A glimmer of hope ... a good development
Thank you again for all the replies. While I agree that taking direct advice over the internet is likely not the wisest idea, this has given me the opportunity to at least ask myself questions that I'd never considered previously.
In summary, last night we had a rather nice conversation about our prior "blow up". This came up because yesterday, she encouraged me to go to an auction where guns were being offered up
. So I went, enjoyed getting out on a nice day, decided against bidding. When I got home she asked about my day at the auction. I talked about all the interesting items I saw; some of the great bargains that other folks got and a few instances of "auction fever" that will likely end in "buyers remorse" later
. I told her I didn't buy anything, that although a 1940 Garand went for way under its value, it was still more than the piddly amount in my current budget. She looked puzzled and said "well, you could have borrowed the money from another budget category to cover it for a short while."
What the
? Hence how our talk got started later that night. I asked her, why after our big fight a week earlier was she so friendly and open to me going to an auction to buy more guns?
She said simply that she knows that it is my hobby and that it is something that I enjoy and she supports that. This is also when she told me that last week, when we had the blow up, that ... well ... Aunt "Flo" had dropped in for her monthly visit ... if you know what I mean. And Aunt Flo is rather disruptive to her ... as another poster points out:
I did chuckle because that honestly isn't far from the truth.
Back to our conversation. I asserted that I would never, ever try to "force" her or even influence her on guns. I might offer to show her how they function, if she is interested, for the purpose of perhaps removing some of the fear/mystery of them. I also reaffirmed that I would continue to keep the guns and gun related items as out of sight - out of mind for her as much as possible. As I held her, I reiterated that I do love her and our boy and protecting them is very important to me and that the gun is my preferred tool to do so, while her preferred tool is her newly acquired baseball bat
. She agreed, that that makes sense.
So it is a start. Maybe a small one, but encouraging. I honestly don't intend to try to get her to like guns, or become my shooting buddy. If in 20 years she changes, great. If not, that's fine too. Acceptance is all I want at this point. After all, I do have shooting buddies that I enjoy spending time with (my parents, my sister and her husband, and a couple of good friends).
Sometime I may write up a "contract" or "agreement", as we have done on budget/financial goals. Something that says concretely that I will respect her wishes to be left out of my hobby, and she'll respect my desire to protect her and our son, and own firearms to affect that protect, to enjoy as a hobby, and also (for me) to do my part in exercising my 2nd amendment rights (something she knows I feel strongly about). I have one medium size safe, and I have agreed (just not in writing) to never acquire another safe unless it is a replacement for the one I have and no larger.
So we will see. As others have said, I will confirm that the issues do go beyond just guns. There are control issues, and may always be. That has gotten better overall in the past months (except for the influences of Aunt Flo / the Pon Farr), now that she is off all the meds she was once on. So there is hope on that front as well.
Because it is more about control, I don't believe that getting the guns out of the house will solve anything, it may even make the situation worse, and I do predict resentment on my part if it comes to that. However, I will keep that option open. My parents are very pro gun, and they don't live far from me, so I could always move my safe to their place if it came to that.
I know we aren't out of the woods yet, but this little event has been the most encouraging I've seen in a while.
BTW, for the record, we both more or less brought up the "D" word at the same time. And we both want to avoid it, as I think we both view it as being the "nuclear option".