Disinvited To The Game...

I have read my wife's summary of the facts of what happened from her perspective. I do not disagree with her summary of the facts.

I do think there needs to be a bit more added by way of "background information" and a few more details of the brief conversations we had regarding the proposed activities for the evening in question.

First, my wife was 100% correct in saying that we both work a lot. In fact, in the past 2 weeks she has been unable to attend a family dinner with my extended family that had been planned for weeks, a couple softball games, an event for my sister's school, and generally been coming home so late in the evening from her job that we have just enough time to have dinner together, share a few stories about the day and go to bed. I wasn't happy that she missed the family dinner, but she tried to make it and really had very little control over her ability to attend. I really couldn't care less about her not being able to make the softball games; half the time I'd rather not go but I made a commitment to the team and I take it seriously - - if she'd be able to share in those evenings from time to time, which she did make an effort to do on one occasion, that's great, but if she's too busy I understand. It wasn't a big deal that she couldn't make my sister's school's event since we were never totally planning on going and it was more of a last minute "maybe we should try?" kind of thing.

In fact, the only reason I bring up the background information and my sister's school event is to give a little insight into our busy schedules and to show that we often have extra-curricular activities - - planned and unplanned - - for which both of us occasionally are unable to attend because of our busy schedules. In fact, for my sister's school event, I ended up leaving it early to head home to spend time with my wife only to get a call from her when I was already half way home to inform me that she was headed out for a "girls night". Meanwhile, I had already abandoned my family at my sister's school event and was on my way home because my wife had asked me to come home instead. I wasn't mad about the situation b/c I knew my wife could use a "girls night" b/c we both work so much and she rarely has time to spend with her friends or relaxing. It seems I didn't get the same benefit of the doubt with this hockey game situation...

When it came to this hockey game thing last night, it was a spur of the moment situation where my boss offered our company's tickets (of which there are 4) up for grabs. 2 of my co-workers whom my wife and I are friendly with ended up getting the tickets. I told them how I was going to try to get them but that they were too quick for me jokingly. They said that I should go with them. I told them I wasn't sure if I really could, but that I'd let them know. They asked what my wife was doing and I told them that she had to work late that night, but was working not too far from where the sporting event was going to take place and that maybe she would be interested in going. One of my co-workers who had gotten the tickets said he had tried to invite his girlfriend but that she wouldn't know if she would be able to go until 5:00 p.m. The time we had this discussion was around 10 am.

I had a very busy day ahead of me and went to work not really thinking about the whole situation. When I finally had a break in one of my meetings, I re-convened with my co-workers to get a status update on what the plans were. I was still hedging on whether I would be able to go waiting to see what the decision was going to be for my co-workers g/f to see if I was going to be able to include my wife in the plans or not. My co-workers pressed to see if I wanted to go still and ended up saying to invite my wife to see if she wanted to go too.

When I called my wife to invite her, she didn't answer. I e-mailed her to call me. She called and was obviously busy at work herself. I tried to quickly explain why I wanted her to call me and asked her if she wanted to go to a hockey game that same night after work. She isn't the world's biggest sports fan, but it was more of an invitation to go out on a weeknight and do something fun than anything else. She expressed very little interest and said that she was havinga busy day at work and didn't want to be getting home super late because of some hockey game. I told her the situation about the g/f of my co-worker not being able to give an answer until 5:oo p.m. and that that was the extra ticket that would be for her and told her I would keep her updated.

I went back into meetings and then had a conference call. The next thing I knew, it was 5:30 p.m., I had 2 missed calls on my cell phone from my wife and my co-worker was in my office saying we needed to leave and that his g/f was in the lobby waiting for us to all go to the game.

I quickly called my wife back to explain the situation while trying to finish up some last minute details at work that needed to be taken care of. She answered obviously upset that I had not answered her 2 calls and was not made any more happy by the revelation of the news that my co-workers g/f was able to go to the game and that I would be joining them. Apparently, I failed to adequately communicate to her that I had told my co-workers "yes" that I would go to the game as part of the reason why the conditional-invitation was extended to my wife.

So, I found myself at 5:35 p.m. with my wife on the phone not happy, my co-worker, his g/f and another co-worker waiting for me in my office, and needing to do about 5 more minutes of work to wrap things up for the day.

I told my wife to please stop being upset with me on the phone and that I would have to call her back in a few minutes. Once I tied up my loose ends at work, I got in the car with my co-workers to head to the game and proceeded to send emails/text messages back and forth to my wife better explaining what had transpired (rather than engage in a phone conversation in front of the co-workers and the co-worker's g/f).

We ended up leaving the game early (in large part due to my coercing) and I rushed home just to find my wife asleep already. I washed up and laid down next to her and kissed her on the forehead hoping to wake her to be able to talk about what had happened. She grunted and groaned (half asleep), and I took that as my hint to leave her alone. I started to set my alarm on my phone to wake me in the morning when she exclaimed, "Seriously, do you have to do that?!?" (apparently talking about the light being emitted from my phone).

I ended spending the night on the couch.