Tired and Cranky
I don’t like confrontation. I had far too much of it in my last marriage. My ex and I would fight for hours only to discover we were both saying the same thing. In the event that I “won” an argument over, say, which car to buy, and that car happened to break down ever, he’d let me know that I’d been wrong in yet another argument. So I made a conscious decision that I didn’t want to fight with Lion.
How in the world do you avoid fighting? I stopped arguing. If Lion wanted a red couch and I wanted the brown one, we got the red one. If he wanted to go out to eat we went out to eat. I don’t give him any ammunition to tell me that my decision was the wrong one. This, of course, creates other problems.
Lion was getting pretty tired of making all the decisions all the time. It’s exhausting. But even more problematic is the fact that Lion is not my ex. They are two different people who act differently. He was not looking for me to screw up a decision like I imagine my ex was. (I’ve never actually discussed this idea with my ex so I don’t know if he was really just laying in wait for me to make a mistake.) And Lion also wanted me to take charge in the bedroom.
On a good day I’m not really a take charge kind of person. I’ve been trying a lot more lately. But when I’m tired I tend to lapse back into the adversarial role I had with my ex. If I perceive an attack I go on the defensive very quickly.
When we travel I don’t sleep well. Something always seems off. And then, because we take my truck, I’m usually the one driving, which makes me more tired. I was thinking the other day that we don’t travel well together. However, I think it may be because we’re both tired.
I’ll say something and he’ll take it the wrong way. Or vice versa. We snap at each other. When I mentioned something about it on the way home he told me I have the shock collar and I can just zap him when he does something wrong. But what if I’m wrong? I can’t just zap him when he does something I don’t like, can I? Even for things we didn’t discuss? If I’m in a particularly cranky mood I could run through the batteries very quickly and Lion’s balls will be fried. I know he wants me to be in charge, but it doesn’t make any sense to me that I should punish him for things that may not be wrong.
Today he turned on the tv while I was trying to write my post. I’ve told him it bothers me when he just comes in the room and turns on the tv while I’m working on something. It kills my train of thought. But I also know I’m tired. I’m more sensitive. I’m cranky. Yes, I’m bitchy. And we may also be heading into PMS season. Is that reason enough for Lion to keep his head down and avoid my cross hairs? I am supposed to be correcting behavior, but I need to do it rationally. I do not have absolute power. But I do have absolute responsibility for myself.
I guess the cage is teaching me about Lion and myself.