not wise to buy home now- (letter to jimmy)

Hi sweetie- Its important that you read this now. so I am sending it. Please read this today if you can fit it in, before things get busy or during a short break. This is highly important to me and with the stress we've been under lately- it is likely to continue to rise or build into higher tension if not resolved and that is why sharing this with you now is vital and it would be detrimental to everything including our health, to not tackle it now.

Its nothing to worry about - rest assured, as it isn't anything we havent spoken of and seems to be a continuous source of tension b/t us so its nothing bad or shocking and nothing to fear but it is a touchy thing and it is too pressing for me not to address right now. Since its one of those things I can only approach via email to avoid adding further fire to the flame, I feel it best to share/express myself to you via email. It just feels safer that way and I dont want to keep piling stress upon stress on you. I know it seems like I am right now but it's not my true intention. My true intention is resolve and cohesiveness in our relationship, minus the tension/stress as of late. So, its vital there be open communication to talk and that you truly hear me now. Some things I feel shut out on and there are times where email seems only appropriate. This is one of those.

So to preface things, I will explain:

I got this note from my favorite/friend diarist C., she asked I give you some wise advice and tell you she said it, so I chose to share with you the gist of the entry I wrote yesterday before you got home from work and now her following comments and feedback that I saw just recently. I think she knows what she is talking about and I also believe she means well and is trying to be helpful to you and I.

I also think her note makes me see how important it is that you hear how I feel in this entry and what I think because what I think or feel should be important and worth something to you, even if you do not agree in the slightest of anything I said. Most especially because it is causing me great stress and because if you love me, you would want to know and hear how I feel, to take that into consideration.

Please read this carefully and think about it, deeply and please think about C.'s wise advice. Its exactly how I feel - maybe you need to hear it from someone only ten years older than us who has had more than one home in her life and knows what it is like firsthand and isnt someone close to you or connected or pushing you to buy a home now. It's important you understand that she isn't attacking you - nor am I- but I think in a roundabout way she wants the best for you because she cares about me and knows the choices you make in this circumstance will all-around affect me, too.

By the way - the following journal entry was written yesterday afternoon before we even spoke or mentioned Yvette had written you. It is important that you know that. This was not written tonite or just now. It took me hours to write what Ive chosen to share with you and Ive summarized this to be to the point for you and concise/clear. I do not feel its malicious or meant to attack/hurt or anger you, and that is not my intention in sharing this, so I strongly want to emphasize that you not take how I feel the wrong way - please try to listen to what I am really saying in this without jumping to conclusions or negative assumptions.

I will feel anxiety over this because I don't want to upset you or cause you any negative emotion. It will worry me until I hear some reply or reassurance and you talk to me more on this. Please do at some point today.

I love you so deeply and hope you can just separate yourself enough for one minute to understand where I come from and put things into true perspective with out feeling hurt or on the defensive or even angry again, at me. Please try to hear what is truly at the heart of all that I am saying. Thank you in advance for your patience and again I apologize for the way I have caused you such stress in recent days.

I am aware that there is much going on and much to be stressed over in many areas of your life especially in this wedding preparation, that is why sharing what I wrote below is vital.

To minimize stress for both you and I, I need you to listen to what I am saying and hear this, heed it, because adding more stress to the mix is definitely the last thing we need so let's find a way that we can work together productively and find a happy medium please.

Please be gentle in your reaction and reply to this. I don't think my heart/mind/body can handle another day of arguing or crying. Please, my hormones are off balance w/ my period and I am sensitive, tired, stressed, drained and I just feel emotionally taxxed right now. I feel runned down and not at my best emotional state so please be gentle, its all I ask.

I love you-

April

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the stress + strain of house-hunting 7.28.08 [Monday]

A home is an investment and if we can't see ourselves there down the road ten yrs plus, we should not make that committment or investment. It is a huge [life-altering] decision that you can't just correct if you make the wrong choice, you are stuck.

I do not want our final home choice to be the result of pressurized selling or the home of our nitemares simply because we settled feeling desperation to pick anything just to get a home period.

I am not desperate and refuse to settle. I believe that anything good is worth the wait. I also believe in making a decision that I can commit to for a lifetime and not being rash when it comes to choosing a home and buying one.

I refuse to settle because if nothing is coming our way OR prices raise or it's NOT meant to be right now, then I am content to accept that. I would much rather wait until the time is right and have a home I love than end up with a dump I settled for just because we made decisions based on fear and desperation. But Jimmy thinks differently. He wants a home right away and he thinks in the negative, that he will never be able to afford a home if he doesn't buy now. I have to disagree. He has a high enough income that he can afford a home and will one day and he has pristine credit.

There is no reason why down the road he couldn't ever buy a home but he is so restless, anxious, antsy to buy a home before the market changes and prices raise that he has lost sight of his prior ambitions to find a dream home that is affordable which we both love and is almost ready to settle for homes I couldnt even see him ever wanting to live in if it were an apt we were renting. its just his ideals have gone down the drain due to desperation and FEAR of never owning a home.

I feel that he lacks trust in himself and the future and I don't know how to instill some faith and hope which I do have. I would ask why but I'm afraid to because he never reacts well to confrontation and seems to always become defensive, closing up, whenever I want to talk. He would only deny this and downplay what I sense and feel and dismiss it as if it were not true if I said my true thoughts right now.

I've tried to make him see and I think its opened his mind a lot as he even wrote Yvette a lengthy letter explaining we wanted a break and didn't want to settle for just any home [all the things I told him I felt recently] and that he had decided he'd gotten lost in the excitement of it all and lost sight of what was important to him and ourselves so he wanted to re-evaluate his choices and start over from scratch, stick to his ideals and not settle even if we have to wait til something pops up that we can afford. I think he finally realizes and agrees with me that it's better to wait than to regret, in the long run.

Unfortunately Yvette's reply to him was short and impersonal/unfriendly, abrupt. I don't think she is happy about the decision and she has never wrote anything saying she understands where we are coming from or supporting our decision. I fear this non-reaction will cause him to cave and re-nig on his decision, the one we made together and my anxiety is building with worry over this.

He even expressed his regret in wasting her time and apologized in two different emails saying he felt awkward with her and hoped she understood. He showed me her replies and none of them acknowledged his apology or her giving us any understanding. I don't feel she is truly genuine or wants the best outcome for us. I believe it is only the promise of a sale and cash that counts to her. She may no longer want to work with us but if she does, I think it is only money/sale- motivated.

I really do not want to work with her anymore after some of her actions/behaviors in all this and she has hit a nerve on more than one occasion with me coming off catty and snarky in an effort to get a rise out of me. She's hardly organized, professional or competent at her job and frankly I am at the end of my rope with her and sick of having to deal with the likes of her .

Jimmy on the other hand thinks he will ask her in the future to show us more houses again once we take a break. He acknowledges he senses the same discomfort in her replies or lack of acknowledgement or hurt and seems to think she will get over it and seems completely oblivious to the fact that his decision was taken very personally by her, in my opinion, and the fact that he has in a sense damaged the business relationship and I would not be surprised if she thinks I am behind this and feels hostility towards me. I have never felt that she genuinely likes me as a person, anyway.

She is NEVER going to be comfortable now even if time passes and she lets it go. I feel it's time to move on and find someone else especially someone who is not connected to his best friend. I feel choosing someone with a connection was a big mistake. This whole time I've felt his eagerness to do what she says, no matter how rash and irresponsible and hasty, has been effected by the fact that she is his best friend's sister-in-law. It is almost as if he feels obligated to impress her or he feels he has to impress her and give her a good sale. I do not want to buy our first home with someone he is out to impress or consumed by the fear of disappointing her just because she is connected to his personal life. That is how mistakes and bad choices occur. I feel and believe it was a HUGE mistake to go with her because if it doesn't work out or he makes a bad choice, he is going to have to see her in the future outside of the business relationship because its his best friend's relative.

I can't force him to do-away with Yvette because of his loyalty to her which seems quite wrongly misplaced due to the fact that she is his best friend's sis in law and he feels pressured to not disappoint and does not want to go outside of his 'comfort zone' to find another simply because its too much work for him so he will settle for this.

I am a person who has a real dislike of people who "kiss-up" or put on a facade just to make someone else like or respect them just because they are afraid to be themselves. The truth is I can't and I won't tell him what to do but I will not keep quiet about the fact that I do not like Yvette and do not wish to continue with her and that if he does, he can expect more future outbursts/arguments in front of her from me if provoked by her w/ sarcastic/catty remarks because my patience is wearing thin and my level of tolerance is growing weak. She has already seen me blow up in controlled ways a few times and I was sarcastic and snappy towards or indirectly irritated at her and it showed - it was subtle but anyone could feel the sense of tension spilling over in the air.

When Jimmy did tell me he wrote Yvette a lengthy letter about us making a decision to take a break from house hunting and pull homes we had bidded on that week and cancel them based on realizing we were settling and making bad decisions and needed to re-evaluate our priorites etc, I felt SO relieved. These were all the things I have been saying for months now and had argued over with him.

It moved me to know that he finally listened to what I was saying and on his own and had come to the realization that I was right and that he was being very hasty. I feel that him waking up has helped lessen some of the tension that got kicked up in our relationship..HOWEVER his mother has already expressed extreme disapproval this past weekend, and it sounded like from what I could see [he was on the phone with her], that she was unhappy and critical of his decision and was encouraging him to rush in finding a home and to settle before prices go up, rather than waiting for the right home. I heard him explaining and reasoning with her and defending our decision however I could tell his mother was discounting what he thought best for us and planting doubt in his and our decision together. After this talk, Jimmy seemed anxious over getting a home prior to our wedding in november this fall, all over again, AFTER we had spoken of taking a step back and going slower with this only days before.

I don't know what is in his head today. He is going back 'n' forth between rational logic and impulsiveness to find a home before the market changes. I feel he is being influenced back to his previous thoughts prior to deciding to take a break - all because of the way his mother was pushing him to find one and not take a break this past Saturday and I am aggravated as hell that she has gotten him all stressed out again making him feel as though he will never find or afford a home in his lifetime and that she has undone, unravelled the decision we had made together, only days ago, to take a break and reevaluate everything, change our game plan and so on. I am frustrated with it all and don't even know what we are doing now. He is so all over the place and indecisive about being decisive that I am confused/lost and it is causing me more stress than I can handle right now.

I mentioned recently that he probably felt desperate to buy a home because of his mother's constant calls everytime she knows that we are going to look at homes to see if we found one yet or if we have bid on it...And then when we haven't found anything, lecturing him he's got to hurry and buy a home. He totally denied this when I mentioned this gently last week but then my point was proven when his mother called and he said his decision this past wkend and she kept him on the phone for longer than usual just to lecture him about how she disagreed with him waiting etc.

I didn't hear her exact words but I was sitting next to him the entire time and I saw his face, his reaction and you could tell, that she was pushing him and pressuring him and making him doubt himself and I could tell after that convo - that it affected him because we've looked at more online homes after this to add to check out in the near future AND he made statements a few times after making the decision to cool things off that sound like he is getting desperate again and I sense that he is ready and ripe to contradict his and my decision.

In fact, I have the distinct feeling he will talk to yvette via email - if not today- sometime this week- and I think he will, without telling me, try to fix things in order to make near future plans. I feel anxious over this and think he will not voluntarily tell me about it or will ease it in light hearted conversation very soon just to prepare for a soon-to-be outing with her and act like we never made the decision we just did.

I sense that the resolve he and I decided on, is slowing slipping away and disintegrating and that he is going to retract all that he had said about taking a break because we have so much to do with planning the wedding and all and it is quite stressful.

The way I feel is : the wedding + impending marriage ARE top priority, therefore making sure everything is together for our day should come first!! We committed to this date way before we even started looking for homes and that should be our primary focus.

Planning a wedding causes extreme stress for most and he has been recently expressing this, and so, to top it off with trying to find a home before the wedding makes absolutely NO sense and is asking for it.

Things are stressful enough and even he is coming undone over the stressors of putting a formal wedding together and it really bears no logic to try to add more stress to your life by doing the second most stressful thing in the average couples' life- buying a first home.

I am not certain my mental state can handle that much stress and strain. it is just too much for me and i feel it is causing enough distress in the relationship to cause damage. i just feel the timing is all wrong.

There is no emergency, no rush to find a home before our wedding, but I can't convince him otherwise and he doesn't see the affect it is having on everything. It is like asking for suicide to add that to the mix and his idea originally was to get a home and move in, a month before the wedding. That is f***in' crazy and makes absolutely NO SENSE at all.

I can be a person who lacks common sense in areas that involve emotion and scary decision-making HOWEVER in this situation, I feel we have switched roles . He is the person I typically am and I am the logical one this time. It baffles me because he is very grounded, a logically oriented person, stable. J. does not jump to conclusions, make hasty choices, do things he regrets. Normally, he is slow, safe, cautious, guarded - slow to take big steps and make decisions, perfectionist about what he buys or chooses [must be flawless] so when I think of all this and I have told him this, I am completely confused as to why he has not been this way in the arena of choosing a home/buying our first home together.

I feel that my fiance is a successful person in many facets of his life and has wonderful potential for more success in his future however I feel that his parents high expectations/attitudes push him too hard and this truly blocks him and is a source of inner confliction and self-doubt. It makes me both sad and angry and also frustrated that I cannot do anything and I am helpless to make him see this without offending him.

I am dizzy with the whole thing. Things change so much. One minute you're told you have a good chance or are within the right price range then the next minute you're told 'oh sorry someone else already has a contract, outbid you, or you were not in the right price range.' We've had so many of this lately that all the homes are beginning to blend together and I can't keep up on it all. I feel utterly drained, burned out over it all.

It has been a whirlwind of homes, overkill of looking and being told to bid on what we can lay our hands on [according to Yvette which I thought unwise-] ..WHY bid on things you don't love as backup? Why not focus on only what you love and what you would settle for as the best? I had been telling this to Jimmy for a while now. It finally dawned on him and in his letter to Yvette late last week he did state this.

I fear he will regress though because her lack of acknowledgement and lack of attempt to reply to what he said to her or accept his apology may cause someone like him to fold and give in, and because he has a need to please/impress others to be liked. I can already envision him writing her out of the blue like nothing happened and suggesting to look at his next set of homes.

I hope he does not do that. It would look very flighty, wishy washy, and I would resent it after all we talked over and how I helped him compile his letter to her and took the time to discuss the situation with him, listened to him, and made a joint decision together. IF he were to turn around and change everything we talked out and decided days ago, I would feel very disappointed and unsettled..not to mention pissed.

When you make a decision together, you stick together. Not to mention the fact that he wrote two very decisive and to the point emails to Yvette stating clearly his decision and my approval of that decision to take a break, go slower, and do things entirely differently. And so if he were to start planning outings right away again, it would seem like he never meant what he wrote and it would come off as desperation and lacking ability to stick with what he had said when we had clearly made a decision and took the time to write out his feelings to her.

Her unacknowledgement of what he had written about our decision/apology clearly is her way of not putting any weight into what he said, knowing that that is the best tactic to get him to start talking again about our next planned meeting.

I fear he is not going to stick to that decision we made and that I cannot handle the stress that will follow and ensue. There are too many other important things going on that involve a heavy amount of stress like finalizing all details of our wedding and this added to it, causes deep confliction, anxiety, and is distressful to my mental state of being. I do not want to go backwards from this!! but that is what i sense is going to happen. I don't know what to do :/

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Thank you for listening and I think you should think about what I've expressed. Please do not take it personally or think that I am trying to attack you. The whole situation is going to cause me to crack mentally and my mind can only handle so much stress. Be mindful of this. Please.

You stated to Yvette via email and right in front of me that we were taking a break and I agreed and told you I felt it necessary and essential and even if you have changed your mind at this moment [within days, it is not even a week since you wrote her], it would be unfair to yank me back into that gruelling process of doing what we were doing prior when it is so obvious I am in great need of a break right now, emotionally and mentally. It is too much. Please heed my warning. I do not want a mental breakdown before our wedding .

Here are C's notes. Please know that I believe in my heart that she has good intentions and that she truly just wants the best for both and is looking out for your and my future. She does like you and always compliments you when I write so it's not like she looks down on you. Anyway here are her notes:

I would recommend that he not tell his family at all the next time you look for a home. When we were considering building we never mentioned it to Freds' family because they would just harp on him. People who harp on other people are controlling. They are NOT looking out for someone's own good and that "need to impress" is why so many people are in foreclosure right now. All Jimmy has to do is read the paper. Does he really want to have to turn around and lose his home and his credit?

Yikes! Sorry. I don't mean to be inciting you against him if you're already having hard feelings, but Jeeze Louise! Tell Jimmy I said it's a very wise decision, that people overextend themselves and that if you wait for your dream house, you'll both walk in and go, this is it! But if you buy a house because you feel you have to, you'll be settling! *hugs*

You definitely need to be included on decisions. Maybe you can just sit on this stuff for six months. It's never a good idea to be trying to do too many things at once. In this world where everything is so stressful, it doesn't make sense to invite more! [C.] [p]

the stress + strain of house hunting- pt 2

We do not want our final home choice to be the result of pressurized selling or the home of our nitemares simply because we settled feeling desperation to pick anything just to get a home period.

[that is more jimmy than i. im not desperate and refuse to settle. i believe that anything good is worth the wait. i also believe in making a decision that i can commit to for a lifetime and not being rash when it comes to choosing a home and buying one. i refuse to settle. if nothing is coming my way OR prices raise or its NOT meant to be right now, then i am content to accept that. id much rather wait until the time is right and have a home i love than end up with a dump i settled for just because i made decisions based on fear and desperation. jimmy thinks differently. he wants a home right away and he thinks in the negative, that he will never be able to afford a home if he doesnt buy now. i have to disagree. he has a high enough income that he can afford a home and will one day and he has pristine credit. there is no reason why down the road he couldn't ever buy a home but hes so restless, anxious, antsy to buy a home before the market changes and prices raise that he has lost sight of his prior ambitions to find a dream home that is affordable which we both love and has almost thrown away those values and is ready to settle for homes i couldnt even see him ever wanting to live in if it were an apt we were renting. its just his ideals have gone down the drain due to desparation and FEAR of never owning a home. he lacks trust in himself and the future and I don't know how to instill some faith and hope which I do have.

I've tried to make him see and I think its opened his mind a lot as he even wrote yvette a lengthy letter explaining we wanted a break and didnt want to settle for just any home [all the things i told him i felt recently] and that he had decided he'd gotten lost in the excitement of it all and lost sight of what was important to him and ourselves so he wanted to reevaluate his choices and start over from scratch, stick to his ideals and not settle even if we have to wait til something pops up that we can afford. he realizes its better to wait than regret.

Unfortunately Yvette's reply to him was short and impersonal/unfriendly, abrupt. I dont think she is happy about the decision and she has never wrote anything saying she understands where we are coming from or supporting our decision. He even expressed his regret in wasting her time and apologized in two different emails saying he felt awkward with her and hoped she understood. He showed me her replies and none of them acknowledged his apology or her giving us any understanding. I dont feel she wants to work with us anymore and really do not want to work with her anymore after some of her actions/behaviors in all this and she has hit a nerve on more than one occasion with me coming off catty and snarky in an effort to get a rise out of me. she's hardly organized, professional or competent at her job and frankly i am at the end of my rope with her and sick of having to deal with the likes of her . i dont care to see her face again. i get angry.

Jimmy on the other hand thinks he will ask her in the future to show us more houses again once we take a little break. He acknowledges he senses the same discomfort in her replies or lack of acknowledgement or hurt and seems to think she will get over it and seems completely oblivious to the fact that his decision was taken very personally by her, in my opinion and he has in a sense damaged the business relationship and cut the ties by saying what he did to her.

Its NEVER going to be comfortable now even if time passes and she lets it go. i feel its time to move on and find someone else esp someone who is not connected to his best friend. i feel that was a big mistake. this whole time ive felt his eagerness to do what she says, no matter how rash and irresponsible and hasty, has been effected by the fact that she is his best friend's sis in law. its almost as if he is obligated to impress her or he feels he has to impress her and give her a good sale. i know how he thinks and he is hungry to be liked by everyone esp people connected to his family/friends. I do not want to buy our first home with someone he is out to impress or consumed with the fear of disappointing her just because she is connected to his personal life. i feel and believe it is a HUGE mistake to go with her. because if it doesnt work out or he makes a bad choice, he is going to have to see her in the future outside of the business relationship because its his best friend's relative.

I can't force him to do-away with yvette because of his loyalty to her which seems quite wrongly misplaced due to i believe it is only that she is his best friend's sis in law and he feels pressured to not disappoint. but I am a person who has a real dislike of people who "kiss-up" or put on a facade just to make someone else like or respect them just because they are afraid to be themselves. The truth is I can't and I won't tell him what to do but I will not keep quiet about the fact that I do not like Yvette and do not wish to continue with her and that if he does, he can expect more and more future outbursts/arguments in front of her from me if provoked by her w/ sarcastic/catty remarks because my patience will wear thin and my level of tolerance is growing weak. she has already seen me blow up in controlled ways a few times and I was sarcastic and snappy towards or indirectly irritated at her and it showed - it was subtle but anyone could feel the sense of tension spilling over in the air. I do not like her and nothing he says or does will convince me otherwise.

When Jimmy did tell me he wrote Yvette a lengthy letter about us making a decision to take a break from house hunting and pull homes we had bidded on that week and cancel them based on realizing we were settling and making bad decisions and needed to re-evaluate our priorites etc, I felt so relieved. These were all the things I have been saying for months now and had argued over with him.

It moved me to know that he finally listened to what i was saying and on his own came to the realization that i was right and that he was being very hasty and him waking up has helped lessen some of the tension that gets kicked up in our relationship

HOWEVER his mother has already butted her head in this weekend, and it sounded like from what i could see [he was on the phone with her], that she was showing EXTREME disapproval of his decision to take a break from yvette. Its almost like she was telling him to rush in finding a home and to settle for any home and be unsensible, rather than waiting for the right home. his mother was lecturing him about how he needs to find a home now before the rates increase and how he's running out of time.

After this talk, Jimmy seemed anxious over getting a home prior to our wedding in november this fall, all over again, AFTER we had spoken of taking a step back and going slower with this only days before. i don't know what is in his head today. he is going back n forth. between rational logic and going with what his mother is pushing him to do and i am aggravated as hell that she has got him all stressed out again making him feel as though he will never find or afford a home in his lifetime ever and that she has undone, unravelled all my work and all the sense i had finally talked into him and into his head. I am frustrated with it all and don't even know what we are doing now. he is so all over the place and indecisive about being decisive that Im confused/lost.

Gee, I wonder why Jimmy struggles with self-doubt and has a hard time making decisions?! Could it be because his mother is always criticizing his every move [and if his father spoke more as he is ill, i know he'd be even more critical of jimmy than his mother. it is their way. and i have to say i see it as very toxic and the reason for a lot of jimmy's inability to communicate or make decisive decisions without feeling doubt in himself or feeling like he is a failure. ] He doesnt see it though as everytime I point it out, he dismisses it, downplays it, and defends her/them.

For instance, I mentioned recently that he prob felt desperate to buy a home because of his mother's constant calls everytime we look at homes to see if we found one yet and have we bid on it? and then when we haven't found anything, lecturing him he's got to hurry and buy a home. HE totally denied this when I mentioned this gently last week but then my point was proved when his mother called and he said his decision this past wkend and she kept him on the phone for longer than usual to lecture him about how she disagreed with him waiting etc.

I didnt hear her exact words but I was sitting next to him the entire time and I saw his face, his reaction and you could tell, that she was pushing him and pressuring him and making him doubt himself. and I could tell after that convo - that it affected him because weve looked at more online homes after this to add to check out in the near future AND he made statements a few times after making the decision to cool things off that sound like he is getting desperate again and i sense that he is ready and ripe to contradict his decision. in fact, i have the distinct feeling he will talk to yvette via email today and fix things in order to make near future plans. I feel anxious over this and think he will not voluntarily tell me about it or will ease it in soon, subtley to prepare for a soon-to-be outing with her. i sense that the resolve he and i decided on, is slowing slipping away and disintegrating and that he is going to retract all that he had said about taking a break because we have so much to do with planning the wedding and all and it is quite stressful. the way i feel the wedding is top priority and our marriage and making sure everything is together for our day- should come first. we committed to this date way before we even started looking for homes and that should be our primary focus. planning a wedding causes extreme stress for most and to top it with trying to find a home before the wedding is asking for it. things are stressful enough and even he is coming undone over the stressors of putting a formal wedding together and it really bears no logic to try to add more stress to your life by doing the second most stressful thing in the average couples' life- buying a first home. i am not certain my mental state can handle that much stress and strain. it is just too much for me and i feel it is causing enough distress in the relationship to cause damage. i just feel the timing is all wrong. there is no emergency, no rush to find a home before our wedding, but i can't convince him otherwise and he doesnt see the affect it is having on everything.

Its all because of his mother I believe. and it makes me really angry. I am not making any hasty decision in terms of buying a home where we will share our future lives together. I'm sorry - I am not going to allow a mistake to be made. Its not just his life, its mine too and I refuse to be pulled down into someone else's mistake when we are a unit and most esp when its all based on an irrational fear of never owning a home.

I feel he is too fixated on impressing everyone. He needs to let go a bit on this. Not just this, but we have enough stress with wedding planning and he has complained constantly. I feel its stupid on his part to try to add finding a home on top of all that.

Its like asking for suicide to add that to the mix and his idea originally was to get a home and move in, a month before the wedding. that is sooo crazy and makes absolutely NO SENSE at all.

I can be a person who lacks common sense in areas that involve emotion and scary decision-making HOWEVER in this situation, i feel we have switched roles . he is the person i typically am and i am the logical one this time. it baffles me because jimmy is very grounded, logical oriented person, stable. he doesnt jump to conclusions, make hasty choices, do things he regrets and he is slow, safe, cautious, guarded - slow to take big steps and make decisions, perfectionist about what he buys or chooses [must be flawless] so when i think of all this and i have told him this, i am completely confused as to why he has not been this way in the arena of choosing a home/buying our first home together...it's as if he has thrown out all his sensibilities, logic, values and smart decison making strategies in this situation. i just cannot pinpoint why and can only assume it is sheer desperation and fear of looking like a failure to everyone in his life and feeling he doesnt measure up and im sure its largely attributed to the jabs his parents make that convince him he is not good enough or successful enough but he'd deny this til the day he dies.

I love him and feel angry when i see how his parents have created this confliction in himself and dissatisfaction in life because their opinions have become his and i think sometimes they are overly critical, judging and superficial in their values and its everything i am against. i feel jimmy is a successful person in many facets of his life and has wonderful potential for more success but his parents attitudes have seeped into him and they block him. it makes me both sad and angry and also frustrated that i cannot do anything and i am helpless to make him see this without offending him.

spirometry + a conflicting situation. (more wedding stress)

7.11.08

on tuesday morning, early in the morn. we traveled about 40 minutes away to downtown tampa by davis island where tampa general hospital is located and the spirometry dept exists for patients referred there, to measure one's breath [how long you are able to hold it, inhale or exhale] - specializing in treatment of asthma patients. Jimmy accompanied me. We registered on one floor and got basic paper work put into the computer and then I was directed to another floor and wing of the hospital. Once I arrived, I was told to wait in this tiny three seater corner of a waiting room next to the spirometry testing area. It also seemed to be a place for stress-testing but possibly related to breathing?

Once called in, I got Virgil- an older african american man who was kind, funny, and amusing whom even Jimmy easily talked with and joked and liked right away as we talked of him afterwards. Virgil taught me to use an asthma inhaler properly and actually took about fifteen minutes to go step by step with me and then practice a few times having me do it alone to ensure I was doing it correctly as I had expressed that I felt I wasn't entirely sure IF how I was doing it was right and had trouble knowing what the right way was because I'd only been diagnosed a year or more ago and was still learning since the inhaler wasnt something I used frequently.

My asthma problem is newer than most and more minor than others who were born with it and have had it their whole lives. I think it amazed/shocked Virgil how I was prescribed these meds and all but none of the drs I had had taken the time to show me how to use inhalers or even tell me how to do it.

I tried learning by reading the directions and following them but when it comes to things like that I am not very coordinated physically and I suck at combining two actions at once. you have to be able to push down the inhaler which shoots out the medicine but only after youve taken a deep breath, blow it out and then suck the air back AS YOU PUSH the inhaler down quickly and hold it for 10 long seconds. I am telling you its hard and something that takes time to master. I suck at things that involve THIS kind of coordination. I am a bit of a klutz, I admit!

Virgil did not teach me the tricks of the trade when it comes to Inhalers til the end of my appointment but I know it was something that he kindly offered to me out of generosity and wanting to help, knowing I didnt even know the basics. He even gave me a spacer with is a plastic piece of tubing that goes on top of the inhaler to ensure the right amount of medicine so one doesn't over inhale etc. I thanked him at the end, really grateful a stranger would do this and surprised since working in a hospital, health profession nowadays does not mean getting a kind, helpful, genuinely people loving health care worker. In fact its often the opposite, people who are rude, cold, passive aggressive, rushed, unempathetic. It's sad what most of the health profession has come to.

These are people desensitized who've forgotten the meaning of their chosen profession and have become hardened- probably due to the stress of it all. I know firsthand since my mother is a nurse, RN, and is burned out and one of the most skilled people at not showing emotion and being cold when it serves her. But this techie who acted like a dr was very kind and had a fatherly feeling, the kind I never had but always wanted.

In any case, prior to learning how to inhale my asthma medication- albuterol, Virgil had set me up at a computer and sat me down in a comfortable chair. He set me up with this apparatus to breath into and a sort of tube to put my mouth over and suck the air out of. It was embarrassing. HE kept telling me I wasnt inhaling hard enough and Jimmy was laughing. I felt self conscious. You had to keep your lips tightly around this piece of plastic while inhaling and exhaling otherwise air escaped and your breathing could not be accurately measured on this machine. It took about three teachings and tries with the technician before I could even start the test. In the end, it probably took about forty mins for this test.

After we returned home, we watched some of this trial live on trutv which involved a local murder case where we lived by citrus park. trial of joshua rosa. napped and then were about to get ready in the mid afternoon to make a trip over to my parents to pick up my mother for a 7' o clock meeting with a photographer we had found that does both full ceremony/reception photography [bw, color and artistic styles] as well as provides a DJ for reception.

The company is known as Celebrations of Tampa Bay and we'd found a fantastic package deal online and it was not going to be any cheaper than that elsewhere as we'd researched hundreds of other places via wedding magazines and websites. This one was $1500.00 for the entire pkg of dj and photography and if you booked, a special coupon of one hundred dollars off.

Just as we were getting ready to get into the shower so we could get ready for this appt, my father called Jimmy's cell phone to basically put him on the spot and criticize him and his family in regard to this wedding. He complained how he had a junk car and needed a new one and how my mom had paid for a lot already in this wedding. He also accused her [she was not home and had made this call behind my mother's back] and us of running around behind his back and betraying him by signing up for things for the wedding she had paid for [ie. my dress, caterer, chapel hall etc.]

My father went on to tell Jimmy that his family needed to pay for a photographer if we wanted one because he wasnt allowing my mother to pay for it or at least pay for half. I didn't hear the whole convo since I wasn't on the phone but I was next to him and could hear snippets thru the cell and felt shocked, angry, pissed, irritated- it was just unbelievably out of line to not only call my fiance like that but to put down his family and make hostile remarks such as this.

He claimed that nowadays the groom's family paid for half of the wedding. Both Jimmy and I stated that that was not true and he was out of touch. It was the bride's side and it has always been that way and he could look at any magazine or book and that was what it was going to tell him. He didn't want to hear it though + proceeded to tell us that we should not come over there to pick up my mother and should cancel our appt with the photographer/dj as he was telling us he would not allow her to go or put any money down for us.

We were outraged. what a control freak. I felt both angry and upset that my father had humiliated my fiance like that. Jimmy was extremely upset to the point that he felt sick to his stomach all nite and like throwing up. He felt awkward and angry at my father and didn't even want to talk to him after this and still today prob wishes to have nothing to do with him if he has any choice. I don't blame him.

I felt my dad was out of line, inappropriate, manipulative and deceptive because he purposely called when he knew my mother would be out, before we were to pick her up to gain control over the situation because I think he is jealous. I knew my mother would be furious at him when she found out because she doesn't think like he does and would see what he did as low and manipulative. Plus, she loves Jimmy and it would hurt her that my father insulted him and his family, possibly making Jimmy not like them. So anyway my father said he'd have my mom call us to talk things over and find a solution but he didn't want us going over there or getting her that evening.

Both Jimmy and I were extremely upset and anxiety ridden. It was his day off and we had planned this and now we had to sit around waiting for my mom's call and not knowing what to do or how to fix things and being afraid to call over my house if my mom did not call..So we waited for an hr and a half and knew she had to be home by then and my father had said she'd call by then but she had not and we were growing more tense and nervous by the minute w/o any resolve. We tried calling her cell but no one answered. Then I finally emailed her via my computer, explaining we weren't angry at her but needed to talk with her after dad had attacked Jimmy on the phone and canceled our appt and wanted to straighten things out and felt fearful to call her house if my dad was going to answer and we were very upset at his out of line behavior - appalled.

This was the actual email sent:

Hi Mom,

Dad called Jimmy earlier and said he would have you call us at 4pm so we have been waiting for your call. Are you home yet? Dad advised that you and Jimmy talk on the phone and said for us to wait for your call. Please call us at Jimmy's number as soon as you read this. We'd try to call you now, but after the things dad was saying to Jimmy-- both of us are afraid to call. He told us to not come over today or pick you up. We don't know what to do about the appt and we were waiting to go out to eat with you and are hungry, but until we can talk and clear this up, we can't do anything without talking to you first. We tried calling your cell a few times, but no one is answering and don't know how we can reach you.

Please call us at Jimmy's number - as we are waiting for word from you. Thanks and I'm sorry if we've caused any inconvenience.
Love,
April

We decided we needed to eat something and could not wait any longer for my mom's call. I stated in the email for her to call Jimmy's cell. We went to Bennigan's- had soup and monte cristo. She called shortly before our food arrrived on the table. Jimmy said she was very apologetic and sounded very upset. She apologized up and down and said she was embarrassed/humliated and didn't agree with dad's behavior or approach and her and Jimmy agreed to work something out but do it without letting dad know. My mother at the end of her conversation with Jimmy actually told him, "Love you" and I heard him say it back. Every now and then my mom will write me short emails reminding me how wonderful Jimmy is, how lucky I am to have him, how nice he is, and generous and loving. There is something about him that she seems to really like and be touched by.

At times they remind me of each other. She is similar to Jimmy- strong, hardworking, ambitious, workaholic, people-person/loves people, outgoing, social, fun personality in social settings, adventurous, versatile, well-rounded.