48: Sunday - shopping

So, the no-Christmas-present-crisis continues and so off we slop to Oxford Street - shoes and leather jacket the targets.

Have to be careful which shops to suggest - Debenhams, House of Fraser, Zara all too cheap.

John Lewis first. Only three walls with no 'sale' signs - clearly, we have to buy full price. Even though in previous years she has taken back to the shops the handbags I have bought her and made use of the reductions to buy more for less. Perfectly sensible in my book but clearly wrong if not her idea.

No shoes appropriate at JL and no leather jacket either.

Massimo Dutti for the jacket - reassuringly expensive. But even XL does not fit and she pulls a face as if it is my fault. Ironic that she constantly gets at me for having been fat when I was 5 through to about 12 but I have controlled things since then through sport. She was thin when young and somehow sees that as her achievement rather than her genes!

So Russel and Bromley - the branch that has no sale. £300 later, we have a boot. Same story with the jacket at Selfridges but at least we have a boot.

I do not get the logic of it all and I can only analyse through logic. Analysing through emotion would just be too difficult.

Instead of buying something that she did not want, I offer her the opportunity to choose what she wants herself - boots and clothes are very personal. This has created a crisis. I should have bought something - anything - so long as it was expensive and then she would have exchanged it - that would have been fine.

And the reason there is no point in analysing emotion is that I have tried to please her and support her for 15 years now. Her frequent unhappiness has affected me. I don't like it, I want to make it better, I take it as my fault. I seize on the moments of fun and forget what has gone before. But is it time to do what I have said often to  myself  that I should do? Cut off mentally?

What I suppose has prevented me is the thought that we will be married a long time and it is depressing to be feel myself be cold for that period - and if I am cold here, will I change elsewhere too? Can I be two-faced like her?

But if, for my sanity, and to protect our son, that is what I have to do? That is what I have to do.