I swear to God if Ryota and I ever get divorced, I guarantee it will happen on Mother's day. I don't know why, but it is NEVER a good day. OK, we've only had 4 together, but the 1st one was a disaster because he did sweet fuck all and I was new to the whole 'Japanese guys don't give a shit about sentimental holidays' game and was really upset, the second I was pissed because he knew I got upset the first time but still didn't get it right or make much of an effort at all, and the third was a disaster that ended up in me sobbing at the register of a restaurant. So by the 4th, I was fully prepared for him to not do anything, but turned out he made a VERY good effort, but we ended up in massive fight anyway.
The fight started on Saturday. OK, actually it started when he went to Australia and I cleaned our house from top to bottom, and not just surface cleaning and shoving shit in cupboards like my usual efforts, I'm talkin' organising, cleaning, scrubbing type cleaning. You know, the type good housewives do everyday and shit. I don't blame him totally, because this is my hang up, but I thought he should appreciate my efforts a bit more than he did. Someone throwing shit all over the floor when you've spent a week meticulously folding underpants, scrubbing grime in the shower and looking after a 3 year old by yourself was not the best way to impress me, but when Ryota got home he proceeded to do his usual trick of throwing his clothes wherever they fell. It drives me nuts, especially when it's sweaty undies or socks strewn all over the place after he's been running. But, I know it's just something he's not good at, he's quite good at other cleaning type stuff, just clothes and coffee cups are his downfall, so I do what I believe you have to do in a partnership- I suck it up and keep it zipped, because getting on with people is all about compromise in my opinion.
So come Saturday morning and Ash spilt his drink. I went to grab a rag to mop it up. I may be strange but I see a rag as a rag, I wipe whatever and then I throw it in the washing machine so to me it doesn't really matter what I mop up, unless it's baby poo or something and then I use bum wipes. But apparently this is repulsive to Ryota, who's family have always separated table rags from floor rags. Now, I get this, you don't have to wash the table rags every time, but it just wasn't how it was done in my house, so considering I do all of the cleaning in the house, I do it my way. This drives Ryota mental, it always has, along with my lack of refrigerator management, which I admit is not good, but fuck, cut me some slack, nobody is perfect! After we had a spat about it, he then plastered his protests on facebook, which pissed me off too, but whatever, it's just facebook I didn't really give a fuck.
I went to work on Saturday afternoon and got home at 8 to Ryota furiously cleaning out the fridge. I was too tired to give a fuck but when he started getting narky with me obviously pissed off it really fucked me off. He then informed me that he and Ash had already eaten and he hadn't made anything for me. This just kind of hurt. I would never do that to him, especially if he'd been working and his coldness really upset me. It then released the bitch in me and I was PISSED. Slamming shit around and thinking about how lucky he was that his wife was willing to go out and work at all, maybe he should have married a Japanese woman who would have quit work when she got engaged! But noooo, stupid bastard has stupid piss poor job that doesn't make nearly enough money to support us. I was internalising all the anger, I felt/ feel? like a big victim in that I'm still working so hard this pregnancy. He called me a stupid bitch at one point and I said "Fucking leave if I'm such a stupid bitch then!"
I stomped off to bed and he slept in the spare room, I'm ALWAYS the one to apologise first but not this time, not over fucking separating rags and not cleaning the fridge properly. Golden week without him really showed me that I can go it alone if I really have to, it saves me hours in picking up sweaty undies if nothing else. The next morning I had to work in Osaka and I always take Ash with me in the stroller so Ryota always drops us off at the train station but because we were ignoring each other he fucked off for a haircut, leaving me (8 months pregnant mind you) to struggle with Ash and the stroller balanced in the bicycle to the station about a 10 minute ride away. Not a big deal, but again, very hurtful that it was mother's day and he didn't care enough about me or the baby enough to swallow his pride and insist on driving us to the station. Again, I know I was playing the victim a bit, it was my choice to work after all, but still... Chivalry is so past dead in Japan it's not funny.
So after he fucked off I sent him a text saying I wanted him out of the house by the time I got home, and he replied with "Fine I'll be back May 20th." I wanted to send another one back saying, "why stop at May 20th, just fucking leave for good!" But I didn't want to text again so just left it. He was there when I got home, as were a present, flowers and card on the table. I ignored all and he said he was leaving soon. I think he expected me to open a dialogue but I wasn't having it, just said "good" and collapsed on the couch, I was pretty fucked after working anyway. He started banging things into a bag and finally left. It was when I didn't hear his bike that I realised by "moving out" he was going to Grandma's house (3 fucking steps away!) Stupid twat.
After about an hour he came back, I think Grandma had told him to stop being an arse and he came back to talk. We had it out, the details of the argument are kind of boring, but basically I made it very clear I didn't feel appreciated or considered enough and that if I was a housewife doing lunches with friends and watching Korean dramas all day then he had every right to knit pick about cleaning, but when I'm working and doing the majority of the house stuff he had no fucking right to bitch.
So after that exhausting weekend of fighting I finally got some awesome shoes and a new personalised ipod saying "always love you Mummy" along with the token carnations, so he finally got the
