Pertinent background: Had seen a marriage counsellor off and on for several years with the wife (pre-RP days). For the past year wife has been seeing same therapist on her own to deal with her OCD and other issues. Wife asked me to come to the next appointment with her to give my take on how things are progressing. I set the expectation with wife that we would use this appointment to discuss strategies for her to cope with her OCD as I am going to be clearing out her clutter from the house in 2 weeks time.

Session: It did not go well, I was not in frame and I was asked to give my thoughts on how things are progressing. I said that I do see that things are changing but not to my satisfaction. Asked to explain I pointed out that Task wife is responsible for was finally completed but that it was completed 3 weeks after the promised to complete date.

Wife begins with shit and comfort tests. She starts explaining that she was done task by due date but it wasn't her fault it didn't get finalized because of outside problems, then begins the water works. Saying that I don't see that she is trying, all I see is that she didn't complete task on time and don't give her praise for the effort she put in. Then my train totally ran off the rails;

Total DEER Failure: I got caught off-guard and ended up DEERing the whole fucking thing, I did every part of the Acronym thanks for the help on that /u/BluepillProfessor and /u/Bread_Pilled.

  • Defend - I started by defending my actions that I did give her praise when the task was actually completed, I will only give praise when praise is due.
  • Explain - Then I use a fucking metaphor to explain myself, "My boss doesn't give me praise just for sitting at my desk, I get it when the project is delivered well and on time".
  • Evade - I try to shift the blame back onto wife, that her excuses are just excuses this task should have been completed 9 months ago, I gave her an additional month and she still came in 3 weeks late.
  • Rationalize - Finally I try to get back into some semblance of a frame, but instead I start to rationalize the whole thing back for her to see my point of view, etc. etc.

Fallout: What happened next was exactly what you experienced MRPers would expect, she saw that my shield was down and she started firing with everything she had. She is trying but I don't see or care, She is making progress but I only care about results, and finally that I am acting conceited and being a dick. Obviously need to learn more about AM. Luckily her 20 minute diatribe gave me time to regroup and pull my shit together.

The rest of the session I kept to STFU and only very short answers when asked. This worked a lot better and I wish I had this frame going in. So now I am so spun around after this meeting any ideas on how to get this train back on track. I am in the middle of reading WISNIFG, already read NMMNG and MMSLP.

Open to all of your criticism, I truly need it because that was a total fuck up.