Marriage would be so much easier if only one person was needed to make the union work. Then, when your spouse was having a hard day or week or month or year, you could just carry the relationship until they got better.

But, of course, marriage doesn’t work that way. It’s designed to be a single entity made up of two separate beings – you and him, or you and her. And if one person is having a difficult time, it can sometimes make for a very long day.

My husband’s moods are tied to mine. Maybe a better way of putting this is, his self esteem depends directly on however I feel toward him. There is nothing healthy about this. I’m no therapist, and he doesn’t go to a therapist despite much encouragement from me and his doctor, so I’m only stabbing in the dark to try to help him find another way to boost his self esteem.

In the past, I thought that doing a hobby or a job that he did really well would help, and while I think it has helped his self image, his sense of self worth is still related to whether I’m happy with him or not.

The problem is, as we all know, conflict is a normal part of relationships. It’s how relationships grow, and if resolved in a healthy manner, conflict can lead to both spouses becoming more emotionally close to one another.

I have no problem with conflict. I do have a problem with poor conflict resolution skills. Conflict resolution in marriage is not synonymous with war. It’s actually more like a conversation you’d have with your best girlfriend or guy friend. It’s full of respect and love, not yelling and coercing. You’re trying to address the problem without hurting the other person. You choose your words carefully. You are extremely careful to not insult one another as you work toward the goal of finding common ground, finding a good compromise, and keeping connected in your relationship.

We forget this when it comes to marital conflict. We get ourselves into power struggles, think nasty thoughts about our spouse or perhaps even say them out loud, do rude things, some people are even violent toward one another or self-injurious toward themselves. Ouch! This is not how we treat the person we love, or the person who loves us. We should not be treating our friends better than the person we live with and parent children with.

Back to my husband’s self esteem being tied to my moods… He rarely tells me that he has an issue with me; he’s much more likely to push it down inside himself, only to allow it to bubble up, or erupt, when I bring up an issue with him.

This is often confusing to me, because his reaction will be way bigger than I’d expected. And it often hurts my feelings, though I’m not always good at remembering to say so before I respond to him in anger. And then he gets mad at me for responding the way I do. And round and round we go.

We would eventually provoke extreme moods in one another, and nothing would ever get resolved. My husband would get what he wanted – for me to drop the issue, not because the issue was a problem but because he couldn’t handle the way it made him feel to know I wasn’t always pleased with what he does. He felt like a failure. And I felt ignored, and eventually bitter.

At least that’s what used to happen. Oh, my husband is still the same. He probably will always be. But I got to a point where I knew I could not live my life that way anymore. So I stopped taking his reaction personally. I started seeing the seeming lack of caring for what it is – a defense mechanism. When your self worth is tied to someone else – while you do ultimately have the ability to change it, you don’t know that or you don’t know how to do that – you can’t “help” the way your self worth goes up and down. All you know is that you don’t feel well and everything in your being is trying to make it feel right, and for my husband, that means defending himself against what’s threatening his well being: Me.

That doesn’t mean I take responsibility for his mood. I just understand how he works, so I don’t fall into the same trap. Oh, he’s still carrying on, alternately giving the silent treatment or yelling and cussing. And it’s still frustrating, but I don’t feel compelled to join in the ranting or to sway from my viewpoint in order to keep the peace. And I can take a break in the middle or walk away at the end without any lasting hard feelings. I don’t lose myself in the middle of it; I can treat him like I would a friend, even if he’s not doing the same.

Comments

This post currently has no comments.
You can read the comments or leave your own thoughts.

Trackbacks

    Last reviewed: 4 Feb 2012