The ring

Time for another posting on the difficulties of communication within a relationship.

Having extremely negative emotions is understandable, we all do it, we are all so consumed by them now and again, that we even lose a little control. Its called being human.

What we don't expect is for our nearest and dearest, our loving partner, to carefully label this button and press it whenever they are angry, in order to guarantee an induced emotional state when they see fit.

This expectation is flawed.

I understand that my relationship was a disastrous one, and that many people do not have the same problems that I had, nor will they ever get them, but bear with me here, I'm offloading as much as I am educating, yes I'm biased, but I want a permanent record of my "recovery".

To give an example, before I married my ex-wife, we were engaged for a number of years, during this time, she had an interesting habit that developed over the first year of the engagement. This behaviour developed as a direct result of my reactions when the first outburst occurred.

What is the behaviour you are talking about...

My ex had the habit of falling out with me about something or other and refusing to sleep in the same bed, she would then wait until I was soundly asleep, storm in, switch on the light, rant and rave at me for one or two minutes while I was waking up, and then in a final flourish would throw her engagement ring across the room, or more occasionally at me.

Just to so we are on the same page, here is what's wrong with this behaviour:

1. Waiting until your partner is soundly asleep, then getting your say while your partner has not even woken up then flouncing off. Your partner can form no memories other than confusion and possibly anger, they certainly are not going to get the finer points of your argument, and of course it means that you certainly are not going to get an apology, your partner couldn't form one if they tried.
2. Throwing the ring, this is not a full-stop flourish that turns your anger into an exclamation point, this is a declaration that the proposed marriage is over.

So we have a method of allowing my ex to vent her anger, while guaranteeing a compromised state for me, thus ensuring that I cannot respond in any way, and just to make sure that I know how angry she is, in my semi-addled state, she throws her engagement ring away.

Obviously the first time this happened, I had no idea what was going on, so I lay awake all night trying to work out what had happened, what I had done and what I could do to rectify it. Chalk one up for the ex there! I had fallen into the trap mentioned in earlier posts of reevaluating my entire previous life in an attempt to determine what I had done wrong. I still hadn't learned the correct response.

I was so distraught over the tossing of the ring, that my ex very carefully labeled that button, and pretty much once every month or two I could be guaranteed a similar occurrence.

Silly bloody me!

This behaviour only stopped when I made it quite clear, that I would no longer put up with this crap, if the ring was ever taken off in anger, the engagement would be off, but from my end not hers, and the same went for the "Wake up the sleeping man" tactic too. I enforced this by carefully hiding the ring and not giving it back to her for several months, and even then she only got it back because she found it after a careful search and I came home to find her wearing it, so in fact it could be more realistically described as me letting her keep the ring rather than me returning it!

conclusion: Don't display your upset at such extreme events, or if you do, be prepared to dole out some pain of your own in retribution to make it stop when it invariably comes back to haunt you with ever increasing frequency.

-- Sermon ends --

Surreality

I was recently reminded of an incident in my life some time ago. I was exchanging stories with friends over lunch about the most surreal moments in our relationships.

It wasn't a competition, but I think if it had have been, my story would have won hands down.

Bear in mind that this incident occurred long before I formulated the "Silent Treatment" response plan, so what you'll read is an example of how not to progress...

I woke up one morning to find that my wife was no longer talking to me. "Hmmm", thought I, "Maybe she didn't sleep well... Maybe I was snoring really loudly last night and kept her awake. I'd best ask if she is OK".

So I did, no prizes for guessing what response I got... well done, "Nothing, I'm fine", but as I'm sure you have correctly assessed, it was said in a tone of voice that said, "Everything is wrong, and it is all your fault, you heartless bastard". Nothing new there then.

Now by this time I had learnt that pressing the point was a sure way to a quick and violent explosion. So I didn't press on, I merely left things as they were, in order to let the course of nature meander to its conclusion.

And I waited...

And I waited...

And I waited...

After two weeks of slowly letting the temperature of my indignation rise, until I was absolutely livid at my mistreatment. I finally snapped one morning before work, I went absolutely beresque.

A fair paraphrasing of my explosion might be, "What is your fucking problem? You have been giving me shit for two fucking weeks now, and I have to tell you its getting really fucking tired, you have until the end of the fucking day to speak, or I'm moving out of this fucking house at the fucking weekend", (I may have sworn a little more than that though.)

I then promptly walked out of the room, grabbed my coat and headed off to work for the day.

I got home, and nothing had changed, everything was the same, the dinner was cooked, but the conversation was dead.

Just before I went to bed, I gave her another opportunity to talk, saying I was going to bed once I had brushed my teeth, was there anything she wanted to say?

At this point the terrible truth came out...

Two weeks previously, when all this had begun, S had had a dream that I was having an affair, in this dream she had caught me in flagrante delicto, and had been unable to forgive me the transgression, even though she knew it was an invention of her own mind, and I had done nothing wrong.

This was not the terrible truth, more of that later...

Being somewhat self-destructive at the best of times, and at this point being particularly livid over the treatment I had received over my wife's commitment anxieties, I said something which can only be described as "stupid beyond belief".

"Was the woman I was shagging hot? 'Caus frankly after the shit I have been though, she had better have been!"

Now in retrospect, I think we can safely say, that there was no possible way I could have inflamed the situation any quicker.

Not entirely without merit, what was one ball of anxiety, stress, and anger plus another ball of fury quickly became a tornado of hate and anger. Much time was spent years later with a marriage councilor fixing that particular transgression I can assure you.

Back to the terrible truth. It had suddenly dawned on me, that I had married someone who was insane.

I have woken up after terrible dreams, I have woken up believing members of my family to be dead, even for my wife to be hiding an affair. And I can say that yes I am genuinely affected, for a while, sometimes as long as a whole morning, and then the reality filter kicks in, I knew it was my subconscious playing "what if" scenarios, that nothing real has happened, and that I had no reason to be upset, if anything I should be better off, having now confronted something that was obviously an unconfronted fear. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger right? (coronary attacks excluded.)

But in my wife, I had someone who genuinely was unable to distinguish between her fantasy world and the real world. And frankly, if that isn't delusional, and doesn't count as one of the definitions of being insane, I don't know what does.

In retrospect, thinking about it now, although I then tried for several years to keep the marriage together, I think at that point, looking back, I knew that the marriage was bound to fail, it was only a matter of time.

Well that came out a lot more tragically than I expected.

Counting

An introduction to job counting.

OK, so here is the deal, when you are in a couple, the counting of jobs does not work quite the same way as counting physical objects.

Men and women each have a mechanism of their own. For men each job is allocated a weight and that weighting is added to the total. For women each job is counted as one, which are then totaled.

Obviously this causes some disparity when it comes to determination of who is pulling their weight and who isn't.

Let's do some simple arithmetic, first of all lets see what our hypothetical couple get up to. We have a traditional family unit, Bob goes to work and Bridget keep house, with a daughter Wendy who is a primary school. (A rarity these days I know!)

Bob's day:
Get up and breakfast, Go to work for 8 hours, come home, have dinner, drop daughter Wendy off at ballet class, collect Wendy, glass of wine in front of the telly and off to his pit for the night.

Bridgit's day:
Get up and make breakfast for the family, walk Wendy to school, hoover the house, clean the windows, take out the rubbish, do the laundry, do the ironing, clean the kitchen, clean the bathroom, pick up Wendy from school, make dinner for the family, glass of wine in front of the box and off to bed.

Now lets look at Bob's arithmetic of both days:
Bob: Work = 30, Wendy's ballet drop = 2, Wendy's ballet collect = 2; Total = 34.
Bridgit: Breakfast = 2, Wendy to school = 2, Hoover = 3, Windows = 2, Rubbish = 1, Laundry = 2, Ironing = 4 (Bob hates ironing!), Kitchen = 3, Bathroom = 3, Wendy from school = 2, Dinner = 5; Total = 30.

So in Bob's mind, both he and Bridgit have had full and productive days, comparatively equal in fact, although he is inclined to think his day was a little harder.

Next lets look at Bridget's arithmetic of both days:
Bob: Work = 1, Wendy's ballet drop = 1, Wendy's ballet collect = 1; Total = 3.
Bridgit: Breakfast = 1, Wendy to school = 1, Hoover = 1, Windows = 1, Rubbish = 1, Laundry = 1, Ironing = 1, Kitchen = 1, Bathroom = 1, Wendy from school = 1, Dinner = 1; Total = 11.

In Bridgit's mind, Bob has gone to work (1) and left her to do loads of work (10), she has clearly had the more productive day and is pulling her weight much harder than Bob.

Here we see the crux of the disparity. No matter what Bob does, because a large part of his life is taken up with going to work, and that item on the list gets only a single point from Bridgit, he is doomed to a negative weighting with regard to the balance of contribution.

There are three ways that Bob can tackle this problem:

1. Stop work.
2. Try to modify Bridgit's method of evaluation.
3. Explain work each day in excruciating detail.

Should Bob stop work, the money will stop flowing in and the couple will shortly become destitute, although Bridgit was prepared to accept that Bob's job was important to supplying the families monetary needs, with hindsight she sees how valuable this activity is and that this particular activity lies outside the scope of her evaluation mechanism. Of course I am being facetious here, I would never suggest that a man makes his family destitute to prove a point.

Bob attempting to change Bridgit's behaviour in this matter is bound to fail. I am quite certain that such behaviours are to a large extent "wired in", this is just the way that women think. Although a sustained careful discussion will eventually get Bridgit to accept Bob's point of view, the likelihood is that her behaviour over time will revert and the same disparity will recur. So even a short term win will eventually become a long term loss.

The final option then is the only one I have found, in personal experience, to work. Bob must explain in great detail what he does each day to Bridgit, so that she is forced to count each item on the list in her subconscious, by doing this he earns the 30 points from Bridgit that he feels he deserves for his contribution.

As an example, let us say that Bob spends the whole of Sunday in the garden doing odd jobs, he must never say "I spent the day in the garden doing odd jobs", what he must say is "I spent the day in the garden, I mowed the lawn, raked the lawn, aerated the lawn, weeded the borders, cut back the roses, tied the roses, painted the fence, trimmed the hedges at the front of the house and trimmed the hedges at the back of the house". By doing this he has earned not one point but ten. Should he be a real adept I'm sure he could mention much more minor jobs he did out in the garden, but he must be careful to not say too much, otherwise he is "always going on about the stuff he does, and it's not like it is anything special", thus getting himself a 200 point demerit for being a pain in the arse.

Aren't relationships fun!

Whinging

Today I'll discuss the broader distinctions between a man and woman getting things off their chests.

Let us imagine for the moment, you have returned home from a terrible day at work, everything that could go wrong has gone wrong. From the commute into work right through to the commute home from work.

Obviously when this has happened, being human and thus being gregarious creatures, we feel the need to offload some of our angst onto those we spend our time with. If nothing else, they'll understand why we are going to be no fun or a while (or maybe for the whole evening if you are that way inclined).

Now from a male perspective, it is perfectly acceptable, to provide prompts and cues for strategies in future that will alleviate the problems encountered during this day. One caveat, this must be done carefully with plenty of care taken not to upset the target of your well intentioned advice. Oh and actually there is a second caveat, this never applies to directions when driving, especially when the suggestion is to stop and ask for directions.

So for example Jack comes home having had a terrible day at the office, his co-worker Marlon is causing him extra work though ineptitude.

His wife Jill, unless Jack is too angry to even speak, should be entirely able to suggest possible ways of dealing with Marlon. All the time though, she must be aware that Jack is upset and she must make every effort to not upset him further by stepping into the comfort zone that Jack has regarding what is advice and what is being told what to do.

Essentially, Jack ideally wants to stop being poisoned by his day, and will be looking for tactics to use in this regard.

Should the roles be reversed, Jack is at home when Jill rolls in from the office and Marion has been causing Jill hell, then Jack has only one option. He must sit and empathise, he must say, "Yes, I can see how that would upset you" and "No, she never did that did she? That's outrageous! How could she be so insensitive" and so on. Should Jack make the mistake of suggesting a possible solution to the problem he is in for a whirlwind of pain. You see the thing is Jack is trying to help with future strategies, but Jill doesn't want that, she just wants to offload the crap of her day. She will come up with her own strategies, and if she can't she'll ask directly.

All that Jill needs is the opportunity to bleed the poison of her day out of her system, not correct the poisoning process.

In conclusion:

• When comforting a man: Gentle advice is acceptable as is empathy.
• When comforting a woman: Empathy is the only option.

Funny old world isn't it.

Subjective long term memory

I've touched on this before, but I felt it was worth mentioning again.

Memory is a fickle beast, apt to trip you up as save your bacon. I find that perfect recall of the most mundane and useless things (witty anecdotes that only I find funny for example) is a given, but strangely word for word transcripts of things said in conversation or heated argument several months ago are sadly lacking.

Although I will remember the event, the likelihood is that I will remember the general outline of what my view was, and some of the logical argument. And if I'm really lucky small snippets word for word or the sense of outrage at some of the really wacko sophistry that I heard.

Obviously I am very unlucky in this regard, either perfect recall is attainable with two X chromosomes, or all of my ex-girlfriends and my ex-wife were blessed with a stupendously good memory.

Of course... Thinking about it, it could be the case that they were inventing what was said in line with their own vague recollections, and trying to pass their interpretation as verbatim fact... Worse they could have been making up facts to fit their story... But that would be unethical surely? Lying... Surely not?

This reconstructionism does seem to fit the model, I have been accused of sympathising with the Nazis, of being a racist (amusingly this came from my wife, who is black, and guess what dear reader, I'm white) and in fact looking back on it, I have been accused of holding pretty much every diametrically opposed position to the ones I usually espouse... How odd!

Gosh, I'm seeing another pattern here... Its almost like, further analysis of my earlier observation on upset, would indicate the second response the "Historic Retrospective" is just a subset of the first option "Random Criticism", the whole point of the tactic is to achieve the end result, namely, "I was upset, now you are too".

But notably this tactic is far far cleverer in usage. By deliberately choosing to fight on a battle plain covered by the fog of time, my chances of a direct hit are being reduced dramatically, while the chances of receiving the same are massively enchanced. Even when I have claimed a surgical strike, I was told, "Nope, nice try, but my forces where never there, I never said that, I said X". And yet, when a crushing blow is delivered and I claim the same defense, I was told, "Oh no, I can see through the fog of time, your forces are there, you never said Y, you said Anti-Y, consider your army wiped out".

Again I assert, at no point must you allow yourself to be drawn into an argument relating to any facts more than three months old. Be safe, try to get this limit down to a single month, and if you are striving for perfection go for a week. The superhuman would be advised to go for a day, but frankly you haven't a hope in hell, but set the bar high and you never know.

Hmmm, food for thought.

Drawing the Line

One of the reasons my marriage failed, was the inability of S to stop demanding ever more, and my comparable inability to stop acquiescing to her ever greater demands. Or to put it more simply, I wasn't very good at saying "No".

Essentially I bent until I broke, and at that point, the marriage was off. Obviously things were a little more detailed than this, but for now all you need to know is that S still lives with the quaint expectation that her wants and her needs will still be serviced by myself.

I spent this weekend with my daughter, who is usually returned to her mother at 6PM on Sundays, but at pickup I was ambushed (a favourite technique of S) with a request to defer drop off until 7PM as S would be out of the city at 6PM. I was OK with this, obviously I enjoy spending time with my daughter, so I said OK, but did point out that I did have plans to be somewhere at 8PM this evening (yes it is true dear reader, I do have a life!), and so it would have to be 7PM latest.

I made a point of saying this, as S has a tendency to mistake inches for miles, and giving me the royal-run-around, to make her life easier in the most minor of ways, is perfectly OK in her book.
Not entirely without precedent around 6:30PM I received the usual flustered phone call requesting that the drop off be deferred until 8PM. Having devoted myself to much exploration for a strategy for this kind of eventuality, my answer was clear. I responded with "No, it can't be done, I have somewhere else to be at eight".

Those who know S or someone with similar traits, would be able to follow the sophistry that followed as the tantrum played itself out. Suffice to say, she kicked off big style. You will note, that I am being asked for a favour and upon declining to perform that favour, I am being harangued and being made into the bad guy! This is not unusual.

However, the end result was that my step-son's father (the ex before me) dropped by to pick up A at 7PM on the dot. So all is well that ends well. Side note: I guess he never quite made it to saying "no" to her.

It would appear that my strategy (and more importantly self belief) has come though. I'm hoping that S understands what has happened, and will not be so shocked when she gets the next "No". Its not likely, but none the less fingers crossed.

I feel good about standing up for myself. I have said no once before, but that is another story that I shall keep for a slow day.