Try Try, and Fall Again

While I do think that everyone needs a certain degree of appreciation for relationships to be happy, I try really hard to stay away from the mindset that he is supposed to acknowledge my efforts. Because really, submission is much more about following that cardinal rule of pleasing him, than it is about what he will do for me if I please him.

I have apparently fallen quite short on the pleasing him aspect lately.

I don't spend much time writing about our arguments. For one, I really only think about them while they're happening, and him reading it never seems to help. For two, it doesn't happen very often. And for three, I think that there is a tendency for well meaning readers to blow things out of proportion.

That being said,we had an argument.

I feel like he doesn't appreciate me.
That may or may not be true to one extent or another.

He thinks that I'm mean.
I am sure that none of you have noticed my scathing silver tongue. Apparently, he doesn't appreciate it.

I said that I feel like he only notices when I screw up, not when I get it right, and that it doesn't seem to matter how hard I try--all that matters are my shortcomings (so it probably wasn't stated that eloquently).
His response was that I don't actually care about anything that he does--I pay him polite lip service, but am otherwise uninterested.

To say that I was shocked would be an understatement. It is true that I am usually not at all interested in doing what he does for a living, and we are often fascinated by completely different things, but I am interested in what he does. I am interested in what makes him happy. I am interested in things that wouldn't otherwise interest me simply because they are of consequence to him.

Do you know what started it all? Hold on to your hats, this one's a doozy:
I asked him why he hardly got any rice for dinner, and his response was,
drum-roll.....
"After 15 years of eating rice every night, I'm just kind of tired of it."
I have not fed him rice every night for 15 years.

Uh huh, it all went downhill from there. Fueled quite nicely by the fact that the kids decided it would be a good night to raise hell and be thoroughly disagreeable.

Clearly, we reserve our arguments for the really important issues in life.

I think though, that sometimes things that are really bothering us come out when we are focussing on minor irritations.
I do feel unappreciated.
He feels that that I don't care about what he does or wants to do, and that I only hear the criticisms.

I feel like I try so friggin hard to be a good girl, to be pleasing, to make him happy.
Yet...
He finds me unkind and disobedient. And that doesn't make him happy.

And somehow we come back to the beginning--motivation matters.
I want to feel appreciated, but I don't want to be that woman who submits for the reward. Because for me, that's not really submission.
Though to know that I have pleased, that is a reward I crave.

Sometimes I feel like the harder I try, the worse I do.



And just because I couldn't keep it to myself...

This had me sputtering in my coffee.