How do you react when your spouse has an angry response to you? My old habit used to be to raise my voice and ask him what is wrong with him. Which, by the way, I do not suggest, as it does not improve the situation, in my experience. My newer approach is to try and calmly ask what is wrong or ignore his response and wait until later to find out what is up.

Sometimes when this happens, it is brought on by something I did, which ultimately made him feel disrespected. This happened yesterday but I really didn’t think I was disrespecting him . . . I was just trying to get him to think through what he was saying . . . I merely asked him a question . . .

I like to think things through from different viewpoints; it helps me to think the best of people and thus not get offended. I also try to remember what I was doing or would do in similar situations to what I’m trying to grapple with at the moment. Because this is how I operate, I think others do or should too. The problem is that when I try to point these things out to Mike, he can feel that I am picking on him and things can escalate (have escalated in the past before I understood what was happening). Needless to say, picking on him would feel disrespectful.

I like to analyze situations so that I can learn from them. Mike and my marriage are important to me. I do not desire to harm Mike in any way yet when I do what is natural for me, it hurts him. Thus I have to learn how to how help him without hurting him, even if that means not saying what I’m thinking.

I’ve been working on the tone of my voice, as I mentioned in an earlier post and am getting better about keeping it low. My reactions are getting better but clearly, I can still improve.

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº