Posted by lookdownfish on January 27, 2004, at 3:14:52
In reply to Lookdownfish- maritial angst update, posted by Poet on January 26, 2004, at 13:43:33
Hi Poet,
I like that. It's about being more assertive without yelling. Makes sense. I find that when I get angry and start yelling and throwing things, it means I will achieve nothing from the argument, because I'm immediately the guilty one for losing control of myself, so I have lost the moral highground. So why do I keep doing it? Why can't I learn that it doesn't work? Actually, I'm just having a look at a book at the moment called "The Dance of Anger". This talks about how we persist with ineffective strategies in order to maintain the status quo, and make our partner feel ok. A crass summary, but that's about as far as I've got. It's very interesting. Many thanks to fallsfall who recommended the book.
An update on me: I'm in a bit of a depressed slump at the moment, which hopefully I'm just starting to crawl out of. This means I have lost confidence and forget to do things, can't make decisions, panic about simple problems and feel I can't cope with my children. This gets my husband frustrated with me, although he is trying to be supportive. What I can't quite work out is whether the depressive slump is caused entirely by my marital problems, or whether I'm depressed anyway and this exacerbates the marital problems. It's probably a bit of both, and a vicious circle.
I have agreed with my husband, probably foolishly, that we will skip marital therapy for the moment, and see how things go. My therapist is very keen for us to do marital therapy, but she did give me some hope by saying that we would work on changes in me, and the changes in me could bring about changes in him. All a bit flaky, but here's hoping.
lookdownfish
poster:lookdownfish
thread:305637
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040123/msgs/305923.html