Avoidant partner...

[Anonymous]

Hi, my wife and I have been together for nearly five years and I love her very much. She is a loving wife and great Mom 98% of the time. We have arguments and fights that sometimes escalate to yelling and personal insults. We are both working on our patience, but I am seeing patterns develop in my partner that are alarming and I need some advice.

The general pattern is we have a fight, don't talk for a day or two, then kiss and make up.

The kiss and make up part on my end consists of me letting her know exactly what the issues were for me that caused hurt feelings or emotions on my end. I do this generally via text, or write out in an email (unsent) and I try to tell her later. I try very diligently to avoid blaming and assigning responsibility but it also seems like she wants to avoid accountability for her actions during the fight.

Her post-fight kiss and make up consists of generally ignoring the texts...and then generally being defensive in her response to my grievances. If not defensive, she will use justification of her actions as an explanation. Very few times does she admit wrongdoing.

All of this feels very invalidating and counter-productive to me. Her avoidant approach might be influenced by her upbringing, where her parents literally "never fought". I think she would like that, but she has a sometimes combustible personality and her parents are VERY passive aggressive, unlike me (or her!). I think she has expectations that we will avoid conflict at any cost, and if there is a fight, we can just "let it go" after a few days of good feelings.

TLDR: My wife doesn't like to deal with issues after fights

[Anonymous]

You're letting her know 1) what upset you, and 2) that you're ready to let it go. I can see why she'd focus on 2 rather than 1, because it means it's over.

If you want a real dialogue, you need to add a real desire to find out what upset her in with your list of things that upset you to lead to the fight. I know you say you're careful to avoid assigning blame, but you're still coming to her with a list of things she did wrong and then expecting her not to be defensive about it. You already know that she won't bring up the things that "caused hurt feelings or emotions" on her end, so you have to try to get that in the open yourself.

Our therapist had us start sentences with "I [spouse's name] felt upset because..." to try to get in the other person's headspace and it was simultaneously the most ridiculous-feeling and most successful communication tool we picked up in premarital counseling. If you were to approach it from that angle, she could correct you on your assumptions about what drives her behavior without feeling defensive (or, in the alternative, feel validated that you do understand what upset her), and then you can switch and have her try it. *That's* when you get to address your list of hurts/upsets. The way you're doing it does assign blame, even if you try to avoid it in so many words. Doing it this way makes each person think about what they did to upset the other person first, which puts you in a more collaborative/ accountable mindframe, rather than just rehashing the fight from the same set positions.

[Anonymous]

Could it be that OP is dealing with an emotionally immature and sounds like selfish partner?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Could it be that OP is dealing with an emotionally immature and sounds like selfish partner?

It could also be that Op is hypercritical and this is a self-preservation technique.

[Anonymous]

OP, I deal with the exact same thing, and after trying to enact some change in that behavior, I realized it is not going to change. It's rooted deep. Is unfortunate for both of us.