It is the season of "giving"...I packed up all the clothes that XH left behind in his rush to be with PP and handed them out this Thanksgiving to the homeless.

Ralph Lauren shirts, hillfigler, pringle...best dressed homeless in town.

Positive action vent...

HeadHeldHigh,
Thanks a lot HHH, like I wanted to read a long article right now. lol.
Seriously, my WH is guilty of a lot of what is written in the article. He has gotten better over the years but he still goes off when he is angry. Reading the article brought back memories of how bad he was early on in our relationship. He was and still is(to a lesser degree) a ragger. My dad was also.
These 2 stuck out the most.
Smashing plates or kicking doors
someone cuts you off in traffic
I would also add one that both my dad and my WH do. The silent treatment.

Because of my dads rage I learned to be a conflict avoider (not good) and carried that into our marriage. It took me a long time to figure that out and work on my reaction rather than focus on WH's actions.

I have found the audio series "life's journey" very helpful. There is one called "Transcending our anger" that talks about this subject. Interesting note, the speaker talks about sexual aggression being another negative way of releasing anger....Hmmmmmmm.

This is from the link you posted.
The more effective approach is to just stop. Take your anger off of the stove. Let it go from a boil to a simmer to a lukewarm state where you no longer want to sink your teeth into the side of buffalo.

Still, cooling off is not the same thing as not dealing with your anger at all. Bushman suggests you delay your response, relax or distract yourself with an activity totally incompatible with aggression.

Like doing Sudoko puzzles? YAY!!!!!!!!!!

MUST NOT REPLY WITH SARCASTIC REMARK....

Where is my puzzle book?

If the clothes were that important to him he would have taken them. You did the right thing by giving them to someone who really needs them. I have been going through all my clothes as well as the kids clothes and giving them to the poor. I have 5 bags already. WH can take all his clothes with him. I will nicely tell him if he doesn't take it I will donate it to the poor for him. He has 3+ times as many clothes as I do. He has been talking about going through them for years now. No time like the present!

Thank you for demonstrating the absolute perfect usage of a smiley to convey sarcasm!

Sadly, we are going to have pity parties if we want to or not. It's just going to happen. Grieving process and all.

I can post, research, think, know WHATEVER I want about psychology and human behavior, but my logical, rational self and my emotional self just aren't going to sync up.

I know, to an absolute, why FWW tacked that W on her W... er what?

Anyway - knowing that more than anything, it was about her lack of boundaries, does not make it hurt any less. It does not make it any less of a betrayal.

However, knowing these things, and having been able to dissect that, and discuss that - and both FWW and I having been emotionally honest with each other throughout this process - has given my rational logical self a to use against my emotional self when he gets a little too loud.


I actually [b]do[/i] agree with this thread. A place for everything, and a 2x4 to put it in it's place!

Or, a pat on the back when it's a good direction.

I actually did do a little Plan FU on my hubby way back when he was in the mood to avoid talking about or working on the fallout from his affair.

His lovely idea was that if we just didn't talk about it, he could "move on" and that I should figure out a way to compartmentalize it and accept that he would be a good boy.


I very IMpolitely informed him that if he did not start doing his work, that the facts showed I was likely to leave at the six-month mark.

And we were at the six-month mark. I was sick of his trickle truth and game playing about how I had to ask questions, and his little avoidance tactics - which were his attempt to avoid having to talk about ANYTHING that made him

"feel bad".


I pretty much told him I was through with his approach, and he would get on this bus or we were done.


Odd. He chose to get his bus pass in advance, and has been on the correct route since then.


I guess for some folks, all they really need is a Plan FU.

I do not recommend it, tho. It took a huge fight, hours of talking, and lots of making up work after that.


Vent here. Much safer.

Wow! So he got on the bus? Did you enjoy it?

You got that right.

I think you should just sit those 2 down and make them get along.

I'm right there with you, I think it is just normal human nature. No one is perfect. I also believe we learn more about ourselves as life goes on. I will continue to grow and learn until the day I leave this earth. That is a good thing. If I thought I knew it all, that would be a bad thing! I also try to avoid no-it-all's for this reason. If someone thinks they have nothing to learn, they have learned nothing.

I avoid know-it-all's as well.

I myself am a know-a-lot-of-nothing. Whatever I know, or whatever I find out, can always be proven wrong - or, there are always exceptions.

I really, really need to find this particular math equation. It was the best description as to why absolute thinking fails. The basic of it, is that the calculation is true to almost 4 million. In other words, the equation is always right until you get around 3,977,000 or so, and then the equation is no longer true.

What?

Well, even if it takes almost 4 million times to become untrue, the fact that it isn't when you reach that line, means that it absolutely is not "always true."

Nobody always or never anything.

So yeah, ultimately he got on the bus!


Except, he had prostate cancer surgery right after d-day....so that ticket wasn't even validated for about a year.

My dad always says that the idea of 2+2=4 is stupid. He is a mathematician, and he has this logic about any number.

He says that you can only say this if you have two actual things, and add them to two more actual things of the same class. Then you have four things.

Otherwise, numbers are inexact. Is it really "2", or "2.00000001" and the calculator or human just rounded? Then it isn't "2" at all, is it. And how do you KNOW, unless it is two actual SOMETHINGS.


And those two things are perfectly intact.....



He drove us crazy with his stuff.

I guess you could apply this to affairs:

One actual PA, one near PA, one EA, and one online chatting/flirting session......

equals

Four affairs.


Of greater or lesser......value?


Sheesh

SB

Pretty much.

I've rolled that around... bad habit, I know... but I have.

Would I be as angry if it was a "soulmate" situation, instead of dirty teenage boinking?

If it was only once?

Would I have stayed if I had to fight?

Don't know, don't wanna know. I have my situation, and I can't really project that anywhere else - not just because it is it's own thing, but how I feel about it may not be the same as someone else would.

I think the math instructor at the CC here would take that a step further for you;

2+2=4... however, if it's an apple and an orange + a pear and a grapefruit, you may have four fruits, but they are all different.

btw- what is this smiley doing?



Is it stabbed in the back? Is it's hair on fire? what is the purple thing? a pillow?

drama queen!

I think your dad and I could have quite the conversations! This sounds like something I would say.

My mom would say "the sky is blue" just to point out that I'm arguing. When technically, when you get right down to it, the sky is NOT really blue........

heh heh... I hope he is fine now and rides the bus on a regular basis.

So if it is an apple, orange, pear or grapefruit they are all fruits?

I don't think venting here is bad. I feel very strongly that getting my frustrations out on paper, on a thread, WHEREVER helped me purge some of the angst and heartache that I couldn't seem to get out of my soul. It helped me to have others put some of that in perspective and help me deal with it differently/better.

or just so I knew I was not alone.

You are not alone.

and it is okay to be mad.

My kids do this all the time. One little thing that drove me nuts was when I would say "It's 8PM time for bed." Then I would get the "no it isn't, it is 7:59." Then there was the endless conversation about the sky. "What if there were no clouds. What if it doesn't rain. What will happen to the plants etc. " This was a conversation with my then 4 year old that went on for days. Then she hit me with "what if there was nothing in the sky?" I said "then it wouldn't rain and the sun wouldn't shine." She said "NO MOM I mean NOTHING in the sky." Now these are the conversations at 4, you can imagine what she is asking about now.