At one point on Saturday, DH snapped at me about something and nothing, then a few minutes later came to find me and said, "I'm sorry - I suppose we're both very hormonal at the moment."
Once I'd picked my chin off the floor, I quickly explained to him that "hormonal" doesn't mean "grumpy" or "bad-tempered", or even "sad", and that while we are undeniably both devastated at the moment, only one of us is suffering the physical effects of loads of extra hormones disrupting the balance of our body chemistry.
I could have added that only one of us is also suffering the physical manifestation of our failure in the form of a very crampy, uncomfortable and heavy period, but I did have a little bit of forbearance.
He spent a couple of hours on the computer yesterday, and he did read a bit about both adoption and embryo donation. I don't know how much, though, because he also spent quite a lot of time on cricket websites following the test match in South Africa.
The frustration comes from the fact that he's going through exactly the same thought processes and exactly the same realisations that I did almost six months ago. And since I explained those thought processes and realisations to him at the time, the fact that he's presenting it to me as if it was new information just makes me realise how little he listens to what I say - or perhaps just how little he absorbs.
I think I'm going to be biting my tongue an awful lot over the next fortnight. All I can do is pray for him to reach the point that I'm at a bit quicker than I did - when I first started to research the process of adoption seriously, I was completely daunted and thought it would be so impossible for us that it wasn't an option, and it took a good three or four months for me even to be willing to start thinking about it again.
Why didn't he listen to everything I said at the time, so we could have gone through all that together? Is it going to take him as long as it took me to get his head round it? And will he ever get his head round it?
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Oh honey - I just want to shake your DH sometimes!!! Mind you, I just want to shake mine, sometimes, so I guess it's a human thing :/ I hope he does the reading and gets his head around it soon. And I WISH you guys could pack up and come and live here, where they are desperate for people who want to adopt and where you can sign up with the social services and have a baby to call your own in a month. I think a little Xhosa-by-birth cousin would be exceedingly sweet. As would any child you and DH had the raising of, even if they were not yours genetically XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
ReplyDeleteHonestly, my DH is the same way. I think men live more in the moment. They focus on the current plan working rather than on "what if it doesn't". They don't listen to us because they can't get there with us. To them, it isn't relevant to what we're going through right now. At least, this is how DH explains it to me. :)
ReplyDeleteIt really is frustrating. I'm sorry that it feels like you're having to rewind, and I definitely get how irritating it is to listen them tell you something excitedly that they "just discovered" that you've told them 700 times over. Makes me want to smack mine square in the head sometimes. Hopefully he'll get there really quickly to make up for it.
Ugh, that is so frustrating. Men are a bit slow sometimes ... I really hope your DH is able to take much less time this time around figuring out the adoption process so that you both can have a heart-to-heart discussion with both of you knowing all the facts. I am praying for you both!
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