My wife and I recently separated after being married for 9 years. I have a problem with communication that usually ends in anger. I am starting therapy this week, my wife had asked that I go a long time ago and i stopped when I thought I was better. I was not. When we talk about issues, I usually get mad and blow up. I have said some really nasty things before and called her names. I don't know why but I did. I want to stay together, but she seems to be leaning the other way,which I don't blame her. I love my wife with all my heart and want to work this out and save our marriage. I need some help. Please

There is a great book called "The Verbally Abusive Relationship" by Patricia Evans which may help you understand how your wife feels.
Counseling is great, keep going.
This book may help you understand, but it also may help you change your behavior. You may not be able to imagine how it feels to live with an angry verbally & emotionally abusive person.
Show her that you can be the person she loves. It's all up to you now.

Welcome, Fireman. You know it’s also helpful to go back to the basics with some new understandings. Try counting to 10 and then count it again. Try leaving the house for a long walk. The new understandings to bring to these coping mechanisms is that “anger” is a secondary emotion. It comes on top of fear, hurt, sadness, or a combination of those. And anger can be a powerful tool if you are dealing with a bully or a bad person. It has a time and place. The time and place is not with your family, obviously.

So, take time out when you get mad, and go for a walk to figure out what’s under the mad feeling. Imagine your wife tells you she isn’t going to do what you want her to do. You get mad. How dare she? Okay, what could those feeling really be about? It could be you’re hurt because you interpreted her “no” as her not caring about you. It could be you’re scared that you’ll never get anything you want. It could be you are anxious and worried because if she can say “no” to you, you can’t control her and she could leave or hurt you. It could be you were really disappointed because you really wanted this.

Then, without even bothering to dig deeper into any of this, you can go back to your wife and use a time-tested MB approach. This is guaranteed to prevent you from committing an Angry Outburst or Selfish Demand—it is not guaranteed to make your spouse react in the proper way.

So, you say “Honey, I felt (sad, hurt, scared, worried, disappointed, ashamed, embarrassed, worthless, desolate—or any other “feeling”) when you did/said __________.”

There are three tricks to making this work.
1. You feel a feeling. You do not feel a thought. So you did not feel “you treated me like cr*p when you did x,y,z.” If your feeling starts with “you” or is more than two words, you probably have a thought, not a feeling. Thoughts in this situation easily become disrespectful judgements, angry outburst, or selfish demands.
2. Keep to the facts in the “when you did” section. You don’t need to add words to describe her behavior. In other words, if your wife said something, don’t describe her as saying it sarcastically, or snidely.
3. Stop while you’re ahead. After your simply “I feel…when you…” statement, STOP. Don’t say anything else. You are sharing information with your wife about how her behavior really affects you. You are not demanding she change her behavior. You are not punishing her for her behavior. Now the ball is in her court. She may be so shocked at how you handled this, she may not know what to say at first, or do. She may also try to get back onto familiar territory and react as if you had yelled at her. Be prepared for that, and don’t get sucked back in.

Example of the wrong way:
Honey, I felt you totally disrespected me when you whisked the plates off the table and stormed into the bedroom while I was still eating my dinner. That was totally unreasonable; you better not do it again.

LOL. This would totally defeat the purpose. Instead of saying you felt hurt and evoking her empathy, you’ve just accused her of being disrespectful. Then, instead of saying she cleared the table and went into the bedroom, you gave your interpretation of events: She was storming around. Finally, you ended with another disrespectful judgment and a selfish demand.

The better way would be:
Honey, I felt hurt when you cleared the table and went into the bedroom.

Then, you’ve set the stage for her to possibly say “Oh, sugar, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I was so stressed about getting little Sammy’s pants mended in time for the school play that I just couldn’t sit still.”

Or she may say.

“OH? Well, I mean to hurt you. You were totally rude at dinner and I just needed to get away.” Those are fighting words. She’s reacting as if you were the old you. Avoid this trap.

“Honey, I’m so sorry. Can you tell me what I did that upset you so much you needed to leave? I want to avoid that in the future.” (Now, the fun part of this hard, hard work is sitting back and watching how bewildered you spouse is by this empathy. Probably, when she looks at it, your behavior wasn’t so bad. And even if it was, she’s thinking, “Maybe he really cares. Maybe, he’s willing to stop doing things that upset me.”

Get the LoveBusters book. Read up on it. Your wife probably doesn’t believe you love her because it’s really hard to believe anyone who causes us so much hurt and distress can really love us. We tend to equate loving care with romantic in love feelings. If someone demonstrates care for us, we assume they love us; if they hurt us or harm us, we assume they do not have love feelings for us. As Dr. Harley points out, that’s not really how it works. If someone gives us the kind of care we really like, we get “love” feelings for him. If they don’t show that care or they hurt us, we lose those “love” feelings. So, my showing you the proper kind of care equals you feeling in love with me; it doesn’t equal me feeling in love with you.

The whole point of that theory is that your wife probably doesn’t think you really love her. You need to stop all LoveBusters immediately. There is no room for mistakes.

Guess what? From your user name, I suppose you are a fireman. That means you can harness a lot of self-discipline when you need to. You know how to follow a plan when you’re in an emergency situation and you know how to prioritize actions. These are great tools to bring to a marriage in crisis.

Read all the basic concepts. Read the letters too. And go buy LoveBusters or borrow it from the library.

The book Newly recommended is good, but it doesn’t have a lot of practical information. You’ll need lots of practical how-to information along with the deeper understanding stuff.

Greengables, that was awesome. I'm going to save that one!

Firemanjohn, how is it going? Have you been able to try this?

Thanks.

Yeah, FJ, how's it going?

It's going okay, I miss her more everyday. She has told me that she still does not know what to do. Can't blame her. I can not wait to start therapy to get back on a better road.

FJ