Pretending to be asleep 🤬
The other day (Friday night) I was shootin the shit with my husband of 14 years and a [male] friend I have known for over 20 years. We were talking about how our kids wake up at all hours of the night. I mentioned how they always come to wake me up for whatever and never my husband. My friend had said something like “my kids go to my wife because I growl at them to go back to bed” and I said “I try to do that too!” And that’s when my husband shot himself in the foot.
“No you don’t, you’re always like ‘ok, it’s ok baby let’s go back to bed’ I hear you all the time you just did that the other night!”
What. The fuck. Do you mean. You. Hear. Me.?.?.?.?.
I was buzzed and 🍃 high so he thought I was being funny.
Don’t. Fucking. Laugh. You mean to tell me, you heard me get woken up the other night, meaning YOU HEARD the girl tell me she peed in her bed, and you just rolled over while I fought a fitted sheet in the dark for 15 minutes BY MYSELF? While she searched for PJs and underwear in the dark BY HERSELF? Knowing full well it would be done faster with help, knowing full well we might wake her sister, knowing full well the longer I stay up and the longer I keep this kid up, the harder it will be for us to go back to sleep, knowing full well I already have sleep deprivation problems to the point of needing midday naps and you and the kids buy me “funny” t-shirts about it, knowing full well that YOU ARE ALSO AWAKE and you just choose not to help me????????????????))?)?)
And what the FUCK do you mean “all the time,” like how many times are you hearing “mommy my nose is bleeding,” “mommy [kid] is crying,” “mommy I had a nightmare,” “mommy I frowed up” “mommy I’m firsty” “mommy I can’t sleep” over the course of TEN GODDAMN YEARS AND THREE CHILDREN (including the time before they could talk when they woke up every 2 fucking hours because of course the most tired mother in the world has children that don’t fucking SLEEP)????? And you hear all this and just “meh! Zzzzzzzzzz”
He tried me with “well whenever I do offer to get up with them you tell me not to!” Oh, the 5 times in the last decade??? Omg how inconsiderate of me. How about I got it because you don’t fucking say anything until I’m already out the door?? “Need help?” In a careless whisper as I am literally walking down the hallway to their room. Shut the fuck up.
The next day (Saturday) I was sobered up but definitely still mad. I told him so, I told him how fucked up it is that he knows I’m so tired all the time and have been since our eldest was in utero, and to find out he’s been pulling this on me for God knows how long or how many times, just to try to laugh it off…it’s messed up, considering I’ve cried so many times over wanting him to be a parenting partner with me, not some employee I call on or delegate things to. Whenever I cry (not often), he feels terrible and promises he will step up and does some big gesture to show he’s committed to doing better (like buying a mannequin head to learn how to do hair, oh wow look at you!)…only for that to last a couple days before he’s back to waiting for me to ask for help or assuming I don’t need it (he has not touched the mannequin head and this morning cut a hair tie out of a kid’s hair because he didn’t know how to take it out). This time he didn’t even say sorry. I pointed that out and now he for sure won’t say it, probably because he thinks I won’t accept an apology (I won’t, but that’s not the point, the point is to BE GODDAMN SORRY and even if you don’t want to say the words, hello, act like it, do something, be better). Instead of saying sorry, he cooked me dinner after I told him multiple times I wasn’t hungry. So we got refusing to listen because “he knows me” on top of all this.
He also asked me “ok going forward, are you actually gonna let me help if I get up or are you gonna tell me ‘go back to sleep I got it’?” I told him he had better not be teeing up a “damned if I do, damned if I don’t” argument against me. I said “[man], there are many times that I actually don’t need your help. Walking a kid back to their bed after a nightmare is easy. Changing a kid’s sheets and PJs after a nosebleed or pee or throw-up is not. If you hear that, you had better get your ass up. I’m not going to wake you up, you are going to get yourself up. I can’t believe I actually have to spell this out. And DO NOT try to tell me I don’t ‘let you’ help. You are a grown man and a father. I don’t have to ‘let you’ do anything, you either do it or you don’t.”
Now it’s Tuesday and I’m still mad 😭 To the point that I’m looking for marriage counselors because at this point I want to talk to someone to know I’m not losing my mind, and he’s not the one I want to talk to about it. I’m spiraling, like what else is he pretending not to notice, what else is he just too lazy/selfish to deal with and totally comfortable with me fighting for my life? How much longer is it going to be before I feel like we are carrying the same load? When they’re adults???????? I’m just so hurt right now, I’m actually surprised at how much this bothers me. I think it’s just the willful ignorance of it all, I didn’t think I married someone like that.