p.s. is there any chance that you and your wife could get away for a weekend on your own, without kids?

If I can break that down into three areas that I have been angry about:
* Independent behavior: YES! This has almost completely stopped!
* Disrespectful judgments from Prisca: she has made some progress
* Engaging with me in UA time (meeting my emotional needs and letting me meet hers): this varies greatly from day to day. But this third issue is different from the others in that I can't demand that she do UA time. If I'm always acknowledging her right to decline to participate or to back out if she decides she feels differently at the time, then I'm going to have to learn how to not have an AO over the resentment.


Corpus Christi, actually. We took a roundabout way back home that brought us through Wharton, which is as close as we got to Galveston or Houston.

I don't know; the last time we were able to do that was the Marriage Builders weekend, a year ago. My parents haven't provided any support for that, ever. One of the reasons we moved to Prisca's hometown was in the hope that her family would sometimes help with the children, and they have done that somewhat, but I'm reluctant to ask too often lest we overload anyone.

For MB weekend my sister took one of our children and Prisca's mother and sisters took the rest, split up between them. It would be great to do something like that again.

I thought MelodyLane was offering to help!

It would also be helpful if she'd respect my requests to disengage from a conversation. She came to me later in our bedroom and I was basically cornered (though I could have gone out the bathroom) and didn't want to take "no" for an answer about discussing it.

Can your church help you out with this? How much does it cost to hire babysitters these days?

And yes, Sugarcane, I can offer my babysitting services! I will tie those little hellions up!!

I guess I am not clear on why you so often seem to want to disengage from a conversation. I can tell you that I found it VERY frustrating to want to discuss something and be told I had to stop the conversation.

What happens that makes you need to stop the discussion?

SmilingWoman, the usual reason I want to stop a discussion, when I feel that way, is love busters on Prisca's part (disrespectful judgments, and occasionally angry outbursts). Sometimes it is simply the fact that I am frustrated.

Here's a sentence from my anger management therapist: "Sometimes others feel that I have a choice between staying and having a calm discussion or leaving, when really the choice I have is between leaving or staying and blowing up." This is a temporary stage I am living in now until we can say that my anger is completely under control. Dr. Harley, my anger management therapist, my MB coach, and I all agree on the need for me to sometimes stop and withdraw from a conversation and calm down and come back to the conflict to try to resolve it later. I think Prisca agrees, too, but in practice she doesn't always agree to it in the heat of the moment.

My anger management therapist's top two rules for men when angry are:
1. SHUT UP
2. LEAVE (quietly, without expressing any anger or disrespect)

Dr. Harley himself says not to say or do anything when angry. If emotions are running high, it is necessary to cool down.

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi3350_guide.html

Wondering ....

Are there different rules for an angry woman?

My therapist specializes in men. I'm not sure what differences he'd make for women. I've seen his book adapted for an online course that can apparently be taken by either men or women, but I haven't taken the course.

SmilingWoman, the goal is not to leave Prisca stuck in a situation where she can't get a conflict resolved. The goal is not to subject Prisca to angry outbursts and to keep me from engaging in behavior that reinforces the habit of angry outbursts.

Most often it is actually me who wants to resolve a conflict and Prisca who doesn't want to talk about it, or me who wants to resolve a conflict but is putting it on hold. I agree it's very frustrating to want to discuss something and for your spouse not to be enthusiastic about discussing it.

But I also feel like the policy of joint agreement should hold sway in every area of marriage, even conversation. If Prisca doesn't want to talk about something, I have to respect that and look for something else to talk about.

Of course if you need to leave the discussion and/or the room to avoid a AO of your own that is what you should do.

Hope you can find a way to control yourself internally soon.

Well, Prisca cancelled our scheduled trip to the gym tonight. I'm disappointed, but I haven't had an angry outburst.

I took four of the children to McDonald's and let them run around on the playground. I think they had fun.

Good job on not having an AO!!!

Markos, do you think she would be more willing to spend time with you if she had more breaks from the kids? I have to be honest and say that if I had that many kids I would be EXHAUSTED. I had 2 sons, 17 months apart and I thought I was going to lose my mind.

Prisca was quiet most of the day, from the very beginning, but didn't tell me why and insisted she was okay. She later complained she was lonely, but I don't know how to take away her loneliness when she doesn't want to talk to me. This has been my great struggle for years, and it's only gotten worse. We used to have such wonderful conversations during the day. I of course am lonely, too.

I don't know what happened. She seemed very happy last night. We drove an hour away to another city and had ice cream, the children fell asleep on the way back and we had great conversation which continued after we got home and put everybody to bed. But this morning she was withdrawn and didn't want to tell me why.

My MB coach renewed contact with me again today. We had a phone call and she asked several questions about the anger management program I'm in and discussed moving us to one of the emotional needs lessons if Prisca wants to. (We talked about it awhile back, and she did at the time.) We've been at this a year and haven't done any work on meeting emotional needs.

Do you have Kim or Sandy?

Kim.

Earlier this year Prisca told me I was nothing but a paycheck to her and that she wished I'd cheat on her so that she could divorce me.

Now after spending the day not talking to me and cancelling our UA time together, she's asking me about the budget because she wants to buy something.

I feel the same all over again, but I can't bring up the mistakes of the past, so I don't know what to say. I feel like time spent together is a lower priority than shopping.

It came out that she has negative feelings about this morning, even though she told me she was "okay." Now she is mad at me for saying I consider that dishonest.