I feel (after 25 years of marraige to same man) that there will be certain duties I will charge myself with performing because it would not and does not accure to him that they are important- he is not in my head and I'm not in his. If we take up certain duties and then over time they are given the wieght of responsibilities we might want to remind ourselves who assigned the job in the first place. But- doing things that we resent for one another because we've made voluntary efforts into responsibilities then becomes sort of passive-aggressive. This year in my house we discussed and decided not to put up Christmas decorations and a tree and go without all the formalities (our lease is up in spring so it was practicle not to unpack all that stuff and we were able to save money we'll need to move) so we had a relaxed day and even decided not to exchange gifts but to get food and movies and a few board games that would belong to everybody. My point is I could have felt obligated to do all the holiday stuff and resented it all being on me to pull off the holidays- if I'd not brought it up to family and gotten thier input. I had assigned myself these duties years ago and it was up to me to find out that it wasn't something the family would hold against me if I didn't do it. We all ended up on the same page instead of anguishing over who required what from whom and feeling put-upon by each other. My husband was very happy not to have to shop as well.
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