Another blasted test

My son was taking something out of a toy basket when my wife suddenly went nuts and started yelling in the local language. I didn't understand her, and not because I didn't understand the words she was barking, but for another reason altogether: she was saying that she couldn't stand him taking his toys out because she just cleaned up, and he always took out toys from the same basket. I understood the words perfectly, but I was confused because there was no reason for her to be shouting.

My son started to cry, so I took him into the other room and made a little fort and slide for him to play in. My wife came in about a half hour later trying to "test the waters" by doing something innocuous to gauge how the two boys felt about her; basically, it was a ploy to not apologize, but to go back to a normal family anyway. My son was anxious to get back in her good graces, but when she tried to show me some skin she dug out of her ear or whatever and she asked if I wanted to see it, I just said, "No." She tried touching me in bed later, and I ignored her.

Silence, direct speaking, condescension, rudeness, coldness and other withdrawals of affection work well with an out of line wife. She needs me a lot more than I need her, and now she understands that fully. As for marriage, there are four things to be certain of:

1. My wife never did this crap when she was my girlfriend.
2. She always does this crap on Sunday.
3. She always does this crap to people who don't fight back (and after I stood up to her last year, I'm no longer a target).
4. I wouldn't have to deal with this crap if I weren't married.

Rejections

I asked my wife for sex, thinking that now that she was back to normal, we could go back to a normal, boring marriage schedule. She rejected me, saying her stomach hurt. I smiled inwardly, realizing that she was up to her old tricks again; just a few days ago, she accepted my offer for sex, but was hesitant about it and made me give her several reasons why we should. And now, here come more lies to avoid me and to try and prop herself back up as the leader of this marriage.

I'm not making the mistake of asking her again; it's time to secretly reject her, and not initiate, as I did over the past few months. It's very clear who of the two of us should be running the marriage, seeing as how I never verbally abused or disrespected her when I was in charge before 2010, but she did just those things when she was running things. And because sex and power are almost synonymous in a reptilian woman's mind, I refuse to give my wife any leverage over my life by allowing any undue sex between us.

Another mistake

I screwed up today. When I came home alone with pizzas, there was absolutely no room on the table to put them, just as there has been no room on it for the past five years because of all the junk my wife keeps piling on it. I sighed and started to begin the neverending process of getting all the useless junk off of it, piece by piece, but only a few seconds passed before I had enough. After 40+ straight days of work and 5+ years of constantly cleaning this damned table, I just moved the six bottles and glasses of liquid to the side, then swiped the rest of the junk onto the floor. Medicine bottles, a tape dispenser, junk mail, tissues, capped bottles, food packages and much more went flying to the ground. I briefly considered cleaning it up, but decided against it, because I'm tired of being the butler in this house, especially when most of the messes aren't mine.

My wife came back and was pretty shocked. "What happened?!" she asked worriedly. Without looking at her, I answered, "I'm tired of cleaning the junk off this table." She didn't say another word, and instead started to pick up the mess I made in silence. I was an a-hole and I felt like it, but even after she had cleaned up, my wife was acting super nice to me again.

I told myself almost a month ago that I had to stop being the Iceman because she had cleaned up her act towards me, and here I am acting like a complete douchebag, and although I've never done something like this before the pushback, it's still indicative of the apathetic, frigid man that I used to act like last and this year to get my wife back in line. I didn't and won't apologize to her, because she'll just turn it into a reason to abuse me for the next several years (like she did from 2010-2012 when I apologized in 2009, only once, for using the computer too much), but this situation shouldn't even be here because it shouldn't have happened in the first place. So what happened?

There's no excuse for what I did today, but there is an explanation: I'm zoning out and running on autopilot, just as I have been since I got married. In fact, it's even worse now, because not only do I get the average of a single day off of work every month (and I zone through work days), but I also stopped smoking several months ago, which makes the zoning even worse. To be completely honest, every single day since somewhere around three months or so ago has been lived by the autopilot, unconscious me. I'm not exaggerating: the last time I actually, consciously looked at the number of days left to go before my marriage is through, rather than simply subtracting one from the previous day's number, was a season before.

My sight, my hearing, every sense is in almost complete darkness, and I only briefly wake up here and there in the day to play with my son or play a video game. The rest of it is handled by autopilot me, which is sometimes still set to Iceman. Switching between different personas isn't like a light switch; it's a gradual process of change that takes time to completely happen.

I need to work hard on being nicer to my wife now that she's beyond her abusive stage, and I need to do so while I remain in this dark pit that passes time through this marriage as fast as possible.