3am mother of all fights - awake and feeling somewhat desperate / in dread

[DrDesperate]

Hi-

 

I'm 38, I've been married to my wife (also 38) since 2001 and we've been together for even longer (almost 20 years). We have two lovely kids, one is 4 and a half and the other 2. We both work (student loans, house payments) and although her job is very flexible (as is mine) with telecommuting and with plenty of vacation, she and I are probably chronically stressed much of the time.

 

A little history. My wife is a recovering addict. I'm a recovering sex addict. She's been clean of her alcoholism and I've been clean from my addiction (which was not actual, physical infidelity, just out-of-control pornography use and addiction, which is just infidelity of another kind). I've been clean since about 2004, she since about the same span of time. She used to go to AA regularly, does not anymore. I go to a therapy group once a month (used to get much more therapy earlier on), just for support.

 

She comes from an alcoholic family (her mother) who is still practicing. They don't talk about feelings in her family. They're kind of dysfunctional. I get along OK with them (my in-laws) and I don't dislike them personally, but that's the way they are. I think my wife's biggest legacy from them is that she very much doesn't prefer to talk about feelings or relationships either - at our lighter moments we joke about it, I'm the 'touchy-feely' one and she doesn't want to talk about it (interestingly, I'm a clinical psychologist in my work, I work for the federal government).

 

So, we just had a terrible, awful, nasty fight. One of the worst we've ever had. Here's what happened: I was sound asleep, it was about 2:30am. I had earplugs in my ears (habit of both of us when we leave our window open at night when we sleep) and suddently, I heard my son's voice saying, “I saw a cactus book in my room,” and then Mom’s voice saying, “go to bed.” I remember saying also, “go back to bed, Aidan” (some things were also said by Mom and possibly me or Aidan, I don’t remember,) and then I heard Mom clearly say something critical like, “I don’t appreciate you yelling at him,” and then immediately getting up to put him back to bed. I laid there in bed for a minute, feeling stung, hurt, suddenly wide awake.

 

I told her so after we got back to the room, and after restating her problems with how she felt about my dealing with his sleep problems, she simply said she was sorry and then turned over and went to bed. I, of course, continued to feel hurt, continued to be wide awake. I told her so - I wanted something a little more than just a rote apology (after justifying her behavior, of course).

 

Immediately the tone went downhill, she sighed, exasperated, some words were said by her, as if to say, “so what?” She immediately treated my request to have my hurt feelings acknowledged as some sort of insulting and highly irritating thing, which of course made my hurt feelings and anger worse.

 

Suddenly things were going downhill fast. IIRC I protested my hurt feelings, basically demanding that she acknowledge that and she ended up screaming in my face, close in, at the top of her lungs, and cursing me with expletives. I'd like to say this has never happened before, but it has (although it's rare).

 

Here was my first big choice-point. Immediately very hot under the collar, being screamed at and cursed at, already feeling hurt, I screamed back and cursed at her myself. Before I knew it, my wife was threatening to call the police because she "felt threatened." Now, mind you, I never threatened her, and I never made any moves on her (and I never have), but I am six foot three and weight 230 pounds and she said that THIS is what made her feel threatened (this is after she threatened to call the cops).

 

While she has on at least a couple of occasions in the past made a threat of calling the police on me (essentially for yelling and moving my hands a lot), it's been usually a route to just shut me down. At that point whatever we'd been fighting about, and in particular, whatever my issues were or grievances were efficiently get swept under the rug and it becomes about her feeling threatened, which, apparently, is simply triggered by the fact that I raise my voice, move my hands too much, and am simply too close to her... also it's triggered by just being me, a large man, something I can't control. Usually I get perplexed and apologetic and stay angry, she sulks off in the corner, the issues don't really get addressed, and we don't really come to some logical conclusion (or at least a fair draw) in the fight.

 

I don't have a history of violence. I don't get violent. I've never been in jail, prison, had a DUI - I work for the feds for chrissake. I go to therapy once a month. I DON'T GET VIOLENT.

 

Feeling extremely angry and threatened, I did something I'd never done before, and was really stupid of me. As she was threatening to call the police, I said, "oh, I'm going to call the police and tell them I'm feeling threatened by you." She said, "you'd lie to them?" I said, "No, I'd simply say that you behaved the same way towards me that I you say I did towards you." Of course I wasn't going to call the police. She seemed shocked. It, however, accomplished one thing - suddenly she was speaking without screaming again and was speaking in full sentences, as was I.

 

(sidebar - Of course, this threatening to call the cops thing is utterly awful. AWFUL. No good thing can come from invoking the police in this context. Even if you are pro-police, I think it's pretty obvious. You know, if you're actually being threatened or attacked, if you really must call the police, then I guess you should. But in this context, it feels like a really, really dirty move on her part, really unfair, seriously threatening to me, and IMHO, wrong. She's known me better than 20 years, I've never hit her or threatened her physically. If she' s scared because I'm yelling, OK, tell me so and we can do something about it (maybe you should yell at me first) but threatening to call the police?)

 

Suddenly, she was packing her bags and threatening to leave the house. Panicked, I asked when she was coming back, she said, "I don't know." I asked her if she was thinking of divorcing me, she said, "yes." I got very frantic and then started saying all sorts of terrible things, basically out of fear. I threatened to take custody of the kids and (yeah, I'm a moron) cataloged some of the terrible things I'd say about her and her family in order to get the kids (which were actually true, but the fact that I made such a threat was the terrible thing), and at that point things got absolutely terrible.

 

Amazingly, I somehow convinced her not to leave the house. I'm sitting on the couch downstairs writing this (it's now past 5am) and I have no idea whether she's sleeping or not but I can't sleep, no way, no how.

 

She's a great mom. She's a great wife. She's kind, intelligent, and beautiful. I really don't want to lose her. But the way we fight (when we do fight) is so ridiculously dysfunctional it really can't be something hanging over us like this. My fear of having the cops called on us, or of her walking out, or divorcing me, or whatever.

 

For her part, she says I'm "bullying" her when I try to simply air my grievances with her. I get that she sometimes doesn't want to talk (or fight, if that's what we're doing), but she NEVER wants to talk, or fight. She wants to escalate, or avoid, or call the cops on me, or leave the house. I'm not getting it.

 

I should say that to my left right now is a list of marriage counselors in our area, and as soon as the holidays are over I'm calling them. I had asked her to go to marriage counseling before. We went a few times (subsequent to a terrible accident one of our kids had a while back - stressful for both of us although he's fine now), but we stopped, I forget exactly why, but obviously it was a mistake to stop.

 

It was obvious to me, at least – and I asked her to resume marriage counseling with me later on, but she said no. *She* recalls that she said no to just that particular marriage counselor, but of course, she didn’t suggest looking for other ones. And of course, tellingly, I'm the one who has set up marriage and couples counseling sessions for us, this has never been something she has persued or initiated. I recall when I brought up continuing couples counseling the last time she essentially shut down the suggestion entirely. At the time, I had just filed it away in my head that I was going to try and make the couples counseling stuff happen again later. Wow, that was smart.

 

Part of my reason for posting here is just to vent. Part of it is to just get some advice. I think we have a good basis for continuing to be married. I really do love her and I love the family we've built together. I am NOT going to file for divorce. If she wants to initiate it, I guess that will be terrible but I'm not going to be the one to do it. I want marriage counseling and I want some ground rules for fighting fair, simple as that.

 

Short of pursuing and restarting the couples counseling again, I'm not sure what else to do.

 

Anyways, comments appreciated. Advice is OK too.