Do you feel 'responsible' for other peoples moods?

[Oliveoil]

(and I have no idea where my ' needs to go in the title and care not)

dh is v moody atm, we are in the process of (not) selling our house, quite stressy, weather is shite, various stuff

bear with a sore head

he can be Eeyore-esque anyway but atm I feel like I am on pins, tiptoeing about

when really he is quite entitled to be fed up, I know I am but don't tend to spread my moods about

how do I stop thinking of it as MY problem?

is this a female thing as women at work are the same

Allow the winy bastard 5 minutes of time and attention just to check that there isn;t something that needs fixing or can be quickly fixed. Then ignore the bad mood, act as though he's behaving normally, and get on with whatever you would be doing anyway. If he complains, say 'Your moods are not my problem' and go on with what you are doing. Sulkers and whiners only get worse if pandered to.

Oh absolutely agree with madamez.

I'm a sulker myself (I know, I know) and nothing winds me up more than being totally ignored while I'm sulking.

I'm growing out of it

OliveOil

In our family dh is the tigger and I am the eeyore. YET if dh gets down (which he does but rarely) and he tells me about it or makes it more obvious than his usual just going quiet, I invariably swap roles to the cheerful one. Most relationships only have room for one person to be negative or to worry a lot.

Also whilst I agree that an overall positive upbeat view of life is preferable, there is nothing more annoying than someome being relentlessly upbeat in the face things going wrong. I'm not suggesting you get all grumpy, but maybe you could acknowledge that you are finding things difficult too and that sometimes you need him to pretend to be upbeat even if he isn't feeling it so that it doesn't get you down.

I know I will often be more positive and upbeat if I feel the other person needs to be bouyed up too.

Lazy: obviously not advocating being Mary Poppins forced cheerful while being surrounded by Armageddon, but I do have a history of depression. It's self-preservation and I know that if I let myself get sucked down in the spiral then I will not be in a position to help anybody, let alone myself!

99% of the things I end up worry or stressed about are completely inconsequential. The other 1% would be much more easily tackled looked at in a more positive light.

Ah RubberDuck, but if you have a history of depression (as I do) and you are better now then you have probably learned to 'act as if' already.

I am assuming OO is a generally cheerful person so I was just sugggesting ways she could encourage her dh to start 'acting as if'. There is no doubt to my mind that 'a cheerful frame of mind' can be a habit that you can develop.

The problem is that if you are ALWAYS cheerful then the person who you are with who may not be cheerful has no opportiunity to practise being cheerful.

This cuts both ways, you know. Men often feel that their partner's bad mood must be their fault and are lost for what to do about it. It's not something that is uniquely the other way round, as often seems to be assumed round these parts ...

That's true, Lazycow. And there's no danger of me being cheerful all the time, yet, so I think we're fairly safe