Weeks of cold shoulder over tiny things

[Hate&Rage]

I have been married for over a year now, but I'm struggling with my wife's constant fighting over anything and everything.

That's not to say that I do not have issues. I for one, have a rage issue. This was known early in our 8 year relationship now... so I have been working on that throughout the years. Did paid counseling, saw a psychologist (couldn't afford many appointments so did only 2), read many books, and told a psychologist Christian friend about my episodes to keep me accountable. Won't say that I've fully resolved it, but from getting angry every week, now it takes 3 things to trigger an outburst: attacking me repeatedly + when I'm fatigued + when I'm emotionally down.

There are many things to be grateful for, but covid-19 has not been kind either. Everyone at work is [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse]ed, and relationships with our clients are largely strained now. People are calling us at odd hours and holidays to bargain and renegotiate non-negotiable terms. People are threatening to break of relationships. Everyone is desperate, including me.

Not long ago, I was attacked repeatedly, and it came out of nowhere. That day was particularly bad, and knowing myself, I communicated that to my wife, explaining to her how it could impact me. I also outlined my coping mechanisms, and said that I am going to change the atmosphere and have a chill night and suggested we watch a movie. She started to belittle my struggles and anxiety at work right off the bat, telling me that they were nothing, but I could take that as it is common of her to invalidate my thoughts and struggles. After brushing it off and trying to watch a movie, she attacked me again and called me names which I will not mention here. At that point, I exploded and was throwing pillows around while she was throwing my stuff around. And now, since then, she has not talked to me.

It's getting so tiring. Throughout our relationship, everything we have fought over, has been always seen as my fault. So while I have tried to work on things as much as I could, my wife has never needed to make any attempt at improving herself. My attempts to tell her that we should both work on ourselves will be countered by me not accepting who she is. As a result, I know that I will have to somehow cope with being attacked over nothing (for example, for a crease that I didn't straightened out on a bed-sheet which caused her to give me the cold shoulder for weeks).

This sort of life is pointless to me. Through the years, I've been taught and learnt that anger is irrational. So reasoning yourself out of anger is frequently futile, if the response is due to decreased frontal cortex control and increased response from the amygdala. The only way is through actions - like distracting oneself with something cognitively challenging enough. So, I have gone on and took up studying part-time some time ago. Every waking moment is spent on learning something. Whenever she gets angry, I would immediately resign myself to do something challenging. Of course, that itself brings up another issue - that I have no time for her. But then, I have resigned to the fact that there will be always an issue. If it isn't this, it will be that. So I took the path that prevented one side at least, from getting angry. But I am getting tired. The side effect of my anger management strategy which involves obsessive learning has led me to succeed professionally (basically, anything outside of the house). It seems that everything I do is respected at work and within my professional network, but when I come back it's such a letdown. It is like stepping from a hot to a cold shower every time I come home. And spending much more time at home during covid-19 has not been easy.

Over the years, I used to beg for reconciliation, but I've learnt that when someone is unreasonable and does not want to negotiate - you can't negotiate. So, I am not reaching out to reconcile as I used to, since it hurts me every time my wife refuses to reconcile.

 

[NerdGirl]

I'll be honest, starting off with "I have a rage issue and it's never been properly treated", then proceeding to accuse your wife of being the one with all the problems, doesn't really match up. Some of the things you've been told ("anger is irrational", etc) are really not correct or healthy, and I would highly recommend seeking good, consistent counseling for the both of you. If she is really attacking you for no reason all the time, then you need to uncover her own reasons for that behavior, as well as keep working on your own issues. I have a feeling this goes way deeper than just a cranky wife.

 

[Hate&Rage]

I'll be honest, starting off with "I have a rage issue and it's never been properly treated", then proceeding to accuse your wife of being the one with all the problems, doesn't really match up. Some of the things you've been told ("anger is irrational", etc) are really not correct or healthy, and I would highly recommend seeking good, consistent counseling for the both of you. If she is really attacking you for no reason all the time, then you need to uncover her own reasons for that behavior, as well as keep working on your own issues. I have a feeling this goes way deeper than just a cranky wife.

Apologies if it came across that way, it's more like, I am acknowledging that we all have problems, every single one of us that is human, and there are ways to fix it only if 1) We sincerely want to 2) We try everything. I am trying to accuse myself before accusing my wife. I felt it was apt, rather than just accusing my wife of being imperfect. Does that makes sense now?

On why anger is irrational (I have never met a rational, angry person, although I admit that would be quite interesting indeed), read Stress Proof by Mithu Storoni and you'll see how our body reacts during a stressful episode - that rage can, just like depression, be our body's chemical balance in equilibrium. Which means it's equally hard to rid of. Throughout the years, I did subscribe to many other kinds of advice ("Count to ten", or think positive etc), and they did not work for me. But I now acknowledge that when I am angry, I am in an irrational state of mind, and so perhaps we have to deal with it but letting that deluge of emotion pass by. Now, let me give you just a few examples, as it has been my journey and I felt it greatly benefited me and many others.

1) Conventional advice is to "not dwell on it". Which is actually true, but in the heat of the moment - who's going to think that way? So to "not dwell on it", go and do something distracting BUT mentally challenging enough. i.e. math, coding, even gaming. You might not be able to keep from having a heated argument, but the least you could do is storm off and do some work, right?

2) A person who does not sleep well is going to be cranky anyway. I do not want increase my chances to having an outburst just because I had less than 7 hours of sleep, and so I make sure I get those 7 hours.

3) Doing activities that require self-control creates new connections in the part of the brain called the frontal cortex. The frontal cortex is a huge part of what makes us rational (its counterpart being the amygdala). So what I do is I always have a string of activities everyday involving self-control. For example, during this covid situation, I constructed a routine immediately. I work out everyday, push myself to be productive at my job, and learn something new every single day. What has that got to do with anger? Let's go back to what you said with a slight twist. You're right that irrational anger is unhealthy, but the problem is that anger is irrational. So what one does is to increase your capacity to retain self-control during an anger episode by training the brain center that does so.

Hope that helped explaining my position.

 

[Endeavourer]

Hate & Rage, you are behaving like an angry maniac because you are choosing to do so. Plain and simple. Attaching blame on others for behavior you choose to execute is nonsense, and makes you not a safe person for relationships. Basically you are saying your behavior is out of your control. That makes you not a safe person.

If a situation is bothering you then you are a free man and can simply walk away or leave until you feel more disposed to deal with it.

A marriage can survive an affair, but it cannot survive anger. You will need to completely eliminate anger and learn how to negotiate and communicate so you and your wife can reach mutually agreeable solutions rather than hating and raging at each other. If you will not or cannot do this, you might as well part company now while you still have your health.

Please read this series of articles (first one posted here) and come back to tell me what you think of them:
Abusive Marriage - Letter #1 : Marriage Builders, Inc.

 

[NerdGirl]

I'm sorry, but this still feels like either you're making excuses for yourself, or you really, truly don't understand the nature of anger.

There's a difference between being cranky because you didn't get much sleep, and having an angry outburst.

There's a difference between being angry, and flying into a rage where you have no control.

Anger is a secondary emotion. It never exists on its own, it always follow another emotion as a defense mechanism. We get angry after first feeling something else unpleasant; hurt, fear, rejection, embarrassment, sadness, insecurity.

Until you can find out WHY you're struggling with anger, you can distract your mind all day long, and you will not be addressing the root of the problem. You need to find that root. Trace it back to where it began, and go from there.

If you are truly having random, unprovoked, uncontrolled rage, then you desperately need professional help and I'd urge you to seek it. Your wife isn't 'making' you fly into violent hysterics. That's not normal behavior.

I still think you need therapy and counseling from a professional. Reading a book is not therapy.

 

[Tolworth John]

I'm sorry, but this still feels like either you're making excuses for yourself, or you really, truly don't understand the nature of anger.

There's a difference between being cranky because you didn't get much sleep, and having an angry outburst.

There's a difference between being angry, and flying into a rage where you have no control.

Anger is a secondary emotion. It never exists on its own, it always follow another emotion as a defense mechanism. We get angry after first feeling something else unpleasant; hurt, fear, rejection, embarrassment, sadness, insecurity.

Until you can find out WHY you're struggling with anger, you can distract your mind all day long, and you will not be addressing the root of the problem. You need to find that root. Trace it back to where it began, and go from there.

If you are truly having random, unprovoked, uncontrolled rage, then you desperately need professional help and I'd urge you to seek it. Your wife isn't 'making' you fly into violent hysterics. That's not normal behavior.

I still think you need therapy and counseling from a professional. Reading a book is not therapy.

will have to somehow cope with being attacked over nothing (for example, for a crease that I didn't straightened out on a bed-sheet which caused her to give me the cold shoulder for weeks).

One quote from h&r that if accurate shows there is a fault on the other side.

Given that he cannot affirm counseling I would suggest that he seeks help from his pastor and his wife.
That he asks to speak to the pastor and that the pastor s wife speaks with his wife, single at first and jointly later.
For any marriage t work both parties have to be willing to listen to criticisms and to be willing to change.

 

[NerdGirl]

I agree, this sounds far too complicated to be of much help over the internet. Though I have a feeling, if we asked his wife why he got 'the cold shoulder for weeks', she wouldn't say it was over a creased bedsheet.

 

[Hate&Rage]

Hate & Rage, you are behaving like an angry maniac because you are choosing to do so. Plain and simple. Attaching blame on others for behavior you choose to execute is nonsense, and makes you not a safe person for relationships. Basically you are saying your behavior is out of your control. That makes you not a safe person.

If a situation is bothering you then you are a free man and can simply walk away or leave until you feel more disposed to deal with it.

A marriage can survive an affair, but it cannot survive anger. You will need to completely eliminate anger and learn how to negotiate and communicate so you and your wife can reach mutually agreeable solutions rather than hating and raging at each other. If you will not or cannot do this, you might as well part company now while you still have your health.

Please read this series of articles (first one posted here) and come back to tell me what you think of them:
Abusive Marriage - Letter #1 : Marriage Builders, Inc.

Thanks, I read it - am I supposed to only read letter 1 (I realized there are 5 letters)? It seems to be a totally different situation. The only resemblance I could find is where I am in the wife's position ("I have tried negotiation, but without cooperation I am unable to succeed. He has very little respect for me and when he gets angry he mocks me, yells or gives me ultimatums.") Good read nevertheless.

I'm also not sure where I have expressed the adamant desire not to change, as you have aggressively implied and then further advocated for divorce. If you read my first post, I tried all possible solutions I could afford for the past 3 years. And, the same goes for my wife - I'd never leave my wife just because she has an anger issue.

Also, I'm not really sure where I claimed that I am raging at each outburst? Right now, it takes a lot to get me to have an outburst: attacking me repeatedly + when I'm fatigued + when I'm emotionally down. I feel that you are talking into a different situation here.

I'm sorry, but this still feels like either you're making excuses for yourself, or you really, truly don't understand the nature of anger.

There's a difference between being cranky because you didn't get much sleep, and having an angry outburst.

There's a difference between being angry, and flying into a rage where you have no control.

Anger is a secondary emotion. It never exists on its own, it always follow another emotion as a defense mechanism. We get angry after first feeling something else unpleasant; hurt, fear, rejection, embarrassment, sadness, insecurity.

Until you can find out WHY you're struggling with anger, you can distract your mind all day long, and you will not be addressing the root of the problem. You need to find that root. Trace it back to where it began, and go from there.

If you are truly having random, unprovoked, uncontrolled rage, then you desperately need professional help and I'd urge you to seek it. Your wife isn't 'making' you fly into violent hysterics. That's not normal behavior.

I still think you need therapy and counseling from a professional. Reading a book is not therapy.

The first person that would agree that I need help is me. If you did read what I wrote, I stated off the bat that I have tried all means - and that includes counseling and therapy - by which the book was recommended. As I keep a journal, from 3 years ago, I get angry only 1/10 times then I used to (approximately 1 in 3 months) and at far less intensity. However, my wife still has frequent outbursts, and that is the conundrum that I am posting here. And what my counselors and psychologists have done, is in fact, is to point out that I cannot take all the blame for every single thing, and I must learn to also convince my wife that it is a two sided responsibility.

Ah, and we must agree to disagree on books. I believe books do transform people if the lessons are applied. My entire philosophy of any form of success is that it hinges on the necessity of both theoretical and tacit knowledge, and hence, I have religiously applied the techniques in the book which were recommended by my therapist. And yes, at first it did seem unhealthy and counter-intuitive to me, but according to her, distracting yourself in the moment of passion is not the same as suppressing emotions. During a moment when chemicals run wild, you distract yourself to pass the time as those chemical levels return to your normal baseline. Once they have returned, you are now back to being rational (the frontal cortex, in a manner of speaking, has wrested back its control over your actions)- then it is time to talk things out. It's a very healthy way of dealing with anger imo. But if you don't think it works for you, then don't do it, however, it did work for me and I'm unsure of your intentions to simply invalidate what I have experienced.

So, I am not having random, unprovoked, and uncontrolled rage. The problem, as I stated earlier on, is that I am attacked repeatedly without provocation, when I am physically, fatigued, and emotionally down. I am unsure of why you are making grossly unfair assumptions, like "if we did that, I'm sure of this". Why are you selectively reading the bits in my post and fit your own projections of a narrative here? If so, wouldn't it be better for you to write the whole post on behalf of a total stranger's life and disregard anything he says? And finally, how is my problem more complicated than the rest of the problems on this board, such that my looking for help, just like you and everyone else, is invalid?

One quote from h&r that if accurate shows there is a fault on the other side.

Given that he cannot affirm counseling I would suggest that he seeks help from his pastor and his wife.
That he asks to speak to the pastor and that the pastor s wife speaks with his wife, single at first and jointly later.
For any marriage t work both parties have to be willing to listen to criticisms and to be willing to change.

Thank you for being objective and kind, I don't know what I did to draw all the hostility and snide remarks from the posters above. There are lots of things being put into my situation like it was a different one altogether, whereas the actual situation and experience that I wrote about was invalidated and dismissed.

Just yesterday, she got angry after asking me one question: What's going to happen with this covid19 situation? I reassured her that we should trust in God. Then she flipped and forced me out of the house. I was just as confused as you probably are right now, but she got angry because that answer was not solid and like a castle in the air. However, I have always managed our finances well to ensure we have at least 6 months to a year of runway should anything go awry, and both of us have still our jobs. It was a situation that could have deteriorated further as being out of the house, I didn't have my tools to manage my anger. But thank God, this happened right after I did my daily devotion and prayer which gave me strength, so I was able to come back in when she was calm and hug her to tell her that it was all going to be okay, and I was sorry that my earlier answer that did not meet her expectations. And, she actually said sorry too! On another day, she would keep attacking me for days, and it is very very hard for her to say sorry, and I was really encouraged. She was still feeling sorry, so I then told her that it's not a problem at all, and that we will move on, as for every wrong thing she did there are a 1,000 things she does right.

 

[RedPonyDriver]

I agree that being angry is a choice. My late husband used to say that so-and-so or such-and-such made him angry. My question to him was "did whatever hold a gun to your head and tell you that you must get angry or they will shoot you?". If the answer is no, then you chose to get angry. Some people are just rage puppies, they are full of anger and rage, blame the rest of the world for it and forever avoid any responsibility for it. My late husband was one of those.

There are things that I'm rather angry about right now (medical malpractice and the wheels of justice move slowly), but that does not give me permission to be a rage puppy. That anger drives me to get involved in certain things that are attempting to bring accountability to those entities that were party to the malpractice...but I don't use it to destroy. Honestly, being a rage puppy has to be exhausting, keeping that level of anger up all the time. I'm FAR too lazy for that. I have lots of other things to channel my energy into, like teaching again, freelancing again, staying connected to family and friends during this time. Then, there's my felines, all three of them...they take up time and energy too...and they react VERY badly to anger.