And I can't say anything, because it makes me sound ungrateful. I swear I'm not. The guy didn't have to marry me to give me a break on the medical insurance. We'd been doing fine before that, and I'd have figured something out. And I know he wasn't counting on me being without any income other than unemployment for over twenty months, or that I'd eventually run out of unemployment and still have no job.
He's teaching as many credits as the college will allow each semester to bring in as much money as possible, and he's been covering the mortgage and most of the major bills single-handedly for over a year. He's burned out, frustrated, tired. I understand all this.
But the little snippy remarks still hurt. He's allowed to make comments like "Nobody ever feeds my cat" when he doesn't want to get up and put food in her bowl, but if I make the same joke he starts cursing. He complains that the bills are too high, that money is tight, that the mortgage needs to be refinanced, but he buys a new car and pays it off within a year without selling the old car. I think it was the comment last night that the least I could do is go to Walmart and get a job being a greeter at the door that finally made me feel like I was bleeding out from a thousand invisible stab wounds.
After he says these things and sees I'm hurt he always says, "It was just a joke". "Can't you take a joke?" "You don't understand me at all." Sometimes I think he really is trying to lighten things in his own, clumsy way. Mostly I think he means it, and when he realizes he's crossed a line he hides behind the joke excuse.
And yet, he has every right to feel frustrated. I'm the one who stated up-front that I wanted financial independence, regardless of where our relationship ended up. And now it turns out I can't keep my own end of the bargain. So at this point, I've only myself to blame.