I have been married for a year and a half and been together as a couple for a total of 4 years. My wife and I have been able to manage through situations such as coming to resolution of household duties and finances. I must say that I am proud of our marriage, but lately I have been having second thoughts about the way we respond and react to each other.

From the time we met I knew my wife to be the kind of person that is headstrong and assertive. My character is more passive than aggressive and we even did a character profile on each other and I thought that our characters would complement each other. I am not lazy and I will work hard to support my household.

My issue and point is that I think I have ignored her sometimes abrasive attitude in the past and it is coming to haunt me. I am starting to feel as though everything that she says is harsh, and she has an attitude in her tone that she always denies. She has admitted to me when we first got involved that she has no relationship with her father and generally has a problem responding to male figures of authority.

Since we have been married she has displayed nothing but respect for me, lots of love, patience and forgiveness in my mistakes but it seems like whenever she wants something done her way she always gets it and I compromise. Simple words and discussions always turn into arguments nowadays and I always feel as if I am the evil one or the instigator. "Thats not what I meant, but that's how you took it" is what I commonly hear now. I don't know how to respond many times because if I say something it never comes out the right way, and whenever I take something too seriously I have "lost my sense of humor"

I don't know what to do

Just curious, what type of personality profiling did you do? What were the results?

You sound a bit like myself and my husband. I'm agressive and appear sure of myself. I very quickly evaluate, decide, and act. In the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator I'm an Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Judging (INTJ) type.

My husband is passive and compromises (most of the time). He can see so many possibilities and wants to choose the best. He is an Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Percieving (INTP) type.

He is creative. I am decisive.

We sometimes have problems communicating because we don't think the same way or focus on the same issues. There have even been times that we have been arguing the same side but didn't realize it. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Razz]" src="images/icons/tongue.gif" /> <img border="0" title="" alt="[Roll Eyes]" src="images/icons/rolleyes.gif" />

To combat the "say vs mean" problem we will often stop an arguement and figure out where/why the conversation went down hill. We explain what we thought was said and why. Then we clarify what we really meant. It seems to cut out the bad feelings while getting things resolved.

Don't beat yourself up. It just sounds like you both need to learn a new way to communicate with each other.

BTW You might get more responses on the Emotional Needs board. There is more traffic there.

yeah, we are cool. I almost divorced her tonight but she is a fighter. She is like you indeed.
We are going to counseling, but we both agreed that things had to change immediately. She is going to set an appointment tomorrow morning
I feel stupid.... thanks

i don't think you should feel stupid. As the other response said, sometimes because people communicate differently they fail to realize that they both have the same opinion. I think it is good to seek counseling because that person can help sort out the words and keep the conversation on track. As we all know some agruments lead to other unsolved arguments and it can get out of control very quickly. At this point as long as you both want to work on the situation you're FAR ahead of a lot of other people. Good luck. God bless you.

Congrats! Counseling is a good step.

It sounds like you both recognize that there is a problem and you both are willing to deal with it. That's really good news.

Something that works for us is: 1) NEVER deliberately saying something to hurt our spouse. 2) Remembering that our spouse is NOT trying to deliberately hurt us. 3) Being HONEST and OPEN with each other. 4) APPOLOGISING immediately when we accidentally hurt each other. 5) IDENTIFYING and FIXING communication problems as they occur.

There are plenty of resouces out there for improving communications. I get alot out of personality typing and this site. (Dispite my general dislike of 'relationship advice'.) My husband liked "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" and is starting to be interested in personality typing.

I'm sure you will find something that works for you. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" />

Best wishes.

Cool.. thanks for the support everyone!! I will post to let you know how things are going.