Separation - It Does NOT Do a Heart Good

On Friday I bounced V.'s conversation with me off of a guy friend before talking to him that night to get a guy's perspective. The whole day I was in a small funk because I thought his comment was insensitive and it seemed that he was more excited about getting out of Saudi than being home with us. Part of me was angrily thinking he should just go to Vegas by himself since that seemed like his main focus.

But after talking with my guy friend and having all day to calm down and rethink things, I understood that he wasn't saying he didn't want to cooped up in a cabin "WITH US" which is how I initially took it. He was just saying that location was not where he wanted to be. My guy friend (a dad of three) did think I was right on about it not being cool if V. was gone 50% of the time he was home away from I.

So I brought the subject up as in "I know you don't want to go to Idyllwild and my mom can't take care of I. for 3 or 4 days right now, so is there someplace else you want to go for that week with I. or do you want to go away by ourselves for 1 or 2 nights?" I swear, it was like pulling teeth and it took awhile before he said, and it sounded like between clenched teeth, "I just want to stay home." This confused me since he was so adament about Vegas so I inquired again if he was sure and he gave me the same response between gritted teeth. I told him I didn't understand why he was acting so cold and answering so shortly when I was only trying to make sure that he would be able to decompress the way he needed to before going to China. After a long pause he said, "I don't want to jinx things." meaning he doesn't want to talk about time home until he's home.

You know, men say how confusing and hard to understand women are. But I'm beginning to think it's not a gender thing. If one human being doesn't tell the other human being what is going on inside of their head so that it can be used to translate words and actions, male or female we are all lost. I'm not so lost now but this is all after the fact. I need the Cliff Notes before these conversations so that I don't translate improperly based on my own language and suffer emotionally. Just have to make it until July...