Horrible argument with DH - don't know what to do

[whenwillchristmascome]

Name changed because of other identifying posts. DH and I had a bad argument today over nothing and it is totally unresolved - in fact, it is still ongoing in a silent, angry way.

The argument was over something stupid - whether he had recycled a couple of sheets of paper that DS (7) needed for homework, which he was adamant that he hadn't. I was really convinced that he had (saw them this morning; DH had tidied whilst I was out) and I guess kept accusing him, and it spiralled from there.

We have a history of this sort of arguing. We generally get on really well - he's incredibly supportive and a great partner, and we never argue over anything meaningful - we see eye-to-eye on most issues. But we have bad habits of letting tiny, stupid things spiral into big arguments. From my point of view, he is very sensitive when he feels that I'm getting at him, and this leads to him getting really angry and aggressive - never at all physical but shouting and sometimes verbally abusing me. He doesn't usually do this right in front of the children but often when they are in the house. When he gets like this, I usually just try to make him be quiet as I feel this is really damaging for the children to hear - which usually makes him more angry.

His point of view is that I am passive aggressive and commit lots of micro aggressions that all add up - that is the two of us causing these situations and that I am to blame as much as he is - and also that he will apologise for his role whereas I am less likely to. I don't know how I feel about this. I think there is some truth to it but sometimes I feel that even raising complaints or commenting on things I think he hasn't done right count as passive aggression to him. I think it's legitimate of me to be a bit annoyed at what seemed to me a clear case of him throwing out something DS really needed. The last straw this time was me saying, after he had said several times that he had not put it in the recycling, that I was pretty sure it wasn't in the house (after searching) - he feels this was really passive aggressive because it was accusing him of getting rid of it without actually saying it.

The low-point of the argument was him shouting at me to 'get upstairs' with such anger in his face (because DS was in the house and I was trying to keep him quiet - but the noise still carries) and then really screaming at me when I asked him again not to shout. He then stormed out to check the recycling and, in fact, found the papers in there. I thought he would apologise when he came back with them but he was still just as angry, saying that I was wrong for saying it was him when it could have been me that put the papers in the recycling (I really don't think this is likely because I was very aware that we needed them this weekend).

We've been avoiding each other since - I feel really shaken and unsure what to do. But I've just been in, feeling like we should talk. He took one look at my face and got up and walked out of the room. When I asked what he was doing, he said that I wasn't prepared to talk about it as I clearly hadn't come to apologise, and he was sick of me putting all the blame on him when it stems from my passive aggression. He is still furious, and said that he won't say anything to me unless I have 'something new' to say. I took a deep breath and said that I felt his behaviour today was abusive and that I feel like I'd been emotionally abused. I have said this before about his behaviour but it is hardly something that I say lightly or often. He just said sarcastically 'no, something new!' and stormed out of the room.

I feel so confused and uncertain. I feel that he is right in that my behaviour is part of the problem. He is hardly ever critical of me - never complains if I've not done jobs I was supposed to be doing, etc., whereas I am more critical and nagging, which does really annoy him and I am trying to do that less. But I feel his behaviour was in a different category. Our life is really great apart from these arguments (which are maybe 1-2 per month) - I don't want to throw everything away because of this but I feel really horrible about what is going on.

Sorry this is long - but other opinions on this would be so helpful.

Essentially it's about letting go of the control and expectations you have of the other person, the unsaid, between the lines communication and just being direct but not repetitive - so listening. Then being proactive - so like we said, framing the expectation in a positive way, using 'we' might get a better response

Someone saying no then asking again and again won't change their response perhaps. From his POV he needs to reign in the nasty comments - no need for that. You can be angry without being nasty. He's gone too far in a silly row

I would have happily gone to the bins. He was angry at my suggestions that the bins should be looked in when he'd said he hadn't put them in there, it wasn't that I'd asked him to check.

Just a suggestion - it's a book - and it may be helpful - it's called non violent communication. It's on amazon - maybe you guys could both get a copy of it?

Please read the reviews on amazon and see if you think it would be helpful before you order it though.

There is also the Chimp Paradox which I have used and found incredible (although I still don't always get it right).

Also agree with letting the other person choose when to leave the situation and having time and space to defuse. If he can't walk away because he's mad you need to. And don't follow if he leaves

Interesting to see that this argument pattern seems to be similar with lots of couples - thanks so much for sharing that, it really helps. It looks like other couples are managing it a bit better than we are!

Hoops - thanks for the book suggestion, I will look it up. Reading about specific strategies would hopefully help. Deciding to be better in a non-specific way really doesn't seem to be working.

What's the Chimp Paradox, Hoops? I may get the book too, as we still have to co-parent!

Yy to walking away. I rarely do this, and sometimes actually follow him when he does because he says something I disagree with and I am burning with righteous zeal to put him right. Which is pointless and never helps. But I keep coming back to how. Right now - almost all the time - I can see that walking away is by far the best strategy. But in the heat of the moment, it doesn't feel like it.

bum. That's a good point about the use of 'we need to' as opposed to 'you need to' etc.

I think it's helpful to make these connections, insight is a good thing. We can learn these things in childhood and such like but they can be damaging. In your mind perhaps him walking away is rude and disrespeful when it isn't resolved but to him, he's trying to diffuse by leaving and getting space. Then he is followed and neither of you are in the right frame of mind to hear each other anymore

The Chimp Paradox is also a book - it talks about stepping back from emotions / heat of the moment actions and reflecting on things in a logical way - uses the analogy that your brain is part human and part chimp. There's a lot of information about it on google, but I've found the book interesting and useful in a range of situations. I think it's improved my self reflection skills a lot.

(I'm only a little of the way through the Non violent communication book, but so far, so good).

Here's a little more on the Chimp Paradox

www.ncctc.co.uk/files/8014/3566/7344/The_Chimp_Paradox_-_Prof_Steve_Peters.pdf

Fate - your situation sounds massively similar to ours. But how did you change it?

So our difficult time coincided with several contributing factors:

• the traumatic birth of our fourth child after a highly stressful pregnancy and difficulty conceiving.
• I believe my DH (very hands-on dad) had postnatal depression, he didn't bond with dd at all for several months.
• a very stressful time at DHs work
• the resulting lack of sleep and newborn stress caused DHs concentration and focus at work reduce - by the time baby was 6m DH was under capability measures at work.

My husband is a selfless, thoughtful, hard working family focused man. He's never had any hint of MH issues. He ended up on having a bit of a breakdown, hospital visit and anti-anxiety medication for 12 months.

So the route cause was ultimately his stress. His confidence plummeted because of work and his self esteem too, not least because he wasn't being a dad to the baby.

Also my stress at having to cope with 4 children including a baby and a very unwell DH didn't help.

We just muddled through. I slowed down the pace of life to help me cope with everything in our plate. DH had 3 months of work, medication and slept a lot.

To solve the critical / defensive cycle took some self-reflection on my part. I'd been telling (off) DH for being defensive for ages. I had to look to myself for why he was being defensive and I recognised I was being critical. Hyper critical really.

I was blaming him for stuff because I was too knackered and stressed to be kind and thoughtful - So I was just blunt and to the point.

I made an effort to be less critical and he made an effort to be less defensive and instead we both tried to make a "No blame" approach

This was all a year ago. Everything is back to "normal" now. So neither of us needs to be so careful of the others self esteem because we are both in a much more positive, better place in life that's no longer stressful.

I was having the same same row with my DC about being late for school for months. I could not work out why we couldn't resolve it. I would get so mad and once they were in the car I would berate them with blame. Then they had no motivation to be on time the next day and so on so on.

So now I try to reframe it with we will be late, lets all try to be on time,let's help each other to get out of the house, we need to mind the time and things have improved.

ItShouldHaveBeenJingleJess

Instead of making changing it from "you" to "we", another way to think about it would be to make the situation so that he can respond with logic and sense rather than with emotion.

If you give me a specific example of something I can try and demonstrate if you'd like?

Thanks, hoops - I'll,look into both of those.

This is a really interesting thread, OP - there's a lot of 'who's right, who's wrong' stuff on MN but not so much in the way of managing arguments better and learning to convey frustrations without damaging the other person. Some really great examples and experiences being shared, too.

I like the sandwich idea- I am going to try that when giving feedback to some of the young people I work with!

This is all the extremely useful. Hoops, sorry to hear you had such a hard time. We don't have anything like such difficult circumstances to explain it. We are pretty busy - two stressful jobs, two kids. But pretty normal stresses, which won't change much for several years.

I'm going to sleep now (really behind on sleep, which could have been a contributing factor ...) so apologies if I don't respond for several hours.

Fundamentally it's not about how you deal with things that have already escalated it's about avoiding escalation. I do a lot of conflict work via my job and a lot of it involves taking a huge mental step backwards and self control to do so, not responding impulsively and assessing the whole situation before responding. But in truth at home with loved ones they push my buttons far faster than I would like and vice Versa and we are only human.
Raising an issue is the key to how someone will respond to you really, so working on initial approach will likely influence the outcome so you won't have to worry about walking away once you are already embroiled in a row.

JingleJess - yes, I absolutely agree, so interesting and helpful to discuss this. Hope me sloping off to sleep doesn't kill the discussion.

iisme Think that was meant for Fate. Sleep well!

Bum Yes - I also think it's easier to push buttons when you know which buttons to push, which is usually the case when you love and live with someone!

hoops

Ok, an example would be that when he comes to visit DS, he quite often makes negative (or at least I feel they are negative) comments about the flat. If DS has had a lot of toys out, he'll make remarks about how messy it is, or comment on how high the laundry pile is, or ask whether I've sorted X, y, z out yet (I sound terrible - I am vaguely organised, honest). It's never said aggressively, but in an off-hand, casual manner, e.g "I don't know how you can move around in here with all these toys on the floor! Don't you tidy them away at night?" (he knows I do) or ""Jesus, when was the last time you put a wash on?" (DS gets filthy on a daily basis).

I find it hard to decide whether it's me being oversensitive and defensive, or him just looking for reasons to criticise. Does that make sense?

Hope you feel better after sleep!

I went to some conflict training thing once that said it's like gardening. You dont just plonk seeds on the mud and expect a plant to grow. You lay the groundwork carefully and prepare it all and with the right preparations and nurturing hopefully something will grow there.

As humans certain situations trigger different emotions too, I used to get a lot of verbal aggression at work but now it is more written form and it's just trying to separate out your feelings from the situation really before you launch in. When everyone stops listening you have no hope of any good outcome

JingleJess I can totally see why it annoys you. That's quite PA. I have a PA mother and I either totally flat out ignore and not acknowledge these comments or I say directly 'ok'. And nothing else.

sorry but he sounds like an utter git and not talking to you until you apologise? Twice a month is twice too often for my liking and this is awful for DC to listen to and live amongst such an atmosphere too.

Fatedestiny, I think you are onto something there.

OP, what in your life is making you feel stressed/angry? What in DH life is making him feel stressed/angry?

You both need to get out if this cycle, but maybe you need to make some life changes?