So, earlier this afternoon, some friends of my husband came over. One of them, E, the wife and my husband’s current girlfriend, was going to go to a little get-together this afternoon and had invited me along. I declined as politely as possible, but she still was holding out hope that I would change my mind and go with her. The husband and their two kids, along with my husband and son were going to go look at a property our church group is thinking of buying into.
As his friends were coming into the house, I had to go use the toilet. My husband followed me into the bathroom and said “So, are you going with E or not?”
I told him that I had not planned to go and he looked completely crestfallen. ”OK,” he mumbled at me, and then just stood there staring at me, looking like a little whipped puppy.
I asked him what was wrong, and he said, “Nothing.” I had an epiphany then as I realized what was going on. He was angry with me for not wanting to spend the afternoon with the people he wants me to hang out with.
See, the problem is that the people he wants me to hang out with are about 10 years younger than me (some more than that), most of them are childless and to them, the point of life is to get as drunk as possible as often as possible. Now, I am not condemning that lifestyle at all. If it works for them, cool, I have no problem with that. I’m merely saying that THAT particular lifestyle is not one that works for me, and I don’t really have anything in common with most of them. I can’t talk about my son, as they don’t care. And that’s cool. I probably wouldn’t want to hear about other peoples kids if I didn’t have any, either. I can’t talk about my job, as I am a college student again, and they are done with college and work in offices and such. I am studying nursing, and most of them don’t want to talk about blood and guts and gore. Again, that’s cool. I can’t talk about my new cat without memories of my other two cats flooding in and making me cry like a baby. I don’t know these people well enough to cry like that in front of them.
They like different kinds of music than I do, different kinds of movies, they have completely different lives than I have and I respect that and think it’s cool, but there is not much for us to talk about. It’s very difficult for me to get to know people in the first place, and I kind of prefer hanging with people my own age or slightly older, or kids. I get kids and I like them. Young adults, not so much.
So, now my husband is pissed off at me because I am not the person he wants me to be. We have this argument every couple of months when he tries to force me to hang out with his friends without him. I have my own friends, and we have a few mutual friends, and I am fine with that. Apparently he is not. I keep thinking that it’s time for me to move on. That he wants me to be someone that I am not and that is not fair to either one of us.
Tags: arguing, friends, life, unfairness
