this rocky path WILL smooth out

[zig]

hi everyone

i'm finding in the last few days that i need to develop my listening skills better.

things have come up in conversations between me and h - in the past few days, where now that i have stepped back a bit, i see stuff i couldn't see so clearly before.

obviously i am not LISTENING to what he's saying. some small response of mine will set him off.

i see more and more clearly that certain conversations go well - these are the ones where we stick to talking about s, or his school etc., about how great s is and general stuff like that. also conversations where something happened at school, like someone messed up, and then he's like his old self really getting into the details of it, laughing together and criticizing what they did.

the conversations that do NOT go well are the ones where we are discussing co-parenting issues. like what we want to decide for him etc. (R talks have stopped completely, thank God)

i think the message that i am getting from him is - "don't go there (broach the subject) unless I do, unless I feel like it, unless I'm in the mood. If you bring it up, i'll be pissed, because it's too much pressure"

so one day, he's coming to me and saying things like "let's decide together what s does this summer"
and then if i call him and say "i'd like for you and me to take care of taking s to swimming lessons, not your mom" i get a very angry response.

in the same let's decide together condo, he talked about how guilty he felt that he had never thrown a baseball with s.i suggested that maybe we could go play frisbee together or go bike riding (things I nEVER did )

believe me i saw right away - big WRONG MOVE!! that was such a HUGE amount of pressure for him that the conversation that was going pretty well, just slid downhill into the ditch - his whole demeanor changed and he got tense and pulled back and withdrew completely.

i attempted to "save" the situation by pointing out that i had only suggested that because on our Boulder trip, when he suggested dealing with s together , the consequences had been really positive.

so clearly - any suggestion of us doing anything together (3 of us) freaks him out totally

anyway back to the listening thingie -

anyone have good reading suggestions or links on line about how to listen better?
or if thy've come across some good posts here about discussions about listening better to your spouses?

on the other hand, it hasn't escaped my mind that the reason i cannot clearly understand and hear what he's saying is because he's saying everything and nothing and is not consistent with his words and his actions, so how do i deal with that?