What Seems To Be The Hardest Word?

"You apologise too much to him", she said.

Damn. I really thought I'd stopped doing that.

I know a lot of things I'm apologising for are not my fault, or even my responsibility, in fact sometimes I don't even know what I'm apologising for - I'm just trying to stop him kicking off. This means, I expect, that I apologise more if other people are around, in an attempt to avoid an unpleasant scene.

Except that more than one of my friends has commented now that they find it an unpleasant scene to watch me being craven and grovelling in a usually-pointless attempt to keep things running evenly.

"He's a bully. He likes it when you apologise". She suggested I tried telling him I couldn't give a shit.

This weekend, in fact, no amount of apologising could prevent him from storming out of the restaurant mid-meal, dragging the children after him, and shutting himself in the bedroom for the rest of the night. And you know what? We couldn't give a shit. We had a nice bottle of wine, chatted and went in the hot tub, it was great. "Look what you did last night", he said the next morning. "You ruined the evening. I hope you're ashamed".

Even my dad, who is wiser than to comment on partners, spouses, children was moved after one particularly grim weekend to send me an email (I still have it) in which he told me "It breaks my heart to see you trying to please that man. You know you never will - that's his game. I wish you would stop playing it".

I like to think I am becoming more inclined not to play. I am going to perfect an enormous Gallic shrug, a disdainful upper-class sneer, and a range of choice Northern expressions - none of them containing the word Sorry.

Let's see how we get on!