Yes, he could be calming himself - he tends to isolate to do that. And also the "I don't care" mode may just be one of those cool guy attitudes.
I did great. I went in later at the time we agreed to hang out and I calmly started saying I feel afraid of rejection when he says we'll hang out and then we don't but he calmly said he just had some stuff he wanted to do and it wasn't personal. We watched our show and calmly got along. We're both still working on staying calm, we're both so terrified of fights.
Later, it was interesting - H wants to get S up in the night to pee to train him to sleep through the night without diapers. I started saying that no mom I know gets her kid up, the kid just develops the control to sleep through without peeing.
H got very defensive! He started going into argue/debate mode. He wanted statistics of how many moms I had talked to to back up my claim!~ Usually this would have been a huge fight as I would have felt criticized and attacked. H actually said I was "bullying" him with my opinion! Funny thing since I've felt bullied for years.
I suddenly realized he attacks because he feels attacked. He interpreted my difference of opinion as telling him he's wrong so he starts telling me I'm wrong to defend himself. It happened again this morning over another parenting method.
Instead I decided he's just insecure and feels he has to prove he's right to feel better. It's his issue, not mine. I decided I'm not going to argue or take his criticisms personally.
