"Hello! My name is Olga. I live with my husband for 8 years. The spouse is very explosive, sometimes drinks and bring me to tears is considered a matter of honor!
Of course, I am fighting, but even after the next loyal aikido I feel very bad. She left the house three times, once a week, but the husband didn’t care, no, no, but she’s breaking into scandalous behavior.
Although I absolutely do not provoke him and do not give a reason for conflict, the spouse himself finds use for his negative emotions. I shut up, do not go to provocation, or calmly explain that until I hear an explanation of the cause of his anger, the conversation will not continue. For some time the husband calms down, but then the story repeats.
How to be? Maybe I need to choose some other line of defense or even build an attack line ?! I will wait for an answer! THANK!"
Olga, Arkhangelsk
Psychologist's answer:
Olga, hello.
From your letter I heard the following:
- your spouse is a conflicted person;
- you have a very hard time interacting with it;
- at the same time, you have already undertaken and continue to undertake various methods of "fighting" him in conflict;
- Many of your actions brought some results;
- This is not enough for you, and you want more.
I have a question: what else do you want? I didn’t quite understand this from the letter, so I’ll connect my imagination and assume that you want your spouse to stop being what it is, that is, explosive, angry and insulting you.
And here, I am afraid, I will have to disappoint you: you can do nothing for it. You are dreaming to change your spouse, and this idea is initially doomed to failure, because it is impossible to change another person. Any changes are the result of the inner workings of the one who wants to change himself. And the people around have a very separate relationship to this process.
So your question is "how to be?" You can answer in two ways:
1) Learn to live with your spouse as he is, accept his features and keep his psychological boundaries so that his behavior does not affect your condition.
2) Leave, if you can not continue to live in such an atmosphere, if you do not have the resources to accept this situation and learn to live with it.
I would say that the main difficulty here is that there is always hope: what if something changes. Alas, if until now your spouse (after 8 years) did not consider it possible and necessary to learn how to control his negative emotions, then the likelihood of such a “miracle” tends to zero.
So the first thing you need to do is to part with the illusion that you can do something that changes the essence of your spouse. After that, you will be ready to switch your attention to yourself and look for ways to reduce your emotional stress during his “explosions”.
If you have any questions or comments, please contact us by e-mail listed on my page on the site (see the post at the end of the answer). You may want to further discuss your feelings and experiences, in which case you can arrange an in-person consultation in Moscow or a Skype-consultation at a convenient time for you.
Consultant Psychologist Ksenia Terentyeva
