(no subject)
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So I just asked OH what he was in a bad mood about. (Except that I'm not allowed to actually ask "What are you in a bad mood about?" or even "Are you in a bad mood?" because that's accusing him of being in a bad mood and that "obviously" puts him in a bad mood when - according to him - he wasn't before.
The way it went used to be that he would be in an unexplained bad mood for several hours and I would either ignore it or tiptoe around it. Then after about four hours I would get pissed off with being the one making all the adjustments and answer him in the dead, uninterested tone he'd been using on me for the past half a day. If at any point after that I asked him about his bad mood, that's the moment he would pinpoint as being the cause and start of his bad mood. I never worked out whether he genuinely believed he wasn't in a bad mood until that moment, or whether he was just determined to make it always my fault. Nowadays I either just pretend the bad mood isn't happening, or pick a moment when I can be bothered with the hassle and ask him "What's up?" (A totally unnatural phrase and one I'm not happy with, but that's the form of words he's told me won't actually put him in a bad mood!)
He's also perfectly capable of being in a retrospective bad mood. That is, everything will be (to me at least) going fine, and then suddenly he's in a bad mood and says it's because of something that happened hours earlier. Despite the fact that he's been cheerful and friendly for several hours after the alleged incident. I'll never understand that one.
Anyway, for this morning's and last night's bad mood my bet was that it was because I kept out of the sitting-room most of yesterday evening. I can't stand many of the programmes he likes to watch, and when he has them on painfully loud I just prefer to take myself elsewhere. (Which is bloody annoying because the computer is in the sitting-room.) But that's "unsociable" apparently - although watching dumb shit extremely loud obviously isn't - and it does tend to put him in a bad temper.
But no. Apparently the cause this time was that I'm "a miserable git" and that I was apparently "bad-tempered and snappy" throughout the whole of yesterday. Well, that's news to me and I said so. I said very politely that I had no recollection whatsoever of having been in a bad mood at any point yesterday, and could he please give me some examples so we could sort this out.
Apparently he couldn't.
I pushed a bit further (knowing he was about to go out, so feeling quite safe that I wasn't getting us into a conversation that would take hours!) and asked if he could give some clues about when this "bad temper" of mine had started, because I felt that his bad mood had started at about 5pm yesterday.
That was when he said it had been "all day". Which is clearly rubbish because we were getting on absolutely fine when we went separate ways in the High Street at about 2pm yesterday. I pushed again and he said that when we were walking round to the shops I had "kept rushing off ahead". OK, guilty on that one. But this is a conversation we've had many times in the past - despite him being 6ft and me only 5'4" his comfortable walking pace is a lot slower than mine, and I am never going to accept that it is my duty to adapt to his pace rather than he to mine. Take turns, maybe, but no - if I walk at my pace rather than his, I am automatically the one being "unsociable", not him. Bollocks to that, I say, but he is utterly fixed in his views on this one.
He's now out until mid-afternoon, by which time I will be out fetching the kids from school - they have to wait nearly an hour for the train in the afternoons, so on a Friday as a treat I pick them up. By the time we get back he'll be asleep; he hasn't had an office job for over twenty years so he indulges his preference for a two-hour sleep mid-afternoon. When he wakes up I'll be cooking tea, and by the time I want to sit down and relax for the evening he'll have the television on loud again watching whatever mindless male shit he can find. Oh well - experience tells me that he'll gradually let go of the sulk over the next few days and I shall go back to pretending it's not happening. I've no idea whether that makes it better or worse, and I'm not exactly planning to ask him, but I honestly would like to understand what I'm doing that comes over as bad-tempered and snappy when that's not how I'm feeling!
So I just asked OH what he was in a bad mood about. (Except that I'm not allowed to actually ask "What are you in a bad mood about?" or even "Are you in a bad mood?" because that's accusing him of being in a bad mood and that "obviously" puts him in a bad mood when - according to him - he wasn't before.
The way it went used to be that he would be in an unexplained bad mood for several hours and I would either ignore it or tiptoe around it. Then after about four hours I would get pissed off with being the one making all the adjustments and answer him in the dead, uninterested tone he'd been using on me for the past half a day. If at any point after that I asked him about his bad mood, that's the moment he would pinpoint as being the cause and start of his bad mood. I never worked out whether he genuinely believed he wasn't in a bad mood until that moment, or whether he was just determined to make it always my fault. Nowadays I either just pretend the bad mood isn't happening, or pick a moment when I can be bothered with the hassle and ask him "What's up?" (A totally unnatural phrase and one I'm not happy with, but that's the form of words he's told me won't actually put him in a bad mood!)
He's also perfectly capable of being in a retrospective bad mood. That is, everything will be (to me at least) going fine, and then suddenly he's in a bad mood and says it's because of something that happened hours earlier. Despite the fact that he's been cheerful and friendly for several hours after the alleged incident. I'll never understand that one.
Anyway, for this morning's and last night's bad mood my bet was that it was because I kept out of the sitting-room most of yesterday evening. I can't stand many of the programmes he likes to watch, and when he has them on painfully loud I just prefer to take myself elsewhere. (Which is bloody annoying because the computer is in the sitting-room.) But that's "unsociable" apparently - although watching dumb shit extremely loud obviously isn't - and it does tend to put him in a bad temper.
But no. Apparently the cause this time was that I'm "a miserable git" and that I was apparently "bad-tempered and snappy" throughout the whole of yesterday. Well, that's news to me and I said so. I said very politely that I had no recollection whatsoever of having been in a bad mood at any point yesterday, and could he please give me some examples so we could sort this out.
Apparently he couldn't.
I pushed a bit further (knowing he was about to go out, so feeling quite safe that I wasn't getting us into a conversation that would take hours!) and asked if he could give some clues about when this "bad temper" of mine had started, because I felt that his bad mood had started at about 5pm yesterday.
That was when he said it had been "all day". Which is clearly rubbish because we were getting on absolutely fine when we went separate ways in the High Street at about 2pm yesterday. I pushed again and he said that when we were walking round to the shops I had "kept rushing off ahead". OK, guilty on that one. But this is a conversation we've had many times in the past - despite him being 6ft and me only 5'4" his comfortable walking pace is a lot slower than mine, and I am never going to accept that it is my duty to adapt to his pace rather than he to mine. Take turns, maybe, but no - if I walk at my pace rather than his, I am automatically the one being "unsociable", not him. Bollocks to that, I say, but he is utterly fixed in his views on this one.
He's now out until mid-afternoon, by which time I will be out fetching the kids from school - they have to wait nearly an hour for the train in the afternoons, so on a Friday as a treat I pick them up. By the time we get back he'll be asleep; he hasn't had an office job for over twenty years so he indulges his preference for a two-hour sleep mid-afternoon. When he wakes up I'll be cooking tea, and by the time I want to sit down and relax for the evening he'll have the television on loud again watching whatever mindless male shit he can find. Oh well - experience tells me that he'll gradually let go of the sulk over the next few days and I shall go back to pretending it's not happening. I've no idea whether that makes it better or worse, and I'm not exactly planning to ask him, but I honestly would like to understand what I'm doing that comes over as bad-tempered and snappy when that's not how I'm feeling!