Reply to my wife's thin skin

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP here.

Any practical advice here? Calling me a dick or telling me to get divorced doesn't actually help me solve the problem.

This is not a case in which I rejected 100 furniture options suggested by my wife. We just began discussing furniture, for the first time, a couple weeks ago. She suggested one item that I didn't find appealing. I didn't tell her the choice was ugly or anything like that. I just said that I would like to look at other options and find something we both really like. She then told me to decide on my own. Well, that response kind of sucks the joy out of furnishing the house together. What is the point, if we can't do it together?

To the posters who think I'm some kind of a control freak -- no, I want the opposite. I want a relationship in which my wife and I feel free around each other. Surely we ought to be able to discuss furniture options without fear of offending each other!!!! But we can't. This suffocates the conversation. So I focus on the kids, and she focuses on the kids, and this seems to keep the ship upright. But it is just sidestepping the problem, and pretending that everything is OK, when it isn't.
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I would approach it from a place of sympathy and explain you care about her. What you may see as thin skinned is nonetheless real to her. She’s not making it up to annoy you — she probably genuinely feels she is incompetent and has disappointed you every time you criticize a decision. Pushing further won’t help. Instead I would focus on telling her that you love her and want to help her work through these feelings, and reassure her that you never mean to imply she is incompetent. I am sometimes hypersensitive to criticism, and it comes from a deep insecurity that I’m not good enough. At least in my case it comes from long ago and doesn’t have anything to do with my husband.[/quote]

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