Explain.

Is it petty to start a blog dedicated solely to mapping out just how often your boyfriend ruins your day? Only if you’re doing it to prove a point. Which I am. So I guess this is petty. Petty and inconsistent, that’s me.

The thing is I love my boyfriend, very much in fact. So when he told me a few months ago that my constant pessimism and generally unhappy presence was bringing him down and making him consider the health of our relationship I was taken aback and snapped into a less-than-rose-colored reality. I began to make a daily, concerted effort to be happier, calmer, and generally more pleasant to be around. It’s a work in progress as I’m not a sunshine-and-puppies kind of person by nature, but I am more than willing to work on my pessimistic tendencies and short temper. What I’ve come to notice since he gave me his “this is not an ultimatum” ultimatum is it’s not just me.

There are always going to be days where I roll out of bed in a sour mood but most often I wake up a blank slate. Neutral. Waiting for environmental input before forming my mood. I am almost completely dependent on those in my immediate surroundings for emotional direction. This may seem unhealthy or even vapid to you, but as it allowed me from an early age to supplant my own emotional impulses with some that may be more socially acceptable it has simply become my way of navigating a social landscape. With that in mind, since I’ve been making a serious effort to just be nice I have come to realize that I’m not the trigger on the gun that’s to our relationship’s head, nor am I the finger on it. I am the bullet. I will end up doing all the damage, but only once I’ve been propelled to do so.

So here I am, making a last-ditch effort to save us. I’m going to attempt to track our daily dealings—who wins, who loses, who started it… Not to decide a winner or to assign blame, but to hopefully, eventually, have a body of evidence I can bring to him that says that it isn’t just me. That sometimes I’m just reacting, sometimes I have a right to be defensive, and sometimes he’s wrong. I’m trying to save us by ripping apart and analyzing our interaction. It seems counterintuitive, even as I begin, but I don’t know what else to do. Here’s hoping.

To begin: I helped him with his final powerpoint assignments today, created forms for him so all he had to do was fill in information as he finds and assimilates it. After he’d spent hours recording the voice-over he realized he hadn’t actually been recording or some similar nonsense and had to do it all over again. He was rushed and frustrated and getting very angry so I opened the presentations on my computer in the hopes that I could find the solution. I discovered the problem and asked, just as he was going back into the bedroom to re-record everything, if he would come and look at my screen for a second so I could show him. He puts up his hands and says he doesn’t have time, he has to fix it and I’m not helping. I say ok, just trying to help, no need to yell and he storms back to the bedroom. An hour passes, he comes out in even more of a rushed rage and tries to make his computer upload the 98MB assignment in 30 seconds by yelling at it and cursing the assignment, the professor, and the cosmos. Now he has 20 minutes before he has to be at work and the assignment won't upload at all. So he turns to me, sweet as pie after having spent the afternoon alternately yelling and ignoring me to ask if I would fight with it while he was at work to get it to upload. He just left. I will do my damnedest to make sure that assignment gets uploaded, but I did not kiss him goodbye.