by Leo Volont » Fri Oct 27, 2017 2:13 am
Welcome to the Forum Mr. Broyale
Richard had given you some very good advice in regards to the wisdom of leaving. As you yourself have pointed out, the destructive dynamic that your family life has fallen into is on a decidedly downward trajectory, and it would be unrealistic to hope for a virtual miracle that could turn that around for the better without first making a significant change to the Dynamic itself. Your leaving is the only way that you can defuse the situation and prevent a much more serious disaster. Richard seems to believe that you should go home and wait for the next flare up (at 4 o’clock in the morning, perhaps!?), but waiting would only put you in real danger. You see, next time she could call the police and report you for domestic abuse (and the cops ordinarily side with the Female, unless it is the Guy that calls for the ‘Shields’, and it seems that Women are a ‘faster draw’ when it comes to whipping out the phones compared to men who would prefer to handle matters ‘in house’. We can imagine that women are either realistically concerned about Domestic Violence, or they are paranoid about it, but both reasons will result in the Same Phone Call). Then if you are dragged off in the middle of the night by the police, that would give you, the father of your children, a permanent criminal record in that regards and you would have to spend at least a night in jail, with company not of your own choosing, and if your Wife calls the Badges in on a Friday night then you would be in the slammer all weekend until you could be arraigned on a Monday. Then we know that lawyers are expensive, and it is foolhardy to do it without a lawyer. So in the short term, the best and cheapest Insurance for your Future and your Family’s Future, would be for you to take a studio apartment somewhere close by. Tell your wife that this is not a separation, unless she wants it to be. Yes, she works one shift and you work another, and your career doesn’t leave you much time (it seems the demands upon the modern workforce are so extreme that one must exercise a great deal of imagination to conceptualize why outright slavery would be much worse). so getting to see her and the baby on a daily basis might be difficult to arrange. But certainly you both could schedule some time that you can drop by, making it understood that it should be on a sort of a “Date Rule” basis, where you both promise to be on your best behavior. You should both dress nice on these occasions, and plan to smile a lot. Flowers would add to the expense, but it could be money well spent. That would be a good short term fix.
For the long term, there are two possibilities. You can make your Own Little Place permanent. Or you both could get a Larger Place where there would be Inviolable Rules about Space Allocation and Privacy. She would have her own inviolable space and you would have yours. While that seems ‘odd’ by today’s standards, actually that used to be the Common Way of Doing Things for anybody was not forced by the degradations of poverty to live cramped together in one room which is effectively what Modern Living does its best to simulate. Even back in the Primitive Times, men and women ‘lived’ in separate quarters (what self-respecting Cave Man would even dream of hanging around after Food and Fun? And even the Cave Women would want the Men out before they began making the cave a real mess). Of course there were some ‘communal’ activities open to both genders, but generally men and women did not pester each other continuously. With the advent of Civilization more elaborate Household Structures were built which allowed for a Female Side of the House and a Male Side. And there were Communal Rooms intended mostly for Meals and Entertaining. But, again, the men and the women could go most of their time without pestering one another. Men and Women only interacted when they could be on their best behavior, when everyone would dress for meals and behave with culturally enforced ‘good manners’, and of course when Man and Woman would get together to entertain each other where, given the special rarity of the occasion, they could expect to be kind to each other for that limited time.
But nowadays even families that are making really good incomes are living on the Poverty Model – maybe not cramped together in literally one room, but because there is no allocation of space to assure privacy, it might as well be one dense muggy claustrophobic room. Even a mansion would be intolerable if you could be forever barged in on and harangued by a nagging wife, or a wife by a jealous insecure husband.
Perhaps the most idiotic way about how even affluent rich people today try to emulate the Poverty of the Past, is in the almost universal adoption of the ‘Master Bedroom’, where both Husband and Wife are supposed to share a room. Yes, when dealing with Poverty Stricken Families – share croppers forced to live in one-room shacks, or factory workers forced to live in one room sheds, the notion that Husband and Wife could have a room separate from their brood of squalling brats was something of a ‘luxury’. But back in the Good Old Days (before all the Revolutions of one kind or another), as soon as people could climb out of poverty, then a Master Bedroom would be set aside for the ‘Master’ – the Man of the House, as they quaintly used to describe it, and maybe a Library also, but the Wife would have her own domain too, perhaps even more palatial – the “boudoir”, along with other ‘private’ rooms (salons, dressing rooms, parlors, drawing rooms, etc.). You see, one of the Best Things about Living the Good Life is being able to afford to have Boundaries. The two genders cooped up together is a malignant formula. We can see this in the Demographic Data. The only reason marriages are not working nowadays is because the Poverty Model of Living was never designed to be Socially Optimal – the Poverty Model was designed to make Subsistence Living more affordable for the Exploiting Classes. Plantation owners could pay less to keep workers in one room shacks and Factory Owners could pay less to put families in one room sheds. But somehow that Poverty Model of Subsistence Living became the Cultural Norm for almost the entire Western, and now Global Community (which Islamic Culture has the good sense to resist tooth and nail). As a Society we need to go back in Time and Remember what DID work. Boundaries are our Friends.
Anyway, you can try explaining THAT to yourself, and when you have yourself convinced, then you can explain it to your wife. Effectively, you both can only be happy if you promise to leave each other alone, except for prescribed Quality Times – meals and communal hours. But no more being ‘shoulder to elbow’ 24 hours a day, getting in each other’s way, and pestering each other. Couples are the happiest when they see each other on their best behavior and best attire. Remember how fun Dating used to be. Well, marriages could go back to being like that. Wives would never again have to be disgusted by seeing their Husbands walking around in dirty tee-shirts and frayed underwear, making gross digestional noises. And men would not have to be disillusioned by seeing their wives when they first roll out of bed in the morning.
Oh, now about ANGER. By my assessment you have only a mild case of Anger… that’s if you were being totally honest with us. Yes, you were finally pushed to destructive anger, but it did require a great deal of provocation, piled on your condition of accumulated sleep deprivation and stresses from a miserably exploitative job. My advice there is that maybe you would have been able to contain yourself long enough to finally get out the house and go to work if you had been able to Control your Adrenaline. You see, all that constant attack from your Wife, combined with the anxieties about being late for work, seemed ‘Threatening’ enough to cause your Adrenal System to start pumping out Adrenaline. It was the Adrenaline that pushed up the volume of your voice and which caused you to break the phone instead of taking it away and saying, “now of course neither one of us wants to hang out our dirty laundry for all the neighbors to see, do we? You can have this back when WE both calm down.” I’ve written quite a lot about Adrenaline, and much of it is not in the Anger Management Literature. But what I have found, and it has helped more than a few Members here, is that if you can catch the First Sign of an Adrenaline Rush, which is the tightening of the jaws (the clenching of teeth; firmly closing your mouth; your teeth coming together when they are usually apart), and if you can RELAX that reflex the very millisecond that you notice it, you will effectively shut off the Adrenaline Rush. In a situation like you describe, you would simply need to focus on Breathing through Your Open Mouth. One Member wrote to me and said that she can’t get Angry as long as she can keep her mouth open. So the Trick really does work. I can’t wait until an Anger Management author of some standing steals my idea and publishes it so I can finally refer to an ‘authority’ when telling what I know for a fact to be true (oh, and then Science is horribly expensive these days . You can’t prove even the most obvious thing shy of making at least a $300,000 Grant to some University or another). Oh, by the way, another Member wrote in with the curious fact that Aggression and Hostility are not the only things that cause the Jaw Clamp Down Reflex; that acts of affection will also trigger a bit of adrenaline. Apparently in our Animal Makeup the Body considers ANY contact to be risky enough to prepare for. Yes, even when we anticipate affection, when it comes to close contact, we can never be entirely sure how it is going to go. I thought the Member’s Observation to be most curious until I realized as I was bending down to pet one of my cats, that my jaw muscles tightened. It seems that the body is automatically cautious about reaching out to touch an animal that has fangs for teeth and blades for fingers, even if they are generally cute and cuddly. But that is perhaps the reason why Nature gave us a Way of shutting down Un-needed Adrenaline Rushes… if you find there is no Danger, then simply open your mouth and take a deep breath.
Now, about your wife’s issue with Anger. While your own issues with anger are significant enough not to be dismissed, your wife’s problem with Anger are severe enough to warrant priority attention. Maybe you could get her to write in. Of course, we could give you a message to pass along, but it might work better if she writes directly to us. I am sure she has been under a great deal of stress, and along with advice we could give her some sympathy. You see, many of us here used to be, or still are subject to the same kind of Anger Episodes, and so maybe our advice wouldn’t seem quite so patronizing coming from us as from you (though maybe after working on my own Anger Issues I should take some time to deal with my tendency toward being Patronizing. The Path to Perfection always leaves One More Thing to take care of, doesn’t it?) .
So, Mr. Broyale, I hope this has been helpful. Please let me know how it goes?