05-05-2019, 12:26 AM
Feeling better tonight, and a couple of things occurred to me.
I am doing a much better job of being on routine tasks than I ever have been before. Since we bought the house, I have let the yard become a disaster. When spring came around I didn’t get on mowing or weeding nearly fast enough, and just let things get overgrown before I got off my butt and dealt with it. That made things a lot more difficult when I finally did get around to dealing with it. This year, I noticed when things started greening up and started mowing and weeding weekly.
I figured something out about the wife. She’s terrified of criticism, or being made to feel imperfect. She has done a couple of things that she assumed would make me mad. These were minor decisions she made, and while I don’t particularly like a couple of them, I’m not one to rake her over the coals about small things. I noticed that she seemed very fearful when she told me that she did a couple of these things. In those cases I gently told her that I wasn’t angry. This goes with something I realized during an argument a few days ago. She is so afraid of being dominated by me that she has to constantly maintain some kind of dominance (at least in her mind) over me. She is having trouble and some level of fear from the new me who she can’t really dominate. It seems that she may have some of the same childhood problems that I do.
Now that I realize that, I may be able to do a better job managing things.
I am doing a much better job of being on routine tasks than I ever have been before. Since we bought the house, I have let the yard become a disaster. When spring came around I didn’t get on mowing or weeding nearly fast enough, and just let things get overgrown before I got off my butt and dealt with it. That made things a lot more difficult when I finally did get around to dealing with it. This year, I noticed when things started greening up and started mowing and weeding weekly.
I figured something out about the wife. She’s terrified of criticism, or being made to feel imperfect. She has done a couple of things that she assumed would make me mad. These were minor decisions she made, and while I don’t particularly like a couple of them, I’m not one to rake her over the coals about small things. I noticed that she seemed very fearful when she told me that she did a couple of these things. In those cases I gently told her that I wasn’t angry. This goes with something I realized during an argument a few days ago. She is so afraid of being dominated by me that she has to constantly maintain some kind of dominance (at least in her mind) over me. She is having trouble and some level of fear from the new me who she can’t really dominate. It seems that she may have some of the same childhood problems that I do.
Now that I realize that, I may be able to do a better job managing things.
