Mrs Goody Two Shoes XVII

The big fight

There is no use screaming at a man for being the typical man. He has been trained that way. He just needs a new and patient instructor

A few days ago, the husband and I were having an argument. An overdone, banal squabble. I am not even sure I could label it as a tiff, since I had pulled a long face and was listing out my woes in a self-pitying voice while he just sat there stone-faced, staring at 'Bigg Boss'. This by itself became a matter of contention since "I hardly get the remote and am forced to gulp in football, cricket and reality shows (in that order) day and night, don't you ever wonder what I might like? Etc etc etc". (Well, I admit that I don't actually absolutely loathe them, especially the reality show bit, but during a fight, you have to hate whatever the other person likes, otherwise there isn't any fun.
But the argument had turned into a monologue -- mine -- and I just could not drag it any further and dropped it, for a while. My husband is an expert in this field. He offers no resistance, either sinking into a deadly silence which will make you cower and ultimately give in, or making the hurt-puppy face that will make you feel excessively guilty and, as you have guessed rightly, give in.
I may lose my calm every time I make tea and he snores away, or I hang clothes out to dry and he sits with a chilled beer, or I drop my office bag to rush into the kitchen and he sits watching movies on his laptop. But it never boils to a juicy, violent, lashing-out-with-words kind of a fight.
That particular day, I was losing my patience. We are a married couple. So where were the typical married couple arguments? If he doesn't shout back, how can I shout louder and get my point across? Seething and frustrated, I said something very mean to him, and ouch, did that hurt or what? He looked up at me with liquid eyes, wondering what he had done (if he had asked me I would have said NOT done, like the million tasks at home and outside that he doesn't share) to draw such a reaction from the otherwise usually okay wife.
He looked lost, not knowing where exactly he had gone wrong. He looked sorry, guilty, but without a clue about his crime. "I will do what you say." And then my heart melted. It's not his fault really. It's just the way he has always been taught to look at things, to be a man. He actually has been doing what has been told to him. He was told that it's okay to be a boy forever, to be loved, pampered, looked after. His job was just to be. There's a species called the woman whose job was to see to it that the machinery keeps running, that the clogs never get stuck, that the food mysteriously appears on the table on time, that his dirty laundry suddenly shines, that when the tea gets cold a steaming cup arrives in its place. The only hitch is, the story in his book of life reads very different from mine. Well, I'll help him rework and rewrite it. Slowly, but surely.