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Well it certainly results in the whole thread making more sense to me (both in your responses and those of others).

With your tendency toward binary thinking, I can now see why this would be such a struggle for you. Empathy tends to not be something you turn off and on…so it explains why your interpretations of her reactions seemingly have to be either/or.

And you are right about my value on authenticity. It’s so strong that it may have blinded me to something you have been saying all along.

I write about this all the time and I’m sure drives other posters crazy but this is what I know. My job made me very aware of this. Your wife is stuck in childhood. Something prevented her from maturing emotionally. Every single time anything negative shows up in her life she reacts to it very much as a child would. Her emotional age might be 3 or 10 or 15 but if you look at her behavior overall during your whole marriage you will see that you were dealing with an emotional child. Sex between mature adults is bonding. Sex with a mature adult and an emotional child means expectations that cannot be met. Sex with her "boyfriend" was childish fun. I don’t know if she will or can grow up but her responses to you sound very immature. Even if you ask questions in a kind way she reverts immediately to that child inside. That is who runs her life.

Is she able to get past the child to respond to you as an adult during sex? Is she irritable immediately afterwards or is she somehow sabotaging it during? Pay attention. If you can manage take yourself out of interactions with her become an observer. What I read here is that you two have a relationship that never got off the ground because she could not deal with adult expectations from you so she "took her toys and left".

Fair enough, but it didn’t read as a good update.

You said she understood a bit more when you explained her reaction.

She will either start to put that bad reaction with her last one and start adding things up or not.

Members here are correct in that you wife will have to do the work, and a whole bunch of it too. However, in my case it did help my wife for me to point out the changes I needed. I never signed up to be a wife coach. But, I wanted her out of the shame spiral, I needed to help her back out of the hole she dug.

If your wife is barely finished with the rationalizations she used to back her shitty choices, remorse is still a bit down the road. The connection she broke, as mentioned before (as you’re living it) is going to stay that way until she sees a path back.

In that sense, maybe this wasn’t a lost day.

Once my wife understood the information about the A was owed to me (that time stolen from my M needed a full accounting), she answered all future questions as open, honest and as brutal as I needed. I wanted the answers, not to add to my pain, but to KNOW she was BRAVE enough to tell me the horror show. The beginning of earning trust.

Also, in retelling the horror show, the fantasy bubble evaporated. She realized how shallow it all was.

That step was 3-6 months.

Breaking the defensive/blame shift reflex.

That step was TWO years.

Remorse kicks in when a WS finally understands, there is never a defense for those choices. We all can be resentful, not all of us cheat. It’s a cold, calculated series of choices to cheat.

Year seven, my wife still hasn’t forgiven herself, but the shame is a shadow of what it used to be. Shame slows down and stops a lot of WS from progress.

Best to you and yours going forward.

I will always understand a father trying to keep his family together, even through this unique Hell.

OldWouds, thank you again for the wonderfully insightful post.

I didn't consider it a "lost day" and I wasn't all that hurt for it to be a distraction to where I'm trying to go. She's going to start digging into her inward thinking on Tuesday in IC and I'm hopeful she can make some progress.

laugh laugh laugh And good god, DrS, you are literally more literal than I could have imagined. rolleyes

That was a bit too literal perhaps, but I think I missed the point you were making. The word "victim" simply has more impact to me in the pairing than "scared."

Well it certainly results in the whole thread making more sense to me (both in your responses and those of others).

With your tendency toward binary thinking, I can now see why this would be such a struggle for you. Empathy tends to not be something you turn off and on…so it explains why your interpretations of her reactions seemingly have to be either/or.

And you are right about my value on authenticity. It’s so strong that it may have blinded me to something you have been saying all along.

Well, I'll note that even though you are striving toward something that isn't my priority, I found reading your insight on authenticity to be very informative. I think it's probably too much to act on all at once though--and I assume that's doubly true for my WW. I keep trying to get things back on a path--things go wrong when there's confusion and we're jumping around in conversations between entirely different goals.

[This message edited by Drstrangelove at 5:24 PM, Sunday, August 28th]

I write about this all the time and I’m sure drives other posters crazy but this is what I know. My job made me very aware of this. Your wife is stuck in childhood. Something prevented her from maturing emotionally. Every single time anything negative shows up in her life she reacts to it very much as a child would. Her emotional age might be 3 or 10 or 15 but if you look at her behavior overall during your whole marriage you will see that you were dealing with an emotional child. Sex between mature adults is bonding. Sex with a mature adult and an emotional child means expectations that cannot be met. Sex with her "boyfriend" was childish fun. I don’t know if she will or can grow up but her responses to you sound very immature. Even if you ask questions in a kind way she reverts immediately to that child inside. That is who runs her life.

Is she able to get past the child to respond to you as an adult during sex? Is she irritable immediately afterwards or is she somehow sabotaging it during? Pay attention. If you can manage take yourself out of interactions with her become an observer. What I read here is that you two have a relationship that never got off the ground because she could not deal with adult expectations from you so she "took her toys and left".

I agree with you. Our MC has gone back to the idea that she's been scared of her father since childhood and that's the cause of her emotional immaturity. We never dig too deeply into it as it's an MC session. I don't get the sense she's digging too much on that in IC yet, but it needs to all come to the surface eventually.

I don't find her irritable after sex, though she probably has an emotional lingering that I often don't--for me, after sex, I'm back to normal immediately. What do you mean by her responding as an adult during sex?

** Posting as a member **

Take the below as observations, not criticisms. We are human beings, imperfect, and unable to refuse being influenced by others. We do our best to make sense of life, and it's easy to draw invalid conclusions.

It's much harder to clear out invalid conclusions than to take them in, of course, and we can't rid ourselves entirely of invalid conclusions. We can, however, go step by step to get a more accurate view of life.

*****

Sisoon, you've written a variety of this post several times. I still don't understand it. I'm open to the idea that I'm an idiot on this topic.

It's a matter of how you frame the problem, I think.

In a sense, the stay/go after betrayal decision is irrelevant. That's my opinion and not an established fact, of course, but if you look at the SIers who are happy and the SIers who are years out and not still tied up in the old relationship, I think you'll see people who gave up trying to control others and trying to control their outcomes.

You and your W together created your relationship. She blew it up with her A. You've realized you wanted something different sexually all along. So you want to change the relationship into one that has more of what you want and a lot less of what you don't want.

From what you've written, I agree with cooley: your W does show a lot of child-like behavior. I'm not at all surprised, because you show a lot of parent-like behavior. Parent-like behavior with a partner just doesn't work well, IMO. At least it doesn't work as well in bringing out the best in both partners - the parent necessarily limits the child's freedom of action. That could prevent bad behavior, but it also prevents the person in the child role from fully using their own strengths.

The parent-child dynamic is something you have accepted. If you want to build a great relationship, you need to change yourself. You need to stop being the parent. You need to be authentic yourself.

You write of your W's fuck-ups. If you give up the parent role, you have to accept them - your own fuck-ups, too. You'll have to learn new behaviors to get out of the parent role, and you're bound to make mistakes in the learning process. Most mistakes just raise issues that can be resolved. We all hurt each other from time to time. We often repair the damage.

Becoming a good partner is on you, just as it's on your W to make herself a good partner. You have to break down your resistance to being an equal. You have to deal with your feelings about giving up trying to control the outcome. It's very difficult work, but it is very much worth the effort.

Changing the rules of the relationship is risky - your W may like the current rules and refuse to live under the new ones, which seem to place more responsibility on her. If you've become authentic, you can deal with that.

*****

Consider your response to being rejected for the girl you had a crush on. The rejection was excruciating. But what led you to seduce her friends? How did that assuage the pain of rejection by the girl you wanted?

If fucking your desired partner's friends built your confidence, note that you've based your confidence on how you think others viewed you. You've based your sense of self-worth on external validation.

*****

I suspect that your W's A removed the external validation she gave you.

It does that for all of us. The thing is: the people who heal somehow figure out that it is dependence on external validation that is their problem. They worked to discover their own self-worth. Don't get me wrong - external validation is nice to have, but there's a giant difference between liking it and needing it.

*****

Ending your parenthood in your relationship with your W is very much tied up with ending a need for external validation, which is very much tied up with finding your own self-worth, which is very much tied up with staying out of Drama Triangles, which is very much tied up with ending your co-dependence, etc. etc., etc.

The fact that this is - or still may be - opaque to you says to me, based on the way you've presented yourself and your W, that this your best bet for healing lies in working on your inability to comprehend what so many of us have been telling you about focusing on yourself.

*****

None of the above removes any blame from your W. She cheated. She lied. She attacked you behind your back.

If cooley's observation is accurate (as I believe it is), she did so as a way of rebelling as a child would, and she did so consciously. Her A is on her, not on you. You might have willingly taken on the parent role in your relationship, but she willingly took on the child role.

But nothing she does to fix her shit changes the fact that you are responsible for your own. We are all responsible for our own shit, even if we accepted it from others.

*****

I am always cognizant of the fact that we know each other only by posts on an anonymous Internet forum. We can't say everything relevant about ourselves, so everything we read on the 'net has to be considered critically. IOW, although I think my comments are pertinent based on what has been written here, there's a whole lot more that I don't know than I do know, and I could be flat out wrong in any post I've written, even the ones I've written about myself.

But questioning one's self is often is enlightening, and I urge you to question yourself, Drs more than you question your W....

[This message edited by SI Staff at 6:54 PM, Sunday, August 28th]

In my mind authenticity is the goal. Leading from this place is then what (hopefully) manifests the behaviors you want to see. What you want to see - remorse, empathy - should be a by-product of authenticity…otherwise those things are pseudo and usually rooted in manipulation and self-protective coping skills.

There tends to be two challenges in reaching authenticity - either you have no idea who you actually are…or experience has demonstrated that it’s not safe to be authentic. That’s not necessarily an either/or as it’s often the one (not feeling safe) that results in the subsequent other (having no clue). This is why I pointed out the distinction with "scared" and "victim".

The other piece that I dare to point out…inauthenticity in an intimate relationship is usually intolerable to a partner that IS operating from a place of authenticity. Water seeks its own level. This is why it’s important to clean up your side of the street. It allows space for the other to do the same…or it prepares you to move on if that’s not achieved. (And moving on entails a lot more than just your address or who sleeps in your bed - at least it does once you really get it).

Sisoon and Truth, thank you for those posts

I think my authenticity is perhaps hidden by my parent—something I’m unsure how to untangle.

Let me give you an example that we used in MC at the start.

My wife complained I’m too critical at times and we discussed an instance of her buying strawberries. She came home with a basket of them, forgetting that she had just bought a basket of them a couple of days earlier that hadn’t been touched.

Events like that are common (she is not thoughtful in her actions), so the correction I implemented years ago was to be less critical about it. In the past I might yell for a minute about how she’s wasting money and not paying attention when shopping. In the strawberry instance, I didn’t—instead I pointed out to her that we had them.

She felt bad as a result of me pointing it out. I felt inauthentic for not admonishing her for wasting money.

The MC’s suggestion was that I could have instead chosen to suggest using the fruit in a sex session, but that didn’t really provide me any clarity. The issue was unresolved.

As best I can tell, I’m leaning on my parent to punish her for the mistake and she’s leaning on her child to feel ashamed of letting the parent down and potentially lashing out.

So even with my corrective behavior: calmly pointing it out instead of yelling—we didn’t improve anything as my wife still was left feeling badly.

Perhaps a dumb question, but what should I do in that situation? I could force myself to pretend it doesn’t bother me, but that seems inauthentic. Yet what feels authentic is my parent and not my real self.

Edit: In thinking about this more, I always think of my wife as a child and she always thinks of me as a parent. My reactions to her are parental when I'd have entirely different reactions to another adult. We've been in those roles forever. How the hell do I change that?

My mind is blown--I feel like we've danced around this issue for months, but it just hit me in between the eyes.

[This message edited by Drstrangelove at 8:31 PM, Sunday, August 28th]

Wow, DrS…I’m a little blown away with your last post - in a good way. THIS is the work we are talking about.

Yet what feels authentic is my parent and not my real self.

I’m not surprised by this - and you are right, it does create a conundrum and it’s easy to get lost in. It’s partly why it’s so hard to untangle who you are authentically (as I indicated above). If our experiences have not made it safe to be authentic, then we really don’t know who we are.

If we were to suppose that you are not this critical parent authentically, then who would this critical parent be? Step out of that role and become the little boy you once were if it’s not readily apparent.

(Understand too as you do that, there’s a world of difference between intellectually understanding and actually FEELING what it was like to be there. This is why it’s a process and why it’s called "work". The intellectual understanding is often the largest roadblock.)

I’m not surprised by this - and you are right, it does create a conundrum and it’s easy to get lost in. It’s partly why it’s so hard to untangle who you are authentically (as I indicated above). If our experiences have not made it safe to be authentic, then we really don’t know who we are.

If we were to suppose that you are not this critical parent authentically, then who would this critical parent be? Step out of that role and become the little boy you once were if it’s not readily apparent.

(Understand too as you do that, there’s a world of difference between intellectually understanding and actually FEELING what it was like to be there. This is why it’s a process and why it’s called "work". The intellectual understanding is often the largest roadblock.)

Well, I guess the easy answer is that I see my father and his criticisms when I was a child. But I suppose I don't see the criticisms as a net negative.

Using the strawberries, there's a frustration for me. My wife will just throw things in her shopping cart with no regard to cost or value. She's frivolous with our money. I suppose deeper than that is the issue that it only *really* upsets me if they go to waste. If she sat down and ate all the strawberries, I'd be fine. But she wouldn't do that--she'd happily feed a handful to the kids and throw the others away.

And that actually connects to something else.

Growing up, both my father and my grandmother (on mother's side)--who each ran their respective houses kitchens and did the grocery shopping--were always big on not wasting food. They'd force themselves to eat more than they want and always save everything for leftovers (in my grandmother's defense, she grew up during the Great Depression).

I've adopted that--I'd even say I take it as a point of pride. I'll eat more than I want on occasion to ensure less food is thrown away.

My wife is the polar opposite--as is her family. They will all eat the precise portion they want and have zero guilt in not clearing their plates or saving leftovers. They'll happily dump out whatever is not eaten. My wife thinks my behavior is bizarre. Interestingly, so does my sister, who grew up in the same environment.

Anyway, I share that to connect back to the strawberries. I feel like they're a double hit--both wasting money and wasting food. I feel like I was programmed as a child, by my father and grandmother, to be repulsed by those actions. I recall driving around with my grandmother as a child to five different grocery stores all so she could save 10 cents on nectarines--she probably spent 10x that in gas lol.

I'm not sure if any other this is actionable, but I'm writing it all out anyway.

Well, I guess the easy answer is that I see my father and his criticisms when I was a child. But I suppose I don't see the criticisms as a net negative.

The latter part of that is the adult perspective/interpretation. Keep digging deeper. **Try to leave judgement out if it if you can.** (And this is why the intellectual brain sets up roadblocks…it thinks it’s protecting you from those FEELINGS.)

And you really need to be doing this with your IC. S/He will be in a better position to help you get to that deeper part. SI certainly has its merit but there’s limitations because we are in a limited setting. It’s great to raise awareness…but has limitations within doing the actual work.

Edit: In thinking about this more, I always think of my wife as a child and she always thinks of me as a parent. My reactions to her are parental when I'd have entirely different reactions to another adult. We've been in those roles forever. How the hell do I change that?

When you had explained that your wife rarely, if ever "wins" a conflict -- it was a complete deja vu for me and what my world used to be.

My family was a loud, lots of Irish ancestry, wear our feelings on our sleeve, everyone on the planet always knew my mood, my family loved to argue about anything and everything. Verbal and physical fights were a part of my family's way of working through stuff big and small. My wife came from a family (father alcoholic) that NEVER talked about anything, ever. Resentments and stuffed down feelings were the standard operating procedure. To this day, I would fall over if anyone in her family talked about anything deeper than the current temperature outside.

This set up the parent/child dynamic for my M.

My wouldn't couldn't or wouldn't feel like she could articulate her feelings, and of course, how could she, based on her environment?

Now, none her FOO shit excuses any of her BAD choices, but I completely understand our unhealthy M....now.

How we extracted ourselves from it was pretty simple. One we illuminated the issue, it all made sense.

She realized she initially dated me to anger her parents, a rebellion, in a big way. I was a couple years older and in the US Marine Corps at the time and I seemed like the bad boy in their quiet little corner of the world.

Long story short, I reminded her of that rebellion against her parents based on huge piles of unspoken resentments. And then I asked her again how her normally iron clad boundaries evaporated after meeting the AP. Unresolved anger and resentments of shit she flat out NEVER told me. I had no shot. It wasn't about me.

A huge light when on, and I told her I was all done being the parent. She was more than ready to not be the kid, too.

That meant empowering my spouse -- the same one who ripped my heart out of my chest and waffle stomped it.

High risk, high reward, as it turned out.

Most BS never get to that point, to feel safe enough to be vulnerable enough to see their spouse as a potentially GOOD partner again.

For me, I had to try.

I'm not suggesting you do the same, only explaining how we broke the cycle.

It was easy for me to stop parenting first. It meant for some tough days, because it took her longer to learn to share her thoughts in a meaningful way.

It wasn't overnight, it took some reminders (i.e., "I'm not your parent, YOU tell me or YOU decide. Or you KNOW the answer, dig a bit more. Tempted to say, "Use your words." But I held on to that one).

[This message edited by Oldwounds at 10:11 PM, Sunday, August 28th]

Perhaps a dumb question, but what should I do in that situation? I could force myself to pretend it doesn’t bother me, but that seems inauthentic. Yet what feels authentic is my parent and not my real self.

Does her actions merit the level of frustration that you feel? Do a few wasted strawberries and dollars merit admonishing her? Or are the strawberries indicative of a bigger issue that you're attempting to control because you don't like it? Sounds like the latter.

Here's a solution - it's not really about the strawberries. It's about money and food waste. Why not work with her to create a food budget so that there is less money waste? Why not download a fridge app so that she can check it at the store and remember what is already in the fridge? If you have plants, you can get a compost tumbler and turn those bad strawberries into something productive. You know what is never productive? Admonishing her for a genuine mistake instead of working with her to find a solution. Taking your relationship from parent/child to Team vs The Problem is what breaks you out of it.

When you had explained that your wife rarely, if ever "wins" a conflict -- it was a complete deja vu for me and what my world used to be.

My family was a loud, lots of Irish ancestry, wear our feelings on our sleeve, everyone on the planet always knew my mood, my family loved to argue about anything and everything. Verbal and physical fights were a part of my family's way of working through stuff big and small. My wife came from a family (father alcoholic) that NEVER talked about anything, ever. Resentments and stuffed down feelings were the standard operating procedure. To this day, I would fall over if anyone in her family talked about anything deeper than the current temperature outside.

This set up the parent/child dynamic for my M.

My wouldn't couldn't or wouldn't feel like she could articulate her feelings, and of course, how could she, based on her environment?

Now, none her FOO shit excuses any of her BAD choices, but I completely understand our unhealthy M....now.

How we extracted ourselves from it was pretty simple. One we illuminated the issue, it all made sense.

She realized she initially dated me to anger her parents, a rebellion, in a big way. I was a couple years older and in the US Marine Corps at the time and I seemed like the bad boy in their quiet little corner of the world.

Long story short, I reminded her of that rebellion against her parents based on huge piles of unspoken resentments. And then I asked her again how her normally iron clad boundaries evaporated after meeting the AP. Unresolved anger and resentments of shit she flat out NEVER told me. I had no shot. It wasn't about me.

A huge light when on, and I told her I was all done being the parent. She was more than ready to not be the kid, too.

That meant empowering my spouse -- the same one who ripped my heart out of my chest and waffle stomped it.

High risk, high reward, as it turned out.

Most BS never get to that point, to feel safe enough to be vulnerable enough to see their spouse as a potentially GOOD partner again.

For me, I had to try.

I'm not suggesting you do the same, only explaining how we broke the cycle.

It was easy for me to stop parenting first. It meant for some tough days, because it took her longer to learn to share her thoughts in a meaningful way.

It wasn't overnight, it took some reminders (i.e., "I'm not your parent, YOU tell me or YOU decide. Or you KNOW the answer, dig a bit more. Tempted to say, "Use your words." But I held on to that one).

I feel this now more than ever. It's pulling teeth though. She just doesn't know how to openly communicate and if I pressure her, I'm not allowing her to choose to do it. So instead I give her space, but her resolution is often to sleep on her concerns and "feel better in the morning."

We had a brief affair-related conversation today, so she left it feeling sad. She's been quiet all evening and I can tell she's very bothered and upset. If I ask her to share how she's feeling, she'll say: "I'm just so sad I hurt you like this" or "I'm so ashamed of my behavior" (and yes, I know, still inward and still shame)--but she won't go deeper and she won't share more. So I leave her be. Then tomorrow she'll wake up happy and chipper and be loving and supportive.

This might be a good topic for MC.

And to be clear, I'd like to be done being the parent; it's just going to be a bit of a learning curve to ignore my instincts. I do feel like I'm recognizing them now all over the place.

Does her actions merit the level of frustration that you feel? Do a few wasted strawberries and dollars merit admonishing her? Or are the strawberries indicative of a bigger issue that you're attempting to control because you don't like it? Sounds like the latter.

Here's a solution - it's not really about the strawberries. It's about money and food waste. Why not work with her to create a food budget so that there is less money waste? Why not download a fridge app so that she can check it at the store and remember what is already in the fridge? If you have plants, you can get a compost tumbler and turn those bad strawberries into something productive. You know what is never productive? Admonishing her for a genuine mistake instead of working with her to find a solution. Taking your relationship from parent/child to Team vs The Problem is what breaks you out of it.

I've tried every budget mechanism out there--no dice. She would have to care about it to make the change, and she doesn't.

In my mind, I feel like if I inform her about all the strawberries, it might click in her head that she should be more conscientious. It never happens though. So to you point, it's not worth even pointing out probably--I should pick my battles.

Communication is everything. Body language is everything. Tone of voice is everything. Frowns, raised eyebrows, smirks are all ways of communicating.
The strawberries was just another way that the child in her forgot what was in the refrigerator because after all she’s the child. You could have said, "This is the other container so what can we do to eat them all?" At that point she probably would have said oh my gosh we already have some. And you could have said yep so let’s make a strawberry pie or some kind of cake. In other words you become a team doing something to make sure you don’t waste those strawberries but you do not act as the father and tell her she did something wrong. It’s gonna take a Monumental effort on your part to overcome the parent that you have become over the years. My husband cannot quite get past that and I have to remind him all the time that he does not need to say no to every suggestion I make. He swears he doesn’t but I know he does because I am the recipient. I’m not childish so I don’t resent it I just call it to his attention and then he sort of meanders around the subject for a minute and then says OK let’s talk about it. So we do. Sometimes what I suggest makes good sense and sometimes it doesn’t and that’s the end of it. I don’t have issues from my childhood and that makes the difference.
You need to practice while you are alone. Repeating things several times will help. It is like muscle memory. It takes repetition but it can help.
Please don’t use silence as a weapon. That’s cruel.

Please don’t use silence as a weapon. That’s cruel.

What do you mean by this? I’m not being silent with her now at all. I’m checking in with her, but not pushing conversation.

And I appreciate the note. I plan to correct my parent framing.

I did not think you were using silence I just know it is a powerful weapon. I think you are doing a good job trying to maneuver a tricky terrain. I have been to a ton of seminars on communication. My job requires it.

My husband has some mild issues from childhood which make him prickly sometimes. He can misunderstand a remark I have made and it can take a few minutes for him to realize the remark had no underlying message so I get why monitoring what you say gets old. I don’t do that anymore. I tell him I am pretty good in letting him know what I think without having to use subtle language. I think using straight forward speech is best but then I remember I am a Southerner and we all talk in roundabout ways. Life just keeps all of us tap dancing through life.

In my mind, I feel like if I inform her about all the strawberries, it might click in her head that she should be more conscientious. It never happens though. So to you point, it's not worth even pointing out probably--I should pick my battles.

Yes. You should pick your battles. It's not worth pointing out.

I just bought three boxes of pasta because they were buy 2 get 1 free. I'd forgotten that I did that exact thing three days ago, so now I have 6 boxes of pasta. I do this sort of thing regularly enough to say that it's just for whatever reason how I'm wired. I'm not going to remember each item I purchased at the grocery store unless I only shop via instacart and can get up and go to the pantry to look and make sure I haven't already taken advantage of a deal. At this point I just make a blonde joke about myself and feel bemused when I realize I've done it. Obviously it's not intentional because I do care about money. It's all my own money. I cannot fix this one even when I'm the only one it affects. Anyone who has ever lived with me has had to just accept that this is one of my quirks. Anyone who ever lives with me is either going to drive themselves and me utterly insane about that particular quirk or just get over it and write it off as the price of living with me. I have lots of good qualities, but this isn't one of them.

Things like this aren't the things that matter. Honesty, maturity, loyalty, respect and the acceptance of one another's quirks are necessary for a happy marriage. You have lots of reasons to be irritated with your wife. Little things like this are minor and not worth caring about.

So I guess my question to you is: what outcome are you accusing me of forcing?

R, from the posts all the way to my last post, as all your posts will somehow circle to giving another chance, as you need to 'understand' more.

Then I read your responses since then, and looks like you have possibly identified a possible cause of the dynamics you have with your WW, the Parent/Child dynamic.

It makes a lot of sense. The Parent loves the Child, and wants to protect and develop/guide the Child. When the Child lashes out, the Parent 'takes it', as they are the 'grown up'. The Parent tries to understand the the whys of the Child's behaviour, so that the Parent can try and correct the Child's behaviour. 'Love is patient, Love is kind' kinda thing.

Perhaps I am missing out on the nuances/context, but the way I have been reading your posts is: Your WW hurts you, you get hurt for a little bit, then your inner Parent comes out and says 'the Child did not really mean it, and could not help themselves', so I won't enforce a punishment for them, because I don't want to scare the Child from confiding in me.

I am still worried that you are analysing so much, and may get caught in the forest/trees trap.

A common thing on couples who are trying to repair the damage, is to set aside time for discussions about the A, and not ad hoc discussion. Aside from setting aside the time, both parties can get into the proper frame of mind, so that the discussion can be held calmly, rather than perceived as an ambush.