OH and I try to talk

I heard OH park up outside our house after work this evening, and went upstairs so that I could be busily tidying the kids' room when he got in. He likes to play really loud music when he's driving which is why I heard him before I saw him outside the window.*  He also likes to sit in the car for a bit once he's come to a halt, with the loud music on, which drives me insane as I consider it unfair on our neighbours. I don't easily shake off that particularly British desire not to get on other people's nerves. Plus he has awful taste in music. As might we all if we'd been brought up under a socialist dictatorship (DBrother has been trying to explain the difference between all this left-wing stuff but my Greek isn't that brilliant and I haven't been entirely following it all) in the 'eighties, when Madonna and Michael Jackson occassionally occupied the illegal airwaves from across the water in Corfu. In fact to be fair to OH it's only because I don't like his awful music being played really loudly in the house that he ever started to listen to music in the car. When the kids were tiny it was one of the places he used to hang out with them, sharing something he loved. These days we don't play enough music in the house full stop. But that's another story.

I had actually been sitting in the living room with the brothers and the babes for about an hour before OH got home. I have no idea where the brothers were all day, or if they were at ours, because Babe had an INSET day at school and we went to a museum in town with friends, quite early. They were in when we got back, watching telly while their food was cooking, and I could tell they were feeling miserable. Where do you go all day when you haven't got any work or any money to spend and it's cold and raining? And these are two brothers who don't really get on very well, but are now being forced to spend a ridiculous amount of time together. I felt really sorry for them, despite the fact that they were watching Jeremy Kyle at high volume. I suggested to Babe that he teach them how to play snakes and ladders and I think they enjoyed the interaction, and the opportunity it gave them to practise counting to six, and so on.

So... minutes after I heard OH come into the house I heard raised voices. When Greeks are talking it can be really hard working out what is a conversation and what is an argument and I suspected it was the latter. I was pretty sure that I hadn't done anything naughty so presumed that OH was getting it in the neck for something. Poor him, after working ten hours in the driving rain. I don't think they're giving much consideration to what the reality of his working life is.

Minutes after that, he came upstairs and said hello. I put on my best weary face, raised my hands and said 'I done nothing!'. This is a bit of a family joke. When Babe2, who is three, is about to do something naughty - he is hellbent on trying to unlock and jump out of his bedroom window - he looks at you, shrieks those exact words and then runs into his room, slamming the door behind him. When you open it, seconds later, he is doing his level best to stick things into the keyhole.

'I asked at the gym if they've got any spaces for a massage or something tomorrow,' he said. 'I thought you could go and relax and have a nice time.'

A nicer person would have thanked him for his thoughtfulness. Instead, I pointed out that 1) we can't afford it and 2) I can't relax because my life at the moment is a living hell that is of his making and what I would really like is for him and I to have a proper conversation to try and unpick where things went so badly wrong between us and how we ended up in this situation which is a complete and utter disaster. Except that we can't discuss it, I went on, because we are incapable of understanding one another and we don't have time to have the kind of conversation we need to have, which would take years, and anyway, I don't want another bloody argument so let's not bloody bother.

He made to move away. So I quickly pointed out that I did not want him to move away. So he stayed. God, why do I have to tell him to stay?!

I remember an incident with an ex, once - if you can call him that because we never really got it together properly, although boyohboy I was mad about him - when we walked around a park and he was making signals that he wanted us to get back together. I wanted to, as well, more than anything. But I also needed him to understand that he'd hurt me before, (in the simplistic, over-emotional way you get hurt when you're not all that long out of puberty) (I developed late, incidentally) in the hope that he wouldn't do the same again. I needed to say what he'd done and why it had hurt and how much, so that we could move forward. And I'll be damned if he didn't take what I was saying as a 'No!'. I wanted someone who would fight for me, give me a down-on-one-knee apology, maybe a bunch of flowers, and some indication that if we were going to get back together it was for reasons more than simply to get a shag out of me. Instead I got a hurt shrug and that was that. Well, pretty much that was that.

(I do, incidentally, know that I can go on a bit and there are of course two takes on every tale. But just saying, like.)

So, what did I want OH to do at that moment? What could he have said that would have helped?
'Sorry.' That is always a good thing to say. You have to sound like you mean it though.
'You're right.' Yes, that would have helped, whether he meant it or not.
'I love you, You're a wonderful human being and I don't want to lose you.' Yep, that would have been fine too.
'What can we do to make things better and move forward from here?' No, that would have resulted in me throwing something at him. I am dog-tired of having to come up with solutions.

Instead, we had a garbled, angry conversation that was fast and unsatisfactory and broken off because Babe2 started crying downstairs. (Which reminds me of other fast and unsatisfactory things we do now that we have kids...) And in the course of that conversation I asked him not to walk away three times and he stayed.

He said he knows our marriage is in tatters. He said he knows it isn't working out with his brothers. He said he knows OBrother is not easy. He was starting to win me back, a little bit, at this point. He then said that he can't see how they'll bring family members over here. My hackles started to rise because they are talking about this already. How I'll have OBrother's chain-smoking wife for company and how his son and Babe will play together and have so much fun. OH then went on to say that he thought they'd only stay until the economic situation in Greece improves. At which point I'm sorry, but I told him to F off.

I want someone to hear what I have to say and take it on board, reflect and then offer solutions that indicate they have heard and understood what I'm saying. I need someone who can be realistic and understand what a really deep mess is being created by this situation. I have reached a point of emotional distress and overload where sticking plasters ain't gonna cut the mustard.

I went downstairs to find OBrother storming out of the house. I asked what was wrong and OH explained that OBrother had argued with DBrother about who got their driving license first. Like I say, things are starting to disintegrate. I sighed and went to get the kids ready for bed.

*Since we started seeing one another, seventeen years ago, I have been finely tuned to hearing OH arrive home. From our rooftop flat in one part of Athens, where you couldn't see the street or his bike from above; from the balcony of another; from the window of our house where we live now, etc etc. I always hear the engine or the music or the beat of his heart, maybe, and tell people 'he is home', way before he comes through the door.