My wife and I have been together for 5 years and just bought an apartment. It's great, but small, in a huge city. It is good for the time being, but I we will move out eventually to a bigger place in a more rural area in the future then rent this place out. have been insanely busy with work since moving in, and are finally getting around to decorating. One current project is putting art up on our walls.
We have a great "opposites attract" dynamic. I'm a pack rat and my wife is such a minimalist, in another life i think she was a monk. She's actually a terrific artist and I think having limited possessions helps her focus clearly. She hasn't expressed any frustration with the amount of stuff I have at this place, and loves most of the things that I have done, especially in the kitchen and yard.
Recently, we visited my parents' house, at which they have generally allowed me to store some stuff in the basement, including some appliances, old photo and prints. We were rummaging through them and I came across some prints and started pulling some out, thinking that perhaps some of them would be good candidates to hang up. Immediately, her face fell and she began to look visibly distressed in spite of denying it. Eventually, she blurted out that I was pulling out too many prints, that she it was overwhelming her, and she was feeling afraid that the narrative of my life would control our entire living space and she would feel like nothing, there would be no room left for what she wanted to hang. I was blindsided because until that point, she had never suggested anything she wanted to put on the wall. Ive known her for a decade and never seen anything hung up on a wall.
She then teared up, said that she feels that her therapist made the analogy that I speak about my life before her superlatively, like a storyteller relating a cinema that everyone should be engrossed in. That it seems that I learned it from her mom, whom she loves, but she almost feels edged out by during conversations. That she feels like our relationship is not one sided and that we support each other, but that the way I talk is practically narcissistic at times and that she almost broke up with me at the beginning of our relationship because I talk about myself in a way that prioritizes my life over hers.
My wife is not an immature person, but at her own admission is extremely jealous of and tends to ruminate on things like past relationships in a way that I am not, which in turn, makes her jealous. At this point I will say that at the beginning of our relationship I was kind of an idiot with very low emotional EQ, which is why no relationship lasted for more than a year before her. She was patient with me, and called me out on many behaviors and this really resonated with me. I never imagined myself getting married to anyone until I met her and I am so very happy with her. She indicates the same, and we haven't had any issues like this in a long, long time.
Come to think of it, a past ex told me that I talk about myself a lot, but didn't use the language that my wife did. Her words stung, but more than anything I hate seeing her sad. I tried to reassure her that I wasn't trying to hang up all of the prints I pulled, and wouldn't put up any prints without agreeing with her upon it and with respect to the prints that she wants to put up. She agreed that this was fair, and felt awful for how she overreacted. I accepted her apology but she has been acting really weird since then.
I would never describe my wife as a brat. She's the most sincere loving person I've met it's almost as if this triggered really bad feelings from the beginning of our relationship or from another relationship that she can't seem to shake out of some type of cognitive fixation. As far as my mom goes, I know that they love each other a lot, so I'm a little taken aback to hear this. Maybe she has a point, though, I've just never noticed it.
I want to make this right, but I am doing everything I can. Are there any suggestions for anything different I should be doing?
Tldr; wife believes that I'm controlling the decoration of apt out of egotism and disregard for her inner life/past
Submitted July 31, 2020 at 04:14PM by Winter-Indication693 https://ift.tt/2DouhpA
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