The Love Dare - Days 4 & 5

Day 4 of the dare I unfortunately have to pass on; I can't really contact Danny at work unless it's an emergency. But here it is in case you were wondering:

4 - Thoughtfulness

Contact your spouse sometime during the business of the day. Have no agenda other than asking how he or she is doing and if there is anything you could do for them.

So today, instead, I went on to day 5:

5 - Politeness

Ask your spouse to tell you three things that cause him or her to be uncomfortable or irritated with you. You must do so without attacking them or justifying your behavior. This is from their perspective only.

I asked Danny this; I think he thought there was some kind of catch. He wanted to know how I arrived at the number 3 ("why not 5 or 6?"). He also wanted me to tell him 3 things about him. Because I am supposed to be doing this dare in secret, I had to try to come up with a reason why I was asking ("just because"), and also had to get out of telling him 3 things about him, because I felt like that wouldn't be fair.

So, his 3 things were, in order: 1) When I am vague about things with him 2) When I don't tell him everything that is going on with me or with the kids 3) That I have an account on meetup.com.

The whole purpose of the exercise was not to get defensive, but just to listen to what he said. I am not going to defend myself on here, as I don't think that would be fair to what I was supposed to be doing either. I will say, though, that I got a meetup.com account about a month ago, in order to meet other moms and their kids. I have not met anyone, nor gone to any meet-ups. Because it was one of the 3 things he mentioned, as of 5 minutes ago, I logged on and deleted my account. I feel better having done this, because if it really did bother him that much, it wasn't worth it to me.

Outcome: I'm glad he was honest with me, and I didn't end up having to give up the dare. :-) It is sort of strange, but I felt proud of our relationship that the 3 things that bothered him about me were such small things (I don't mean I am belittling how he felt; I actually mean that these are easy things to fix; for example, he didn't say, "We fight too much," or "We don't spend any time together." :-)