I'm Baaaack

I made it back in one piece. All in all it was not a bad trip. Not too many blow ups despite the stress involved with traveling. It was very educational.

I learned that the Wife is always on guard as to what to say and how to act. This is totally foreign to me. I come from a long line of loud-mouthed aholes. Although the folks in my family are extremely well-liked, we are constantly saying the wrong thing. Unfortunately, my wife has felt the need to be completely perfect in everything she says and does from the day she was born. She has learned that she must always be on guard lest she offend someone or say something that makes her/someone else look bad. Totally alien to me. After 12 years of marriage it has finally sunk in. Talk about dense.

The incident that taught me this lesson was the arguement we had the day before I left. Wife, sister-in-law and I were sitting around chatting. The subject of my parents came up. My mother always seems to be able to push Wife's buttons like no one else. It comes up that my parents are always too hot when they visit. Sister-in-law (SIS) states that Wife should be more accommodating and turn the air up to cool them off. Wife laughs and says we put fans in the room to help, but she gets too cold if the air is turned down any lower. SIS says that Wife has always been the least accommodating of anyone in the family. Now, I think this conversation is still in the jesting mode. Wrong. I say that she seems to be very accommodating to others but tends to be less accommodating to family. Not quite the refutation Wife was looking for. I have stepped in it again. I tell SIS that Wife is accommodating, but seems less so to me. This is nothing new to Wife; I have told her this many times.

Apparently, this was a terrible thing for me to say. She tells me that she is disappointed in me because I sided with SIS. I tell her that I did not side with SIS, but told her what I felt to be true. I restated that I felt Wife is very accommodating just less so to me. If she has to pick between myself and someone else's inconvenience, she chooses mine. She stays pissed at me. As she sees it, I have confirmed to SIS that she is not accommodating. Period. I am totally bumfuzzled as to how that comment warranted such a tongue lashing. Wife states that she has been looked down upon by her siblings. They do not respect her, they demean her, and she always felt like she was second class.

She has said this before, but I did not understand the length and breadth of her conviction. What I have noticed is that each sibling feels the other is screwing up. It FINALLY dawns on me how much pressure she has put on herself, when she visits her family. It is totally the opposite with my family. We are very laid back and always tell folks what we are thinking. We'll never attain high office.

Naturally, this argument occurs the day before I am supposed to leave, so now sex for me for seven days. Rosy and Harriet, the Palm, sisters are my new, best friends.