A Little Epiphany - (and a newbie delurking)

[Kettricken]

Yeah, that's exactly the kind of thing I meant. I have to fight a tendency to do that too. My h. is brilliant and awesome but really the "absent-minded professor" type. Day-to-day practical details thus tend to fall largely inside my sphere. Which is all fine. But the temptation if you're not *actively fighting it* is to start vibing "maternal/mommy knows best" which is a kick in the nuts of any male ego and antithetical to attraction even if you *are* right about how best to cook veggies, maintain the car, etc, etc. Ya really gotta pick your battles, and even if you *have* to throw down (as with the brakes), try to soften the blow if poss.

(I totally get what you're saying about him being more pissy if the mechanic DID find something wrong with the brakes. Take-away message: my wife was right about something that is "supposed to be a guy thing" and I was wrong. I feel bad/guilty/less-than about that, so I'm going to take it out on she who pointed out my failings in the first place. That's childish, but grokkable.)

Anyhow, it sounds like you're really aware of that dynamic now.

As far as the "worried about his dad" interaction, it's good that you didn't engage, but I don't think you needed to pendulum all the way back to invalidating your own feelings. He has the adult choice to resist becoming infected by your emotions (Have you gotten ahold of "Passionate Marriage" yet?)

This:

We were discussing kidlet's room and whether to move him to a diff room in the house. H expressed his views and I said, "I agree 100% with everything you've said. Sounds great." I wasn't even DBing - I really did agree.

He did a double take, struck a Superman pose and said, "I like hearing you say that." I laughed and asked him if he wanted to hear it again.

... may be a huge piece of the puzzle. Unless he is a bottomless pit for affirmation, the fact that he did a double take at hearing genuine unreserved praise/agreement may indicate that he hasn't heard enough of it.

It's so easy (if you're a recovering perfectionist like me, anyhow) to nitpick the flawed and questionable while rewarding the accurate and competent with ... silence. And it's so easy to change that with a little internal reprogramming. Who doesn't like to hear their loved ones tell them they're right/smart/good at what they do???

Of course, feel free to ignore or correct me if none of that applies.