I'm on my 3rd day of struggling over a silly little squabble my partner and I had. It started when she was in the bathroom, and I came in and handed her some batteries and told her that they go in the charger. The next morning, when they were laying on the counter next to the charger, I got upset. She got angry with me and told me that I didn't ask her to put them in the charger. I agreed that I didn't ask, and told her I'd work on that. She said she didn't do anything wrong and left PISSED!
I tried to have an intentional dialogue with her later, and it went downhill fast. First, she delayed and delayed and delayed the dialogue, until she was in bed and had already taken "bedicine." When we finally had our dialogue, I really worked at owning my shit, and my perception is that she really worked at protecting herself. Needless to say, it didn't go well.
Today, I'm still struggling. It's really not the batteries I'm struggling with. It's the fact that my need to process through feelings together and come out on the other side together is colliding with her need to avoid conflict and to build her wall of self-protection when she thinks she's being attacked.
We have this same struggle often, when I want to process through something and she doesn't. She says I'm trying to control her, and in a way I have to own that I am. I want her behavior to be different, and I can't make that happen. Maybe I need to figure out a way to resolve my feelings without her, but that makes me sad. A friend in the fellowship reminded me that hadn't I just worked through a really, really, hard lesson in letting go? Did I really need God to provide more growth opportunities in that area? I was able to get clear that I need to let my partner know that I'm really struggling, not with the batteries, but with the dance we do when there's conflict between us. I need to speak my piece, and then I need to let go of the outcome. Or, God can certainly give me some more opportunities to practice that letting go thing.
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Oh, I hate this particular conflict. Mr. J and I struggled for SO LONG with it and it was ready to tear us apart before we figured out a way around it. In our relationship, he goes into his 'cave' where he's all reticent and [seemingly]sullen and I get all psycho-analytic about why he doesn't want to talk and it gets very bad, very fast. I encountered similar accusations of trying to change him and control and force him to talk when he was not prepared to, etc.
Here's how we resolved our communication problem: I would tell him that I needed to say a few things about a situation, and would he please let me know when he was comfortable listening and/or talking about it?
This allowed him to "prepare" in a way, sort of get used to the idea that what I had to say might sound accusatory or attacky; for him, it gave him that remove from the situation so he could look at it objectively after the fact, rather than be right in the middle of the situation during the time of the incident. For my part, I had to be extra careful to use "I" statements very specifically until he got used to the way I communicate.
It took awhile for us to really get this down, and we still very occasionally have frustration with each other until we figure out that we need to back off and do some mental regrouping before we can come together and discuss an issue.
Hugs to you, r.
Sweetie, I wish this wasn't so hard.
Sam and I have struggled with this as well, and I've written about how framing it as an introvert/extrovert thing has helped me back off a bit. What you've written about your fear of abandonment has also helped me.
I do need to work out stuff without him sometimes, and that does make me sad. I'd rather do the work with him, but he can't - at least not every time, and not always at the time I would choose. I'm sad about it, but not sad enough to leave him, so I accept it - and I'm growing closer to really accepting it. But it hurts like hell, still, at least some of the time, and it leaves me feeling unsupported, or at least not as supported as I'd like to feel.
Big hugs. This is such hard stuff.
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