Thursday mood, reflections on S being home..

I have to write because I’m feeling down this morning.  I’m really hoping I will feel a bit better after writing.

So S has been back the last 3 nights after working away for 3 weeks.  It was good to be together again but it was hard too – we had a row yesterday.  He’s just left again for another 5 nights away.  In terms of my eating, something slightly odd happened.  I was quite concerned about turning to food for comfort while he was away, so I blogged a lot and put a lot of effort in to eating well, which I achieved – I ate better than I have in, well, probably years.  I felt great and after a few days it became easy – I was making lots of lovely meals, loads of vegetables, beans, fruit, seeds – and very little cravings for sugar/fat.  The weekend before his return I became anxious and my healthy eating went out the window.

We run a business together and have always clashed a bit on making decisions, which is why I think him working away a bit with another project is really good for us.  Our arguments are always about the business (an ice cream parlour) and I was pretty nervous about him doing a shift there yesterday (this was the first time I’ve had to run the place on my own – and it was for 3 weeks!) – as he usually has a negative reaction (says I didn’t clean well enough, forgot to do A,B and C).  In the past I probably have been the least “into it” of the two of us – and taken more of a back seat on decision making etc – but partly because I got tired of arguing about every little detail.  We ran it together for 6 years and had a lot of arguments – in the end I decided to let him have the “final say” on things and I would back down unless I felt incredibly strongly about something, it just seemed better for us, our relationship is more important to me than getting to decide what colour to paint the cupboards!  As a result he has taken the view that I am not putting 100% into it anymore.  Which was probably true, but really I felt a bit pushed out, I didn’t feel there was room for both of us to get our way.  But things have changed now, he is away a lot so I have completely re-evaluated my position – the shop is my business now, I have to be responsible and run it to the best of my abilities, getting there early, leaving it immaculate, making sure every customer is happy and that I remember to order everything we need etc.  I also learned to do the accounts (which he always did before) and clean all the machinery.  I can say without doubt that I have put 100% into it these last few weeks, I enjoy it, I feel proud of it and I really wanted S to be proud of me too, and shake his attitude that I am half-arsed about it.

So I was nervous but excited about him going down to do a shift, I had worked hard to get everything immaculate, organised, topped up – I had so many things to remember but I was very organised and confident that he would be pleased with me.  However, I must have been worried about it because my diet went out the window just before his return.    My diet is always a symptom of what is really going on.  And guess what happened?  He was furious.  I popped down to drop off some fudge for the shop that I had spent all morning making, and he couldn’t even look at me.  He was angry.  When I asked him what he was so cross about, he said the tape on the cardboard (you have to stick some tape on before you put it out to be collected) wasn’t stuck on straight, and there was dust on the side out the back in the staff bit where a plumber had done some work the day before.  I can’t remember if there was anything else.  But they were ridiculous things.  I became so indescribably upset and frustrated and gave him a speech about how hard I work and how I didn’t deserve this.  I felt so horrid, I drove away and really wanted to crash into someone, I was so livid.  I was crying a lot, he tried to call me and left me messages saying that he was really sorry.

Anyway, for the rest of the day (yesterday) he was really apologetic to me, said he knew he had been completely out of order, that I had done a great job, that he is a control freak etc.  He did the whole day in the end to make it up to me, so that I could have a rest and lay in the garden.  He has this small part of his personality that is like this (control freak, unreasonable) but it just comes now and then.  The rest of the time he is a different person.  I’ve always found it very confusing and stressful to deal with, but had thought that we had pretty much sorted out this kind of behaviour and that lately we have been more respectful to each other.  Before we went to sleep last night he said “I love you so much, I’m so sorry about today, I wish I could take it back.  I know you work really hard, and you didn’t deserve any of that today.”

I don’t know where to go from here.  He’s just gone again for 5 nights, and I have a really busy work weekend ahead where I’m in the shop all day then restaurant shifts at night.  I feel blue and need to sort my eating out too – last few days I’ve been not eating then over-eating, it’s all over the place.  I just want to feel better.  I know he says he didn’t mean any of it but my self-confidence is pretty low now and I feel under-appreciated.  Isn’t it weird that I did really well with my eating while he was away but then it all went to shit when he was back?