I took that advice to heart back then and it worked very well. The problem is that my W doesn't would rather watch TV at night and ignore the fact that we are in a team effort to save the marriage.
Secondly, I hate the word "boundaries". It feels constricting and contrived. Maybe I'm completely wrong here but I've been trying to communicate in terms of "Vision", "Principals" and "Communication Rules". It's almost like the "team management" books in the business section.
I'm in the process of writing an apology to W regarding my violation of our 1st rule "bringing up the past". Yes, I'm a hothead and my mind gets really foggy when I'm upset. If she could have calmly reminded me that I was breaking one of these rules, I would have thanked her for the reminder and shut my pie hole.
She's great at establishing the communication rules while I'm very good at establishing the vision and principals of a great marriage. We need to collaborate on these and get consensus. I'm also defining a principal that has to do with spending unproductive time doing nothing while we shuold be dealing with this stuff. I think that in her mind, watching TV together will fix everything. We have some real issues to address and we better have our sh!t together before we do.
I'm certain that part of our lack of communication is that we both suck at it in various ways. I attack, she diverts...we get nowhere. Well, this is helping.
It almost seems like having these little spats will improve our ability to communicate as long as we learn from them.
Anywhere is walking distance if you have the time
-Steven Wright
