He never cared about some things that were really, really important to me. That hurt, and I never got over those hurts.

He didn’t like me speaking Estonian with the children when he was around. He found it too hard to learn so he gave up and mostly forgot the bits he had once learned. It was uncomfortable for him to hear a conversation and only understand half of it. For his sake, I stopped speaking Estonian when he was present. But it hurt. Language is important to me. Sure, I can express myself in Swedish and English equally well, but Estonian is the language of my heart. If I’m talking to Ingrid or Adrian about some emotional topic, then doing that in Swedish feels very impersonal. It felt like I was not talking to them for real, but like I was on a stage, acting a part.

(Why am I writing all this in English, you might wonder. Surely this is an emotional topic? Yes, it absolutely is. English gives me distance, and in this case, it’s a good thing. It takes some of the emotion out of the topic and lets me view it more dispassionately. Also, to be quite honest, I am better at writing in English than in Estonian. When I talk to Ingrid and Adrian in Estonian – which I can now do all the time! – I often throw in Swedish or English terms when I just don’t have the vocabulary in Estonian.)

He was not interested in my friends and family. He came with me to Estonia when Adrian was so small that it was difficult for me to manage both kids on my own, but as soon as we were past that, he stopped. And I do realise that it was not a lot of fun for him to be there – not the best he could do with his vacation days. He always felt like an outsider, not knowing the language, and of course the trip there isn’t short.

He hasn’t seen my father and his wife in many years. They’re getting old and won’t be around forever, and he hasn’t found it worth a few days’ effort to come and see them. I wouldn’t even need him to come with us every year, or stay the full time that we do. But, like, once, for a day or two? To signal that he cares at least a little bit?

He never read or even looked at my blog. This has my primary creative outlet for decades. It’s not like he doesn’t read other things online… just that mine wasn’t important to him. Again, I didn’t even need him to subscribe or look at it weekly or interact in any way. But, again, like, maybe take a look once a month and say something politely positive?

Finally, the snoring. It seemss petty, in a way, and definitely wasn’t as deeply emotionally hurtful as the other points above. But it’s still significant. He knew that he snores. He knew that it bothered me. I sometimes literally had to sleep “upside down” with my head next to his feet because the snoring was so loud that my earplugs weren’t enough, so there’s no way he wasn’t aware. My daily (nightly) comfort was just not worth even the smallest effort.

As I’ve described from several angles now, a core problem in our relationship was him labelling me “negative” in a very general way. That was problematic in and of itself, but it was also a sign of our differing world views, which bothered me more and more as time went by.

I generally think well of people, especially those whom I love. Eric is much more inclined to, for lack of a better word, think badly of people.

If someone behaves in a way that I don’t like, I make an effort to assume the best. Their behaviour can usually be explained by a combination of circumstances: the situation, the person’s knowledge and skills, etc. Perhaps they were tired, or had a bad day. Maybe they didn’t realize how they sounded, or (especially in the case of children) maybe they didn’t have the skills yet to behave better or express themselves better.

Meanwhile, when Eric sees behaviour he doesn’t like, he tends to generalize that to “this person is [negative adjective]”. He assigns labels to people, and then lets those colour his future interactions with them.

I find my philosophy both more useful and more respectful. A label sticks forever, and none of the involved parties can do anything about it other than be annoyed by it. Whereas a situational approach empowers you to prevent the problem from reoccurring, or to alleviate it. I really didn’t like hearing his negative labels about the children, like s/he “doesn’t care about others”, or how s/he is “messy”, “lazy”, “distractible”, and much preferred making an effort to understand, prevent, explain, teach.

I’ve since learned that this is a whole debate in psychology, known as “person vs situation” or “trait vs state”.

One big problem in our relationship in recent years was that we both felt that we were not allowed to make mistakes.

He said he couldn’t make mistakes because I would immediately correct him.

I felt I couldn’t make mistakes (express myself in a less than perfect way) because I was then immediately labelled as “negative” and “the cause of all problems”.

That naturally felt bad for both of us.

Maybe I’m just finding excuses here, but to me, there’s a fundamental qualitative difference between these two.

One is being told “you were wrong about this”.
The other is being told “you are a bad person”.

One you can agree or disagree with, accept or reject.
The other is an attack on your whole being.

A big part of what Eric perceived and described as my “negativity” was me correcting him.

I know I used to correct him (and others) when I knew they were wrong, more often than they liked. I worked on it, trained myself out of the habit. It was not enough.

I let him be as wrong as he wanted without saying anything. He can call plants by the wrong name, and I say nothing. He can order “hot cold milk” from a menu written in Italian, and I say nothing. He can say we’re walking east when we’re going north. Whatever. It’s never worth saying anything.

If I still corrected him EVER then I could see him immediately shut down and get quietly furious. And I did correct him, in two specific kinds of scenarios.

One was when the discussion topic was specifically about facts, for example if Adrian asked about how something works. I mostly let Eric have center stage in those conversation (see later post) and only added my bits when he had had time to shine. The only time I stepped in and corrected when he was unequivocally wrong about some essential part, and I didn’t want Adrian to walk away with entirely wrong information. I made very sure to express myself very politely and diplomatically, wrapping the correction in soft phrases. None of that was acceptable. He just could not accept me correcting him.

The other scenario is in particularly stressful situations. Factual errors stress me out when I’m already anxious in a stressful situation. If we’re navigating public transport in a foreign city, or we’re barely on time for some important-ish appointment and someone calls a street by the wrong name. I know it doesn’t matter at all, but it just makes my anxiety worse. Correcting people in that situation is a reflexive action, not even intentional – it’s almost like batting away a wasp hovering in my face. It’s rare, literally happens no more than a handful of times per year. (I have grown to be hyper aware of each time this happens.) But even that was too much, and Eric reacted strongly every time.

Maybe it is all my fault. Maybe my behaviour twenty years ago traumatised him to the extent that even the slightest criticism now is unbearable. I don’t know, but I accept that it is possible. If that’s the case, then we’re in an untenable situation – if he can’t forgive me (for lack of a better word) then we’ll never get past this. The only thing to do then is to accept that and for both us to move on.

Someone once said that love is an action verb. That resonates with me.

Loving someone means more than feeling warm feelings. Loving means saying loving things, behaving in loving ways, but also seeing the other with loving eyes.

To love is to interpret the beloved’s actions with extra love, grace, and forgiveness. In my mind, if you love someone, then you make an effort to interpret their words and deeds in the most positive way that you can.

Eric’s view and behaviour towards me has turned into the opposite. He is unable to love me, for my definition of love.

“Love thy neighbour as thyself.” I’m not a fan of the Bible, but that guideline is a good one. I am pretty sure that I love a random stranger in the street – in the sense that I look at them with more forgiving eyes – than Eric looks/looked at me.