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Ernie78 Offline OP
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Originally Posted by mrEureka
It is insufficient to just walk away from unpleasant confrontations. You also have to avoid doing things that cause the confrontations.

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

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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.

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Ernie78 Offline OP
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Originally Posted by alis
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.

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?

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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?


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What to do with an Angry Husband

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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)".


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Ernie78 Offline OP
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Originally Posted by Prisca
If you must calm down first before answering your wife's question about the location of the remote, you have a serious anger problem.

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.

Originally Posted by Prisca
Again, are you in anger management?

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?


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Ernie78 Offline OP
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Originally Posted by kilted_thrower
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.

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".

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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?


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Quote
I didn't have an AO
You are in no position to judge that.



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Originally Posted by Ernie78
Originally Posted by Prisca
If you must calm down first before answering your wife's question about the location of the remote, you have a serious anger problem.

I wasn't angry at her.

I was upset with the kids

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.

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

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.

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

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.


If you are serious about saving your marriage, you can't get it all on this forum. You've got to listen to the Marriage Builders Radio show, every day. Install the app!

Married to my radiant trophy wife, Prisca, 19 years. Father of 8.
Attended Marriage Builders weekend in May 2010

If your wife is not on board with MB, some of my posts to other men might help you.
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Originally Posted by Prisca
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?

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


If you are serious about saving your marriage, you can't get it all on this forum. You've got to listen to the Marriage Builders Radio show, every day. Install the app!

Married to my radiant trophy wife, Prisca, 19 years. Father of 8.
Attended Marriage Builders weekend in May 2010

If your wife is not on board with MB, some of my posts to other men might help you.
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Originally Posted by Ernie78
Originally Posted by markos
The problem I'm seeing is that you were disrespectful and angry toward your wife about the remote - I'm not seeing you acknowledging that.

I left the room because I did not want to enter into an unpleasant discussion, and was not in the right mindset to discuss it calmly... It didn't come up for discussion later.

I did what y'all say to do - leave if it gets unpleasant, go somewhere else to calm down. I forgot completely about it afterward (many other things going on), and DW didn't mention it again. How did I go wrong?

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.


If you are serious about saving your marriage, you can't get it all on this forum. You've got to listen to the Marriage Builders Radio show, every day. Install the app!

Married to my radiant trophy wife, Prisca, 19 years. Father of 8.
Attended Marriage Builders weekend in May 2010

If your wife is not on board with MB, some of my posts to other men might help you.
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Originally Posted by BrainHurts
Have you seen this?
Four Guidelines for Successful Negotiation

Also, are you in an anger management program?
I guess my questions goes unanswered.


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Originally Posted by kilted_thrower
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)".

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.


If you are serious about saving your marriage, you can't get it all on this forum. You've got to listen to the Marriage Builders Radio show, every day. Install the app!

Married to my radiant trophy wife, Prisca, 19 years. Father of 8.
Attended Marriage Builders weekend in May 2010

If your wife is not on board with MB, some of my posts to other men might help you.
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Originally Posted by Ernie78
Originally Posted by MelodyLane
Here is what she told us: "Yesterday, my DH found the tv remote that had been misplaced. I asked him where he found it, and he told me he wouldn't tell me. No one had obviously put any effort in finding it so I didn't deserve to know. I told him I would really like to know, but again.... And still he refuses to tell me."

She asked a real simple question and was treated to the above lovebuster. Why?

It started as a simple question at first.
I was not calm about all the chaos its "been missing" had caused, so I did not want to talk about it just then - at that point. I most likely SHOULD have just said "I am really upset by the the remote often being misplaced, and I don't wish to discuss it at this moment". But, I did not say that. When she then began to demand to know where I had found it, that escalated the situation and I felt the wisest decision was to just leave and calm down before I said something I should not say.

Yes, I was upset - especially after having found it in a simple location.

No - I did not communicate to my wife that I was upset.

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.


"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.." Theodore Roosevelt

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Originally Posted by markos
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.

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

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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.


If you are serious about saving your marriage, you can't get it all on this forum. You've got to listen to the Marriage Builders Radio show, every day. Install the app!

Married to my radiant trophy wife, Prisca, 19 years. Father of 8.
Attended Marriage Builders weekend in May 2010

If your wife is not on board with MB, some of my posts to other men might help you.
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Originally Posted by BrainHurts
Also, are you in an anger management program?
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.

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Originally Posted by Ernie78
Quote
Originally Posted by BrainHurts
Also, are you in an anger management program?
I guess my questions goes unanswered.

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.

Last edited by markos; 02/19/14 02:06 PM.

If you are serious about saving your marriage, you can't get it all on this forum. You've got to listen to the Marriage Builders Radio show, every day. Install the app!

Married to my radiant trophy wife, Prisca, 19 years. Father of 8.
Attended Marriage Builders weekend in May 2010

If your wife is not on board with MB, some of my posts to other men might help you.
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Originally Posted by MelodyLane
What would have been so wrong with just saying "I found it on the couch?" (or wherever you found it)

Yes - that would have been best.

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

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