What Katey did next...

Dear you,

After our incident this morning regarding the dirty dishes and the burst of free expression on my part and the storming out the door to go to work and the me-not-chasing-after-him-to-try-and-repair-things-even-though-it’s-futile, here’s how the day has unravelled.

I sent a photo to his work email of our boy playing happily at the local park. Boy was very happy. He likes to send photo updates just to keep in touch with his dad during the day.

No response. (Not entirely unusual in itself. He gets busy at work. He’s focussed on work.)

I call about an hour later to say hi. I tend to call once a day. It’s not a big deal, just nice to make contact. He’s very, very short on the other end of the line. It’s that voice which says: You are interrupting something. I have no time for this. I want to get off the phone.

Today I am not allowing myself to be upset by this. Today I did not chase-after-him-to-try-and-repair-things-even-though-it’s-futile so I expect some fallout.

This evening he arrived home. He didn’t say hello until I did. He plonked himself down on the couch and opened the paper and did not speak further. I asked him about his day. It’s feeling eerily like having a teenager around the house.

“How was your day?”

“Okay.”

“What did you get up to?”

“Just the usual.”

And then not another word. He’s in the lounge, reading the paper. I’m in the kitchen doing odds and ends and typing this up.

So now I need to figure out quickly how not to turn this into a silent contest where we see who can hold out the longest.

My intention was seriously to give him the space he needs when he’s in a bad frame of mind, without hounding him, without my presence adding extra strain. I’m also trying to give me some space from it, so I don’t catch it as such.

So, I guess I need to do something in the next few minutes to stop my lofty ambitions from descending into (the usual) crap.

Flo