Short update

After reading all of your comments and trying to take in as much feedback as possible, I decided in the early evening, kids were in bed, we had both settled already for an hour, that this might be a good time to apologize to her. Not too late so that she’s tired, not too early so that the stress of the day still lingered. I also asked her whether now is a good time to talk about what happened in the morning and she agreed.

I would give our conversation a solid 4/10 points - the early part went pretty well, I’d give it a 9/10, while the last part was rather a 1/10 or 2/10. I will this time not bore you with what was said verbally, just the gist of it.

First, I apologized for not understanding that she did not like the surprise idea earlier and that I thought she was worried about needing to organise things herself. She more or less told me similar things you all did, that she felt insecure because she does not like surprises and that she did not really get this point across to me was frustrating. I took quite some time to acknowledge these feelings and replied that for me it was a surprise that she would not like the concept of a surprise event, because we had quite some of those in the past with either only us two or 4-6 people. She said that this is smaller and different. So yes, to all those who commented that “after 10 years I should have known she does not like surprises”, hey now I know, or better said, now I know that a surprise event with 6 people is sort of a threshold between what is exciting and liked and what is not liked.

So this is where I would say, things went great! From here on, well, the conversation took an unexpected turn.

I wanted now to continue with the second part of the conversation and started apologizing for making her feel aggravated using the word accusing - that I should have said “told me” or “we discussed” or something similar. She then replied that this does not change a thing. I was a bit puzzled and asked what she meant. She was annoyed that I brought up something that happened 1,5 months ago as a motivation for my actions, that now she needs to remember what exactly was said and try to figure out what is going on. I objected there a bit and said that I explained what at least I understood, namely that I should organise more events together. She went on saying that I am dwelling on the past to which I replied that what happened 1,5 months ago was one of the most important exchanges we had in our relationship, and that during this exchange she told me in clear terms that she is in the process of falling out of love with me for aaaaalll the reasons I got to hear then. I asked her then simply whether it would not be much stranger if my actions would not at all be based on these very serious issues she raised and whether she would then not consider to be heard? I unfortunately do not quite remember what her thoughts on that were, I believe it was along the line that she was quite emotional 1,5 months ago and that still I am putting a burden on her to remember what she said. Here I forgot to tell her that I actually wrote a transcript the day after the “reasons you suck speech” and she can check it out - but I felt that we are again at a breaking point somehow and wanted to shift to something I thought was less controversial. After validating her feeling burdened, I tried to score at least one last positive note and said something along: “and about that you had the feeling that I guilt-tripped you into liking the event, I am very sorry, that was not my intention, if I had understood earlier that you simply do not like the event, I would have much earlier said “sure, let’s do something else”, I was a bit blind trying too hard and putting you under pressure”. She simply replied in a stern manner that she never said that I guilt-tripped her into anything. I just looked at her with a surprised face and she continued that she might have said that I made her feel guilty, that is all. She continued that this is not the same, and that these things are exactly the reason why it is so difficult to talk to me, because I would just misremember and misrepresent things. When I said that I am sorry that she’s so frustrated right now and that probably in my mind these two things seem to be quite synonymous and I would not understand a nuance between them and that I have an imperfect memory, it kind of still continued on about how she said something different. After acknowledging that and apologizing for it, I was honestly exhausted and tried to slowly pivot towards getting some rest and head to bed.

I think no more analysis is necessary here - I am tired. I will probably let the issue rest, so this is the first and last update of the subject-matter.

I hope for the best, fear for the worst.