Yesterday Husband admitted that, no, in fact, sometimes he doesn‘t listen when I talk. I found it extremely gratifying to learn this, because the alternative was that he hears me and then ignores what I say. Reportedly, when Little Girl is crying, or I am angering him in some way, that makes too much input and my instructions (e.g. “get the pink outfit hanging on the hook in her room with the hat and try it on her”) go right past him and Little Girl comes back wearing a navy blue shirt.
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As near as I can figure it, Husband and I made our acquaintance just about ten years ago. A friend encouraged me to download a chat service which had a feature allowing you to connect randomly with any of the thousands (or more) of users online at that time. I had some questions about how the software worked, so I hit that button looking for someone to ask. Up popped Husband. Always helpful, my questions got resolved and we found out we lived about two hours away from each other–he in the city where the above-mentioned friend lived. I found out he was from Sweden, he was more than six years older (I lied about my own age), and he was divorced. I was, we’ll say, intrigued . (At that point in my life I was notorious for only dating those for whom English was not a first language.) When I accidentally disconnected myself from the chat, I emailed him my thanks for the help. And a correspondence was born.
Maybe if I instant messaged Husband all my requests he’d pay more attention?
