on frustration

Personally, when someone I love frustrates me, I think they aren’t doing so purposefully, and maybe I’m seeing them as incompetent and inept and frustrating because I can’t see firsthand what’s going on with them. So rather than think “why hasn’t this person done the task I told them to do” and get frustrated, I remember that they’re not an infallible person and they much like me are overwhelmed with the minutia of life. Especially if they don’t seem to be antagonizing me about the request or express that they earnestly forgot and recognize the delay isn’t good and take a step to remedy the situation. This person isn’t my subordinate, if I choose to engage with them in that manner I should be prepared to accept a dynamic that reflects task giver/receiver more than loved one. That’s just me though

I’m not mad at you, I empathize with what it must be like from your perspective. Regardless of the reason, you feel frustrated and essentially wronged by telling me something with trust that I’ll handle it, and then me not doing so in a timely way feels like a breach of that trust and reliance

For that, I really am sorry. I’m sure that feels very weird and hard to digest

But if you think that in 5 years from now I’ll have “learned to be more on top of things”, you’re going to resent me over time

I’m just a person trying to do what I think is my best each day, I’ll never be anything more than that

I didn’t mean to sound mean or anything, I didn’t want it to come across that way so I’m very sorry if it did

it’s more than okay for you to get upset or frustrated with me, regardless of how I respond to your emotions

Don’t apologize for being upset, and nothing I said was meant to invalidate how you feel. I tried to word it as such, I’m not sure if I hit the mark or not

I simply wanted to share how I process and react to things, because I realized that maybe it’d be beneficial for both of us to have an idea of the mentality of the other when it comes to frustration and conflict. I am starting to understand that non urgent and timely/urgent requests from you to me sound very similar when you say them to me; it’s subtle until it isn’t (which is when you get frustrated), so I have to learn to pick up on small signals better and figure out your priority intention with inference and subtext. When you mention something to me a second or third time, I don’t automatically register that as “urgent”, I naturally just think you’re ensuring that 1. You told me, and 2. That I remember that this is to be done.