A Public Apology To My Long-Suffering Husband

Tail firmly planted between my legs, I owe the old man an apology for my last post.

 

For as he pointed out, where it’s not unusual for me to write about him non-reverentially, typically I balance up my scathing, personal criticism with some redeeming facts about his personality. However, in my last post he thought he came off sounding like a dickhead. 

 

Which he’s not.

 

And looking back at that post with hindsight thoughtfully aided by minor domestic warfare, perhaps he’s got a point. He puts up with a lot from me, poking publicly at his foibles on a weekly basis, and sometimes I forget that you, my readers, don’t really know the man. And often in my vitriolic, self-delusional need to be funny, I forget to add that he’s actually quite nice.

 

In my defence, I was generalising about middle-aged men, but I used him as my example. His immediate reaction to the post was that he wanted to put out his own equally bitter, retaliatory post about how awful I am to live with, and I begged him to do it because I’m sure you’d all lap it up. To be honest, he’s far funnier than me.

 

But then the Pitch and Putt Golf Open in Machu Pichu came on telly and he couldn’t find the window of opportunity.

 

I’m sure all of you realise that I’m no Mother Theresa and I hope that the picture I paint of our lives doesn’t ever come across as unauthentic, warped or too perfect. The whole point of this fucking blog is about NOT being perfect, and having to deal with the extra shit that the ageing process, teenagers and being a woman in hormone crisis throw at us even when we’re on the floor, at our lowest ebb.

 

But in case you haven’t worked it out, and for the old man’s sake – because I love him enough to throw my pride onto a live train track – I can admit that I’m a moody cow to live with, that I’m highly judgmental, opinionated, and about as far from the ‘natural’ mother-type I aspired to be, (more the type that desperately hopes that love will make up for all my shortcomings). I’m also a really shit cook, rely heavily on alcohol to cope with stress, (aka being a very poor role model to our children), I continually give him a hard time for not living up to my high expectations of helping me create that perfect family picture in my head that the Ingalls and Waltons had, (that blinkers me to what I do have), and I don’t tell people often enough how much I care about them because that would be a sign of weakness. And did I mention that I’m a perfectionist and very over-critical?

 

A bitch of the highest order, if truth be told.

 

But again, in my defence, I don’t know how I would have survived the last few years without this blog as my therapy outlet and sometimes I get carried away by my own importance. Almost double the number of parents who have kids with ADHD end up in the divorce courts, so I’m not being melodramatic when I state that as a couple, we’re doing okay. Sure, we’ve weathered some fucking perfect storms, but bizarrely they seem to have made us stronger. The old man doesn’t have the same therapy outlet as me and being a different gender, he has to find his outlet to scream in other ways – usually by whacking at a golf ball.

 

And I know I ridicule him for his obsession with golf, but it’s his place to focus when he doesn’t want to focus on the pain, just as writing is mine.

 

The old man and I have fundamentally opposing personalities, which were always going to lead to fireworks. We often joke that his cardiogram is flat line whereas mine is a full-blown heart attack. I’m the drama queen; he’s my steady knight. We’ve always fought, bitched and warred with each other, but those few times when I’ve really overstepped the mark I’ve always been horrified at the thought of losing him.

 

That must be love, and love deserves respect.