Posted by gardenergirl on February 25, 2006, at 17:15:42
Hi everyone,
I just wanted to run something by y'all. It's still bothering me, which in and of itself bothers me.My husband has taken to holding his anger in and then dumping it all out on important days: My birthday and our anniversary, in particular. So with Valentine's day coming up, I decided I was not going to expect anything from him. That way, I wouldn't be hurt or disappointed if/when he didn't do anything special for it. Now, it's true that we are not big fans of V-day anyway. But we usually do a card and maybe flowers.
I bought him a card. And in an email I sent to him that day, I included "Happy Valentine's day" in the text. He came home, opened his card, and then said that he had forgotten about it.
Now, I really wasn't upset. I hadn't expected anything, and it's not that big of a "holiday". (It's a commercially invented holiday, but that's a whole 'nother post).
But later, I remembered that I had said Happy v-day in my email to him. If he truly wanted to get me something, even if he had forgotten before, he could have at least stopped at the grocery store on the way home and picked out a stupid card. So that kind of bothers me, but I really was okay until I remembered the email. (okay, maybe unconsciously I was not okay.)
Anyway. one question is this: Is it healthy of me to lower my expectations like that in order to not be so hurt when he lives up to the lower expectation? Or is that me being too pessimistic and negative? I admit, it's really really nice not to be hysterically hurt like I was twice last year. But...what if I always keep my expectations to nil? Won't that be depressing, too?
What do y'all think?
gg
poster:gardenergirl
thread:613256
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/relate/20060220/msgs/613256.html