Not sure what I experienced with the wife yesterday AM was a shit test or just a legit tantrum, but it was definitely a moment that challenged me to hold frame. Would love to get AskMRP's perspective on how I handled it. My usual reaction to a tantrum like this is to go into comfort mode--not this time.

Context:

  • Lack of captaining in my marriage in the past led to the sex dying down. I resumed being captain and recently used some pretty hard dread on my wife recently which had the effect of bringing the sex back, but greatly increasing her anxiety.
  • My wife has become increasingly insecure as I've started spending more time to myself to focus on my own interests and self-improvement activities. She thinks I don't pay enough attention to her.
  • Her need for attention vs. mine for time to focus on myself is an ongoing source of friction. We don't have kids.

Yesterday's Situation:

My week at work has been particularly rough and I've been busy. I have 2 major deadlines and we just lost a big revenue-generating client contract. My wife knows about all of this.

I needed to be up early for work travel yesterday and had a long day of client presentations ahead. I also had a late night with work events the evening before, and really needed as much asleep as I could get. My wife inadvertently woke me up an hour before my alarm was set when she began playing/reading on her phone in bed, and then started cozying up to me to start cuddling. Normally I'm all for cuddling (and will escalate to other things), but it's 5:00am and I need sleep. She wasn't picking up on my hints that I wasn't in the mood (e.g. me not reciprocating, then rolling away to go back to sleep), so I finally just straight up told her I need to get back to sleep. I figure she'd understand... wrong.

She got upset and storms out of the bedroom. IDGAF at this point... I'm barely awake and my only priority is another hour of sleep so I can function that day. Then she flips the fuck out... running into the bedroom screaming, turnings lights on/off repeatedly, pounding the bed... and proceeds to have a full blown tantrum screaming "You hate me," "You don't care about me," and "You're hurting me," etc. At this point I'm now wide awake, and quite pissed, and ignoring her is no longer an option as she's running around the house like a crazy person.

I kept my anger internalized, and calmly told her to calm down. I did not hug and coddle her like I normally do, but took the approach my dad used when I was a kid and throwing a fit: sternly tell me to shut it down.

End Result:

All of this happened before 6:00am. She calmed down, and when she became a normal person again I reiterated the circumstances behind me not being so lovey-dovey over the last 24-hours.

I'm hoping I handled this OK... it felt a bit odd to not try to actively comfort her and take more of a stern approach. I'm not intentionally trying to freeze her out right now, I just need to make her respect boundaries.

Edits:

I updated the quotes so that they are direct/exactly what my wife said.