But this week:
Writing in The New York Times, Nicholas Kristof reported that the media has been as guilty of ignoring the ongoing genocide in Darfur as the Bush administration has been. In June, he said, the main TV news programs collectively ran 55 times more stories about the Michael Jackson trial than they did about East Africa’s crisis. CBS gave three minutes of coverage to Darfur in all of 2004, and NBC five minutes. As soon as you finish reading this horoscope, Virgo, I hope you will take aggressive action to avoid falling victim to equally misplaced priorities in your personal life. Don’t you dare let trivial spectacles divert you from healing the sorest spot in your world.
I feel like this actually means something to me. I ignore Rob most of the time, but I kind of feel like there is stuff I need to do to heal right now.
Last night I cornered Puppy and told him how very upset I am about his inability to compromise. He just doesn’t seem to be able to. He either entirely gives in to appease me or he gets his back up and won’t move. I told him I don’t want either end of this crap. I really really don’t want to deal with him vascilating between the two extremes. I don’t know how I can make this situation any better or any easier for either of us. I am trying to think of the issues that exist in our relationship. We are both very sensitive to being teased and yet we both spend a lot of time teasing. This isn’t a great situation. We are trying to figure out how to understand the teasing as non-hurtful. Every time I am in any kind of a bad mood he is convinced it is all his fault and that I am about to walk out and this escalates any irritability on my end because he gets somewhat dramatic. And I get into bad moods pretty easily: sleep deprivation, hunger, being too hot, not feeling well…. Any can cause me to be really pissy and grumpy. ARGH! I think we need to work on the expression, “Are you mad at me or near me.” Because as soon as someone says this to me (and I have a few friends trained) I realize what I am doing and mellow out conisderably almost instantly.
Compromises we have to work on:
I am moody. It is just kind of unavoidable. I have tried and tried and tried meds to deal with this and I haven’t been successful yet. I will probably try again when I have insurance again because I would like to be less psycho. I get unreasonably angry about simple things and I am very demanding and attention needy. I know these things aren’t easy for him.
He is forgetful and lazy. To the degree that both cause actual problems in my life. If he was only influencing himself it would be a different story. He is very unyielding about difficult issues and continues to push far past where it is ok with me to do so.
I really don’t think either side is any easier or harder than the other, just very different. *sigh* Everything in this relationship is kind of on turbo drive. I kind of feel like we skipped the honeymoon phase (or at least had a very short one) because we are both very conscious of wanting long-term stuff and we want to get started on that sooner than later. The next six months are going to be very telling. We are almost at six months. He commented that he has never had this much trouble learning to communicate with a partner before. I counter that he has never really learned to communicate with a partner before. He believed he knew what was necessary to keep his wife happy, but he also threw down about things and wouldn’t compromise and she left him because of it. I wonder what he has learned from this? He told me last night that there are going to be things that he won’t ever compromise about but he couldn’t come up with examples. That scares the hell out of me.