Gently, as others have stated, I would have also been very angry had I been in your wife’s position. Very angry. I don’t blame her at all for how she reacted, especially after you just ram-rodded over her hurt and justified anger to make it about you and how she should be apologizing to you. (If this is regular behavior, it is, at the very least, disrespectful, and some would categorize it as emotional abuse.)
If 90% of the time, your wife doesn’t seem to have an anger management problem, perhaps a) she’s holding it in and exploding when it builds up; (b) is reacting in an exaggerated way due to horomones, in which case you would probably be able to notice a cycle to the outburts; or (c) all of the above.
I think that the best approach would be to seek couple’s counseling to address these issues.
I did not see her reaction as out-of-the-ordinary at all, let alone as something that required hormones as an explanation. A husband could easily have reacted in the same way to his wife, after all. Her reaction could have been more constructive, but like the husband’s decision to give her the silent treatment it fell in with the typical reactions that the conflicts of marriage bring. It was the kind of bad behavior that typical people fall into, with unfortunate but predictable results.
I have a rule for marriage that I give to couples who ask for my one most useful piece of advice:
If you are wrong, apologize, even if you are not the most wrong. I’d even go so far as to say* especially* if you are not the most wrong, since the spouse who is the most wrong is usually feeling the most defensive, and therefore it is easier for the other one to break the ice and get the process of reconciliation going.
A real apology, if it gives reasons for the bad behavior at all, gives them in a way that does not qualify the need to apologize. In other words, you say, “I was very upset at what you did to my scissors, but I should never yell at you like I did. I’m sorry. I hope you’ll forgive me,” and NOT “I’m sorry, I hope you’ll forgive me, I should never yell at you like I did, but I was very upset at what you did to my scissors.” (Do you see how the second way sounds like you are slipping in an excuse for yourself?)
The beauty of the rule, of course, is that almost all stand-offs in apologies come about because both sides are thinking, “OK, yes, I’m wrong, but I’m not as wrong as he/she is, so I AM NOT GOING TO APOLOGIZE FIRST.” Both sides stubbornly dig in as a defense of their own moral superiority, both sides feel hurt and put upon, and what could have been easily dealt with hardens into a major conflict.
Why do that? Why not apologize when you’re wrong and look to repair what you’ve damaged without looking for bad behavior in your spouse as an excuse to leave the damage you did go un-repaired? Since you know that sometimes you are oblivious to how you hurt your spouse and you are
certainly aware that you are oblivious to all the ways you offend God, right? Why not pass over some apologies you think you ought to get, in order to fulfill your supplication in the Our Father:
Forgive us as we forgive those who trespass against us? This sacrament of marriage is meant to make saints of us, after all, not just make babies.
Marriages thrive on mercy:
Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, is not arrogant, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, How many of us had that passage read at our weddings? Well, are we willing to live it? If not in how we handle offenses against us, then how?
In our marriage vows, we promised our spouses:
I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life. Not just the days when our spouse was doing his or her part or the days we feel we have the quid pro quo going, but all the days of our life. Until there is infidelity or abuse that poses a serious danger to us, we are not excused from the duty to keep that promise.
