Solving a conflict

I made a mistake the other day.

I had a meeting yesterday with my thesis colleague and the person who's going to grade it in the end, to see if he would allow us to go forward with our idea for the study. He had expressed some doubts, we'd tried to rectify it, and then he had answered "this is so complicated I think I need to see you before I can agree to this". That scared us, badly - I had visions of not being allowed to continue, of being grilled about the statistics of the study (of which I know almost nothing) and about having to come up with a whole different concept.

In the end it turned out that he had misunderstood us, which says very bad things about our ability to convey our aim and methodology in text, but fortunately nothing about the design of our study or statistics, so we got a go-ahead and are finally approved for that part of the course. Yey!

But. We decided to hook up before the meeting, have lunch together and go through his comments and try to think of some answers. And I didn't tell Mistress.

To me, a meeting at one o'clock and deciding to have lunch before kind of equates. It means I'm booked for the lunch and the afternoon that day, and that I'll be away from home, and somehow I figured that was all Mistress needed to know. She, on the other hand, checked on the calendar that I had a meeting at one and thought that good, then I could go to the local vet and buy special kidney-friendly dog food, because they opened at twelve. And she declared that to me over breakfast, I panicked and spluttered and stammered and said that I already had a meeting at that time and couldn't do it, she got pissed off and glared at me - and here's where the interesting thing happened.

I mean, all of the above is just our normal day to day thing. She wants to keep track of me all the time, I try to oblige but routinely fails because... well, honestly, because of ADHD. Because I'm a scatterbrain. Because I make plans and then promptly forgets about them. This is nothing new, and not all that exciting.

But. When she gets pissed off like that, I have for years decided that she doesn't get pissed off in the right way. Yeah. I'm bright like that. She doesn't go all domly-dom on me, she doesn't correct me or yell at me, a lot of the time she doesn't event tell me what I've done wrong (okay, that part I think will always bother me, since I'm not telepathic). She gets mad, for real, and hurt, for real, and she shows it by withdrawing and disengaging. Not to punish me, simply because that's her genuine reaction when she's hurt and angry.

And it used to piss me off so bad. Because it makes me feel like my innards falls to the floor and someone electrocuted my brain - it's an instant break down of the whole system. Massive pain. And, naturally, feeling like that makes me panic, and when I panic I attack. So the process is usually like this: I fail at something she wants me to do - Mistress gets angry and hurt - I interpret that as a catastrophe, and lashes out at her - she gets defensive and withdraws - I get defensive and feel sorry for myself - we both feel miserable.

This time, when she said (! Not using not-working-telepathy!!) that she didn't like me not telling her about my plans, I simply said "you're right, I'm sorry." And then I said it a couple of more times, and eventually, I think she got that I really meant it and that it wasn't a preface to "...but really, it was your fault because you...!". It was my fault. It's not unfair of her to be displeased with me when I don't follow orders. She doesn't have a duty to show that displeasure in any certain way in order to make it less uncomfortable to me. It's my fault, and any aversive feelings her displeasure causes me is both inside me, not coming from her, and  well-deserved rather than unfair.

Before she left, she gave me an slap and forgave me, and before she got home from work I'd managed to get to the vet before closing time and get the dog food. And we didn't fight and I again learned that it isn't the end of the world if I screw up and everything is so much easier if I just own up to my mistakes and don't fight it.