OK, now I’m getting the picture. I’ve got a building full of engineers where I work. I also have all accountants in my department. Logic to the hilt. Many of them are shut down emotionally, many think they are “real” men but are really hiding behind a mask.
You people keep saying stuff like "the glass is half full/empty"...I say, "the 8oz vessel contains 4oz of fluid." its not negative, its not positive, it just IS.
This is easy logic, meant to avoid confronting self doubt and the anxiety that brings. Even in the engineering world, there are few hard and fast answers. Assumptions are made all the time. But we are not dealing with equations, are we? We are dealing with emotions and you answer your own question.
When your wife “flies off the handle” or you hear her parents screaming, why do you want to curl up into a ball? I am guessing you interpret that as a scary situation. It creates anxiety in you, right? You want to get away. You might say that glass is half empty. I might say that glass is half full, because the people are engaging and staying in the fight until a resolution can be reached. You could even argue there is comfort in the fighting.
My point is that the half full/half empty argument is based on you emotional state – fear or ecstasy, happy or sad, manic or depressed. To say the glass “just is” is to say the fighting “just is.” So why do you have an emotional reaction?
that seems to be a contradiction, to me. "walking on eggshells" is avoidance; manipulation requires some positive action to generate a response, which I am most certainly NOT doing.
Are you sure about this? Again, your statement is made from YOUR point of view only. Read up on verbal abuse and you will see that not communicating, with holding information, invoking the silent treatment, are all forms of abuse. To YOU they might not be since the silence would be comforting to you. But for someone like your wife who feels anxious when she does not get affirmative feedback, the silence can FEEL like manipulation. In her mind, she knows you have a choice – to speak up and express yourself or not. When you do not, she also knows you have made a choice not to, and since she also knows that you know the silence scares her, she assumes (incorrectly) that you do it to passive aggressively attack or manipulate. Can you see this?
I learned to communicate (or "not communicate) from my parents. I am my mother; w is my father. my father rants and raves...mom ignores. sick, isn't it?
So you dad was the macho man, the man’s man, the bully. I am guessing he yelled plenty at you too. Did your mother stand up to protect you or did she keep her head down to avoid his wrath and leave you defend yourself? How did you feel about that? Were you scared or did it not bother you because that was just how life was?
By pure coincidence, I spoke with someone this weekend with a situation VERY similar to yours. The wife also “flies off the handle” but she told me that there is nothing she hates more than when her H withdraws into his shell and won’t speak to her. It triggers her abandonment fears and she goes off.
I also learned that he had been beaten by his father as a child and his mother would beat him when the father was not home. His mother is now divorced but is extremely codependent and is always sacrificing everything to make her second husband happy. I can only assume she was like this with her first husband. But what I think really hurt my friend’s H is that fact that the only person he could turn to for protection as a child, his mother, beat him to protect herself. So when he reached out for help, i.e., made himself vulnerable, he was beaten. How much greater betrayal can a kid experience?
His reaction now is to withdraw into his shell whenever emotions, good or bad, start to run high. I told my friend that his response was conditioned and out of pure survival. So now, whenever he starts to open up, his instinctive reaction is to shut down again. I do not think he knows he does this. To him, it “just is.” But he is blocking his feelings to prevent the greater pain of betrayal he felt as a child.
His W understands now (I hope) that her screaming for validation and interaction just pushes him away. HE needs to understand that his withdrawing threatens her and makes her push even harder to avoid the feeling of abandonment she experienced as a kid. Do you see how this dynamic works?
I know that trying to confront someone that is "flying off the handle" by doing the same thing in response, is an exercise in futility. It only makes things worse.
Do you see why this statement can be false? It is based on assumptions only, assumptions purely from YOUR past experience, not anyone else. To me, this screams of a lack of empathy. You are having a problem putting yourself into someone else’s shoes. A lack of empathy comes from a need to protect yourself as a child. You learn that no one will serve your needs or address your fears. The only one who can comfort you is you. So all consideration of other’s feelings are ignored, as your feelings have been ignored. This is the basis of the narcissistic family setting I have been discussing and the heart of adult attachment disorder.
You should consider a therapist you can help you deal with your FOO issues, to confront your hurt, address the repressed anger and resent that you have and get in touch with your feelings.
