Okay, I'm taking a deep breathe and pushing myself to finish this blog entry. Really what I want to do is call my Rabbi / mashpia / adviser and cry to find out what to do to rectify this situation.
In short, after clearly explaining to her that she cut off the payos and even though it's not that big of a deal, we need to give our son a proper haircut so that he fit into the community as a Jewish boy rather than one of the Israeli kids who's parents don't respect halacha. She agreed that the haircut was inappropriate, but admitted that the cuteness of our son wearing that haircut was growing on her, and hence the haircut was growing on her. I told her to keep her head straight and not get seduced by our son's cuteness, and that the funky haircut was growing on me too since we both love our son so much.
Then after a few hints that maybe she should hear me out about my feelings about the haircut and the upsherin and my experiences, she allowed me to speak. I told her how wonderful the event was. Then all hell broke out when I told her about her father and how much it bothered me that he cut a lock off the peyos after I told him not to. She denied this vehemently and defended her father over my statement, and then tried to shut me up when I was telling her about how I felt as a father when she took our son to the barber and cut off his payos after me making such a big deal about it the whole day before.
In short, my mom got involved which was the fuel that was poured on our flaming conversation and the whole conversation erupted into a shouting match. My wife walked out and I finished giving my mom my opinion about the whole thing. I then decided to take a shower and cool off.
In the shower, I clarified my thoughts that I wasn't upset at the peyos nor was I upset about the haircut in general. I was upset that I felt that my voice wasn't being heard and that I felt shut out with regard to how to run my OWN family and I felt that I had a right to have a say in what goes on, particularly with regard to how my son looks when he goes to shul or school. I also clarified that I was feeling that my own feelings weren't being attended to, and instead of calling my wife heartless and spewing words of hatred towards my wife, I softly told her how I was feeling and that I felt that I wasn't being listened to and that I was hurting because I felt that my wife wasn't prioritizing my needs and that she was ignoring things I was saying as unimportant and this has been hurting me lately. I did this in the privacy of our own room so as not to allow it to elevate again with my mom involved. In short, I softly bared my soul to my wife and made myself completely vulnerable so that we can have shalom bayis even though what I really wanted to do was rip her head off.
I left to go to minyan, and I expected that everything would be better when I returned. My mom intervened again as I was leaving and she fanned the flames fighting my wife's side as I was leaving. I felt that this was inappropriate, especially since I just made myself look better to my wife by sharing my feelings of vulnerability and here my mom again made me look like a monster by comparing me to her husband.
Last part of the story in the last post...
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