Fighting Fair

My husband was barely home for twelve hours when we had our first disagreement. He had been away for a week to see family and during that time we talked daily. We had a difficult business situation that we were navigating for the first time which was costing us both time and money. While he was away, I was tasked with handling the final details and we would discuss the latest updates daily. He was understandably anxious about the matter, however, it appeared to me that the details I provided never quelled his concerns; it just seemed to make him more anxious and frustrated.

On the night of his return, he asked me to recount the details from the previous week and we fine-tuned our plans. The next morning, he again requested a complete overview of everything I had been doing while he was away. I lost it. I lost my cooI. I lost valuable words from the English language. I lost my self-control and my dignity. I reminded him that we talked daily for a week, sometimes multiple times per day, and we were doing everything in our power to fix the problem. I reminded him that our verbal to-do list from the night before did not change overnight. I yelled and screamed in frustration. All of this happened in front of our child who was admonishing me to “count to ten” and to “think before speaking.” When I finally ran out of steam, both my husband and son were staring at me in shocked silence.

Still stewing, I gathered my thoughts enough to grab a piece of paper and a pen and wrote out our to-do list and then I asked him to choose the items he wanted to tackle. He quietly told me to choose first and I put my initials beside a few items and suggested we reconvened later in the day to discuss them.

I sat in my office for hours afterwards silently fuming and unable to be productive. I blamed him for ruining my day. I was upset at myself for becoming so angry and for the poor example of problem-solving that I set for our son. I asked myself why I was so angry, and I sat in stillness until I could verbalize to myself why my husband triggers me in such a way.

I consider myself an honest and hard-working person. When he had to leave for a week due to a family emergency, I stepped in to complete the business at hand. It weighed heavily on both of us, and we both were working hard to see it to completion. However, he was using his vacation time to see family and I was at home with our son, working multiple jobs while navigating this added dilemma. Although his reason for traveling was not pleasant, he had time to relax. I on the other hand, had on additional item added to my full workload. Yet I was completing it on schedule.

I do not like repeating myself unnecessarily. When I have a difficult task at hand, I write it down then I work on the steps necessary for resolution. If it keeps me up at night, it gets bumped up on the priority list and I do not stop until it is resolved or at least until the anxiety or fear that it engenders is controlled. When I have difficult tasks to complete, I do not benefit from repeating them to myself or others. I simply go back to my to-do list and rework it. In fact, hearing it repeated causes me great anxiety and decreases my productivity.

My husband is cut from very different cloth. He is also honest and hard-working but we do not attack problems in the same way. He finds comfort in rumination. He verbalizes the problem ad nauseum and relives the anxiety and fear that accompanies it. He calls family and repeats the incident multiple times. He imagines and shares worse-case scenarios, and then trace each scenario down a path of destruction. From my viewpoint it is a torturous affair.

The rift occurred because we both problem-solve differently and failed to communicate reassurance. He needed reassurance that I was taking care of the business process as discussed daily. He is reassured when I verbalize the problem each time, state clearly the mistakes we made, what we should have done differently and what will happen if we do not get this taken care of immediately. After this preamble, he wants us to discuss a list of options and choose the best one. I needed him to reassure me that he trusts me to work on solving the problem in his absence and give pertinent updates.

He didn’t need more information; he needed reassurance. I didn’t need to be grilled; I needed reassurance that he heard me and understood that I was doing my best. Without that daily dance he is not reassured that we are on the same page and there is progress. Without reassurance I feel I am not being heard, or worse, not believed. I feel he thinks I’m incompetent.

After pausing for reflection about the fundamental issue that caused my meltdown, I collected my thoughts and then apologized to my husband and son. Then I told my husband how his actions made me feel. I felt disrespected and inconsequential like my effort didn’t matter. I didn’t matter. I needed to be heard and understood. He then shared that he doesn’t repeat himself and question me because he doesn’t believe me. He simply needs to hear the information multiple times to process it. He attacks the problem from various angles and evaluates various scenarios. What I do on paper he does verbally.

This disagreement also helped me to see that while my husband energetically tackles every problem, I prefer to take my time because my mental energy is already divided among childcare, professional pursuits, and other activities. My husband had every right to want this problem solved immediately because it was costing us a lot of money. My small-bites approach was not the best fit for this problem. I have come to realize that I procrastinate greatly about everything that makes me anxious. I get overwhelmed and then practice staunch avoidance, which lengthens the time to action and task completion. His daily ruminations created a sense of urgency that made me uncomfortable because it did not align with my avoidance method. I also prefer solitary strategy sessions while he prefers communal sharing.

One of the reasons I was attracted to my husband was because he is very detail oriented. We complement each other because our values are similar, but our approaches are different. This usually works for our marriage. However, this time we allowed our differences to become weaknesses instead of strengths. He now understands that ruminating over every detail and repeating every error does not help me be more productive. I now understand that his process includes going over every possible scenario and outcome as a way to prevent poor outcomes. While I cannot be the person who listens to the doomsday predictions, I can compromise on how we solve the problem. We ended the conversation with a plan to put all action items on a list in the family’s online drive. This gives him the chance to write a whole dissertation if he needs to, and I can simply abstract the items I need. He also has my permission to call family members to fill his need for verbalizing every step. And the best part? Our strengths have realigned and our business prospects are improving.