Anger destroys marital harmony

Charu, you made some points here for me. Thank you for that.

In my view it is not superiority complex but is nothing but power game. You are correct in a sense to put a full stop to this which was what I have been trying to do. What I don’t understand is that if you want to take control of everything, you do so as you wish. But anger & resentment behaviour is totally unnecessary.

The occasional feeling of anger is impossible for most of us to eliminate and also the occasional thought that the partner deserve to be punished for what he/she did, can also be impossible to eliminate. So the bottom line is, the feeling of anger is inevitable time to time. But if it becomes daily part of your life then it is pointless.

Yes, I took your views and I will try to use them to streamline the current status


Radhi
Your analysis is perfectly correct to a greater extent. As you said the solution lies that she needs to realise the facts of life. As you also mentioned I thought about living away or move my work to different area. But it is not possible in my circumstances. But I have to do similar things to keep away from her. It is true you don’t know until you try.

Many times she has been pinpointed that it is her anger/anguish creates lot of tensions in the family. She loses her temper easily because she fells justified in trying to impose her will and claims the person isn’t doing what she wants. We try to tell her what she wants is not right or at least not always right.

It is worth explaining couple of samples:

She is a perfectionist in terms of keeping the house clean. When she is not well or not in the mood she doesn’t mind the house is not clean. But when she is really into it, she is very much of a dictatorship woman. We hardly get anyone visiting us as we cut down lot of friends. If someone comes occasionally, she expects the house to be spotless, expects everything be in order, no things are lying around or scattered around. She evens dumps them under the cupboard as long as the rooms look nice & clean. We told them several times, “OK we can see your point, but it is not always possible to keep it that way. Also we don’t want anyone coming to the house who expects absolute spotless house. (they don’t do anyway) We live for ourselves not for others. If they don’t like the way we keep the house, they don’t need to come here” We even try to cleanup & stack those scattered things in an acceptable way so we can sort them out later. But she simply wouldn’t listen and yelled each one of us with “F…off, very much vulgar words” etc.. So in her standard her expectation is not achieved which turns her in to this angry mood.

Every morning I go for a brisk walk / jogging, and my clothes get wet easily by sweat, so I hang them outside to dry out. As I wash my own clothes by myself, I won’t have enough time to wash it before I get to work, so I wear it for the following days of morning walks. I normally hide my dirty clothes in a bag to keep away from her vicinity, because I know she doesn’t like me keeping dirty clothes. When I get time I wash them and empty the bag. Somehow I forgot and left these sweat clothes in one of the chairs. When she started to clean the house and she saw these clothes. She got irritated so much and literally threw my clothes outside the house. I had to pick it up from dirt when I came back and this is not first time she has done this kind of things. I have warned her several times not to do this kind of humiliating things and her argument was that I did not follow her instructions.

Just over a year now she has been managing all the family finances. She takes control of all money matters. All these 20 years we have been on a joint account and everything is in bank statements of all the transactions and many years I have a habit of write everything in a note book where all the money go to find out how we spend on groceries, children, mortgage, activities etc… Lately she became suspicious of me and controls the money affairs. It doesn’t worry me as I don’t have anything to hide. My parents are long gone, my sibling (elders) are all well settled and I don’t have any bad habits. Since then, of course she achieved some benefits by reducing the debts and it is only short time benefits and ignored some of the long time goals. What bothers me really is, she keeps on saying she didn’t get married to a millionaire and she has to work her guts out to run the family as if I am not earning anything and as if I am not aging. She is also moaning everyday that she regrets that she has been like a slave to the family for very long time and she made a mistake of herself by not waking up from as a slave early enough. As far as I can remember under no circumstances, I did not force her to anything she doesn’t like. I always try changing myself to accommodate her. I cut down all my childhood friendship, friends around here, keep away from people whom she doesn’t like albeit I don’t see anything wrong with them. Couple of my friends rings me few times but I never return their call back, they may think I am rude but I am not bothered as they don’t know my personal situations.

The task at my hand is on how to make her to overcome the habit, but not spending valuable time & energy wondering how it developed. I hope once she learns stop having angry mood, the belief & attitude of control that supported the angry habits tend to disappear in due course.

 

Maggi99

I appreciate your inputs although you are lot younger than me. Thank you for that. It is good idea to pass the message through the children when the right time comes.

I was surprised I didn’t get many responses from women for this thread. I am not sure if they all want to protect their gender with a strong mindset that men are abuser or they think they are not old enough to make comments or they all think I am a loser.

I can see your point that if have 100s to tell about her, she will have 1000s to tell about me. She feels that her way of doing things are smart and all of the alternatives are stupid which is a disrespectful of my thinking. I am fully aware that husband and wife generally do not have the same emotional needs. What makes one very happy may not mean much at all to the other.

My marriage is not bad enough to leave because:
She brings financial benefit to the family
She cooks for us with some form of help from me
She looks after the kids very well and helps them for their achievements
She creates a very good image to outsiders that we are a good family
She helps us make a major decision in the family

Also my marriage is not good enough to stay because:
Important emotional needs are not met. Time for leisure is absolutely essential to our mental and physical health, and to maintain the sanity and stay happily married, the leisure time is not spent with each other

Her angry behaviour - She has an arsenal of weapons she uses when she is angry. Sometimes the weapons are verbal, sometimes they're devious plots to cause suffering, but they all have one thing in common: it is designed to hurt me all the time. Since I am at such close range, she uses the weapons to hurt me the most.

Being un-friendly all the time – she doesn’t think that friendship is the sole basis of healthy relationship in order to keep the love and trust alive

Let the problems unresolved – Nagging is the biggest enemy of happy and healthy relationship. It can never be a solution to any problem

Thank you for mentioning those ideas. After all in every relationship, no matter how much we love each other, we get into a disagreement, and have bitter arguments. They happened to me a lot and ended up feel bitter and hurtful. I decided shouting and quarrelling will not lead me anywhere. I decided to be calm, composed and patient to make everything move smoothly.

 

Bharathi

Thank you for your thoughts. I doubt it very much she needs psychiatric treatment but should not be ruled out, anything is possible. It is funny you raise this. In the last couple of weeks, I have been keeping myself away from her, sleeping in a separate room, take kids away myself, do grocery shopping myself etc.. I can sense she feels something.

Few days ago during one of the outbursts, she screamed that something seriously wrong with me and asked me to go & see a psychiatrist, not sure she feels insecure without me. I also told her that she is not consistent on anything which is important for harmonious life. I openly told her "Unless you do something about it, I am preparing myself live away from the family"

It is very unfortunate, I need to take steps in a unusual way than sit down and talk about it & agree about it.

Tridev

Thank you for jumping in again. When I post this thread I want to get people's view on this issue, particularly do women behave in that age group, because I didn't see this behaviour in my mother or sister? The responses strongly suggest the menopausal symptom is the cause which I don't want to sweep it under the carpet as an excuse and yet to be investigated. We are arranging for a check up to rule out any hormonal imbalances.

As you said I am confused and it is hard for me to prepare a step by step action plan to overcome this. My personality adds a bit of contribution to this as well. For many it seems I was the cause of this. One wouldn’t realise the pain and mental torture all through the year, unless go through in their personal life.

She grew up lot of habits by herself because things didn’t work out well with my input. In essence she tries to get me meeting her emotional needs without meeting mine. In the early period there were very few meaningless habits because successful bonding between us got rid of majority of them. In due course of time, these habits started to grow. In the name of personal freedom, private interests and expanding prospects she developed habits and activities that do not take each other's feelings into account. Before long, they made us no longer compatible.

The bottom line is that any couples need to eliminate behavior that is good for one and bad for the other, even if it makes the one eliminating it feel bad. Truth is, it should never have been there in the first place, and all I am doing is eliminating those bad habits. It's like telling a child molester to stop molesting children. It may make her feel bad to stop, but she should never have gotten started in the first place.

I have read you talked about my previous comment. I totally accept your criticism. I made that comment after reading many number threads here. That assessment came after the following facts:

a) When a woman is in turmoil, there are hundreds of responses pouring down here and most of them with very generic statement with “Men are like that / my husband is like that” How could you be so sure that woman does not contribute to the problem?. Number of responses bluntly attack men. Generally conflict occurs in situations in which there is opposition. Opposition occurs when a solution cannot be found in a disagreement. So the process should involve identifying areas of agreement and areas of compromise to arrive to a solution. Some even say “Indian men are ego centric and expect wives to obey them” It sounds like they are comparing Indian men with non-Indian men which is not a right thing to do. Are they also comparing that non-Indian men normally sleep with 6 to 7 women (according to study) before they settle down in life? Are they also comparing that non-Indian men go out with different girls every time for party, drink & dance heavily, and indulge in unacceptable behaviour? Are they also comparing that non-Indian men abuse girls in step father situations?

b) There have been number of threads on MIL issues. Whoever are mother today will become MIL sooner or later. Once they move MIL status, same tactics are followed upon without doubt because they were the DILs once and it is evident it has been happening for many generations. I can see it in my own eyes, my 2 elder sisters became MIL and do the same. In my younger age they used to complain to our mother about their husbands and inlaws. What they complain to me now is about their SIL/DIL and it is about their loved ones changed so much after they got married and left home. They are in totally different perspective now than some 35 years ago. It proves they moved from DIL to MIL chair now.

I can still remember 20 years ago my wife made comments few times that I was so attached to my mother even though we never ever lived with neither of our parents all these married years. Now she started to tell our 19yr old son that he is NOT allowed to choose a girl without her consent, he is only getting married to a girl she chooses. See ! She is laying foundation for MIL chair. I wonder what will happen to his married life.

Some women call their DH as Mamma boy. What a judgment is that? Having been in mother’s womb for 10 months, it fastens the emotional bond in the gene to become fond of mother. Not only that, the rest 25/30 years they provide shelter, food, education, health care, financial help etc.. How could you throw everything as soon as he ties the knots? He actually takes another role as ‘husband’ on top of as ‘son’. It is fairly long process to move to next stage. The transition period varies person to person

c) I can read posts on women say their married life become hell since day one. How is that even possible? These days girls have so much expectation and want everything instantly. One needs to get used to the new environment first and accept the new role as ‘wife’. Now opportunities are wide open, girls get more freedom, financially independent and these make them over confident without understanding the basic rules in marriage. In marriage, the interests of both partners should be considered simultaneously. One should not suffer for the benefit of the other, if they do, one is gaining at the other's expense.

Years ago when our daughter got sick very often due to child day care, we decided my wife will take some time off to work and she did it for one year without pay. During that period she was so calm, very humble, cooks meals every day, force us to make regular visits to the temple and no argument at all. Once she went back to work, started to earn money she simply went into controlling mode again. Actually couples must consider each other's happiness as equally important because it is like a team and both should try to help each other and avoid hurting each other.

OK! OK! I am going off the track. Let me stop this.

I raised this thread to obtain some suggestions on how to cope with Woman’s dominance in the family. Number of you ILites made inputs into my request. To summarise all the suggestions in to one single sentence and this is what it is:

SHUT UP & PUT UP or LEAVE

Thank you for all whoever commented to my thread, I really appreciate that.

It is a general perception that Men are abuser and it is not ALWAYS true.