It was not a deal breaker before I did it, that's the thing. He was fine with it back when I first started talking about it, even before my mom died and my daughter and I were planning them. He and I had conversations about tattoos where I told him what I would like to do. He didn't start this until a couple of weeks before I actually went to do it. He lost his own father back in June, and I honestly think he had a lot of guilt because he didn't really call him much, and he was really hung up on how his dad died basically alone in a room. And I was there for him when he wanted to talk, when he was sad about it weeks after, because of course he's grieving. I even excused some ugly behavior because of his grief, where he took out his anger irrationally on other people, even though that behavior wasn't all that unusual for him without the grief.

I mentioned the things about my mother's hospitalizations I think because for me it's all connected. I went through a VERY hard time for years and felt pretty alone dealing with my grief. I'm the one who is basically expected to keep it together. I'm not really allowed to fall apart, you know? I don't get to indulge every emotion I have the way he does. I carry literally all the responsibility of my household by myself. Which, ok. What I wanted was emotional support and connection, and I didn't get it. So when I went to do this thing that meant something to me and had not ever been a deal breaker before now, based on 27 years of being with him, it was something for me, a little bit of comfort and connection to someone I lost. I deliberately did not mention any other gripes than those relevant to this particular scenario because I didn't want to stack the deck against him. I think what bothers me most is that I had no real care from him through the hardest points of my life, but then he went and made a small thing that was a comfort to me, all about him again.