Is it men, or is it just my man?

I have new sunglasses. I betook myself to the mall this morning, getting stuck behind the slowest-moving farm vehicle towing a flatbed filled with hay bales on the way, and spent money on moi même and no one else. So there. Nyah. I got Ray-Bans, not very expensive ones as that particular brand goes, but not cheap like drugstore sunglasses either. I hope they last me a long time.

Apart from that, I just got my husband mad at me, and I was trying to be calm and speak reasonably and he just blew up. We are going to a wedding on Sunday (it’s a Jewish wedding, hence Sunday) in Toronto. This is a second cousin once removed (for all of you non-genealogists in the audience, that means that his great-grandmother and my grandfather were siblings) and I can’t really say I know him. In fact, I wouldn’t recognize him if I were to meet him somewhere, but everyone in the family is invited (as they always are) and since we’ll to be in the neighbourhood anyway (this being Thanksgiving weekend, after all), we’re going. Having said all that, this is my problem:

There is a chance that my brother, the one who does not speak to me nor acknowledge me in any way, shape or form, the one who has spurned my every attempt to bury the hatchet and put the past behind us, who believes that I am a loose canon and will keep his distance for that very reason (and even if I am, I only blow up when someone gives me reason to) and his wife, who has been unspeakably rude to my mother and whom I believe is the root of all this evil, will be seated at the same table as my husband, our two children and myself. The last time we were at a family function and this happened, my brother acted as though my chair were vacant. My husband and he carried on a lively conversation about guitars and music and other stuff that they have in common, and while Hubby tried to include me in the conversation, it was strictly a one-way thing as far as my brother was concerned.

So I asked my husband that should we find ourselves in the same situation as before, that is, seated with my brother and his family, that he support me if my brother and his wife refuse to acknowledge me. He assumed that I meant he should be rude to them and he refused to act that way. He has some delusional idea that if he’s nice to my brother, he will eventually come around and stop ignoring me. That’s not going to happen, sorry. But Hubby simply does not subscribe to the “my wife’s enemies are my enemies” school of thought and would not go out of his way to let them know that.

He was really getting upset with me during the course of this discussion, even though I was trying very hard to remain calm. I finally had to say to him that if he tried to include me in a conversation with my brother and my brother refused to acknowledge my presence, that he should say to him, “I’m sorry, but until you stop being rude to my wife, I really can’t talk to you.” That’s all I ask. However, I just couldn’t understand why he didn’t see that himself, why I had to explain it to him. Is it all men? Or is my husband just particularly naive? I don’t get it.

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