How to value your partner as an emotional comfort blanket, not treat them an emotional punchbag

I was reading Lucy Mangan’s column in Stylist Magazine this week, Inexplicable Spouse Rage is So Normal and it stuck so much of a chord, I actually tweeted her, and she tweeted me back, which has made me warm to her even more.

The article was about husband bashing – not literally – although I suspect most of us who’ve been married a few years will admit to coming close –  and the fact that when you share most of your sleeping hours with one other alone (or with the kids piling in), you’re bound to get pissed off when they snore.

The article felt particularly salient after an insidious little tantrum I had last week when I didn’t get what I wanted for my birthday from my other half. Granted, I was ill with a chest infection, and had been receiving declines to my party, planned for the next day, all day, as well as having been woken up by texting well wishers at 6.15am having spent a sleepless night from 3.00. Tom had got in late the night before, drunk after a Christmas party and had woken me up with the gift of a red bowler hat and an orange pigeon that he’d won in some city boy escapade. So I was in a typically bad birthday mood.

When the time came for presents, which wasn’t till Tom came home the next day, I was sat on the sofa with a duvet and a box of tissues, the kids watching excitedly as I unwrapped the packages, the sting of disappointment became all a bit too much to bear as I ended up a bit tearful. I know. I sound like an awful cow. And I am. But I’ve been more stalwart in the face of a poverty-Christmas offering of Quality Street in the past. But on my birthday, well, I’m always a bit wobbly.

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t tried. He’d got me a cream I blogged about, a perfectly nice and serviceable black jumper and some jewellery from Oliver Bonas that he warned me in advance he’d picked up out of desperation. There was nothing wrong with it, any of it. It was just not what I would have got (bar the cream) if I’d bought it myself. And a gift’s not really a gift if it’s come out of your joint account.

We’ve come unstuck with gifts before. I’ve written, previously about how little I enjoy receiving and the spurious politics of gratitude, but getting is always doubly worse when it’s accompanied by the guilt of having been chosen with care by someone you love, but bought with money you could have spent on something you like that little bit more.

I really don’t want to sound ungrateful. But gratitude shouldn’t come into it when one’s own purchasing power is at stake. Tom should cut his losses and take me shopping in the future. But the damage was already  done. I’d “spoiled the moment”, the kids were disappointed that I wasn’t over the moon, and I had to go and smoke a fag to get over myself, compounding the chest infection. It was all rather pathetic. But luckily for me, Tom completely got it, wasn’t angry that I wasn’t happy, and promised to take the things back to change them to save me the bother. Which all rather made it worse.

Reprobate Tom and I have a healthily tumultuous relationship that has weathered the figurative storms of richer and poorer, sickness, health and forsaking others (a thankfully short-lived phases that occurred when we were both a bit pissed off with the status quo of sickness and poverty.)

Luckily for me, Tom is probably the nicest, most balanced, most sycophantic person around (although he can be a proper pratt when he’s had a few – this years’ birthday appearance in “second wife” reprobate Kate’s skinny jeans, heels and lipstick, when challenged that he couldn’t pull it off as a look, springs to mind, as fairly standard party fodder.)

I, however am not nice. I am complicated. Moody, difficult, particular, angry, sometimes brilliant, intense and quite dislikable. And poor old Tom bears the brunt. Of course, he understands. He’s too bloody understanding if you ask me, enabling me to be the worst possible version of myself at every opportunity, and bringing me biscuits afterwards.

Occasionally, I suspect him of being sociopathically nice; of deliberately making me look like worse because he is so lovely, like good cop parent forcing the other to play bad cop. He is a bit of a sociopath. I regularly accuse him of having no feelings, perhaps because in contrast I have so many. It’s part of what makes us a good team.

And we are a good team. He is tidy and I am clean. He does with aplomb all the things I am hopeless at, and I am just about capable of doing the few things he cannot – like notice dust. But all this stalwart, in-it-for-the-long-run, solid, ten years and counting history ( and genuine love, whatever that is when you strip away power, need and sex: probably being able to live under the same roof) still does not prevent me from unleashing on him from time to time, and vice versa.

I blame life. It’s tough. Sleep deprivation, financial woes, family and Christmas: all our obligations can get in the way of a perfectly good relationship. The sex goes. We kick each other out into the spare room to ensure we get through the night without kicking each other in the balls (as it’s usually him that gets kicked). But then I don’t, he tells me, snore, either.

The chance for fun can get lost amid the work; the fact that friendships go by the wayside and it’s harder – or inappropriate – to make new ones – can get tiresome. The stresses and strains of daily life have to go somewhere and inevitably it falls to your partner to sop up the overspill.

My advice? Cut down on commitments and get more sleep – it’s quicker than a divorce, and the consequences are far more positive. And cut each other some slack: yes, it might embarrass you that he’s flirted with his assistant at the office party, but get over it. If you won’t massage his ego, he has to do it himself. And he might extend you the same privilege at your own do, with a bit of luck.

If you can’t bear to sleep in the same bed Monday to Friday, and you’re lucky enough to have a spare that’s not subject to an unfair tax, catch up together at the weekend and stop stressing things aren’t what they were: give each other actual massages, rather than attempting sex when the flame’s not lit. Just touching each other might help ignite it.

Don’t expect too much, given that you tend to see each other when you’re both wrung out; and, by the same token, don’t exhaust yourself trying to be perfect in the hope they will reciprocate. They probably won’t. All relationships have their dynamic and people really don’t change – except, that old adage, about men never changing and never wanting women to change, seems to hold water. I am not the 23 year old he met. I am tired and crabby and not often sexy, these days. Can’t be bothered. But he is more or less the same, save a few more greys. It doesn’t feel like he got much of a bargain, but then, come to think of it, he knew, when he found me, I was slightly damaged goods.

But perhaps the point is, you need to accept yourself; even the worst possible version of yourself, as it’s inevitable that terrifying pariah will rear its ugly head over the course of a relationship.  Perhaps the reason we’ve lasted so long is that Tom accepts himself completely and so is also able to accept me, warts and tantrums and all; where as I am, for many reasons, a whole lot more insecure.

So he is the rock I have attached myself to, and we have barnacled together amid life’s flotsam and jetson. Long may we hold firm. But I will always credit the cup of tea he brings me every morning since we got together as the glue that holds us together. I roll his pants; he makes me tea. That is how it goes and how it will always go until death us do part.

And P.S. this whole thing has been written wearing my birthday jumper, which I decided I did like the day after. Which just about sums up what poor old Tom has to put up with on a daily basis. I don’t know why he puts up with me, but that he does should be enough.