I seem to be having respect issues with my husband. It is not a really serious one, but it is something that I will be keeping my eye on and seems to relate to my posts this week.
When someone works in a predominantly male environment where ‘man-talk’ is the norm I can understand that it might be difficult to draw the lines between work and home. Now I am a fairly open and liberal woman who does not quite take offense to the locker room talk. Still, I do not want to be objectified by anyone even under the guise of my husband’s adoration.
As someone who listens to a lot of true crime podcasts and watches similar TV shows, I am often struck by the lack of respect that men have towards women or even vice versa in rare cases. We find small ways to justify slightly skewed ways of speaking to one another or judgmental comments about body image. Yet, all of this is about respect.
So, yesterday my man was having a very bad day. I called to check in on him and he immediately began to yell at me over the phone to “leave him alone”. Well, mid-tirade I simply hung up. I was having a great day and in a rare good mood. Nothing and no one was going to mess that up for me.
Therefore, I chose not to speak to him again. He could have sent me a message at any point during the day to apologize or express love, but he did not. He chose to call me when I was in the middle of my lessons, so I could not speak with him. Then, he tried to justify his lack of apology and communication with “I tried to call you.”
Well, this does not pass for me because everyone who knows me knows that I rarely – if ever – answer my phone nor prefer to talk on it. Also, he would have known that I had lessons at that time and chose to call then. Finally, he knows that a simple message of “sorry, let’s talk later” or something to this effect will be enough to appease me. Thus, I felt it was more a matter of a lack of respect – lack of respect for me as a person, his wife, etc. He claims he was truly sorry, but I don’t know.
The point is that, for whatever reason, I no longer feel the need to accept the small justifications no matter whom I feel is disrespecting me. I have respect for myself and no one is allowed to treat me otherwise.
~T π
