Questionnaire 6

Can you identify only one or two extreme feelings, such as anger or fear? 

No.  Absolutely not.  This used to be one of my biggest frustrations with Wife, in fact, that her range of emotions seemed so limited.  She would do something brain-dead and when I'd ask why she'd say "Well if I didn't you'd be unhappy with me."

What this always mean is that once upon a time I said I wanted X; and from then on Wife assumed that I had to have X -- regardless of other circumstances -- or I'd be "unhappy with her."  What did "unhappy" mean?  God only knows.  She acted as if it meant screaming fury, throwing things, hitting her, ... stuff like that.  But what I could never get her to see is that context always played an important part in any kind of decision.  If she did X for me at the cost of also doing something else a lot worse than the absence of X, ... would I be mad?  Of course.  Did that mean that I really didn't want X after all?  Oh for heaven's sake ... (deep sigh) ... how many choices do I get?  She could never understand that in the abstract X might be kind nice, and I might be kinda disappointed at missing it, but if the alternative is to overdraft the checking account (for example) then I'd damned well prefer to miss X and not bounce checks.  Understanding even as simple a concept as that involves being able to see shades of grey as well as straight black and white.  Wife couldn't do it.

There's something of the same dynamic in this post, too.