Wednesday 1 September 2010

The silent treatment...

Ryota and I really don't fight that much. I'm going to say we fight an average amount, usually little things, sometimes big things and very occasionally, things that make me want to take one of his surfboards and shove it right up his clacker before slamming my inkan down on the divorce papers.

I remember our first fight ever. I was pretty damn pregnant and we had a fight about who had put the bacon in the freezer without separating it into small packages. Silly really, we should have just fried all the bacon up and have been done with it! But he was insistent it wasn't him and I KNEW it wasn't me. I'm the kind of person who won't fight if I'm not 100% sure, but when it came to the bacon, I knew I hadn't just shoved it all in the freezer in a big block (such a Ryota thing to do). So we screamed at each other for a few minutes until I stormed out of the apartment, it was snowing and as I said I had a massive baby belly, so decided to go home after having a bit of a sob in the park down the road for fear of giving my unborn child hypothermia. Ryota had gone looking for me and when he got back we just let the issue lie and apologised to each other, then about an hour later he was like, "Ohhhh fuck, I remember putting the bacon in now..." What a twat!!

I guess after Ash was born the main fights have been about major life decisions (where to live, to start a business or not... blah blah) or about how to raise Ash, i.e. Ryota believes in no discipline and chocolate for breakfast, whereas I, do not. Other little arguments are usually pretty quickly resolved by either a) me crying b) me apologising first c) Ashton distracting us.
But basically, he is a stubborn cock head who will NEVER apologise first, and then when I say sorry, just for the stupid fight to be over, he always says, without fail, "OK, I forgive you!" Just to be a big smart arse.

So on Monday night, we had one of the stupidest fights to date, it even beat the bacon fight! Basically I'd taught lessons all day (well, not all day, but enough to be buggered) and had still found time to make fucking good hamburgers. I should point out I don't like cooking, I fucking hate cooking, so if I make something I'm pretty damn proud of myself! As we sat down with our fucking amazing hamburgers, salad and tea, Ryota had the fucking nerve to mutter "Hmmm I'd rather have coke than tea..." Mother fucker! But not wanting to cause waves, I said "OK darling, let me go and get you one, there's no cold ones so I'll have to fuck around with ice, but I love you, so I will!" I then got his tea so I could pour it back in the bottle (Yorkshire up bringing coming in there, waste not want not!). As I took the tea away, he said "Can you do it??" Now this may be a language barrier, he said it to me in English, and to me, this gives the tone of 'You're sooo going to spill that you daft cow' so I responded in a bit of a pissed off way and said something like "Of course I can do it!" but not like PMS raging bitch-like or anything, just in a teasing way like. Ryota then got really pissed and said "それやめてくれへん?!” He started speaking angry Japanese so I knew he was pissed, so I tried to calmly explain to him he had implied that I couldn't do it by asking me if i could. Wow, this is getting confusing...Sorry! Anyway, cut out all the other bits and in the end it basically went that he asked me what he should say in that situation and i responded "Nothing. Or thank you." He then took this opportunity to say "Fine then, I'm never talking. EVER AGAIN!!!"
Errrr how old are you again, like 5?! What the fuck!?

Anyway, he didn't talk, not that night, or the next morning, or the next day.
Now usually I cave in after about an hour of the silent treatment and grovel but I was fucked if I was doing that this time, so I stood my silent ground too. I think he was a little shocked, I didn't even pack his work bag for him like I usually do. I realised by the next day when the arsehole had let me ride my bike to the next town over in the blistering heat when he could have driven me that he wasn't going to cave and apologise any time soon so I sent him a message that basically told him to move out of the house until he could grow up and say sorry, and that I wasn't going to put up with this 'gaman' shit that J-wives may put up with. I think I even threw the divorce word in there just to scare him!

And scare him it did, he said he didn't understand most of the big words in my English mail but knew 'move out' and 'divorce' and almost shit himself! Will do the wanker good to have a bit of a scare I say! We did talk and came to the conclusion it was more of a language/culture miscommunication than anything else and we would both try harder in the future. Gotta love fighting, if nothing else for all the makin' up!

2 comments:

  1. Whew! Glad to hear you smoothed things over. I don't usually condone scare tactics as a way to solve conflict, but I too have discovered that sometimes men need to have shit scared out of them to make them really look at their own behavior.

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  2. Shit, that was a long time to go without talking I bet. I've had similar fights with my hub too. It's always the small things that cause big problems - not understanding the nuance, or a difference in cultural expectations. I find it really stressful to conduct my marriage in Japanese and I get tired of being the one to always speak in a foreign language.

    Glad you sorted things out and great news about having your bag returned. I love that about Japan too!

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