I have a question for the other married folks here. Do you sometimes wish you weren't married? Or am I the only one?
Sometimes - like last night, at 10:40 p.m., which was at least 40 minutes past when I had wanted to have my lights out, when I am lying in bed waiting for Primo, who is telling me he will be just one more minute, I wish I were still single and in control of my life and in control of my bedtime.
I treasure my sleep.
I don't feel well if I don't get enough sleep.
But I am married to a night owl who thinks there is merit in going to bed at the same time, a belief I think is without merit. I don't care if we go to bed at the same time. I just want to get enough sleep.
But he wanted me to wait for him and then it was "just one more minute" for almost an hour.
I thought to myself, "I hate you. I hate you I hate you I hate you. I want to sleep and you're keeping me from it."
Am I the only person who thinks this about the person she loves?
I had already spent the weekend working on the damn campaign: data entry, delivering yard signs to volunteers, delivering postcard blanks to a volunteer and explaining what needed to be done, starting to cook for the fundraiser, and then, to top it all off, spending two hours doing doors in the rain.
I had earned my sleep.
Primo needed to get the invitation out for the fundraiser next week.
How complicated can it be to write an invitation?
Quite, if you are Primo blesshisheart.
The qualities that make him absolutely maddening to work with as a spouse on a time-sensitive project are the qualities that will make him a good legislator: he is obsessive about the details and will not be rushed into releasing an imperfect product.
I like that in a legislator: I want our government to take a long, long, long time to make laws. I don't want more laws, so the more they delay, the better for us. How many laws does a country need, anyhow?
But this slow deliberation is crazy making for getting an invitation out. Plus he wants my involvement in deciding is the spacing right? Oh, that period has to go! That shouldn't be a comma! There should be a comma there!
Exasperated, I told him that nobody was going to grade him on this - that all that was necessary was to get the information out before the party actually started. People need more than five minutes notice of an event.
It took him two hours to compose the invitation and review the email list and finally hit "send."
I was ready to divorce him.
Am I normal? Or is this a huge problem?
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I don't mind people being obsessive, it's when they are obsessive about minutiae that I want to slap them. There is such a thing as being highly efficient and quick. I cannot believe that Primo micromanages your sleep patterns now! Stay away from the knife drawer until the last vote has been cast!
ReplyDeleteIn answer to your question ... NO!! It does seem like the Give-Take ratio is a bit off sided with you all.
ReplyDeleteIf Primo expects you to stay awake until he comes to bed, then he needs to be willing to get up when you do. Is that happening? Somehow i am doubting it.
My night owls stays up as late as he needs, but then sleeps in. I do the opposite and neither of us expects the other to give up sleep. Its way too important.
I think it's sweet that he wants you both to go to bed together. However! If it is more important to him than it is to you (as it seems to be from your post), then the onus is on him to get his tuchus to bed when you are ready to go to sleep. There's little I hate more in a relationship than the attitude of "this is so so important [to me] that I expect you to accommodate my preferences." He can accommodate his own damn preferences!
ReplyDeleteMy sweetie needs way less sleep than I do, so while we enjoy going to bed at the same time, it doesn't happen most nights. If he *ever* pushed me to stay up, while pushing sleep back farther and farther and farther, he would have an angry, crying rage-ball of a partner on his hands.
ReplyDeleteI dither over details, so sympathize with Primo on that part of the story, but I (obviously) can grant him no quarter when it comes to sacrificing someone else's sleep over them.
No, you're not the only one. And you're completely within your rights to object. It's one thing to have preferences -- I prefer going to bed with my soon-to-be-husband, actually -- but it's not OK to make those preferences come at the expense of your partner. I prefer going to bed together, but soon-to-be-hubby doesn't. He knows, from experience, that if we don't go to bed together, [wxyz] won't happen, because I will be asleep. So usually, we go to bed together. But if he wants to stay up and watch TV, then he knows he's missing out on [wxyz] and that's his decision. But he also knows that saying "Just one more minute" for an hour would make me VERY cranky the next day and that comes at a serious expense to him.
ReplyDeleteHA! I win and Primo loses!
ReplyDelete