"In healthy relationships, major disagreements get resolved over time." False but I don't think that hubby would agree with me & considers it a point that things will never get better & that we must have a bad marriage because of it
How do you feel about this statement? reality is that everyone has fights & it's all in the manner in which you handle them thats make them either productive or non-productive
What things have you and your partner been arguing about that never seemed to get resolved? We should be discussing more the money matters even if he wants to handle the bill payments (I stopped looking at the bills our 2nd yr of marriage because we have 2 differant methods of paying bills & rather than argue I just let him do it & forgot the whole idea of budgeting because even after getting Quicken he wouldn't do it so it's truely a dead horse that can't be beaten
The arguement which was the MLC Bomb Dropping I'm moving to my Mommy's house - was about the friends he's keeping have him drinking way too much & he's the one wasting the money to get them high while our bills & home down payment money ($10k maybe more over the period of a yr) as well as our finally decent credit went down the toilet & I was sick of hm lying & trying to sneak off to be with the whore from his job who is part of the group of "new friends"
Have there been any ways in which your heated arguments have changed over time? I've been less in the ranting & raving until this last cycle which is calmed but still brewing
Have they mellowed in any way? I stopped throwing things at the wall the 1st yr of our marriage & have only resorted to throwing things in complete frustration 2 times in the past 10 yrs
Have any of your disagreements seemed to have maybe become less important than they were before? Before MLC Bomb drop there were a lot of minor stuff that I let slide & I think that he did too, but since the Bomb drop it seems that hubby sometimes is doing things that he knows will start an arguement & everything is reason to be mad or fight
Have you been able to just "agree to disagree" about any subjects? Well I tried to stop a recent fight that he wanted to continue by just saying that I'm not understanding why we're fighting & when he saw that I wasn't going to allow myself to go full flrdged into the fight yelling he decide he wanted to go to his moms house & said fine & when I wasabout to get out of the car he said for me to go home instead of just ignoring him I allowed him the space & time to be at his mom's I'm letting some stuff slide which I really don't want to but since hubby's in MLC & doesn't want to hear anything that I've got to say I'm just ignoring the bait to fight & letting him act like a child while he's having his temper tantrum
If so, how were you able to get to this point? I'm too tird emotionally & actually I'm getting quite disgusted with it all so why bother - I'm feeling this is a dangerous time for myself as I'm feeling discouraged & the temptation to just say F@#$ it all & start my own affair to simply forget but I know this would be wrong & I'd be the one who would suffer more
What works best for you in "choosing your battles"? I used my grandma's Daer Abby qoute - Is it better With or WithOut? basically decided more on was the fight really worth the efort when I had time to think about it Sometimes thou hubby hits me with things out of the blue & it's during the fight that i have to decide whether it's worth continuing, this latest cycle it's been really a matter of stop taking the bait as he's being arguementative because he's got to face up to some of his responsibilities or he's going to have to be without a car until sports car is fixed In the meantime I'm just ignoring his attempts to start a fight, I might start to take the bait but quickly realise whats about to happen refuse to argue by simply stating my opinion & then doing the 1 line broken record until he drops it
How do you sort out what's important to resolve, from what's not-so-important to resolve? at this point I'm just going by do I have what I need
this last cycle which we're stuck in I lost it & got started
he had a flat which if he had just done what he was suppose to do there wouldn't be a flat tire & i had a broken window because I was stuck in a substandard apartment which has been written up by 17 inspectors & the "property manager" slumlord was mad about that & had my car window broken out as retallation -
basically I was too stressed out to think clearly, so I was a bit over the top in not abiding by his wishes & just letting him have robin pay for the flat & then have him come to the house to get the sports car into the garage to get fixed, but I also knew that he'd be giving me a hard time about giving up the wagon until the next night if he decided to ignore robin's advice & complaining 'cause she just paid for the tire something which I can't trust him to do at this point she knows that once you get a few beers into him he's easy to mannipulate to her way of thinking
I've been making some dents in the cycle to de-escalate the situation but each day theres new issuses that are popping up
& he made the decision to bring up the last 2 escalations, the 1st I was caught quite by surprise & tried to quit fighting but he kept baiting me I had a hard time calming down because this was a major issue & I wanted it dealt with since he was the one who brought up the subject the 2nd escalation I realised what he was doing so I was better able to handle it & let him basically get mad & just deal with it
I'm trying to finish the step 1 so that I'll be better focused to know even better which battles that I want to fight & which ones I want to leave alone... This MLC is so difficult & very frustrating , because he's unwilling to work on the marriage & I do see where he doesn't want to let me totally go - he just doesn't want to be responsible right now & thats not acceptable either
