I guess I just don’t see “up yours” as constituting verbal abuse. Granted it isn’t the most refined way to express your annoyance, but it’s hardly a cruel, dehumanizing statement. It’s just a crude way to say “you’ve really ticked me off”. Whenever we used to ask my mother where our own shoes or bookbag was, she’d respond similarly with, “If it was up your (ahem) you’d know where it was!” That never chipped away at our intimacy and affection. Now if the statement had been accompanied by a coffee mug aimed at his head…well, then that’s something different.
And your wife has the anger issues?
Good point. The op may not realize how much ***he hurt his wife ***first when he didn’t come to eat the dinner she’d prepared, but then again when he eventually decided to come to eat, possibly after she’d already finished eating her meal without him and put the left-overs away.
The relevant issue is that the OP is deeply hurt and affected by the expressions. It sounds like your mother was saying something basically from affection albeit crass. If she used that as an attack delivered with venom in order to demoralise you, believe me you would have experienced it for what it was. In relationships each persons experience is valid. If he didn’t like the way she breathed and was complaining about that it would be obviously unreasonable… but its perfectly reasonable to expect that your spouse stop vicious verbal attacks clearly meant to hurt if you explain your hurt.
…and it’s also reasonable to expect your spouse to make some sort of effort to find things before asking you where they are.
Yes it is. It’s hurtful to go through the effort of serving your spouse only to be rejected. Apparently this makes sense to the OP because he attempted to somewhat rectify it. I think he needs to acknowledge that he didn’t go about that the right way and apologize to his wife for it. I can think of worse things she could have said, but I can think of better as well. Both have been hurtful to one another and it’s possible neither can see their own faults as easily as they can the other party’s faults. Both were wrong and they need to move forward by learning how to communicate properly.
Yes but that’s not the issue at hand. In the counselling setting there is a hierarchy of reconciliation depending on who the aggrieved is. The person who instigates discussion of a particular issue deserves a hearing and an objective analysis of that particular hurtful thing. If a spouse responded to the grievance by saying well it’s your fault. You made me treat you that way… or it’s not that bad, my mother used to say that to me… that’s when a counsellor establishes the ‘order of business’. The big picture can be addressed much more reasonably once the flesh wounds have been treated.
It doesn’t sound like the OP’s spouse is making “vicious verbal attacks”. It sounds like she is expressing annoyance with a common, mild (albeit crass) expression in a situation in which any normal person would be annoyed. The OP didn’t say anything about venom or demoralizing. He didn’t say she was screaming at him, crying, or brandishing a frying pan. He didn’t say she burned their wedding album, packed a bag and moved in with her sister. He said she told him “up your…” and when he complained about it she shrugged it off as if it was no big deal. She’s in a fit of demoralizing rage one moment and then shrugging it off in the next? Maybe, if she’s a psychopath, but given the OP’s description of their relationship, it doesn’t sound like she is. I think the relevant issue is projection. The OP knows what he did was ridiculous, but it’s easier to focus on his wife’s “anger issues” that pop up once every once in a while in the form of ONE negative comment then take responsibility.
His attempt to rectify was to show up when he got around to it, neglect to apologize, and request his dinner.
Well, the OP didn’t come to dinner when called (a marital felony for many people) and then compounded it by wanting his wife to find him something without bothering to look for it himself (a marital misdemeanor).
What the OP is describing, isn’t an uncommon trajectory. He used the one negative comment as an example of a pattern and then went onto say…
I agree 100%. Trying to give them both the benefit of the doubt since I wasn’t there and didn’t see it all unfold, but my initial reaction was thinking I would have said something much more colorful than “up yours”
Well, the main problem I see with doing just Anger Management for her is that it carries the idea that all of their problems are her, whereas it sounds like our OP is doing a lot of bad stuff. So it’s not just a problem with her–there’s a bad dynamic between the two of them, and fixing her won’t fix them.
I’m not saying that the wife has no grounds for her anger/annoyance. When I say ‘aggrieved’ party, I’m meaning the one who looks to outside help first which was the OP coming here. In counselling and in the court room, the parties generally have dispositions based on how they arrived there. Either plaintiff or defendent type thing. (It really isn’t that cut and dried in every counselling situation, but there is generally an ‘order of business’ that is more fruitful to follow to get to the big picture. When people are trying to resolve their issues themselves it is often ‘you should do this or that’ rather than addressing that efficient order of business. I’m a great big fan of the efficacy of counselling. It’s a wonderful modern vocation.
Of course the wife feels aggrieved. She IS aggrieved, objectively speaking. But in counseling, the aggrieved party is the one making the complaint, no matter how trivial and petty the complaint is in the full scope of the situation. You’re not allowed to consider the fact that your spouse forgot one child in the car and spent the mortgage payment on nail polish when they tell you their feelings are hurt when you call them an idiot. That sort of thing.