Counseling 11

This week's session with Counselor seems to have covered some useful ground.

We started by explaining a problem we had had over the weekend. The details are too trivial to go into at the moment; but the gist is that we were out in public somewhere and the boys were being rambunctious and in the way. (What a surprise ....) I told them, "Boys, get up out of the way in case I need to blah blah blah ...." In my mind, I was just asking them to show some manners. In Wife's mind, I was implicitly telling her that if anybody needed to [blah, blah, blah] it would be me and not her because I was in charge and she wasn't up to it. Of course I didn't get this at the time ... all I saw was her face flashing a really unhappy expression. So when we got home I asked her what was going on. She explained what she thought I had meant, and I explained what I really meant. But instead of telling her she was crazy for thinking what she did, I said, "Wow, it never ever occurred to me that you might hear it that way. But now that you explain it, I can see how you could have -- and that must have made you feel like shit. Gosh, I'm really sorry for hurting your feelings because I never meant anything of the kind." And we all lived happily ever after.

Counselor really liked this story, because he took it as positive progress: instead of falling into automatic postures of reciprocal defensiveness (where each person's defense looks like an attack to the other), we found some common ground and deactivated the problem. And as we discussed the situation in more detail, Wife explained that this touched on a real hot button for her, because she often feels like I make her decisions for her. In this case it was the decision that I would be the one to [blah, blah, blah]; but at other times -- and she proceeded to itemize several in the last few weeks -- it has been other things. She even conceded that I probably thought I was doing her a favor in these cases, by taking on some task or other that (because of her illnesses) she really couldn't handle. But whenever I made the choice unilaterally, she felt disrespected or infantilized -- treated as less than a full peer because she had no voice in the decisions. And when (today, in Counselor's office) I urged her simply to speak up in such cases, she said she "no longer" bothers to speak up because her experience has been that if I want to do A and she wants to do B, then I just steamroller over her and we end up doing A.

You remember that one of her big complaints about me is that she feels I don't respect her, right? This looks like it may be part of the picture.

Before we got as far as trying to solve the problem of my steamrollering over her, Wife made another comment that I thought was remarkably interesting. She said, "When you do that, I get so angry that I just want to get in the car and drive as far away as I can." Really? This is anger? I would have assumed that fleeing the scene of conflict would be a sign of fear, not anger. So I asked, somewhat jokingly, "It makes you want to drive away? Why doesn't it make you want to kill me?" Her immediate answer was, "Because I don't want to spend the rest of my life in jail for your sorry ass." (Wife and I may not be able to communicate worth a damn, but the timing of our mutual repartee is split-second perfect. Maybe we should give up trying to keep up a household and just do stand-up comedy together. We could put on a show in the barn! Mom could make the costumes ...!)

What I found interesting about her reply was the centrality of flight as a theme in her emotional life. I mean, flight is a normal response to fear. But to flee also out of anger -- rather than fighting -- looks significant. At one level, it explains why Wife never pushes back, even if she dislikes or disagrees with what I am doing: never pushes back, but resents the hell out of it and stores up the anger for years. At another level, it may explain why she kicks against me so hard and so often, why divorce has been a running theme through her mind for so many years. At a third level, it could help explain the affairs.

But I digress.

From there, we discussed how we could make this cycle better. Counselor pointed out that much of the problem is cased by how automatic our responses are: when we start into a cycle like this one, we could be all the way through it before even realizing what just happened. So we agreed on a verbal formula that Wife should use when she feels like she is being railroaded, something like "This is one of those cases that Counselor talked about and I am feeling run-over." That will then be my cue to slow down, stop trying to insist on doing things my way, and listen to what is going on for her.

Wife then said something that I could have taken to be very insulting, but I chose instead to see it as a sign of hope. She said that she would try hard to use this formula as a way of speaking up when she felt unheard ... and that, although it would be hard, she would definitely try to follow through. And she added that a few years ago she would never even have tried that much, because she would have feared my yelling at her or flying off the handle ... what she characterized to Counselor as "verbal or physical intimidation."

I remember those years a little differently, but it doesn't matter. I have also said before that I don't think it is my job in this blog to flatter myself, so let's assume that she is literally right. The fact remains, as she made a point of saying, that she no longer fears I would do any such thing.

Wife concluded by saying that -- in this respect, at least -- things have gotten better between us over the years. She no longer feels like I am always shouting at her or threatening her. And because these things have gotten better, she went on, that proves to her that things can get better. And this gives her hope that we can fix other things in our marriage, too. I think this is good news.

So all in all, I think I would characterize this as a fairly constructive session with Counselor.