[FR] Wife goes off the rails, did I 90% pass my fitness test?

rocknrollchuck · 2019-09-17T14:04:42+00:00

After about an hour of that, she wakes up in her normal PO attitude wakes me up and says "You owe me big time, I will go get him and change him". Now myself being awake and always in my OYS mindset wanted to just hop up, take care of the situation, and let her go back to bed. I hopped up and she said, "I'm already awake now, I got it". I STFU go back to bed.

She's a SAHM, he's sleeping through the night pretty much, you have to go to work in the morning. You did nothing wrong here except for your mindset of wanting to "hop up and take care of it." Nothing wrong with that per se, but it sounds like it was in response to her words.

I arrive home at 7:10am after stopping to get her a latte because I know she had a rough night.

Nice, but you have to ask yourself if this was rewarding bad behavior or trying to placate her mood. Only you know for sure, it could go either way depending on the dynamic.

Usually, the wife is up when I walk in from lifting. She slept in this time and I simply got my coffee and headed out the door.

She wasn't sleeping. She was lying there waiting to see if you were going to come in and try and smooth things over and submit to her mood.

I heard her upstairs with my son. That queued me to go ahead and prepare a bottle for her to help her out.

What a Nice Guy^{^TM} . You were hoping to smooth things over.

As I am making the bottle she yells down and asks if I can make a bottle and grab her a coffee. Considering I already got her the latte I told her I was already on it and had the bottle ready.

And I can see that she truly appreciated your efforts too /s

She proceeds down the stairs in an anxious PO'd tirade and starts telling me how she hopes I "enjoyed my coffee outside on the patio" and that I should have gotten the monitor from the room while she was sleeping and maybe got him for her when he woke up. Knowing this was a completely irrational thought I simply said "here is your latte I got you this morning" and smiled.

"Look what else I did for you honey." You need to change her mood here. Have you read WOTSM?

Instead of getting angry because she's so upset that you made one little mistake in a long series of successes, instantly shift the energy between you. Remember, history is irrelevant to the feminine, so your mistake is as easily forgotten as your successes. As soon as you see she's upset, immediately assume happiness. Shock her with your love. Make her smile and laugh with your humor. Lick her neck, or lift her off the ground and pretend you're King Kong. Surprise her in some loving way, and the emotional slate will be wiped clean. Your momentary failure will be effectively vanished, as irrelevant as the long line of your successes. Restore love and happiness in the present moment, don't justify your little mistake by referring to your long line of successes.

She proceeds down the stairs in an anxious PO'd tirade and starts telling me how she hopes I "enjoyed my coffee outside on the patio" and that I should have gotten the monitor from the room while she was sleeping and maybe got him for her when he woke up.

You should have Timeboxed this: "I know you're upset, but the way you're talking to me right now is unacceptable. I'm going outside to water the plants, if you want to talk when I come back in you might want to find another way to approach this." Go outside, water the plants, come back in. You're likely to find she's different. But you must make it clear that you won't tolerate being treated this way - with your ACTIONS, not your words.

She clearly wants me to sit down and have her "emotional support" conversation but there isn't simply time to do this.

You need a boundary (secular link) here. "If I sit down with my wife, she will be respectful or I will get up and leave." You can't control the way she acts, but you can control the way you react.

Obviously, texting is never key considering I am using it for logistics. I could be wrong but normally I will get a novel soon about how I just needed to "be there for her" and all of that.

Don't respond to that emotional abuse by text. Ignore and ghost her for the day. Be ready with Fogging, Negative Inquiry, Negative Assertion, etc. when you get home tonight (you HAVE read WISNIFG, right?). Just remember to keep your emotions under control (secular link).

SuzieSixSpeed · 2019-09-17T14:37:02+00:00

Posts like these remind me to not get married

Stryker7200 · 2019-09-17T16:51:00+00:00

Your wife is a child. It’s time to turn her into an adult. Your wife getting upset thinking you owe her because she got up to change a diaper one time during the night is ridiculous and you need to make that clear. Not only does she not have to work but an 11 month takes at least one long nap daily and sometimes naps twice during the day.

A stay at home mom with one kid that isn’t special needs is practically the easiest job in the world. A 13 year old could do that job.

You need to bring some perspective to your wife because she is acting the part of a spoiled child. You even treated her above and beyond and got nothing but disrespect. It’s times to put some boundaries in place.

Red-Curious · 2019-09-17T19:41:54+00:00

When one thing doesn't go her way, the whole world is on fire and burning around her and she normally wants everyone to die in the flames with her to feel her "pain" or "frustration".

I addressed this in detail here: https://www.reddit.com/r/RPChristians/comments/d3s1o7/fr_unstoppable_emotional_inertia/

/u/rocknrollchuck already addressed the relevant stuff here. You're rewarding a lot of bad behavior, thinking it's the "nice guy" thing to do. You're rationalizing it as the "RP" thing to do because you're maintaining positivity in the face of her negativity. But your words betray you because it's pretty obvious from the way you write that you're using these things to try to manipulate her through gift-giving, acts of service, or all those other 5 covert contract languages.

A trick that works wonders: she's slamming things on the table asking you to answer for what she perceives as your mistakes. You pick up your 11mo and start flapping his mouth open and closed with your fingers to make it look like he's talking. "Mommy, why are you so angry? I love you mommy. Don't be mad. Are you going to slam me down too? Come here so I can spit up on you."

The thing with positivity is that it has to be your own. You tried to give her your positivity. "Here's a latte for you." "Let me get the bottle ready for you." "Maybe I should go get the baby for her." For her. For her. For her. Stop that. Don't do things for her. That's weak and women see through it every time. You. Do. You.

If you want to get the baby because you don't want him crying alone? Go get the baby. But don't do it because you're afraid she'll be mad if you don't.
If you want to get a bottle ready for the baby because you're a responsible adult who takes care of his kids, then do it. But not because you're afraid of how she'll react if you don't help her out.
If you want to buy her a latte because she's been good to you and deserves a reward, then do it. But not because you feel like you have to placate her anger and it might cheer her up a bit.

I went out to the mall the other day to buy my wife some "care package" stuff. I got her cookie-dough lip balm and some face cream from a local cosmetics store at our mall. I also bought her a "stress relief" and "bluberry maple pancakes" scented candles. I also got her a bag of taffy and chocolates. All of this was about $40. She's been working hard and deserved a treat.

On my way out of the mall she calls me up furious that I'm not home yet. Did I give her the care package to cheer her up and prove that I was really doing a good thing for her so she shouldn't be mad? You'd better believe I did NOT! I don't reward bad behavior. Instead, I played a practical joke on her and all the kids laughed. She pretended to be frustrated, but eventually caved and started laughing too, even though she was the butt of the joke. I didn't play a practical joke to cheer her up - if anything, I appropriately expected her to feel even more upset by being picked on. But I knew that whatever was going on in her, my positivity would override it - especially once I got the kids to be positive with me. She felt the fun in the room and joined in, despite nobody doing anything to her or for her to cheer her up or make her life better.

She then went back to work in our home office in a good mood. She was back in a context where I wanted to reward her hard work. But I still didn't give the treats to her right then - I set them up in the driver's seat of her car so she'd find them when she got up in the morning to take the kids to school/daycare; a time when she's in the midst of doing things helpful to me and likely mildly stressed out, so as to communicate: "You're doing good work right now," rather than rewarding past service, her past bad attitude, contemplating prospective service, etc. It was a fun surprise for her. It didn't come with a grin on my face demanding validation or praise in return. I wasn't even there when she got it - and that was intentional. It let her know that, yes, my time at the mall was for her benefit and therefore she should have felt dumb for getting mad at me over it - but also reminded her that I could have given these to her the night before, but didn't, further affirming that she won't be rewarded after bad behavior.

And I just got back from a client meeting that cut me off before I finished, so I can't remember where I was going with this. Enjoy as far as I got.

g_e_m_anscombe · 2019-09-17T14:27:14+00:00

Maybe I’m obtuse, but what do you think the fitness test was here?

FuzzyKittenIsFuzzy · 2019-09-17T15:38:51+00:00

She's cranky from not sleeping well. Tell her you realize this and she should take a nap. After work when she's better rested, have sex. Then move on.

NoFaithInThisSub · 2019-09-18T03:12:16+00:00

what bothers me with these F.R.s (even 1 RC posted a week ago), is not how well you guys do in that horrible situation, but rather how little the Godly character of your wives manifest.

It's always a similar story, 1 little situation and they manifest in anger, comments, "the sky is falling".

Angry snarky tirades at the husband.

Do these women even know Jesus and what God expects about women in general?

These posts always sadly serve to remind me that not getting married most women is FAR better than getting married to the wrong woman (which again is most women).

Maybe we need some F.R.s of women being good humble and obedient to the husband REGARDLESS of his poor planning and health etc.

Willow-girl · 2019-09-17T14:57:06+00:00

I think I'd go with, "Anytime you'd like to get a job and support the family I'd be happy to trade places with you." Unless, of course, you think she'd actually call your bluff! :-o

2020-02-11T03:21:06+00:00

I'm sensing that the "You owe me big time" was a bonding/flirting move. In my coterie in days of yore, this was a definite friendly statement. You should have grabbed her butt and made some husbandly witty remark.

Rifleshoot · 2019-09-17T13:57:17+00:00

Only you can decide if her behavior was rational or not. There’s a lot of details in this and I’m sure a lot of backstory that we don’t know, but you do. Ask yourself, were her requests reasonable? If not, tell her no and maintain that frame. Don’t let her try and argue about it either. If they were reasonable, then did she ask them of you in a respectful way, that a wife should speak to her husband? If not, tell her to ask you again in a more respectful tone.

Basically what I’m saying is that only you can decide what you find acceptable behavior from your wife. When your wife crosses those bounds of what you consider acceptable, you have to enforce those boundaries and remain firm on it. No waffling or letting her shift your boundaries. That’s frame in a nutshell.

Title	[FR] Wife goes off the rails, did I 90% pass my fitness test?
Author	BourbonandBirdies
Upvotes	14
Comments	40
Date	September 17, 2019 12:53 PM UTC (4 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/RPChristians
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/RPChristians/comments/d5gjzo/fr_wife_goes_off_the_rails_did_i_90_pass_my/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/RPChristians/fr-wife-goes-off-the-rails-did-i-90-pass-my.301112 https://theredarchive.com/post/301112