Unwarranted Apologetics, Episode 271

As an electronically-extroverted social-introvert, I keep on writing these types of posts, as they have been happening, and then erasing them before submitting them; or even submitting, and then deleting them, more recently.  I wonder how long I'll leave his one up.  

...Stop reading now, If it bothers you as much as it bothers me, to see me as vindictively petty, for even sharing about having a row over these mundane housekeeping trivialities, as well as toothless and emasculated by always conceding to the tide of change I'm feeling in my life...

My wife just confirmed that she only stays with me because I wash the dishes.  


As I contemplated a sink, stacked full, a stovetop full, and half a countertop of scattered dishes, I asked her calmly what she thought of each of us doing (what I do 90% of the time,) and each person simply washing the dishes that each gets dirty, as we're finished using them.  
She immediately broke into a voice of raised pitch, volume and contempt, and said, "¡Qué va! NO, no, no!  I will leave, and move out again, for good, if that's what you want!"  

No kidding.  For real, she literally just said that, although in Spanish. 

 In the past couple of years, my wife has prepared a meal for us both to sit down to eat together, maybe once a season.  I don't resent this, as I know that my nightly work schedule makes it extremely difficult, as well as my taste in food, and the fact she is still deeply emotionally hurt by the times that I simply stopped eating things she had worked so hard to prepare, and told her the truth, when she asked me if I liked it, even when I didn't like it at all.  
I have long since accepted the fact that to eat the things I want, when I want, means mostly making them for myself, going without, or occasionally compromising.
Of course, this also means that we rarely share meals, and that she makes whatever she wants, whenever she wants, and rarely cleans up the kitchen after herself.
Recognizing the fact that it's something that she is much more naturally disposed against doing, possibly even because, as she says, her mother obsessively made clean-up time a truly painful experience for her, growing up; we have been working off the model of: 

...I do the kitchen, my own laundry, and take out the trash and recycling, do all the grocery shopping, pay all the rent, all the bills, work full time, and chauffeur her anywhere she doesn't want to go on her moped...

...and she cleans up after the dog I didn't want, infrequently collecting the sun-dried droppings he leaves mostly on the balcony, and cleans the rest of the apartment, except the room I use as an office (and also usually have to sleep in, if I am to get enough darkness and quiet, to be able to sleep during the day.)

My proposal, to consider slightly challenging the status quo, was met with such a surprisingly shrill amount of rejection, that at first I was a bit too shocked to understand what it really meant; what she was really saying.
Never one to keep rocking the boat, I waited until I could calming say, "okay, okay..."  
She went into her room, and started listening to music through the speaker on her iphone, and several minutes later, almost cheerfully asked me to come help her figure out how to get it to play a series of songs in a row, by itself.  As I began to explain playlists, and how she could create a new one on the laptop I gave her, and then upload it to the phone, she cut me off with a dismissive, "¡Adiós!" and a look that plainly said, "too long, shut up, get out of this bedroom."
What the hell is wrong with me, that I'm fine with this, and would rather it continue like this, without ever being to bring up an idea, and not have shouted back down my throat, rather than just saying what I usually only say if she's literally screaming at me, "okay then, if you're so angry, then maybe it's better if you do leave." 
- Which I have said a couple of times, and she did leave, but came back, speaking of going with the flow, compromise, mutual agreement, and 'convivencia' - just as long as I never bring up religion, specifically the one in whose temple we got married, in the first place...

-even if she does bring it up, or 'spirituality' which now means something quite different to her, than it did when I met her. Nor can I speak of the fact that, after 9 years of marriage, (now 11,) of putting up with a considerably well-managed mental illness, she decided to throw away one of the precious few aspects of our lives, that we both shared in common, and with a similar level of stringency, that had hitherto been an axis, or center-of-gravity upon which we had so much more easily balanced our differences.)
It leaves a catch-22, where to maintain equilibrium, the balancing point has to be pulled even farther back, by your's truly, to what we had at the beginning, but which simultaneously strains and distances us even further, when all I want is to feel closer to her.