Hard Conversations

Drew and I had to have a hard talk on Tuesday.  In four years together, we’ve only had one other.  Last time, he initiated it.  This time, it was me.
He has serious spine issues.  Next month, he’ll be having a vertebrae removed and replaced with a titanium jack.  The pain makes him understandably grouchy.  The problem is that he’s begun having these angry outbursts of yelling and cursing and flailing his arms.  He has no particular target, but it’s stressful to listen to.

On top of this, I’ve been sick again.  I’m feeling a lot better, today, but definitely not 100%, yet.  When I’m sick like this, I can’t do much of anything.  Yesterday, I woke up feeling pretty good.  I was going to shower, then maybe go play a little Wizards Unite.  After the shower, I needed to rest for a while.  I finally  managed to put my clothes on, but that was it for me for the rest of the day.

So back to Tuesday: Drew works for an international company whose primary product involves information technology.  You’d think that a company like that would have a pretty extensive IT department for its engineers, architects, and sales people.  They don’t.  They outsource.  To India.  And they have the crappiest network you could imagine.  He’s always fighting to get online, get drivers installed, blah, blah, blah.  They tightly regulate permissions on his laptop.  Seriously: he can’t even change the wallpaper on his laptop.

As he fights with his laptop, he begins swearing.  “Fuck!”  I say it sometimes.  I’m not a prude.  But as he gets more and more frustrated, he gets louder and the words feel more violent.

And I begin to have

_____________________________

Tuesday, it just came to a head.  I began to have a panic attack.  My hands were shaking.  My heart was racing.  I can’t be around this kind of unchecked anger.  It triggers me.  He gets like this, in traffic, too.  He’s always so worried about the way others drive, even if it doesn’t affect us in the least.

So after he finally got online, had his meeting, got the loose ends tied up, he came out to sit down and relax a minute.  I told him we needed to talk and it was serious.

Between my being sick and being emotional due to peri-menopause, my hands were trembling and I was trying hard not to cry.  I explained that I understand his frustration, but I have no where to go to get away from it when he gets like that.  I told him that aside from the fact that the anger triggers me, because I’m unable to work and completely dependent on him, when he gets so frustrated like that, I’m afraid he’d just quit, and I’m not used to not having a back up plan.

I spilled it all out, and he listened and apologized multiple times.  I told him that I didn’t want him to apologize, because I know that it’s not directed at me, but that I need it to stop.  He said he understood.  He told me he loves me.  He told me that he wasn’t hurt or mad at me for talking to him about it, and that he was glad that I had.

And now you can see why I love this man.