Hi MrBond, I think you have seriously misunderstood me and that is probably my fault for not explaining coherently!
He often told me that he had learned to say to nothing as a kid, his mother had a temper and used to argue with her children (all 5 of them) and as the youngest he learned not to annoy her and that not responding was the best policy when she was in a bad mood. He told me that he hated conflict and rows of any sort. He is a gentle man.
Not sure what you think is 'not true'.
Anyway, I wasn't complaining about his leaving me to deal with the difficult issues with the kids - it was my choice to make - I was just trying to give some background to how we were as a family.
Also, when I said I 'let' him, this was me being self critical as I always felt that I should have involved him more in their issues because he never objected to discussing them with me on our own but i usually didn't bother which I now think was wrong of me.
Not really sure what I am doing wrong in telling my M story. For most of our M I didn't think we had problems, we both had our interests but enjoyed each other's company and drew on each other's strengths. I loved his sense of his humour and he loved to make me laugh. When we moved to a different part of the country to more rural area in 1998 M problems started to arise. He had a ready made set of aquaintances through his job. I knew no one, I had left the office I had worked in for 10 years. We had four young children, 15, 9, 4 and 3 months.
I didn't have a job as such but started doing some work at home because of difficulties with child minding and the need to ferry them to school etc. (no public transport here!). I felt a bit isolated but didn't mind too much as I was so busy.
My H used to go out to the local bar a few times a week, to de-stress from work and I used to go with him one night of the weekend. He got to know some of the locals and there was always someone for him to meet any night when he wanted to go out. Initially I didn't have a problem with this.
After some years i got fed up with going to the bar and stopped going with him. He gave up asking me to go and went by himself.
We would go on family holidays but a few times work would get in the way for him and he would not join us. I started to notice that work and going to the bar seemed to take priority over our family and I resented it.
I would try to talk to him about it but he would get defensive and deny everything which made me angry and I would shout at him, which upset him and he would shout back and then walk away.
How did we resolve conflict?? well we wouldn't speak to each other for a while, sometimes an hour, sometimes a day and eventually we would start talking and either not mention the argument again or we would both apologise to each other - thinking back it wasn't really conflict resolution - things didn't really change - it was more like we ignored the issues until the next time!!
i would always let issues build up in my head and my heart rather than try to resolve them and then they would explode.
I know that alot of things i did and said annoyed him too but he would never tell me what they were.
Are the above the 'facts' you were asking about?? If not, let me know and I will try again!!
