True Wife Confessions
Oh man, I just swallowed my gum:
I resent paying for Head and Shoulders shampoo so much that I have been buying generic shampoo and putting it into the same Head and Shoulders bottle for over two years. Honey, you’re bald and you don’t need shampoo anymore. You especially don’t need one that controls dandruff. You have more hair on your ass than you do on your head and you use soap on your ass.
Enough already!
I read this out loud to a coworker, and she said that yes, it took her boyfriend some getting used to the fact that she freely expresses her opinions, like “that is the ugliest shirt I have ever seen.”
One of the key desires I have for the woman I hope to pair with is that she be sassy. I confronted my repressive tendencies in High School, and have been dealing with the question as to how open I should be, and how to articulate my feelings in a constructive manner, ever since. You can tell, by the fact that you are reading my blog, that I am inclined to err toward openness and sharing. Even so, I don’t always err that way: in my marriage I was not all that engaged with my own emotions, until it was too late. The problem is, being open and sharing alienates a lot of people. I think people are alienated by criticism because we either have low self-esteem, our confidence is based on material things, or we just aren’t used to having someone who loves us enough to tell us straight-up what they think is going on. (That, and delivering criticism takes some finesse.)
And when you’re being non-repressed, you do gotta just let a bunch of trivial stuff go, rather than bitching all the time. It is a fine line, but I’d rather hear it than not.
So, I learn to ask myself “is this actually important?” Let the unimportant stuff go, by all means, but don’t forget to listen to yourself, and to your partner, and engage the important stuff. Even if you don’t have a solution, identifying a genuine concern together is better than letting a problem go un-checked.
I guess it’s a juvenile thing if I have a soft spot for repressed people who don’t know how to express themselves. Sympathy for the child I used to be?
Anyway, that “True Wife Confessions” is a good way to let off some steam. Sure, I’m a husband, but there are those “oh my god, you too” moments. Makes one feel less alone, and more like yet another shared soul on the riverboat of humanity.
