# 3: MY HUSBAND: A LONGITUDINAL CASE STUDY OF TOTALLY NOT LISTENING TO ME AT REALLY IMPORTANT TIMES

PAGE # 3


Thursday 

12/1/2011

1:05 pm

This adoption attorney was obviously not well versed in the laws of man.  Otherwise, she'd know that men, as a rule, especially married ones, cannot multi-task.  I couldn't just call my husband, interrupt an important business meeting, and tell him out of nowhere that we could have a baby in less than 3 weeks!

I couldn't call him immediately.  I was having flashbacks of past calls during business trips.

Me:  Tom, it's me.  Oh my God.  Oh my God. Oh my God.

Him:  I'm in Germany right now, really important meeting, I'll call you back later.

Me:  No!  Wait!  Oh my God.  Planes!  Two planes hit The Twin Towers!

Him:  I have to go now.

Me:  Don't hang up!  Oh my God!  Oh my God!  The towers are falling down!  The Twin Towers are falling down!

Him:  I'll call you later.

Me:  No!  We're under attack!  The Pentagon was hit too!  Oh my God!

Him:  Gotta go.  Love you.  Bye.

There were other times too.  Like when he was at a trade show in Atlantic City and I called to tell him I was pregnant again (14 years since our first was born).  Or the time I was lost for 5 hours, at night, in a very dangerous part of NJ.  

Tom does not even hear me during work meetings.  He doesn't do it on purpose.  Listening, to me, for him, is beyond his conscious control.  I trigger his sympathetic nervous system--the system responsible for enabling the release of adrenaline, etc. in times of stress.  Some people have a fight response.  Tom has a flight response.  Simple as that.  I don't even take it personally anymore.