Work/Spouse Balance

I don’t write a ton about my husband Bear here. Part of that is out of job security. If this blog comes up in a google search for his name, it could affect things. It already has once.

Bear was listed in a lawsuit for a company he worked with years ago, and the lawyer deposing him slid a bunch of printouts of my blog across the table to him. He loved coming home to tell me that he had to admit in court that his name was ‘Bear’.

But the main reason is because it turns out that I do have one boundary after all. In all the writing I do about my bad childhood, my infertility and health problems, my politics and religion, the one thing I want to keep to myself is him.

I’ve been keeping a pretty ridiculous work load, and so has Bear. He’s now running two buildings and he’s super dedicated. He also works with the teenage boys at church, bakes whenever he has an excuse, and plays sports with his friends one night a week. With Atti on summer vacation from both school and therapy, his packed schedule is suddenly empty and he’s looking to me to entertain him while I’m trying to keep up with my own crazy workload.

I can’t remember if I’ve talked about it here or kept it to myself out of superstition, but I’m working crazy hard on a novel. It’s something I’ve been working towards since I first started blogging eight years ago and I’m finally doing it. But since it has some Mormon themes, I’m totally feeling the pressure of the media attention on Mormons. I feel like my best chance of it getting published is getting it written as soon as possible, or at least by November.

So I’m working like crazy, Atti wants all of my attention, and Bear is gone most of the time. The other day I finally flipped. It was Bear’s night to go play softball but I hadn’t gotten any writing done, Atti was getting on my last nerve and I just lost it. I felt like Bear wasn’t hearing me when I asked for help and so I got mad. Bear promised he was working on making things get better, but in my state that wasn’t good enough. I said, “But what are you going to do to make it better, NOW?”

He stayed home from the game, promised to give up some things, I calmed down, but he was pouting at me for the rest of the night.

The next day he made a joke about giving up baking and I didn’t know what he was talking about. Turns out that when I said “What are you going to do now,” he thought I meant going forward, when I just meant, now. I wanted him to miss his game to give me a break, and he thought I wanted him to give up every single one of his extra curricular activities, for good.

He was pouting the night of our fight, but he was willing to do it.

He’s a great partner.