JOAN’S WEEKEND BLOG – MARCH 14-16, 2008 – “I AM SO MAD AT YOU – BUT I DON’T REMEMBER WHY!”

If your sense of humor is a little more in tact than mine, you may get a bit of a laugh from the title of this Blog, but at the moment, I’m finding it very frustrating and sad.

This is happening more frequently now. My husband will purposefully walk over to me to tell me that something I said or did an hour ago or the previous night, hurt his feelings or made him extremely angry. Foolish me asks, “What did I do?” His predictable answer is, “Well, I don’t remember what it was, but I’m mad at you.”
Now I am the one with the look of total confusion.   This has to be the ultimate in a Catch -22 situation.  Because he is trying to control his temper, he says he does not lash out at me when I do something to make him angry. But then when he wants to talk to me about it calmly at a later time, he can’t remember what I did to upset him. He can only remember the anger. So, together we decide that the next time I do or say something to infuriate him, he will tell me right at that moment (preferably without throwing a tantrum), and I will (hopefully), address it in an equally calm, soothing manner. Except when it does happen, he can’t remember that he was supposed to tell me!!!!

Since I truly am on a mission to respond better to his moods and needs, I would like to know what it is that I do to upset him. If I know, I can adjust my reaction the next time “it” happens. If I don’t know, then I’ll end up continuing to do "it" until he cannot control the anger anymore, and he’ll explode. Well, I guess then I’ll know why he is upset.

Yes, in another day or two, he will probably forget that he was even angry with me, but sometimes it is not just anger. Sometimes he says I hurt his feelings, and I do not want to do anything to hurt him. What this disease has done to his life and our life together has hurt him enough.

I suppose a solution would be for me to read his mood and body language carefully – it will tell me when he is trying to hold in his temper - and then ask if he can tell me what is bothering him without a Mt. St. Helens eruption.

To anyone who is not living with an AD spouse, this must sound ridiculous, but I am sure there are many of you who have experienced this same cycle of absurdity, that has become the “norm” around here.

In the midst of it all, we are planning on a pleasant weekend together – tonight is the St. Patrick’s Day outdoor concert in Town Square; tomorrow I will get up early, and walk another 3 miles; and Sunday, I’m making dinner for my cousin’s 65th birthday. He and Sid have been best friends since they were 6 years old!

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