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The other day, I was trying to write, and Lori was cleaning up the kitchen. As the future office is currently our bathroom, she was about fifteen feet from me. I have great ears, and I have never learned to tune out noise. I was pretty much done with the noise when various pans feel out of an over filled cabinet. I put on my headphones, but I could still hear the noise. So I took a break to stand outside and look at spring.
Were it not for this post, Lori would never know it had been a problem for me.
She was doing something necessary, and she was not being particularly loud about it. It bothered me because I’m unusually sensitive to noise. That’s my issue, and I don’t want my stuff to make her life difficult.
Of course, it helps that Lori is aware of my noise issue and does a great deal to make it less of a problem. She runs the vacuum when I’m outside. She asks what I will be doing later to choose the best time to make noise. She is very understanding and goes out of her way to make it better for me. So there is give and take on this.
What bothers you more than it bothers most people? Do you make that your wife’s problem, or do you try to protect her from that?
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I feel this one. I wasn’t sensitive to much when we married but a couple of concussions and maybe a touch of PTSD later, there’s a lot to work around.
I do try to make it my problem and not my wife’s or my children’s problems. Sometimes I really struggle to find a good way to do that, such as when one of the kids practices piano, which has volume control and even a headphone jack, while I’m at work and waits to practice trumpet or saxophone until I am home. Those are very loud in my house and I try to be very careful to clearly define that it is the volume in our house that I can’t handle, not their abilities.
Then theirs the next level of difficulty. I am also sensitive to light and heat now while my wife has issues with “gloom” and cool temperatures. I have glasses now that mitigate the light sensitivity. I can’t wear them all the time but they help for a while.
But the real struggle is my feeling of being in a goldfish bowl vs her claustrophobia. We now live in town where there are constantly people who can see right in at night when the light inside is brighter than the light outside. I can’t relax for feeling like strangers might be watching so I close curtains. My wife sees the close curtains and feels claustrophobic so she opens them and I struggle with anxiety all over again.
It really doesn’t help that I cannot fathom how seeing an inch farther can help her claustrophobia. Curtains open at night just mean we see our reflection on the glass of the window while anyone on the other side can clearly see us. Curtains closed only cuts the visible space of our rooms by a couple of inches at most and only at the windows themselves. Our rooms are large with high ceilings. I try to keep my problems my problems but that one I have yet to resolve in a way satisfactory to either of us.
@Pa’dam – You have my prayers! I find it’s far worse when I am tired. So I try to set a sane base level when I am not tired.
I’ve just ordered sound cancelling headphones. I had resited the expense, but then I realised it’s as much a gift for my wife as it is for me.