Dr. John Gottman wrote several communication books and he also runs a relationship clinic somewhere in the NW, I think. His books are filled with common sense style advice, as well as much biophysical information that was gathered at his clinic. For instance, men will sometimes "stonewall" when they are mad...they walk away or shut down and refuse to talk. Dr. Gottman researched this and there is actually a flooding of the brain that occurs with men and they become so overwhelmed that it is literally fight or flight. Since most are not inclined to punch their W's lights out, they sit there stonily silent or get up and leave. Prior to reading this, I assumed that my H was just being an ahole when he did these things. Once I read about the actual biological happenings inside him, it made it easier for me to just back off when I saw this happening to him--no matter how mad I was at the moment--and take it up later.
Anyway, yeah, we still have a ways to go on the ol communication front. Most of his hangups have been largely taken care of because I am a stay at home mother. His fears have been eased because there is no contact between me and the outside world. (with the exception of you kind people who keep me company) Prior to this, he was given to fits of jealousy and wanting to tell me what to do. We have been talking about it lately, even though I'm no closer to rejoining the work force.
We had an interesting incident yesterday. We are having killer weather here in the midwest...80 degrees I think it was yesterday. So I wore shorts and sandals, fully aware that he is a leg man and would surely notice. He did. At one point I went down to talk to the neighbors and he stayed in the driveway with our baby. I returned home after a few minutes and cooked supper. As I was doing that, he said that his "blood pressure was going up as I watched X and Y (our male neighbors) watch you walk back home." I sorta downplayed it because truly I had no idea if they did that or not, but mostly I wanted to fill the 'dead air' because I know from experience with my H that the next words out of his mouth would be instructions on how NOT to dress, so that I don't inadvertantly turn on our neighbors. I was internally cringing and preparing for these words and I found myself talking to fill the space so he couldn't do this. IOW, we both try to control the other, I guess. Bottom line: H didn't say a word about my clothing, Yay H, and I eventually shut the hell up and gave him an opportunity to either rise to the occasion or sink to his usual low.
