How to deal with stress from when my handicapped wife unjustly attacks me.
The Selfish path to romance. Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com
Here is a question that I received from Steve, who's having some frustration with his wife. Hi, Dr Kenner, when outside events take a turn for the worse, my wife, Megan, turns to anger and resentment at the problem and at me. No particular reason for her to be angry with me, but she'll nitpick, and even little things that happen become events for her to get angry with me. She has a debilitating and disfiguring disorder, which causes minor stresses to cause her pain, but I see her creating her own stress. I get angry, but most of the time, I just hold it in. What can I do?
Steve, it's an awful feeling for any of us to feel unjustly attacked. And of course, what do we want to do when we're attacked? We want to say yes, but we want to counterattack, which, of course, escalates the problem. So if you tell Megan, if you counterattack and tell her that she's nitpicking, she's not likely to sweetly say, "You know, thank you, honey. You're right. I won't do it anymore. Thank you for raising my awareness of how unfairly I've been treating you. I will start try to stop doing that." You know, she's much more likely to come back and say, "You nitpick too. You're so selfish. You never listen to me." Blah, blah, blah, blah. So you end up with mutual character attacks.
So here's the situation. When you're feeling unjustly attacked, you want some tips, so I'm going to give you a few of them. The first is that you want to first take care of yourself. What you say to yourself matters. If you say to yourself, "She's not going to get away with this. I'm going to put her in her place," or "I'm leaving this relationship," you're just churning. You're building momentum. You're about to explode. And we either explode outwardly at someone else, or we implode inwardly and just feel lousy and feel like we're hopeless in life. You know, we can't do anything. We have no voice.
So you want to have a very gentle conversation with yourself, as if you're your own best friend, and you want to say to yourself, "I know I've done nothing wrong. This is unfair that Megan's yelling at me. I've done nothing wrong. I don't yet have the skills to manage this better, but I'm very eager to learn a different way of handling this, and I like that in myself. I like that I'm willing to reach out and learn some new skills."
The second tip is that you want to bring in the wider context. Well, okay, I know my wife has a debilitating disorder. It's not easy for her, and her coping strategies seem to just escalate her problems and our problems. So you just bring in that context, then you want to understand why your current coping strategy backfires. It's not good that holding it in makes you feel like you are going to explode, and you both know that things need fixing. She's going to be able to read all of your little micro-expressions, even if you give her the silent treatment. You know, we communicate a heck of a lot when we're silent. You know, we cross our arms, we roll our eyes. And you want to not, not leave yourself in that situation, or we implode. We feel very depressed.
And you can also prepare. Another tip is to prepare. You want to give yourself some private time, time alone from her, maybe even away from her, go to a Starbucks or a coffee house nearby, or take a walk. And you want to ask yourself, "When did I start noticing this pattern between us? Was it a week ago, a year ago, five years ago, when we first got married, when we first met? What might have triggered it? Was it the onset of her neurological disorder, or is this something that preceded it? Did she always nitpick? Is this something that's familiar from my past? Did a parent nitpick? Did mom always nitpick, or a sibling nitpick and blame me for things I didn't do? And how did I cope then? Is there any time when I have coped with this type of a problem?"
Well, it's really good to focus on your own strengths. Another thing you can focus on are, what are Megan's words? When my wife, Megan, yells at me, what are her actual words? Because that gives us lots of clues. If she says, "Hey, I got to interrupt this because we've got to pay some bills. 30 seconds, that's it. A very quick ad, and then Alan will be back."
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It's when my wife, Megan, yells at me, what are her actual words? Because that gives us lots of clues if she says that I don't listen to her. Maybe I could, instead of saying, "Yes, I do listen" or "Who wants to listen to you if you're nitpicking?" Instead, I could say, "What is it that I'm not getting? What is it that you want me to hear that I haven't gotten?" Of course, you can only do that if you've been coaching yourself and calm down a bit.
And finally, you want to shift gears and ask yourself the big picture: you're in this marriage, what is it that you like about her or love about her? What attracted you to her, and what do you enjoy about your relationship together? What are your best times together? When do you feel emotionally close? When do you laugh playfully together? And if you say never or never for the last decade, what are you doing in the relationship without getting help? I mean, you may not want to leave right away. There may be other reasons, but you don't want to be duty-bound in a relationship that is dreadful for both of you. Granted, she has a disorder, but that doesn't give her an excuse.
So the final point I'm going to make is that you need to set boundaries with your wife. If she's nitpicking at you, you need to set boundaries without wounding her, without attacking her. It is not okay for Megan to use you as a pin cushion when she's feeling some pain or stress in her life. So in a manner in which she can possibly hear it, Megan needs to know that you see the pattern of her nitpicking and that you want to put it on a healthier trajectory.
So how do you do that? You can say something along the lines of, "You know, this neurological problem—fill in the blank. You can put the actual title for it. I've left that out here—has not been easy for you, and I wish for you and for both of us that there was a cure for this that doesn't look promising. I know that we both love it if we got along better, as we did in the past." And it's really good to insert an example. For example, "The time we went to Bermuda together," or fill in the blank, or "The time we laughed hysterically when I don't know when we went to the beach."
So you jog her memory of what's possible in your relationship, and then you can say, "I know you get frustrated with the housekeeping, and you say things to me that you may not mean, and I don't know how to handle this. It bothers me deeply. It's unfair, and I would love it if it would stop. What do you think would help us to get along better, Megan, and to have more of those fun moments together?" So you need to have that conversation. You may need to use what's called the broken record. You may need to have that conversation several times to let her know that you're not a pin cushion. You don't put it in those words, obviously.
And you can even develop what some couples do, or what some therapists will help a couple do. Develop a signal system where you can either wink or you can give some sort of signal to one another, "Uh oh, we're going into the same pattern," and figure out how to turn that around. Finally, it's really important to know that underneath anyone's anger is typically sadness, and she's probably very sad about the disorder and sad about the relationship. It's much more productive to talk about the sadness.
This is Dr. Alan Kenner with the rational basis of happiness, toll-free: 1-877-DRKENNER.
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