(no subject)
So, Scott and I did not partake in the L.A. Pride festivities this past weekend. This, even though we had several invites to go up and have an absolutely debaucherous and sleep-deprived marathon experience at any number of parties.
But, the reality is that since my mother flew in from Connecticut on April 1st right through Friday when my brother moved back to L.A. to start school...we have not had a day where our guestroom has not been occupied by someone in my family.
Scott was extremely patient through the entire experience, especially since I know it was driving him crazy. As anyone whose taken a personality inventory can probably recite, the difference between an extrovert (me) and an introvert (Scott) is that an extrovert actually accumulates energy from socializing with groups of people. An introvert, on the other hand, experiences a depletion of energy the longer a social scene lasts and instead replenishes energy by being alone or with intimate relationships only.
So, you can imagine how thin it wears after a couple months of coming home from a hard day's work only to find your spouse's relatives posted up on your couch and asking about your day, to the point where the only place in your home that is sanctuary for you to replenish energy is your own bedroom.
Having your bedroom be your retreat is cool for disaffected highschool kids who naturally ascede the rest of the house to their crazy parents and siblings. But when you are a professional adult who has worked hard to make your own home, it rubs a bit to have your "safe place" be reduced to only one room in your house.
But he was patient and understanding because he knew that it meant a lot to me to be able to be there when members of my family needed me. As much as I love him with all of my being, it becomes impossibly more when I think about his sacrafice in this regard.
So we spent our weekend in quiet bliss with just each other in our once again peaceful home. It was a great time of snuggling, watching tv, going for swims, making snacks, and getting frisky.
So, against that backdrop of my deep appreciation for his sacrafice and our connected weekend, it seems mindboggling that I can sit here now and describe how our lunch together today turned into a stand-off from which neither of us has as of yet backed down (4 hours, 35 minutes and counting).
I have been wanting to go up to San Fran Pride (next weekend) for some time now. Scott hasn't wanted to go and so I had dropped it. But then my good friend Ricky called me this weekend asking if I would take an adventure drive up there with him, thus rekindling my desire to go. I had told Scott about it and while he was not pleased with it for monetary reasons, he didn't argue it.
So, this morning I get an email from Scott saying:
San Fran...
Can We Go Now?!?!
It is deader than a doornail here…THANK GOD I did not come in over the weekend.
No matter how I look at it - I just can’t miss out on this weekend, even if it does cost us our home!
Love you - take me to lunch please!!
Scott
So, I am excited that not only is he being cool about me going and spending the money but now he wants to go to.
Cut to lunch...
We sit down and order and then I pull out stuff that I have been researching on the trip so I can show him different options that balance cost and comfort in terms of accomodations.
I no sooner get the words, "Option one will put us in a 4 star hotel in the Embarcardero for two nights and our portion of the cost will be $160..." before he totally just cuts me off ranting and raving about cost and how this is such a fiscally bad idea, how he can't believe that I want to waste money like this so soon before our trip to Australia in August.
I calmly tell him that I have other options to go over with him if he will just let me finish. That proves to be more than he is willing to offer. He just continues on. Telling me that maybe we should separate bank accounts since I seem to always want to spend money and he is the only one trying to protect our budget.
I sit there rolling my eyes (in my mind only as he would go ballistic if I did it for real), thinking about the fact that we make a combined $170K per year with necessary expenses that come nowhere near our monthly intake. Add on to this that we have savings as well as $100K home equity line of credit available for any unforseen disaster befalling us...but I am breaking the bank because I dared to suggest that we spend a few hundred dollars on a trip to SF Pride since I have never been there for Pride (unlike him, who went a couple years ago with our friends when I couldn't go)??????
So, I just sit and listen to his derisive comments about my lack of fiscal responsibility (read: I don't get unrealistically paranoid about finances the way he does) until I just can't take it any more and my own stoic wall breaks.
Now, you need to know that the person I choose to be is far different than the person my upbringing makes me capable of. I am more slowly moved to anger than any person you will likely ever meet. I have more patience than Job and typically give everyone the benefit of the doubt long after most decent people will have flipped their lid and gone off on somebody already. I am usually described as extremely balanced, cool-headed and dispassionate when I engage in disagreements or debates about anything with anyone.
But, I was raised in a very volatile environment. My dad was a major drug dealer who grew up in South Central Los Angeles and crawled out of the ghetto to become a very successful supplier of cocaine to the Hollywood elite in the 80's. This meant that my influences were a sassy inner-city black extended family, a tougher than nails dad who wouldn't think twice about intimidating Calle Cartel higher ups when they tried to treat him like he was some low-level pawn they could dictate to, a mother who survived years in and out of the pennitentiary and running with hardened street criminals, and dealing with the seedy underside of life in general.
None of this to toot my own horn over tragically fucked up shit that shouldn't be forced upon a child, but just to let you know that I know very well how to go fucking off on someone in a way that will make them feel extremely low, extremely frightened, or both. I hate with a passion the few times I have slipped and let that kind of behavior show...as I swore to myself growing up that I would be a different kind of person that everyone I saw around me as a kid. But when something fully pushes my buttons, you need to back the fuck up or I will (in the immortal words of Marcellus Wallace) get medieval on your ass.
Fortunately, I love Scott WAY too much to ever lose it that degree with him. But as I sat there listening to his bullshit in the restaurant today and thinking about how inconsistent and unfair he was being (especially since he had emailed me saying "lets go!") I let just enough slip to really wound him.
I just cut him off with a stare that could freeze the heart of a demon and did my almost but not qute yelling that is really a whisper, saying:
Look mother fucker. Im tired of you always having a fucking opinion when I fucking want something. God forbid I have a fucking desire that you aren't on board with, or that you don't share. When is the last time you told me you really wanted something and I responded with ANYTHING other than, if its what you really want then I support you. Is that such an impossible fucking conept for your selfish ass to grasp? A little happiness for someone else's happiness. Is $300 too fucking expensive for me to enjoy myself doing something that I've been telling you for 2 months now that I would really like to do? If so, fucking tell me what my fucking desires are worth. I want to know what my leeway is to where I know I can enjoy myself without having you auditing me like the fucking IRS or being made to feel like some out of control budget-breaking freak who needs to be put on a fucking leash and given a fucking allowance. Bitch, I've been paying my bills since you were in highschool getting all your fucking wants and desires handed to you by your mom and dad. When you were driving around in your little red prelude that mom and dad bought you, I was making my car payment AND my fucking ex-wife's. Now you're driving around in a fucking Dodge Dakota that is also bought and paid for by mom and dad, and yet I had to beg and fucking plead with you to be able to trade in my fucked up ass truck for a nice car, and even then I had to show you how it would totally save us money in the long run for maintenance before you would get on board...and now you drive the fucking thing every chance you get all the while bitching about needing to sell it everytime the fucking car payment comes in the mail. But somehow, our budget always miraculously has enough room for you to buy the Ab Scissors, the Total Gym, Power 90 workout, or whatever other late night infomercial shit you impulively spend hundreds of dollars on. Do I say anything, NO! Why? First because, despite your apparent fucking lack of faith, I know enough about fucking finances to rationally say we can afford it. But second, and more importantly, I know that you really want these things because they make you feel like you are taking care of your body...regardless of whether they are stupid products, and the fact that your body is just fucking fine without it. I bite my tongue because of your "body dismorphic disorder" don't say a fucking word when you ANNOUNCE to me (not request) that you are using several thousands of the 100K we just took out in home equity line in order to get hair transplants for a hairline that is (obviously to everyone but you) receding at a slower rate than the polar ice caps are melting, and for liposuction to suck out NON-EXTISTANT fat from your hips, even though I would kill to have my hip bones even visible to the naked eye much less protruding from my jeans waistband like yours do for every guy at the club to salivate over. You wanna talk about waste of money ridiculous expenditures? But do I say shit? No! But I guess my petty wants and desires just don't meet muster when it comes to what you're willing to spend "your" money on! But what really rubs is that it isn't about the fucking money at all. Its about your need to control everything that affects you, and that means you have to control me. You always have something critical to say about everything choice I make. I'm ordering the most expensive item on the menu, or Im ordering the most fattening thing on the menu, or Im ordering too much of something on the menu, or Im eating what I ordered too fast for your liking, or Im changing lanes to fast or too slow, or Im braking to late or not speeding through a yellow light that you would have. I'm fucking SICK of it. I don't need a fucking life coach. And I know you know that. What you have a fucking problem with is the fact that someone else makes decisions that you have to live with, and they are not always the decisions you would have made on your own. Well after four fucking years I would think you would have fucking woken up to the tragic reality that such is the fucking way it goes in a relationship. You give up some control over your finances, over your time, over your body, over EVERYTHING! So, I suggest you do two fucking things, and the quicker you do them the happier you are going to be...One, you need to meditate on the fact that what you say you want (a relationship and a partnership and a shared life) needs to mesh a little better with what you can be at peace accepting. And two, you need resign yourself to the fact that I am going to be in fucking San Francisco next fucking weekend. I really hope you are there too. And I will fucking drive up and sleep in the fucking car in order to spend as little money as possible (against all rational analysis of our financial health) so that you can feel as unconflicted about it as possible...but that is a reality you cannot change, so I suggest you lay off my fucking back and stop bitching about it before I stop holding my tongue and really give you dose of whats really going on outside of your self-posessed mental fantasy land you insist on living in!
Needless to say, I pretty much felt shitty as soon as I said it. Scott just stared at me and I stared back at him. Him not wanting to even touch any of the shit I just laid at his feet. Me not wanting to back down from a legitimate gripe just because I felt horrible about the way I laid it out there.
So, we sat and ate our lunch in complete and absolute silence. After paying the bill, I stood up and said, "Im gonna get back to work now," then turned and left. That was the last we've spoken.
So, now Im going to go home, and spend the evening sharing with him how I just want a little of the same courtesy I give him, which is to respect the fact that this is his life too and that he needs freedom to do things with our shared resources and within the context of our shared life that I wouldn't always or ever choose to do myself. There is a mutual trust that needs to be there, and that I deserve to have from him as much as he deserves from me.
But I need to let him know that I am sorry that I hit him with a low blow with respect to his ongoing body image problems. Though he was just as cute, he was a fairly portly child growing up and was exposed to a constant sense that he was the odd man out. Because he was the Pastor's son, he was always part of the youth inner circle, but the rest of them were all "A" crowd athletes and social butterflies, while he was a shy fat kid. He never won any races, and good Summer youth group friends often became cooly distant during the school year. Add that to the fact that his dad unwittingly (which is beyond me) would call him his "little piggy"...well, even after he had his highschool growth spurt and became the towering vision of physical hotness he is today, some scars take a LONG time to heal, if they ever fully do.
It wounds me so deeply that I crossed that boundary in my anger today. The most sacred and holy miracle in any truly strong relationship is that two people have found someone with whom they can be honest about their "club foot" so to speak. That person has access to the deep parts of your heart, where you battle against insecure shame and inner demons. Yet, not only do they love you inspite of this, but they protect and honor those vulnerable areas, treating them as sacred ground, not to be defiled.
I failed today. Just a little bit, to be sure, and I know he knows that I am his biggest fan, his most ardent supporter and his most committed defender. But nonetheless, I hurt him for the stupidest reason, because he had hurt me, and over the stupidest issue, a trip to San Francisco.
I need to go home now and be a healing balm for the wound I made. Because that too is what good relationships are often about.
But, the reality is that since my mother flew in from Connecticut on April 1st right through Friday when my brother moved back to L.A. to start school...we have not had a day where our guestroom has not been occupied by someone in my family.
Scott was extremely patient through the entire experience, especially since I know it was driving him crazy. As anyone whose taken a personality inventory can probably recite, the difference between an extrovert (me) and an introvert (Scott) is that an extrovert actually accumulates energy from socializing with groups of people. An introvert, on the other hand, experiences a depletion of energy the longer a social scene lasts and instead replenishes energy by being alone or with intimate relationships only.
So, you can imagine how thin it wears after a couple months of coming home from a hard day's work only to find your spouse's relatives posted up on your couch and asking about your day, to the point where the only place in your home that is sanctuary for you to replenish energy is your own bedroom.
Having your bedroom be your retreat is cool for disaffected highschool kids who naturally ascede the rest of the house to their crazy parents and siblings. But when you are a professional adult who has worked hard to make your own home, it rubs a bit to have your "safe place" be reduced to only one room in your house.
But he was patient and understanding because he knew that it meant a lot to me to be able to be there when members of my family needed me. As much as I love him with all of my being, it becomes impossibly more when I think about his sacrafice in this regard.
So we spent our weekend in quiet bliss with just each other in our once again peaceful home. It was a great time of snuggling, watching tv, going for swims, making snacks, and getting frisky.
So, against that backdrop of my deep appreciation for his sacrafice and our connected weekend, it seems mindboggling that I can sit here now and describe how our lunch together today turned into a stand-off from which neither of us has as of yet backed down (4 hours, 35 minutes and counting).
I have been wanting to go up to San Fran Pride (next weekend) for some time now. Scott hasn't wanted to go and so I had dropped it. But then my good friend Ricky called me this weekend asking if I would take an adventure drive up there with him, thus rekindling my desire to go. I had told Scott about it and while he was not pleased with it for monetary reasons, he didn't argue it.
So, this morning I get an email from Scott saying:
San Fran...
Can We Go Now?!?!
It is deader than a doornail here…THANK GOD I did not come in over the weekend.
No matter how I look at it - I just can’t miss out on this weekend, even if it does cost us our home!
Love you - take me to lunch please!!
Scott
So, I am excited that not only is he being cool about me going and spending the money but now he wants to go to.
Cut to lunch...
We sit down and order and then I pull out stuff that I have been researching on the trip so I can show him different options that balance cost and comfort in terms of accomodations.
I no sooner get the words, "Option one will put us in a 4 star hotel in the Embarcardero for two nights and our portion of the cost will be $160..." before he totally just cuts me off ranting and raving about cost and how this is such a fiscally bad idea, how he can't believe that I want to waste money like this so soon before our trip to Australia in August.
I calmly tell him that I have other options to go over with him if he will just let me finish. That proves to be more than he is willing to offer. He just continues on. Telling me that maybe we should separate bank accounts since I seem to always want to spend money and he is the only one trying to protect our budget.
I sit there rolling my eyes (in my mind only as he would go ballistic if I did it for real), thinking about the fact that we make a combined $170K per year with necessary expenses that come nowhere near our monthly intake. Add on to this that we have savings as well as $100K home equity line of credit available for any unforseen disaster befalling us...but I am breaking the bank because I dared to suggest that we spend a few hundred dollars on a trip to SF Pride since I have never been there for Pride (unlike him, who went a couple years ago with our friends when I couldn't go)??????
So, I just sit and listen to his derisive comments about my lack of fiscal responsibility (read: I don't get unrealistically paranoid about finances the way he does) until I just can't take it any more and my own stoic wall breaks.
Now, you need to know that the person I choose to be is far different than the person my upbringing makes me capable of. I am more slowly moved to anger than any person you will likely ever meet. I have more patience than Job and typically give everyone the benefit of the doubt long after most decent people will have flipped their lid and gone off on somebody already. I am usually described as extremely balanced, cool-headed and dispassionate when I engage in disagreements or debates about anything with anyone.
But, I was raised in a very volatile environment. My dad was a major drug dealer who grew up in South Central Los Angeles and crawled out of the ghetto to become a very successful supplier of cocaine to the Hollywood elite in the 80's. This meant that my influences were a sassy inner-city black extended family, a tougher than nails dad who wouldn't think twice about intimidating Calle Cartel higher ups when they tried to treat him like he was some low-level pawn they could dictate to, a mother who survived years in and out of the pennitentiary and running with hardened street criminals, and dealing with the seedy underside of life in general.
None of this to toot my own horn over tragically fucked up shit that shouldn't be forced upon a child, but just to let you know that I know very well how to go fucking off on someone in a way that will make them feel extremely low, extremely frightened, or both. I hate with a passion the few times I have slipped and let that kind of behavior show...as I swore to myself growing up that I would be a different kind of person that everyone I saw around me as a kid. But when something fully pushes my buttons, you need to back the fuck up or I will (in the immortal words of Marcellus Wallace) get medieval on your ass.
Fortunately, I love Scott WAY too much to ever lose it that degree with him. But as I sat there listening to his bullshit in the restaurant today and thinking about how inconsistent and unfair he was being (especially since he had emailed me saying "lets go!") I let just enough slip to really wound him.
I just cut him off with a stare that could freeze the heart of a demon and did my almost but not qute yelling that is really a whisper, saying:
Look mother fucker. Im tired of you always having a fucking opinion when I fucking want something. God forbid I have a fucking desire that you aren't on board with, or that you don't share. When is the last time you told me you really wanted something and I responded with ANYTHING other than, if its what you really want then I support you. Is that such an impossible fucking conept for your selfish ass to grasp? A little happiness for someone else's happiness. Is $300 too fucking expensive for me to enjoy myself doing something that I've been telling you for 2 months now that I would really like to do? If so, fucking tell me what my fucking desires are worth. I want to know what my leeway is to where I know I can enjoy myself without having you auditing me like the fucking IRS or being made to feel like some out of control budget-breaking freak who needs to be put on a fucking leash and given a fucking allowance. Bitch, I've been paying my bills since you were in highschool getting all your fucking wants and desires handed to you by your mom and dad. When you were driving around in your little red prelude that mom and dad bought you, I was making my car payment AND my fucking ex-wife's. Now you're driving around in a fucking Dodge Dakota that is also bought and paid for by mom and dad, and yet I had to beg and fucking plead with you to be able to trade in my fucked up ass truck for a nice car, and even then I had to show you how it would totally save us money in the long run for maintenance before you would get on board...and now you drive the fucking thing every chance you get all the while bitching about needing to sell it everytime the fucking car payment comes in the mail. But somehow, our budget always miraculously has enough room for you to buy the Ab Scissors, the Total Gym, Power 90 workout, or whatever other late night infomercial shit you impulively spend hundreds of dollars on. Do I say anything, NO! Why? First because, despite your apparent fucking lack of faith, I know enough about fucking finances to rationally say we can afford it. But second, and more importantly, I know that you really want these things because they make you feel like you are taking care of your body...regardless of whether they are stupid products, and the fact that your body is just fucking fine without it. I bite my tongue because of your "body dismorphic disorder" don't say a fucking word when you ANNOUNCE to me (not request) that you are using several thousands of the 100K we just took out in home equity line in order to get hair transplants for a hairline that is (obviously to everyone but you) receding at a slower rate than the polar ice caps are melting, and for liposuction to suck out NON-EXTISTANT fat from your hips, even though I would kill to have my hip bones even visible to the naked eye much less protruding from my jeans waistband like yours do for every guy at the club to salivate over. You wanna talk about waste of money ridiculous expenditures? But do I say shit? No! But I guess my petty wants and desires just don't meet muster when it comes to what you're willing to spend "your" money on! But what really rubs is that it isn't about the fucking money at all. Its about your need to control everything that affects you, and that means you have to control me. You always have something critical to say about everything choice I make. I'm ordering the most expensive item on the menu, or Im ordering the most fattening thing on the menu, or Im ordering too much of something on the menu, or Im eating what I ordered too fast for your liking, or Im changing lanes to fast or too slow, or Im braking to late or not speeding through a yellow light that you would have. I'm fucking SICK of it. I don't need a fucking life coach. And I know you know that. What you have a fucking problem with is the fact that someone else makes decisions that you have to live with, and they are not always the decisions you would have made on your own. Well after four fucking years I would think you would have fucking woken up to the tragic reality that such is the fucking way it goes in a relationship. You give up some control over your finances, over your time, over your body, over EVERYTHING! So, I suggest you do two fucking things, and the quicker you do them the happier you are going to be...One, you need to meditate on the fact that what you say you want (a relationship and a partnership and a shared life) needs to mesh a little better with what you can be at peace accepting. And two, you need resign yourself to the fact that I am going to be in fucking San Francisco next fucking weekend. I really hope you are there too. And I will fucking drive up and sleep in the fucking car in order to spend as little money as possible (against all rational analysis of our financial health) so that you can feel as unconflicted about it as possible...but that is a reality you cannot change, so I suggest you lay off my fucking back and stop bitching about it before I stop holding my tongue and really give you dose of whats really going on outside of your self-posessed mental fantasy land you insist on living in!
Needless to say, I pretty much felt shitty as soon as I said it. Scott just stared at me and I stared back at him. Him not wanting to even touch any of the shit I just laid at his feet. Me not wanting to back down from a legitimate gripe just because I felt horrible about the way I laid it out there.
So, we sat and ate our lunch in complete and absolute silence. After paying the bill, I stood up and said, "Im gonna get back to work now," then turned and left. That was the last we've spoken.
So, now Im going to go home, and spend the evening sharing with him how I just want a little of the same courtesy I give him, which is to respect the fact that this is his life too and that he needs freedom to do things with our shared resources and within the context of our shared life that I wouldn't always or ever choose to do myself. There is a mutual trust that needs to be there, and that I deserve to have from him as much as he deserves from me.
But I need to let him know that I am sorry that I hit him with a low blow with respect to his ongoing body image problems. Though he was just as cute, he was a fairly portly child growing up and was exposed to a constant sense that he was the odd man out. Because he was the Pastor's son, he was always part of the youth inner circle, but the rest of them were all "A" crowd athletes and social butterflies, while he was a shy fat kid. He never won any races, and good Summer youth group friends often became cooly distant during the school year. Add that to the fact that his dad unwittingly (which is beyond me) would call him his "little piggy"...well, even after he had his highschool growth spurt and became the towering vision of physical hotness he is today, some scars take a LONG time to heal, if they ever fully do.
It wounds me so deeply that I crossed that boundary in my anger today. The most sacred and holy miracle in any truly strong relationship is that two people have found someone with whom they can be honest about their "club foot" so to speak. That person has access to the deep parts of your heart, where you battle against insecure shame and inner demons. Yet, not only do they love you inspite of this, but they protect and honor those vulnerable areas, treating them as sacred ground, not to be defiled.
I failed today. Just a little bit, to be sure, and I know he knows that I am his biggest fan, his most ardent supporter and his most committed defender. But nonetheless, I hurt him for the stupidest reason, because he had hurt me, and over the stupidest issue, a trip to San Francisco.
I need to go home now and be a healing balm for the wound I made. Because that too is what good relationships are often about.