On Communication
So last Saturday, Jo and I made plans to go out to breakfast after my early-morning workout. Except that after my workout, I noticed that the shelves were dusty and my bathroom needed to be cleaned and the floor washed...
...so I started cleaning. (Around 7:00, I think.) A half-hour later, Jo gets up, goes to shower, and I asked him to wash the kitchen floor. He gets the swiffer wetmop thingy and does the floor, which was of course still filthy.
So after I dusted and cleaned the kitchen and part of my bathroom, I redid the kitchen floor. Jo comes out and wants to know why I am re-doing his work. I told him it was still dirty. He wanted to know what had happened to plans for breakfast. I said I needed to finish the kitchen floor, my bathtub, and the bathroom floor before showering and getting dressed.
At which point it devolved into an argument in which he called bullshit on my last-minute insistence on cleaning when we already had plans and I told him we could leave RIGHT THEN if I could just put on some pants and he said that I would just obsess about the cleaning if we went anyway, and so on.
So I finished cleaning and showered and went to apologize for wrecking the breakfast plans, because he was right -- I had just started cleaning and then insisted on finishing. (Which, when I pointed it out at the time, just pissed him off more, because it's hard to argue when someone is telling you you're right.)
Now comes the funny part -- when I went to apologize for my thoughtlessness (really, though, the kitchen floor was NOT CLEAN, okay), Jo said that what he was most pissed off about was that if we made plans and HE'D insisted on suddenly doing something that took over an hour beforehand, that I would have been furious. He was pissed off over the double standard, not that our plans had been, um, shifted.
You will notice two things:
1. He's not wrong. I would have been absolutely furious.
2. That didn't actually happen.
So he apologized for getting angry over things that hadn't happened, and I apologized for ruining breakfast.
That did work out rather well. :)
...so I started cleaning. (Around 7:00, I think.) A half-hour later, Jo gets up, goes to shower, and I asked him to wash the kitchen floor. He gets the swiffer wetmop thingy and does the floor, which was of course still filthy.
So after I dusted and cleaned the kitchen and part of my bathroom, I redid the kitchen floor. Jo comes out and wants to know why I am re-doing his work. I told him it was still dirty. He wanted to know what had happened to plans for breakfast. I said I needed to finish the kitchen floor, my bathtub, and the bathroom floor before showering and getting dressed.
At which point it devolved into an argument in which he called bullshit on my last-minute insistence on cleaning when we already had plans and I told him we could leave RIGHT THEN if I could just put on some pants and he said that I would just obsess about the cleaning if we went anyway, and so on.
So I finished cleaning and showered and went to apologize for wrecking the breakfast plans, because he was right -- I had just started cleaning and then insisted on finishing. (Which, when I pointed it out at the time, just pissed him off more, because it's hard to argue when someone is telling you you're right.)
Now comes the funny part -- when I went to apologize for my thoughtlessness (really, though, the kitchen floor was NOT CLEAN, okay), Jo said that what he was most pissed off about was that if we made plans and HE'D insisted on suddenly doing something that took over an hour beforehand, that I would have been furious. He was pissed off over the double standard, not that our plans had been, um, shifted.
You will notice two things:
1. He's not wrong. I would have been absolutely furious.
2. That didn't actually happen.
So he apologized for getting angry over things that hadn't happened, and I apologized for ruining breakfast.
That did work out rather well. :)