I wasn’t in a good space. I’m tired.

The husband wasn’t in a good space either and I asked if he’d like to talk later. “I’m left with some stuff from last night and I don’t want to hold onto it,” he said, which I took to mean “yes please, can we talk later.”

I had to try to sort my head out.

I went out lunchtime to a nice cafe and had some delicious soup while I did some reading. After work, I spent only fifteen minutes on the piano, then tried some meditation too get into a good mindset. I suppose it was all a bit rushed.

Nothing seemed to work.

Talking in the evening after work doesn’t leave a lot of time to get my head in order first.

After tea and walking the dog, I sat on the floor, as I usually do when talking, and asked the husband to say what was upsetting him.

To start with he was reluctant. I think he asked himself whether he could be bothered, or words to that effect. I tried to be patient.

He was angry. And loud.

I’m afraid that I responded in the same way at times. I wasn’t well behaved really. Eventually, I shut myself up since I couldn’t be kind.

I’m trying to piece this together in my brain.

He was angry about me saying that I wouldn’t want to come back to him about “balance” until Monday at the earliest. He demanded to know what else I had to do – why was I so busy?

It was more about finding some quiet times to think, which there wouldn’t be much this weekend since I am travelling to see a friend one day.

He seemed angry that I write everything down. It might be that I blog everything that happens to me, which effectively means that it’s public, although the purpose of writing about my relationship is really to sort my brain out. I really don’t think I come across very well because I was irritated by it. I was hearing “stop writing your blog”, which I am not going to do because I need it.

He was angered that I went upstairs for about forty-five minutes after we’d talked on Thursday. He couldn’t believe that I was writing the whole time. I was! I was just writing and thinking!

I think that he feels that I should be able to just remember things. I can’t. I have to write down what he says on order to process and think about it. That’s way more effort than just being able to remember it!

He seemed to want to read my blog. It’s there, he could if he wanted to. I did ask if he’d like to see last night’s entry. “It might give me some idea if what’s going on in your mind!” was the answer. I don’t know whether I’ll send it to him. He can find it if he wants.

He said that I’d read a book about autism and decided to do all the traits. He seems to accept that overwhelm and shutdowns are real things for me. I don’t know what else he meant specially though. I don’t try to hide some of my oddities any more, I wonder if that’s what he meant “by decided to do all the traits”? I actually don’t know what he means!

He objected to me describing his questions as “demands”. I chose that word because there seemed to be a forcefulness to the request beyond what the word “asked” could convey.

I’m going to use the word “demand” again though because he demanded to know what I said to my online friends.

Then he didn’t seem interested when I started to answer his question. In fact, answering made him more angry.

I closed my eyes and pushed my hands into the floor. I could feel the glue coming on inside my brain.

I’d been very defensive and not at all in the calm place I needed to be too really discuss how he felt. I felt attacked and was reacting.

So at just after 8pm, I came up to bed to try to calm down. I have an early start tomorrow.

---

The alarm woke me at 6am. That’s very early for a Saturday. I’m didn’t take a sleeper the night before so that I could wake up.

I’m meeting a friend in Bristol, that can be anything from an hour-and-a-half to two hour drive along boring motorways. I’ll be stopping in a running shop before we meet to buy a pair of new running shoes because my current pair are a couple of miles from getting holes in the soles!

---

I’m in the running shop trying on shoes, trying to understand why he was so angry?

Am I secretive? I don’t think so. It sometimes feels that I can’t talk about what I’d really like to talk about with him because when we talk it’s mostly about our relationship.

Maybe that’s the problem: that every time we talk it’s about our problems and not about our lives.

I’m not secretive about my online friends. He knows that I regularly chat to people. He knows a few general facts about them (I don’t break confidence).

His phone goes “ping” a lot. I do see him on it sometimes (and more times than in the past), but I don’t know whether he’s talking to people. I don’t mind if he is.

What is he really angry about? It feels unfair.