A year on and standing

[may22]

To follow on with AS... my H and I have the same dynamic (though opposite gender) where he's the one to get ridiculously angry with people who take to long to park and servers who screw up orders and can't/won't acknowledge their mistake. This was a long, LONG time area of contention for us because I felt like (a) NBD chill and (b) let's not make a scene, especially in front of the kids. So the other day we were driving and a car in front of us did a few annoying things... not really all that big of a deal but my H got heated and honked once. The car pulls up alongside of us and the lady rolls down her window and starts shouting. What I would have done previously is try to calm my H and get angry with him for causing the sitch. This time I did nothing and validated him for being annoyed, and when the lady went off the rails and I was totally on his side that her behavior was unacceptable. We kept driving, he was quiet for awhile... and then he said to me out of nowhere what he thought he could have done better, and that he probably shouldn't have engaged at all with the kids in the car. I was blown away. This was probably the most stark example of it, but since I've stopped responding when he starts to get road rage, it has completely simmered down to the point where he says something off-hand when encountering a bad driver but the anger that used to be behind it is nearly gone.

I know my sitch is not the same as yours BUT I agree with AS that maybe these are opportunities for 180s for you in these kinds of sitches. She's spinning out of control and maybe you're feeding that somewhat with your actions in those situations.