That's great - - but I need to talk myself down first, before responding. Agree?

My H used to do this. It got to the point where I just stopped asking questions. This is where a wife walks on egg shells. I told him I wanted separation if he could not stop, and he did - with some minor bumps along the way. I was 100% serious - I was starting to make plans to leave. I had a toddler and was pregnant - that is how serious I was.

I cannot imagine any woman tolerating this. To not even be able to ask where a remote was without anticipating some sort of AO. You could have simply just said where it was and then said you needed to discuss later some ways to solve this problem.

You WILL get divorced if this continues. You need anger management if you cannot cope with such a question without responding with anger about other things.

I agree, but I just wanted a moment to calm down first.
Is that not what I am supposed to be doing?

Opening my yap when I am upset about something will cause more damage, correct?

If you must calm down first before answering your wife's question about the location of the remote, you have a serious anger problem.

Again, are you in anger management?

You have to learn to be calm even when a storm is happening around you-its good for your health and women find it attractive. A better way to have handled this is to just answer the question and then change the subject. If you had just answered the question, the blow up situation would not have occurred. Both of you are frustrated and feeding off each others frutration.

Then later you approach the subject of strategies to handle the misplaced remote issue after the kids are not around.

Go to the grocery store and learn to negotiate. "How would you feel about buying 2 cucumbers (or whatever product it is)".

I wasn't angry at her.

I was upset with the kids for causing chaos for my wife at home when they should have been looking in obvious places.

I was very upset that they caused my wife frustration when they didn't need to at all - they should have simply looked for it but they did not.


I read a series of lessons online. I did what I was supposed to be doing- calming myself down... That is what anger management teaches. I didn't have an AO, and for me that's a HUGE step.

Do you have other suggestions for calming down before discussing an issue? Why do you think I should invalidate my feelings of being upset?

If I had been in the frame of mind to do that, I would have done just that. However, that is not what I was thinking at the time - All I was thinking was to "just chill out and don't say anything stupid".

You need to get into an anger management program that will keep you accountable, or there is no hope for your marriage.

Will you sign up today?

You are in no position to judge that.

It's still a massive withdrawal from your account in your wife's love bank. It's just as serious to be angry or disrespectful toward her children as it is to be that way toward her directly.


Any time you use the word "should," it's a pretty clear indicator that you are being disrespectful.

If your problem is that the kids hurt your wife, you would want to make it better, not worse, right? So don't handle it by being angry or disrespectful toward the children.

As kilted said, you need to learn how to be calm even when there's a storm happening around you.


When you are upset, you shouldn't say or do anything until you are calm.

Then, after you are calm, you should resolve the issue. Later when your wife asked you where the remote was, you should have just told her instead of being dramatic about it. Any time you are dramatic to prove a point, it should clue you in that you are probably being very disrespectful and making huge love bank withdrawals.

Yes - you need accountability or you guys are not going to make it.

After you calm down, you should tell her where you found the remote, without commenting on how noone has put any effort into finding it. That comment is disrespectful, as is refusing to tell her.

I guess my questions goes unanswered.

This is golden advice.

Combine it with an anger management program and you will probably turn your marriage into something that makes your wife very happy.

What would have been so wrong with just saying "i found it on the couch?" (or wherever you found it) How very amazing that a simple question could be used to cause so much damage to your marriage.

Wouldn't just answering the question be the wisest course of action?

I agree very much that anger management therapy is the most urgent issue here.

Yes, but I just forgot about it because we had other tasks going on.

Ernie, here is Dr. Harley's advice on how to negotiate your problems when one of you is an emotional person. In particular there is advice to purchase a meter that can be used to gauge your frustration level. I have one of these meters. With this meter, you can practice learning to relax when you feel frustrated, and eventually learn to stay calm while handling a conflict with your wife:

How to negotiate when you are an emotional person

Right now, when you and your wife have a conflict, your emotions are prompting you to do things that are extremely abusive and hurtful to your wife, extremely destructive to your marriage, and extremely destructive to your balance in your wife's love bank.

If you want your marriage to be something that makes your wife happy, you are going to need to learn to protect her by preventing this kind of damage.

Right now I'm not sure you realize how serious that damage is. It sounds to me like the discussion we had a couple of weeks ago, where basically you felt that you'd offended on something of the level of a speeding ticket, something that your wife (and us) should feel is not that big a deal.

I guess my questions goes unanswered. [/quote]

Hold on there..... don't do that.
I am at work right now.
The time I get to spend on here is VERY limited.
Y'all need to understand that truth.

You had time to post this and argue with BrainHurts, but you didn't have the time to type "yes" or "no"?

Ernie, if you'll turn to and follow the advice here and fix your marriage, you will have earned a lot of respect and admiration from us and can probably hang around here helping others as well.

But if you argue with us, I promise that you will never prove that you are respectable. And you'll probably never learn how to stop fighting with your wife, either.

Yes - that would have been best.

"I did not want to talk about it just then - at that point."