.
Addendum

And now for the rest of the story... first... thank you Jonathon, for your comments. I truly appreciate any and all comments I receive. Not only do I enjoy hearing from others, but I also find valuable insights into my writing. Hence the subject of today's post:

First.... and foremost... things have been smoothed over, and all is back to normal between my wife and I. We have talked through the issue more completely.

Second.... and most important for this forum, is a clarification of what made me angry about the issue discussed yesterday. And, for this portion, I have Jonathon to thank, for he pointed out to me through his comments a misconception about what was really bothering me:

My wife and I love each other enormously, and both of us work hard to make our lives together good. We both work damn hard to do good things. My wife is NOT lazy, nor is she incapable of doing work. In fact, she is very very good AT working on tasks.

The whole thrust of my anger and frustration yesterday was not because of what she was doing or not doing in terms of household work. Instead, it was *wholly* about her attitude that she gave when doing or not doing the household work. I was angry and very hurt by her doing her work and then being cranky and crabby about doing it. This has been a constant point of contention between us our whole marriage. She has a tendency to view "chores" as very negative... items that infringe upon her time, that are bothersome, and that are things she resents having to do. I on the other hand, have tended to view chores (in adulthood anyhow.... as a child I complained about chores too) as a part of life that simply needs to be done. I work to not be negative about my chores, and stive to feel a sense of love in doing these tasks.... because I am doing them to show love and commitment to my family. It is a whole different approach to viewing chores. To me, seeing my chores philosophically as a tangible way for me to bring more love and kindness to my family makes them a thing I can do in a much happier way.

So, in a nutshell, I was upset, because my wife was crabbing at me about her chores, and this makes me upset because when she is crabby, I usually start troubleshooting ways to make changes so she will not feel this way, and of course that typically goes over like a lead balloon (just like I am met with an icy stare and a whole different realm of crabbing if I decide to *do* one or more of her chores to help her out. This crabbing, and crabbing about disliking and feeling burdened by chores, and this complaining and crabbing about chores others do for her put me in a position of being between a damn rock and a hard place. There is no solution.

That lack of a solution is the root of my anger. Its damn chores, for Pete's sake... they simply have to be done. We choose to either do them with love and kindness in our heart or we do them b*tch*ng, harranging, and crabbing, which shows NO love and just makes others feel edgy, hurt, and bad.

After our discussion yesterday, where I further elaborated these points, and ended with a statement of "I don't give a damn what you choose to do or not do as your chores.... all I want is for those chores you elect to do, to do them with love and not resentment. Let me know what ones you will do and either I will do the remainder of them (readers, just so you know, I mean in addition to my own regularly scheduled chores) or I will hire someone to do them."

And again, I stated for the final record... "Do them for love, or don't do them at all."

That seemed to jar something in her mind where I think she may start to look at these items with a different heart and spirit. Do not get me wrong, my wife is a loving, caring person. It is simply that she can get into these very negative mindsets sometimes and they make me so frustrated, angry, and hurt, that I can barely stand it sometimes. I am not a crying sort by my nature, but in the last seven days, I have sobbed on 5 of them because of this issue. I could not figure out the right words to say to get my point across. It took long, careful thought on my part to put the above ideas into words instead of being simply lists of my being angry back at her.

I am pleased that I believe she may now understand more what I am suggesting and why she had hurt me with her actions.

PipeTobacco