*Warning* This blog is mainly going to be a rambling post as I try to sort through my feelings for my husband.

I met my husband over Christmas break of the 2008-2009 school year. I met him while I was working at one of my two jobs, Meijer. I had his mother as my teacher the previous semester and was scheduled to have her as a teacher for the next semester. I went up to talk to her while I was working and she introduced me to her son. According to her, it was love at first sight for him. He couldn't stop going on about "that hot girl in your class". I think lust at first sight might be more appropriate. At that time, he was seeing another girl, had been seeing for about a month and a half or so. We hung out a few times in January/February so that he could help me with programming homework for class.

We had a hang-out date on March 1st of 2009, it was a Sunday and we watched movies. We watched a great movie and talked through the whole thing. We put another movie in and at some point we started making out. He was still seeing the other girl. I knew it was wrong and we talked about that, but I still kissed him. The next day, after classes, he broke up with her to go out with me. I was working two jobs, going to school full-time and living with my mother. He lived with his mother and step-father and didn't need to work because he had just got off a five-year tour in the Navy the year prior. He had also been declared 50% disabled, was receiving disability and school benefits.

We talked about everything. That week was Spring Break and we spent as much time as we could together. Within a week, we both agreed that it felt like we'd known each other forever, that we were head over heels for each other. In April, he got an apartment to get out of his mother's house and a week later I moved in with him because my mom was making me angry. It was great, my friend loved him, I was happy, and he proposed to me on my 21st birthday. Everything was great until I told him something that had happened in my past, something that I had done one time and something that I planned to never, EVER, repeat. My husband didn't have anything to say to me, other than the polite things you have to say when you live with someone, for three days. For three days I was miserable as my husband made me feel like I didn't exist. I spent those three days trying to get him to talk to me, to tell me why this past event was such a big deal, and what I could do to help him get over it. What finally snapped him out of it was that he had a military meeting an hour or so away from home. When he got back, he said that he realized that the past event wasn't enough to damage our relationship. I don't know if that event ever left my psyche. I have a lot of bad history with guys (past boyfriends, my father, etc).

We got pregnant that June. I worked until the end of August and then we moved back in with my mother (who lived in the same town as the university we attend). My husband picked up a job at Meijer as he tried to go to school in a very difficult major. My husband and my mother almost instantaneously didn't get along. My mother is slightly childish. My husband is not a big talker, so my mother construed that as he didn't like her and therefore she doesn't like him. At this point in time, they hate each other and I have to deal with both of them for each other. It's stressful to say the least.

Anyway, after we had our son my husband told me during the aforementioned three days when he wasn't talking to me, he had contemplated acutally leaving me. Packing up his stuff and leaving. Just recently when I asked him about this he said it was a fleeting thought. That wasn't the impression I received previously. We used to laugh and play all the time. And I fell for that because I knew from his previous job and the fact that he was in school that he could be serious when the time came. But now it seems that his sarcasm is never-ending. When we talked about it recently, he said that he would try to tone it down. His way of toning it down is to not talk as much. I don't want him to stop talking to me in order to not be as sarcastic. It doesn't work that way. It's the same amount of sarcasm, just less overall vocality. I want someone that can talk to me without needing to make a joke all of the time. Or someone that when they aren't being sarcastic is telling me to calm down.

We talked about a lot of things recently. My husband didn't realize that I thought anything needed improvement in our relationship. I want someone that I can laugh and play with, but someone I can also be serious with. I need someone that understands why knowing possible changes in our class schedules is important for next fall semester. It's important because it could be the difference between needed part-time or full-time daycare for our son. I need someone who is willing to do the work: i.e. looking up what our son is allowed to eat, researching items that we intend to buy for the family (our son's stroller cover, our Netflix membership, my new computer), etc.

And these may seem like stupid, minor concerns, but his sarcasm is starting to hurt. And these last few months have been hard (the end of winter is always harder) and I'm to a point where I love my husband, but I'm not in love with him. Our sexual relationship has been touch and go since I got pregnant, I feel like our physical relationship (touching, holding hands, kissing, cuddling) has been strained and I'm the only one making an effort to be close. And I feel like me asking him to stop being sarcastic all the time, causing him to stop talking and making him feel uncomfortable in his own home, is unfair. Shouldn't he be with someone that can take him as he is and love him for his sarcasticness? But it isn't fair for me to listen to him tell our son, sarcastically, that "we'll blame mommy, because it's all mommy's fault." Or, "it's a man's world so what I say goes." He doesn't call me names, his sniping isn't overt and obvious and he is always saying that he was just joking and he didn't mean for me to take it wrong. It's always on me, when I take something he says wrong. What am I supposed to do? Just accept him as he is, take the less talking with the same amount of sarcasm, and learn to not react to my mental thoughts that take his sarcasm wrong?

Another big thing is the cleaning. He always complains about the dishes piling up, or the living room being a mess from the baby playing with his toys, or the baby's cloth diapers smiling up the townhouse. I did most of this to myself. In order to get my husband to agree to cloth diapers, I had to agree to clean them myself, so I do. My husband complains about the dishes and won't wash them by hand and our rental's dishwasher sucks, so I do them. I stack them and I wash them and I put them away when they are dry. I do the laundry, but that is he will take out the trash. And because all of the money coming into our home is from my husband, I feel like a gold digger and like all the hard work I do around this place isn't enough. And that isn't fair to either of us. And yet, I finally had to yell at him because I got so frustrated one night when we had yet another round of "who's getting up with the baby in the morning." It was a Saturday night and he offered to let me sleep in. Then when I asked, is it really okay?, he started going "well…" and we went into a, I'll get up, no I'll get up, no I'll get up and finally eded with him saying that we'd wait until morning and see how we felt. I stewed in bed for twenty minutes after he tucked me in. Then I went downstairs, without my glasses or contacts, and yelled at the blur that was my husband. Now our arrangement is that unless I'm deathly ill, I get up with the baby in the mornings because otherwise we'll always wait until morning to figure it out, the baby will get upset waiting, and I will be officially angry with my husband by the time I manage to force myself out of bed and take the screaming baby downstairs and let my husband sleep.

I think some of this fighting is part of our problem. I also think some of my passive-aggressive taking over of responsibilities is part of the problem. And yet, my husband always seems to turn the conversation around and make it my fault. And yet, is he really, or is it my mental problems exacerbating and twisting his words and meaning? If I can figure out that, then it would be something for me to work on, and not something that is central to my husband that I can't change if he doesn't want to change, which he sort of seems to want to and sort of doesn't at the same time. I mean, he says he wants to but then his solution is to not talk as much. I don't think that's really changing since he was already a quiet guy.

I'm glad I got some of this out and written down.