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Moody blues and shit tests
maker
PEIMember Posts: 34
in Married Life
So today the wife is helping my in-laws on their house, my 5yo daughter is down the road having a playdate. Great I think, a Sunday with my little guy to do what we want basically. After going for a run this morning and coming back to the family already done eating breakfast (9:00am, some kind of record!) I take my son with me after doing some work around the house this morning for a drive to my Dad's cabin. We spend the afternoon there and she has a kid free day with her parents helping them build.
She's home at 5:30pm, I cook supper, go down the road to help a friend with their chickens, come back read my daughter stories and she tries to get our 14 month old son to sleep. It doesn't work, she comes downstairs and says "He wants to go to sleep with you, he told me" I laugh cause he can't talk and I think she is being cute. She goes to the kitchen and starts cleaning (unasked! another record!) and I start downloading the photos and video I took today of our field trip.
Wife is getting snippy. After our son gets into the dog food dish, she snaps "Why is the dog dish still on the floor." I get up and move it after getting my boys hands out of it. Wrong move there I know. After 20 minutes I take the boy upstairs to see if he will settle for me, no go, not happening. So I take him back downstairs, try to keep him occupied while wife is doing dishes. She starts sending really pissy vibes. I am staying cool and positive. I ask her about her plans for tomorrow, whether she needs the car, she responds defensively and with clipped tone. I ignore it.
She then starts talking to our 14 month old son who is getting a little more tired and cranky; "I know your tired honey, go put yourself to bed, take yourself upstairs, open the gate somehow and put yourself in your bed..."
I laugh and say; "are you trying to say something?"
She replies; "I already asked you to put him to bed." Sullen stare.
I reply; "I already tried, he wasn't going to go, I suppose I could have forced the issue and had him cry for an hour till he got exhausted and fell asleep. I decided that wasn't the best option." And go back to what I was doing. Our son is still wired but getting sleepier, running from the kitchen to me to his toys in a circuit. When I think he's tired out enough for me to put him to sleep I take him up and put him down.
Meanwhile wife decides to go upstairs and fold laundry in our room after more sullen looks. There she remains while I type this up. I am not sure what got up her ass and I am not sure I handled it right, I felt like telling her if she wants to sulk like a two year old I will treat her like one.
Thoughts?
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That isn't captain, that is p/a lazy.
In all seriousness, this is her taking out her frustrations on you. It doesn't matter what has her frustrated or what you did. She wanted to be bitchy so she was bitchy. There is nothing you could have done to avoid it. You could have been superhuman and cleaned the whole house in under a minute, hypnotized your children into sleep, and made her a four-course meal and it would not have mattered. Don't look for what you could have done better there, down that road lies madness.
What could have been done better is calling her out on it. As @Kheldar suggested, the way to handle this is to say something like:
"I don't know what you've chosen to be angry about, but whatever it is, its your choice. I'm not your punching bag."
And as to the subtlety of her communication styles, don't sweat trying to read her. She can ask for what she wants. The best way to deal with passive-aggressive people is to give them what they ask for and nothing more. If it keeps up try leading her to communicate:
"I'm guess in by the way you keep grumbling about X that you want me to do Y, but I am not sure. If there's something that I can do for you, I'd love to hear about it."
Making sure communication happens on your terms is a good Alpha measure.
Many women are used to dealing with other women who intuit what they need and give it to them before any verbal communication is used. Women really do have an intuition for this rooted in the way their Mirror Neuron System is configured - it isn't just an old wives' tale. Men instead are wired to sense hostility and threat in others - we aren't very good at anticipating what others need that way.
For many women they have this idea that perfect love means never having to ask thanks to these tendencies. But as long as a man is judged by those standards, he will always come up short. The only way to get around this is to make sure she doesn't expect that intuitiveness in the first place - to make sure she knows she is in a relationship with a Man, and she has to change what she expects.
All men are great men, most fail to see the greatness in themselves.
Power, Passion, Principle and Purpose: The Wild Man Project
My most popular articles: The Art of the Apology (also on video), The Basics of Assertiveness, The Art of Friendship
http://marriedmansexlife.com/2010/07/being-the-alpha-male-of-the-family-group/
The Secret to Why Your Wife Doesn't Initiate; Top Two Reasons Your Husband Doesn't Want Sex; Dominance-It's Not a Bad Word; Top 10 Ways to Increase Testosterone Naturally
This is an old piece I wrote here on the topic that may help.
If someone is suffering from an episode of Generalized Anxiety, their feelings are all over the place, and it is scaring them. They may be afraid that they are going crazy, or hat they are going to act on a dark thought or otherwise lose their shit. Any emotional stimulus gets magnified a thousandfold. Molehills become mountains, and a toddler who won't go to bed and needs to run around may as well be Godzilla attacking the house.
It probably explains the dish-washing. If she was in a mode of high anxiety she may well have been trying to get her distorted thoughts under control by doing something. It may have worked for her in the past, but distraction is not a consistently effective tool.
If this is a regular problem or might turn into one, look for some professional help. Anxiety disorders are curable in most cases.
All men are great men, most fail to see the greatness in themselves.
Power, Passion, Principle and Purpose: The Wild Man Project
My most popular articles: The Art of the Apology (also on video), The Basics of Assertiveness, The Art of Friendship
Baby purgatory is just a rough time. My theory is that the best you can hope for on the sex front when babies (the biggest vampires of them all!) are involved is "do no harm." It's probably not going to get better during this period, but it sure as hell can get worse. Don't be a pushover or a beta schlub; but be especially careful of the asshole alpha as well. I want to be cautious of the blue pill stuff; but when the babies are tiny, it really is a time when being tired can be something other than a hamster excuse or a case of misplaced priorities.
Also, pro-tip: "stupid baby" is comedy gold. Riffing on how babies do dumb stuff because they aren't very bright has been a great source of laughter in my family.