So far, Easter's really a bust.

Bill and I had words last night following an incident with M (in which he stayed out most of the night after telling us he'd be home at 12-1). When I arrived last night at our date, opening night at the baseball stadium, I knew something wasn't right. He was upset with me. So rather than move into pretend mode, I confronted it after we dropped the kids, as we sat in the parking lot. That didn't get us anywhere, and I left in my car and came home without ever entering the ballpark. Bill stayed behind with the kids. I was hoping for an apology when he got home, but it didn't quite play like that. But we did have a long talk to try to get things on better footing. At the end of the night, though, a few things were clearer.
- He has resented for some time that we are not "on the same page" about parenting. This was surprising to me, as we've gone through the past difficult year without conflict, even though we've both viewed things from different perspectives. I've thought that it has worked well: I give him respect and space to operate from his assumptions, and I've felt respected enough to operate from my own assumptions. With goodwill, patience, and good communication, I think our parenting has gone really well. So I'm looking at the situation with nothing but positive feelings, and he's looking at the same situation with negative feelings.
- He is operating from a patriarchal viewpoint (he is the head of the household), and I'm not. That viewpoint is one of the things I jettisoned when I was getting rid of "belief systems that don't work for me". Since jettisoning it, I've felt greater personal responsibility toward my family, greater freedom to know my own mind in a matter, greater authentic respect for Bill, and greater self-respect. He wants very much for me to believe the same way I did; he carries the weight of "responsibility for having the "end-of-the-day last word", and sees that scenario as the way conflicts should be handled (wherein he solicits and evaluates my advice, but if he doesn't go along with it, he makes the final decision based on his own conscience.) I haven't operated that way in several years.
- He has some strange attachment to a midnight curfew being the litmus test of whether I'm supporting him or not. If I can't wholeheartedly buy into it (or at least act to the children like I do), I'm not perceived as supportive, nevermind all the other ways in which I am GENUINELY supportive (with no faking it). I can't buy in. And it's disingenuous to fake some kind of concord I don't have.
- When I have a goal or take a first step on something that is foreign to him (not something he'd enjoy or choose), he is not my cheerleader. As long as it is theoretical he IS, he tells me I can do anything! Or if it's a goal that he believes in, he's fabulously supportive! But when I memorized a monologue and went to an audition, he was very cold to that idea. So for the sake of peace, I gave up on that idea (and because it wasn't a burning passion, but an interest). Now I'm going to my visit with the grad school professor about starting grad school, and he's offering -- instead of a "Go get 'em! You'll do great!" -- a reserved, dispassionate "objective" questioner stance. "I'm not understanding WHY you want this; I'm not seeing that this is the result of a long-held dream; I'm not sure WHAT you're searching for, and what's driving it, and what you want to get out of it".

I really could have used the attagirl.