My husband has taken lately to calling me a bitch.  I’ll be defending myself, or trying to explain myself, and he will say that I’m interrupting him and then say, “is this the way you act at work?  You better be careful, because people will think you’re a bitch.”  Or, “You really are a bitch, aren’t you?”

The most recent time I was trying to present a spreadsheet of our annual budget, recently adjusted for a new loan we took out and new expenses we want to make for our son.  I wanted to explain to him the reasons I put things in the categories that I did, and why I cut back in some and not in others (the endless quest to get rid of the cable and the landline, which I think are wasteful, and he thinks are safe and dependable, while all this other tech is unreliable, which it sometimes is) and ask him what I might have left out that was important (the costs of the cat, I always forget to include that, but she needs special food and medicine and it’s not insignificant).  But before we could even get to the end of the 20 or so item list, he gets frustrated, and tells me that I’m not answering his question about what our weekly “nut” is (which I think at that point is a different issue, our savings, which I haven’t calculated yet), I’m presenting a budget, a plan for the year how we can break even, and not start dipping more into our meager and recently slipping savings.  But he’s talking about our weekly income, because he wants to think of it all in weekly terms, but I’m like, we get paid and pay most of our bills on a monthly basis, it doesn’t help to think of it in weekly, because that’s not how we use or track it.  And we both have to understand the whole month and be responsible for how we use it and how to cut back.

Now, here, I don’t think it’s fair for him to call me a bitch because I’m trying to go through a list with him, and he won’t wait until the end to walk away.  I know part of what frustrates him is it’s hard to see the paper I’ve printed, even though I’ve tried to make it as large as possible without going to a second page.  But that doesn’t seem to be the problem:  “I don’t know why you have to say this, I can read what this says,” but he didn’t seem to read that the last two items were contributions to the savings, which he is most concerned about, until I became a bitch and said, “How do you stop spending unless you know what your spending and have a plan and how to track it? You have to track it everyday, and by category, so you know where you’re at!”

And I did raise my voice did get high and loud, and I did use “you,” but I meant the general “you,” not him, I really meant “we.”  So then he calls me a bitch, and walks away.

And I don’t want to be a bitch.  I never thought it was cool or sexy to be a bitch.  I’ve known women who kind of relish the bitch act, and feel like it gives them power.  That by acting stubborn and irrational, they will get what they want.  I never feel like it gives me power.  I feel like it’s totally losing.  I only seem to get what I want through persistent, calm, long-term persuasion.

What I think I’m learning about why I might sometimes actually be a bitch, is because I’m defensive, or afraid, or worried, or frustrated myself, and that I have pretty strong physical and vocal energy, and it comes off as bitchy and controlling when I’m trying to solve a problem that someone else doesn’t see as a problem, or someone else doesn’t like my particular solution to it.

Eventually, my husband listened to the budget, and pretty much agreed to it.  We’re going to go back to the method that we have of collecting all our receipts and me totaling them up by hand and putting them into a monthly envelope, so we’ll know at the end of the month if we’re on track, or ahead, or behind. We recently renovated our kitchen, and it was a total spendfest…but of course it went over budget, and we’re both very nervous about how the rest of the year will go.  

It looks beautiful, though.  

 

 

I hope this year isn’t too much of a bitch.