I am what I am...

Okay, while I'm still in a bummed out mood - and at the risk of alienating everyone - let me take on the question that two of you asked in comments on my last post: why don't husbands change, but instead say "It's just the way that I am." ?

It's a perfectly good answer, I would say. I am who I am. I am who you married. In fact, I'm a better man now than I was 3 decades ago when you married me. And yet, I get very little credit for it. I get the opposite - judgement 24/7.

I like me okay. Everyone else I know seems to like me okay. The one person who clearly does not like me - who communicates to me regularly that I'm doing it wrong, and wants more than anything else to change me - is the one person who should like me the most.

I know that you want me to change. I get that. It comes through loud and clear. 5 X 5. You are incredibly talented at delivering that message. I don't meet your standards. I don't make you happy. I don't do it right. I get that.

Why is that so one-sided though? I've never asked you to change. It's never a conversation about "two people who want things better". It's about how we can fix me. Screw that.

I like me, mostly, the way I am. Why don't you? I'm generally happy with our life together. Why aren't you?

Here's the bottom line: You wanting me to change, and communicating to me every day that what I am is not enough to make you happy, does not motivate me to change! It motivates me to avoid you at all costs. I won't argue with you about it. But, I will work too much to not have to interact with you and hear the moment I walk in the door what I've not done right this week. I will find things to do in the house to minimize conversation. I will escape into the internet. And so goes the vicious cycle. And then I'm supposed to want to initiate intimacy with you?

Back the fuck up off me already. I am what I am. Either be happy with me, or don't.

- rant off. That's pretty much how I would answer that question.