Melody Lane and MBers,
I presume you have already read that I will be divorced. You were right, her anger was too much for our marriage. The last straw for me was an incident last January at my DD18's football/cheerleading banquet where my wife 1) berated and verbally assaulted both of us after falsely assuming we were late, 2) continued to tell me at the dinner table what a b-i-t-c-h my daughter is WHILE DD was on stage accepting kudos as team captain of the cheer squad!, 3) got into a screaming/swearing match and brief physical altercation with DD later at home 4) the next morning tried to blame me and DD for the problems. All because, as she says it, "I was over-tired."
I started to see the pattern a couple years ago, realized that it didn't matter what I did or didn't do or if I engaged in LBers or not, that her abuse (swearing, name calling, insulting, yelling, etc) was unacceptable. That is why I kept bringing up boundaries in my previous posts here. See Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend.
As I stopped participating in this drama and firmly telling her my boundaries (no yelling, no insults, no swearing) she interpreted it as me pulling all of my emotional support out from beneath her feet. I told her many times I am withdrawing from your temper tantrums and will be glad to talk when its calm.
More recently I exposed her on FB after finding pictures of her hanging all over some guy she went on an all day motorcycle ride with. Obviously that caused a storm of fury, I locked myself in the bathroom, she tried to kick in the door, I called police, she was arrested. Even yesterday she said that the person that was out of control that night was ME! An explosive start to divorce.
Though the future looks much calmer I am sad. I did my best.
Yours truly,
former MBer superhero
Its obvious that all emotions are real chemical-physical changes in the brain but it really helps me understand my wife's biggest love buster. And hopefully have patience.
That is a very interesting observation and it fits perfectly with what Dr Harley says when he says that anger makes us temporarily insane. This is why it is so important to learn to avoid anger in marriage.
It is not something that should ever be tolerated, but a condition that is to be overcome.
What is your wife doing to eliminate her angry outbursts?