So… I messed up a bit…
It was John’s birthday last week. A school day so I assumed he’d want to order his favourite takeaway to have for dinner with the children. I also assumed he’d want to spend the day together as he’s spent a lot of time over the past weeks and months saying we should spend more time together. I was wrong to assume.
The day before, I casually asked him what the plans were. He replied: “I’m going to the bookshop. The idea being that I can spend the whole day there if I want and not have to think about watching the kids. Then I might do some shopping. Why?”
Do you see what’s wrong with that response, or is it just me?
I answered, “No reason” and moved on.
He called me back and said “You can come if you want.”
A wonderfully heartfelt invitation that I had to refuse.
The children normally make John card’s and as we’re in this ‘nothingness’ stage at the moment, I didn’t buy him a card… Yes, I am a monster.
He came back from his lovely day out and asked if we’d got him a card. Cue startled looks from all of us. I didn’t think he’d be bothered as he never keeps cards, even the ones the children have made him. This year though – that’s all change and he was (and still is) quite put out that we didn’t get him one.
Today he told us that none of us are to expect anything from him on our respective birthday’s and that he works 70 hour weeks for ‘you lot and you couldn’t even get me a card’.
My eldest snapped back that we’d already apologised days ago and had tried to make it up to him by spending time together but he promptly fell asleep on the sofa…
He’s been telling people how awful we are and I do feel bad about it. It makes no difference that he didn’t want to spend the majority of his day with us. It makes no difference that (as the children pointed out) he doesn’t even remember their birthday’s (ouch!). It makes no difference that on both my birthday and Mother’s Day, he didn’t get me cards (but neither wanted nor expected from him). And no – it wasn’t a tit-for-tat. I genuinely didn’t think he’d care.
Obviously I know differently now…
This Can't Be Love 