Last night, my fiancé (F28) complained of a weird pressure in her forehead before we were about to go on a walk. My initial thought was that it was a migraine threatening to start up so I offered to massage her neck and shoulders/the headache pressure point in her palm to try to help. That was incorrect. She lay down to find some relief and the dog started barking so I went to quiet him. I didn’t want him being loud and making it worse. That was incorrect, too. I offered to get her an ice pack. That was a dumbass suggestion, apparently. I sat down next to her and looked up her symptoms because she was worried something was seriously wrong. Somehow, that was even more incorrect than my last two choices and amounted to me “playing on my phone”.
We were lying in bed, and I was in the process of going to sleep when the question came: “do you think you’re ready to be a husband?”
“Yeah, of course.”
This opened a 30 minute+ discussion about how I needed to educate myself on basic first aid in case she fell ill, how it was really worrying that I didn’t have her back in the same way she has mine (absolutely not true), how my behavior during her ailment was a major disappointment, how she (paraphrasing) felt like she was trying to make me into a different person by asking me to step up (fucking ouch) etc.
I feel like this is representative of a pattern in our relationship. I get treated as too incompetent to provide meaningful help or batted away when I try to help (in a way that’s objectively not ridiculous) and then blamed for not helping. It’s like I can’t fucking win, man.
Chana masala, basmati rice (not pictured).