Reverie
Active member
Hi all,
I'm looking for help/suggestions for effective, non-threatening wording to try to raise some issues with my husband around some recent communication missteps and a newly developing controlling behavior pattern. I've read some stuff on non-violent communication (NVC) but I'm having trouble figuring out how to apply it to the things I want to say.
I don't want to make him feel bad or put him on the defensive, but I do want to be treated respectfully in communication and to be able to conduct my autonomous life within our agreements without catching flak for it. All of this behavior is new, and he may just be having "a bad week" but I have a history (in past relationships) of being too doormat-y in the face of controlling behavior and passive aggression, and I am trying to learn how to healthily stand my ground and stand up for myself.
Here are the communication missteps and the problem behaviors that have occurred in the past week:
1. Throwing a hissy fit that, in his absence while he is on vacation this weekend, I will be doing a recreational activity with a platonic mutual friend that we are all supposed to do together later this summer. He says that because we talked about doing it together, now he is "excluded" that we are doing it first without him. Elements of hissy fit as follows.
a. Expecting me to read his mind by saying "I'm your husband and you know me better than anyone. You should have known that I would feel this way."
b. Using sarcasm.
c. Putting words in our (our friend's and my) mouths in the form of a mocking conversation where he said "Let's wait for him to go out of town and THEN do it."
d. Insinuating that I'd delayed telling him about these plans until the last moment (when the plan is for today, and I told him yesterday, moments after being invited).
e. A bit of hypocrisy because my husband is off on a vacation with other friends (that I don't have the funds to go on), and so our friend here at home had invited me to hang out with him because he wanted me to have some fun too. So my husband was basically expecting that I not be having fun without him while he's off having fun without me first.
2. Not taking my words at face value when I told him that, while I intended not to have sex with a recently ended FWB if we were to meet up this weekend, I also know that this person is sometimes a weakness of mine, and there is a slim chance that I will succumb in a moment of weakness because hanging out with exes is tricky and people, including me, are flawed. He said he was taking that as I was planning for it to happen. When what I told him was the opposite: I was planning for it not to happen, but I didn't want to blindside him or look like a liar if I had a moment of weakness. I was trying to be vulnerable and honest about my weaknesses, but it backfired.
3. Our current agreements are that we are allowed to have group sex together and casual FWB separately, but when I exchanged numbers with someone at a party last weekend and expressed interest in getting to know him better, my husband pouted about it and said that he had been looking forward to our not having any other opposite sex partners for a while. But he had not expressed that to me when my last thing ended, so I did not know that he wanted our agreements changed. And when I asked him if that's what he wanted, then, he said no, he was happy to still have the freedom even if he wasn't acting on it. In the end, he said I was acting within bounds and could go ahead but he "wasn't thrilled with it." So the elements of this are something like...
a. Expecting me to read his mind that he does not currently want me seeking opposite sex partners.
b. Giving apparently grudging consent to continuing with what we'd already agreed upon, when I asked whether he would prefer a renegotiation.
c. Generally just kind of using pouty passive aggression instead of being direct with what he actually wants and refusing to meet me in a place of direct negotiation.
So, my goal here is just to sort of tighten up our overall communication and agreement-setting practices. I think we used to relate in a very healthy manner, and I want to make sure we do not get too far off course with that. Since we usually have related in a healthy manner, I am rather out of practice with dealing with unhealthy relating strategies, so I want to make sure I don't mess this up.
My priority is that I manage to relate to him with LOVE and COMPASSION, but to still stand up for myself and let him know that the communication strategies and controlling behaviors he has recently employed are not acceptable to me.
I'm just not sure the best way to go about wording it without activating his defenses. Any thoughts or suggestions about how to best go about this are most welcome! Thanks!
ETA: Further details on this situation, if they would be helpful, are available in my blog (linked in my sig); I just didn't want this post to be a million words long, so I tried to distill it to the nuts and bolts.
I'm looking for help/suggestions for effective, non-threatening wording to try to raise some issues with my husband around some recent communication missteps and a newly developing controlling behavior pattern. I've read some stuff on non-violent communication (NVC) but I'm having trouble figuring out how to apply it to the things I want to say.
I don't want to make him feel bad or put him on the defensive, but I do want to be treated respectfully in communication and to be able to conduct my autonomous life within our agreements without catching flak for it. All of this behavior is new, and he may just be having "a bad week" but I have a history (in past relationships) of being too doormat-y in the face of controlling behavior and passive aggression, and I am trying to learn how to healthily stand my ground and stand up for myself.
Here are the communication missteps and the problem behaviors that have occurred in the past week:
1. Throwing a hissy fit that, in his absence while he is on vacation this weekend, I will be doing a recreational activity with a platonic mutual friend that we are all supposed to do together later this summer. He says that because we talked about doing it together, now he is "excluded" that we are doing it first without him. Elements of hissy fit as follows.
a. Expecting me to read his mind by saying "I'm your husband and you know me better than anyone. You should have known that I would feel this way."
b. Using sarcasm.
c. Putting words in our (our friend's and my) mouths in the form of a mocking conversation where he said "Let's wait for him to go out of town and THEN do it."
d. Insinuating that I'd delayed telling him about these plans until the last moment (when the plan is for today, and I told him yesterday, moments after being invited).
e. A bit of hypocrisy because my husband is off on a vacation with other friends (that I don't have the funds to go on), and so our friend here at home had invited me to hang out with him because he wanted me to have some fun too. So my husband was basically expecting that I not be having fun without him while he's off having fun without me first.
2. Not taking my words at face value when I told him that, while I intended not to have sex with a recently ended FWB if we were to meet up this weekend, I also know that this person is sometimes a weakness of mine, and there is a slim chance that I will succumb in a moment of weakness because hanging out with exes is tricky and people, including me, are flawed. He said he was taking that as I was planning for it to happen. When what I told him was the opposite: I was planning for it not to happen, but I didn't want to blindside him or look like a liar if I had a moment of weakness. I was trying to be vulnerable and honest about my weaknesses, but it backfired.
3. Our current agreements are that we are allowed to have group sex together and casual FWB separately, but when I exchanged numbers with someone at a party last weekend and expressed interest in getting to know him better, my husband pouted about it and said that he had been looking forward to our not having any other opposite sex partners for a while. But he had not expressed that to me when my last thing ended, so I did not know that he wanted our agreements changed. And when I asked him if that's what he wanted, then, he said no, he was happy to still have the freedom even if he wasn't acting on it. In the end, he said I was acting within bounds and could go ahead but he "wasn't thrilled with it." So the elements of this are something like...
a. Expecting me to read his mind that he does not currently want me seeking opposite sex partners.
b. Giving apparently grudging consent to continuing with what we'd already agreed upon, when I asked whether he would prefer a renegotiation.
c. Generally just kind of using pouty passive aggression instead of being direct with what he actually wants and refusing to meet me in a place of direct negotiation.
So, my goal here is just to sort of tighten up our overall communication and agreement-setting practices. I think we used to relate in a very healthy manner, and I want to make sure we do not get too far off course with that. Since we usually have related in a healthy manner, I am rather out of practice with dealing with unhealthy relating strategies, so I want to make sure I don't mess this up.
My priority is that I manage to relate to him with LOVE and COMPASSION, but to still stand up for myself and let him know that the communication strategies and controlling behaviors he has recently employed are not acceptable to me.
I'm just not sure the best way to go about wording it without activating his defenses. Any thoughts or suggestions about how to best go about this are most welcome! Thanks!
ETA: Further details on this situation, if they would be helpful, are available in my blog (linked in my sig); I just didn't want this post to be a million words long, so I tried to distill it to the nuts and bolts.
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