anything hasn't been a real problem until I knocked her up. Before my daughter arrived, her paranoia was something I had time to work with, and no reason to abandon somebody. But our daughter is here, and we have to dispense with such considerations of the self as we tend to fight over. - Thor ... well, if I'm not entertaining in the least, then it's merely pointless bitching. If nothing else, I'm still capable of aiming to entertain. - Firdroirich ... interestingly enough, your point is a topic in itself. I can't figure out how I've changed. I used to think I changed radically, but when I stopped and looked carefully, my basic principles had all remained intact and merely sought more accurate manifestation. Whether or not I pulled that off ... like I said, it's a topic in itself. - General notes: We are not married, and will not be. I actually interrupted a failing (failed) marriage that has never officially terminated. Because of a quirk in state law, I have no legal authority over my daughter; the state does not recognize me as the father of my own offspring. This must be resolved before I consider the merits of packing my things and removing my daughter to saner straits. But leaving, like warfare, is a last-ditch move. And she knows it. Some of the paperwork I simply can't fill out. Some of the people I cannot necessarily communicate with. I don't drive at present (a long story that starts with her trying to lay down on the bench seat of a pickup truck and causing me to stray lanes when she hit her head on the steering wheel) so it's not like I can trundle off to another state to resolve a couple of the issues required by the State of Washington. She knows. And she's not doing anything about it for the more subtle reasons: really, she's as tired as I am. Even more so. I'm well aware that she's depressed; she sleeps twelve hours a day if she can. But while she has a mental-health allotment in her health insurance, she won't use it. And you know, on top of that, she has twice ditched me with at home with my daughter when I had doctor's appointments. For obvious reasons, I think "couples counseling" is out of the question. She doesn't want herself healthy, she doesn't want me healthy. Why would she want "us" healthy? I mean, my only real health problems point back toward stress: I'm neurotic and my body is finally starting to come apart as a result ... my family is surprised in their own right that it has taken this long for me to fall apart at the seams. Strangely, though, psychological and emotional clarity are returning slowly. I'm so fucking mad at my partner that I have no option but to think long and hard about why and figure out what to do before I spontaneously combust. It's a little like listening to a low-bandwidth stream. The anger isn't necessarily static. It has become that void behind the music where more signal would be if you were getting higher bandwidth. It's numbing, it is a localized lack of living spirit, and the battle these days is to make sure the garden grows over the bare earth before the rains come and wash away the fertile soil. In the end, I'm happy to be entertaining in this. It's actually a benefit of Sciforums. I'm actually able to unload the cannons while my daughter is sleeping or playing or whatnot ... it's a little bit post-orgasmic; the temptation to snap back at my partner is greatly diminished. It is, in the end, therapeutic. Oh, and the blog ... I can't even maintain my own freaking homepage. Right now I'm shuffling 1700 pictures around in iPhoto (a result of failing to think rationally about the nature of the program) ... I'd look into it, but one of the things I like about Sciforums is that somebody else maintains it. I have a certain stubbornness about the electronic age: while it's nice to try to stay current, one of the things I've observed in this software-laden region is that the tech field can become all-consuming. My brother was an oddity; he hated talking shop outside of work. But it always sucked to go out with friends and find the women being stereotypical women and the guys all clustered together talking about their work. It would be nice to administrate networks for a living, but I'm simply not prepared to sacrifice that much of my brain to the field. I prefer Story magazine, or Zyzzyva, or Parabola, or IONS Review. Maybe Astronomy or American Scientist. But not IT Weekly and the like. But this is how lazy I am about the electronic age: for all the times people have mentioned the idea of having a blog, I've never bothered to look into what is involved in maintaining one. I'm sure it's easier than my mind imagines, but ... well, it'll happen eventually. Probably just after blogs go out of style, but that tends to be a defining mark of my methods. But as for another primal scream ... it'll come eventually. She really is that trying. When it's just Emma and me, well ... why waste the time on bad vibes? Momma will be hustling them through the door, eventually, anyway. Oh, and for the record ... I cook. But it's going to be a few years before I get the hang of housewifery. There's a difference between tending a cream sauce for an hour and feeding a family; "Hamburger Helper" is (intentionally) a ninety-minute affair with me, and reading through a couple of upper-crust cookbooks, I think I'm getting a sense of why Americans are considered so odd in their food habits. I mean, I'm glad there's someone out there to eat Andouille and chorizo, but yeah ... when I say I eat meat, it turns out that I'm a meat snob compared to the rest of the world. But forgive my snobbery if, in my animal-consumption habits, I choose to not introduce my daughter to the "benefits" of sausages stuffed with blood and hunks of fat. (The vegetarian lobby has it all wrong ... the eating of msucle is civilized enough to most meat-eaters. But the consumption of stomach, nose, brain, knuckles, heart, and other such parts of the animal turns a lot of people's palates.) Women are not evil. In fact, here's my two cents' worth of free advice: Women are not evil, they're simply people. And hey, if gender isn't a barrier to your sexual enjoyment, then you don't even need to make that distinction. :m:, Tiassa Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Tiassa, It's good that sciforums is a place where you can get it all out. I'm touched by the honesty of your post here. For a lot of people it'd be worse than naked-baby photos to say the stuff that you have. It sounds to be a very tough situation, and a very tough decision. Let me say this though, the reason you have a problem is that there is a part of you that wants to still be in the relationship, otherwise there wouldn't be such a dilemma within you - the path to go would be a lot easier. Even though she seems to be a psycho-hose-beast from the ninth pit of hell, I'm sure she does have some good qualities. I would say that you need to acknowledge those qualities too, along with acknowledging the part within you that still cares for her. I'm not saying that you should stay or leave her, but to bring yourself together, rather than being split on the issue. Then making a decision will be clearer. One thing that I could suggest that would be a little more concrete is to make a pros/cons list about your relationship. Weigh out all options that you can - write it out. Be honest with yourself on everything. Good Luck in the roads ahead.
