Well finally dammit...waiting all am to post about your last thread.
Sorry I took so long...hard to track down all those links!
To expand on what OT was talking about in being direct...is to also know how to pick your battles. Okay, you're over the bear now. Good.
Well, I am not over him necessarily, I am just beyond needing to DO something to him (well other than pushing him off the bed, into the side table and somehow landing UNDER the bed...lol). No, this was not a necessary battle. NOW, if he finds his way onto the plane...
Good. I think instead of jumping the gun when you "feel" something and immediately want to express yourself in being direct...step back, process those feelings first and then decide if it's something that you feel the need to be direct about. This gives you a chance to "cool down" before approaching things from an emotional side of you. Doing this should also help you regarding your Passive Aggresiveness. Instead of letting things, feelings and thoughts fester up inside until you burst, work them through. Not letting your emotions get the best of you, losing the "reaction" form of contact. I hope this makes sense.
Thank you for posting this. It gives me an opportunity to clarify what I said last. I was not advocating just REACTING in the moment and blurting out "direct" things that stem from feelings I had when confronted with a certain situation. Just as you said, and I SHOULD have said, I am really just talking about keeping the timing relevant. If my W does or says something at 6:00 on Tuesday that bothers me, or gets my emotions flowing, I DON'T wait until midnight Friday to address it. Processing and cooling down is one thing, but stewing and obsessing is quite another. I do too much of the later, which takes a LONG time to do properly. So, YES it makes perfect sense!
It's quite clear that you and your W need to work on communication skills, I think most Ms do. But it's a matter of timing, using your DB skills and always picking your battles. But don't just make these your only forms of communication...learn to be communicative about other things too, positive things. Hey honey, blah blah, you look nice today...okay not necessarily that...but you know what I mean.
Actually, I do know what you mean and I have been guilty of only communicating the negative about a lot of things in my life to my W. I am really conscious of making sure I tell her the good, bad and the ugly with more emphasis on the good. Also, I think my campaign of complimenting her in a mature way is working.
For the first time I can remember, my W and I stood in the kitchen and commented on each other's physical stuff in a positive light. To clarify, in the past one or both of us didn't like our bodies. Don't get me wrong, we are both reasonably fit and reasonably attractive (actually she is totally beautiful) but there are things we both didn't like about ourselves and when we would talk it was always her saying how she didn't like her legs or butt, or me saying my gut was a little big and I needed to work on my tone. Last night we both just expressed positive things about ourselves and each other. It was really refreshing. My W is in GREAT shape now (well, it helps to have a personal trainer...ouch) and I am in the best shape I've been in since the VERY early days of our R, long before the M. It was just nice to see her focusing on something positive and both of us keeping a usually negatively toned talk on an upbeat note.
