I’ve had many a conversation with friends of mine about how much we love our husbands and we wouldn’t be without them. 

But sometimes, just sometimes, we don’t like them.

I decided the other night that it would be really good if my husband would sort tea out for the children and myself and I duly asked him nicely if he wouldn’t mind.  He was up for it, especially when I helped him choose what we could all have.  Great, a night off for me.

That night was what we in our house call a muck up night, when we all might have something different, something snacky but are all happy with the choices we make. 

The reason I asked him to do tea was because I’d had a really busy week trying to sort the mess out that is our home including a massive pile of ironing.  Plus, like many women I don’t sleep very well at night and it catches up with me.  Thirdly I had started another period just over one week after finishing the last one.  And the doctors tell me I’m not starting the menopause!

My husband and I decided to have chicken in a lime and sweet chilli sauce with rice.  Now, I don’t like dinners that are too dry and I asked my husband if he would chop up a bit of salad for me.  All I wanted was a bit of lettuce, tomato and cucumber.  Nothing fancy.  It’s just sometimes I crave salad.

You’d have thought I was asking him to fly to the moon and back.  The sulking I got and the response of "you know I don’t like doing salad, won’t you do it?" didn’t bode well with me.

Well, yes I could have, but I really wanted a night off from feeding everybody else.  So I asked him again and this time I got a shirty response of "in my top 10 of things I really don’t like doing, chopping salad is one of them" and a really pathetic "please don’t ask me to do it".

I’m not a material person and I certainly don’t ask for expensive items for the house, and for pity’s sake I was only asking for a bit of salad.

Yet he refused. 

Perhaps it’s my hormonal state and I didn’t cry, but it really upset me that he wouldn’t cut up a bit of salad.

Maybe it upset me that he knew his own mind enough to be able to refuse and I’m not like that.  But maybe, just maybe it’s more to do with the fact that I wear myself out (like most women) looking after the children, house and working and it made me feel very unimportant for that few minutes.

I have since had an apology and have made my feelings known, but for that day he was not in my list of favourite top ten people either.