Communication Breakdown

So Dawn is sick. Very sick. She has a bad case of bronchitis and is not feeling up to doing much of anything. I tried to get her to stop worrying about folding laundry and that kind of thing, but the best I could do in that area was to just help out. She was talking about getting ready for bed soon and I asked her if we could talk about things for a few minutes before she crashed out. "Just like 10 minutes or so, okay?" She agreed. I sat back down at the computer and saw a friend I know via telephone at work (she's one of my drug vendors) on facebook and started to chat with her. Of course, that was when Dawn was ready to spend our 10 minutes. I began wrapping up my conversation before it had even started and Dawn said in a slightly irritated voice, "Just tell me when you're ready."

Now in my mind, when she said she was almost ready for bed, but was still clicking away on the laptop, that said to me that she wasn't quite ready, and that it would be okay to continue with what I was doing for a little while. The irritated voice a few minutes later told me something different. I quickly said goodbye and saw that Dawn was folding clothes on the bed, so I jumped in to help. I started to talk about an idea I had for the blog and she said that I'm too focused on the blog as a goal rather than have the blog as a tool we are using in order to focus on our goals. This made some sense to me. But I had no idea what to write about. I said I'd figure something out as we finished off the folding, and then I went back to see what was going on at Facebook. Big mistake! It turned out for the best, but it felt like one of our semi-annual arguments was about to take place for a minute or two there. I closed internet explorer down entirely and turned to look at her. She even seemed mad about me doing that for a bit and I said. "I thought we were done. 10 minutes, right?" She said in a very calm tone of voice, "If you want to be done, then that's fine."

The failure of my 1st marriage, and several years of dealing with women has made me a whole lot better at reading them than I used to be. 15 years ago, I would've thought to myself, "I guess everything is fine. I'll just head back to the computer and see if my friend is still on." Not that I had Facebook back then, but you get the idea. I wasn't very bright back then I guess. Anyway, I knew it was time for a talk. What came out of it was this. I don't pay attention sometimes. Weird right? A guy who gets involved with computers, sports, tv shows, movies etc. and ignores his wife. Who woulda thunk it? Dawn is funny sometimes. If she's telling me something and I catch myself not being focused and I ask her to repeat herself, she won't do it. Figures if I didn't think it was important enough to listen in the first place, then why should she have to tell the story again. That happened more often early in our relationship than it does now because we are both working to meet somewhere in the middle. We both realize that I don't always pay attention. I'm trying to get better at listening and catch myself quicker, while she's trying to make sure she has my attention. It's starting to work. But it took some effort to get here.

Tonight we made a deal. If I'm playing around on here and Dawn has something to say, she will call my name and then wait for me to look. My part of the deal is that I have to try to look up quicker. It's not that men (or in this case me) don't want to listen to their wives. We do. I promise. It's just that we get caught up in what we are doing and are unable to instantly turn that on and off. I'm generalizing by saying that, but it seems to me that most men are guilty as charged on this count. And if I had to guess, I'd say it pisses most of their wives off.
John