A New Attitude

I need to stop yelling at my wife and kids.

If for no other reason, my kids need one good parent who doesn't abuse or neglect them, and instead will protect them.

I think I know how I’ll be able to. In addition to all of the advice I have been gleaning from multiple sources, some personalized, I have decided that a significant problem has been my expectations. I've been frustrated because I expected my wife to be a functional, effective wife and mother. I expected this because she was eager to be a stay at home mother and I was glad she was eager to be, and that was the plan long before we married. I also expected it because she had been able live on her own and to work full time with children, and was educated in caring for children, child development, nutrition, etc.

But my expectations were not built on the whole truth, because I didn't know the whole truth. I'm not excusing my yelling, just explaining it. My expectations led to my frustrations which led to my yelling. Changing my expectations will be one the factors and that will allow me to stop the yelling. So far, I have restrained myself multiple times due to this shift in expectations.

On the Couch

I'm getting counseling.

My wife has repeatedly demanded I get counseling for the times I have lost my temper and yelled. I resisted, figuring if I had time to get counseling, I should instead spend that time doing something I wanted to do. Previously, every time she demanded I get counseling, she dropped the demand or forgot about it completely, because each time she made the demand it was she, in retrospect, who had a problem.

My wife even took video of me during one of my rants. This was to show me how awful I was. I knew that even as it was going on. She demanded I watch it and sent it to me (we weren't in the same place when she made the demand). So I did. And you know what? While she was expecting me to see that things were worse that I realized, when I saw the video I didn't look nearly as bad I had in my own mind.

Anyway, I agree I can handle some situations better, and choosing my battles, I recently relented and agreed to get counseling. So now, for a hour each week, I sit on a couch and talk with a man without anyone else around. Heck, even if he wasn't a therapist that hour would be better than an hour being given marching orders at home, or with the kids fighting with each other and petitioning me for this or that. Sure, let me talk with another man for a hour!

Still, I'd rather be doing something else with the time. Even getting a nap, since I don't enough sleep. Gee, I can't imagine someone is who sleep-deprived ever losing their temper.

Dealing With a Bratty Wife

Anyone have any advice of how to deal with a bratty (or bitchy, or whatever you want to call it) wife? It isn't so much that she's being a brat to me (she is, somewhat). It is that she's been bratty towards others, needlessly antagonizing them when they don't do what she wants, when she wants, how she wants. Example... she wanted her brother to babysit. He declined. She started ripping into him about what a loser she thinks he is, point out that she went to college, graduated, got her career going, and doesn't abuse alcohol or pot or illegal drugs (she just loads up on coffee, candy/sugar, and has multiple prescription pills she pops), while he is unemployed, has no college education, and has abused substances... but we still trust him to watch our kids for short amounts of time.

I gently asked if her treatment of her brother was going to make it more or less likely he will want to babysit for us in the future.

I'd like to apologize to her brother and others she's been acting this way towards lately, but I have a strong belief in marital unity and not going behind your spouse's back, and all of that. Besides, she should be the one apologizing, right? Do I encourage her to do so?

My wife has been especially stressed out because of a series of things, but currently it is about an impending surgery. But... dealing with stressful things is part of life and no excuse to antagonize people.

Any tips or suggestions about what to say/do towards her or the people she's antagonized?

Please don't say sex. I can't sleep with her brother. But seriously, sex doesn't relax her or put her in a better mood. It does relax me and put me in a better mood, though. And yes, I do realize I could have avoided dealing with a bratty wife by marrying someone else or not marrying at all. But here we are.

Thorns on the Roses

The time my wife and I had together without the kids was good, for the most part. But let me back up. This entry isn't pretty, but it is honest.

There's a reason I asked recently about verbal abuse. Part of what was rough recently was that my wife was saying the kinds of things to me I'd never say to her. It doesn't happen often, but she has given me the finger, threatened to withhold sex (more on that below), and many more things (mind you, I am the one with the anger problem, right?).

I've worked in jobs where I have had to take a lot of insults and yelling, and just shrug it off. But I don't live with those people and trust my finances and very life to those people, or share children with them.

But she apologizes for everything. Some of the stuff she apologizes for is stuff I have not felt I could bring up. And then I'm supposed to accept the apology, but in doing so for some of those things, I’d basically be accusing her of screwing everything up and marrying me under false pretenses, and I don’t want to kill the marriage or hurt her, because despite my gripes there are many things I like about the marriage and I love her.

She's been bitchy and has had little patience lately in dealing with the kids. She's also been having a pity party. I look at her attitude and how she's not keeping herself up and I wonder what happened to the woman I dated. She recognizes that there has been a problem, and is going back on her favorite antidepressant. You should see her collection of medicines. More on that later, too.

The First Session

The counseling session was not as bad as a visit to the dentist. It's a very experienced male, by the way, so hopefully he's not an idiot with a bias against normal male behavior. I felt awful laughing at some of what my wife said, but at least I wasn't yelling. If the laughing bothered her, she didn't let on. Rather, she was very thankful that I agreed to go, and has been in a good mood and sweet to me ever since I "agreed" to go. Yes, I agreed after my money was already committed to it. It was interesting because...

1. I found out she considers me a "rage-aholic". That was a surprise. I couldn't help but think of Homer Simpson's line, "I'm a rage-aholic! I'm addicted to rage-ahol!"

2. When she described what happened on vacation, she was going to make it sound like I had just started yelling like a madman. I had to break in and point out that she had been yelling at me, and I yelled back, then her sister yelled at me, and I yelled back, and that I was in a situation that I would never had subjected her to in the first place.

3. She's now upfront about the reason we live where we do - to be close to her family. The same family she is now avoiding. She used to say to me (and others) that we're living there (as opposed to closer to where I do most of my in-person work, or closer to my family) because she liked the house and the layout fit our needs. This is connected to why I yelled at her a few months back "because she got sick". I didn't yell as her because she got sick. I yelled at her because she was insisting I was going to take time off from work to take care of her, to which I asked why in the world we were living where we were, so far away from my family members who could (and wanted to) help out without taking any time off of work. When we were deciding to buy that house, I pointed those things out to her... we were going to have to live with the problems the house had because we weren't going to be asking the bank to take care of them, and we weren't going to have the money to do much to fix the place up. And we were going to be far from my family and work. Yet, these things continue to be issues, which is why they may prompt my yelling. We didn't quite go over all of this in session. But when I yell about something related to the house, she takes it as a personal attack on her and her family.

4. The real problem with my yelling may be that her mother yelled when she got drunk. She equated my alleged "rageaholism" with her mother's alcoholism. There's no comparison. Yes, there are some superficial similarities... we both deny our "addictions" are as bad as my wife says they are. But that would be true if she found a complete stranger and accused them of being addicted to gambling and the stranger denied it. See! Just like her mother! She focused a lot on the tone of my voice when I yell. So, perhaps if I yell in a different tone it will be a-okay?

5. She clearly conspired with my sister (and her own sister, obviously) to set up this counseling session and not tell me until it was too late to cancel. I have talked with my sister and also my mother on separate phone calls. After each call, my wife asked me if I told them about the counseling. And when I told her I hadn't mentioned it, she asked me why. Why bother? They both surely know about it. They can bring it up if they want. I'll likely not talk with them about it.

6. It sounded for a while like my wife was going to directly ask me to further cut back in usage of the desktop computer and mobile device. She said I would be happy if I didn't have her and the kids and all I did was sit on the computer. If I didn't have her and the kids, I wouldn't be on the computer all of the time, I'd be out with friends some of the time. But yes, since I'm a reader and a writer, and that can all be done on the computer, I can keep myself entertained by sitting in front of the computer. Mind you, all of the DVR space is taken by her shows and the kids' shows. I like to be productive rather than sitting around, and when the kids are occupied and my wife is occupied, I take the chance to get online. Technology is the only way I can still keep in touch with my friends at all. I pointed out that if the goal was to reduce my stress, doing something to increase my stress was a funny way to do it. Late in the session, she told me she was not asking me to cut back, but c'mon... she made her feelings known, and now I'm going to be some uncaring jerk who keeps right on... reading the news and barely keeping in contact with my friends.

Again, she was very appreciative that I had gone. Jump through the hoop, get a biscuit. That's a good boy.

Opening a Can of Worms?

Things have been good since the trip. My wife even said something that, in the past, would have gotten me riled up and perhaps yelling in response, but I handled it well.

But after that, she told me that she's going to have a marriage therapy appointment, and wants me to go. She told me this too late to cancel, so even if I could convince her it would be a waste, we'd still be out the money. Her sister (the one who I got into the fight with) and brother-in-law are going to babysit. We'd be better off using the time to go on a date.

I had made it clear to the party matching us, and I know my wife knew this before we dated, that I wanted someone who was healthy, not someone who was always treating an illness, real or imagined. When I met my wife, she was working full time, on her feet, with kids. On our first date, we talked about career and having a parent at home. I was open to being the one staying home. She said she wanted to be the one to stay home. She always wanted to be a hands-on Mom. She grew up with younger siblings. I took all of this to mean that she would be able to handle being the parent at home, and I was willing to be the sole income earner in exchange for having someone taking care of the kids.

But it hasn't worked out that way.

I can't bring this up in counseling, because she would take it as a personal attack on her due to her disability (again, I could not have known before we had kids how it was going to impact her ability to care for them). There would be no going back from that. And what would be the point? I'd never leave now. I made vows, we have the kids. She'd be badly hurt emotionally, and I'd rather not have to deal with that, in addition to not wanting to hurt her. She can't change. Well, she could change her thinking, if not her body, but she won't.

So I won't be able to be fully open and honest in counseling, at least not in front of her. So it is going to be waste.

And will she like the results? She's said repeatedly she loves her life and it is the way she's always wanted. Well, it is going to have to change a lot for me to get the things I'll need in order for me to get my yelling under further control.

This could get really, really bad.

More time and money spent that we don't have free to spend. That means more stress on me, even if the counseling itself is neutral. And what if it isn't? What if it does more harm than good?

Turning Down the Volume

I gave a recap of our horrible vacation here.

At the end of that one evening that started out with me trading shouts with my wife and her sister, my wife kept me awake begging me to get therapy and get drugged for my "rage". I calmly and quietly asked her if I had ever... ever... come out of the blue and just started yelling at anyone. She had to answer no.

It is true, my temper has been a problem for me in my life.

It was a problem when I was a kid, and I learned to control it by the time I was a teen. Now that I think about it, I think I got a handle on my temper about the time I started masturbating to orgasm. Coincidence?

Anger has never been a problem for me professionally. If anything, there are times when I should have displayed anger and didn't.

It hasn't been a problem while I drive (no road rage from me).

As an adult, it has never led to a physical fight or violence.

I don't throw things, hit things or people, kick things or people, push people, or break things.

I don't berate or insult others.

I scream... loudly and angrily... often I'm screaming questions... "Why did you do that? What do you expect me to do?" Or refusal, such as "I'm not going to do that!"

It was never a problem in any of my past relationships – I don't recall that I ever yelled at a girlfriend except perhaps with one who would have already been yelling at me. But sometimes with my family, and that now includes the family I have made, I yell. My wife has correctly noted it is when I think I should have control over something, but don't.

With the kids, it was "STOP [fill the in blank]!" I say "was" because when my wife sat me down to point it out and why it was a problem, I stopped.

Even when the yelling is a response to an angry or yelling statement from another adult, I shouldn't be yelling as often as I am.

But I refuse to drug myself when I know behavior modification can work.

My mind is the last thing that is mine.

I'm not sure I have a need for outside help based on something that happened under very unusual circumstances, and things got better after that, as least as far as I'm concerned. I haven't yelled since. But my wife would argue that it has been a pattern.

Maybe it is.

The Latest Shark Attack on Dr. Laura Schlessinger

I used to listen to Howard Stern. I've read his books. I've seen his movie. We even have at least one mutual friend. Listening to his show allowed me to listen to other shows, because of the 20-minute marathon commercial breaks. When he left terrestrial radio for satellite, I figured I would keep up on his show by reading recaps on the fan sites, as I wasn't motivated to pay for radio. Turns out the overwhelming majority of his listeners weren't motivated to pay for radio, either. Turns out I wasn't motivated enough to even read the recaps. In my life, just as in the larger pop culture, Stern's relevance has become a faint shadow of what it had been.

In my case, it can probably chalked up to maturing. Nationally, it is not just his move to pay radio, but also TV shows like Jersey Shore and other "reality" shows essentially doing his show on television. Stern's stuff is very funny to adolescent boys, at least the first few times they hear it. When he was a struggling father and long-married husband who made fun of others for getting drunk, and fought with his boss, people could identify with him. But that all changed. I most enjoyed Robin Quivers' news, and I'm a sucker for parody,so I enjoyed those aspects of the show even as I vehemently disagreed with some of the things Stern said or some of his tone.

There is radio for which I'm willing to pay. I started paying so I could get Dr. Laura’s podcasts, just before she announced she was changing the nature of and base for her show by moving to pay radio.

If you haven't heard yet, Howard Stern's prankster fans did a shark attack on Dr. Laura's show yesterday, apparently trashing the second and third hour so horribly that they weren't podcasted (at least not when I downloaded the first hour). They called with bogus calls, made cryptic and not-so cryptic references to Stern's show, and called Dr. Laura Anglo-Saxon words you can't hear on terrestrial radio because the FCC will fine the broadcaster into oblivion.

Stern has loyal, hardcore fans who, living with their parents and collecting checks from the government, have nothing better to do with their time than play toadie for the bully. If they can get their rude verbal assaults rebroadcast on Stern's show as Stern points out what his toadies did to another show, it is the highlight of their year. If Stern doesn't explicity organize and direct these assaults, he certainly encourages them.

There's no winning this sort of thing. Dr. Laura is on the air fewer hours of the day than Stern. Her show is about helping people, not tearing down others. Her listeners are busy working, loving their spouses, and raising their kids. Stern's toadies (a small subset of his listeners) have a lot of free time, stunted emotional development, and a fixation on insults and offensive disruption.

I'm not sure if there is a way to get Stern to stop attacking Dr. Laura on the air, and thus getting the toadies to stop. Has he made a specific demand? I haven't been playing close attention to Stern for many years now, but based on what he used to say and what scant scraps I've read more recently, my guess is that he attacks Dr. Laura because she teaches things like "It's wrong to kill an innocent human being for any reason other than self-defense", her propogating the ideal of saving sex for marriage, and for her past problems with the content of Stern's show and movie, especially now that she has done what he did – moved to satellite to avoid attacks on advertisers. Stern probably feels like she either should have stuck up for him during his battles in the past or shut up about her battles now.

But there is a difference. Stern's show, and related problems, had to do with pushing racy content for titillation. Dr. Laura's show, and related problems, had to do with instilling morals and ethics. If Stern truly can't see the difference, then he has a serious problem.

I'm interested in seeing how Dr. Laura handles this major shark attack. Is there a way to resolve it without a face-to-face broadcasted meeting between Dr. Laura and Howard Stern? Would Dr. Laura agree to such a thing? I wonder what their "bosses" at Sirius XM think about all of this?

These Studies are Really Pissing Me Off

There's a study that claims to reveal who the angriest Americans are. Here's the article by Andrea Thompson, senior writer at LiveScience.com.

Anger is more likely among the young, those with children at home, and the less educated, a new study finds.

My immediate thoughts...

Young people have raging hormones, less immediate control over their lives (as in, less money and experience), and less experience in dealing with their emotions. Maybe they haven't had time to get to a professional yet who can prescribe emotion-quelling meds to them.

Those with children at home have less sleep, more battles with someone living under the same roof, and more of a stake in the future, and thus are more likely to get angry (and let others know about it) about things that will cause the childless to shrug.

The less educated may be upset about having fewer options.

A national survey of 1,800 Americans aged 18 and older questioned participants on how and when they feel angry in order to build "a broader social portrait of anger in the United States," said study researcher Scott Schieman, now at the University of Toronto.

I'd be interested in a larger sampling.

While anger is a normal human emotion, it could be detrimental if you hold on to it too long. And those who express their anger might actually live longer than those who keep it bottled in, one study found.

The important thing is to find a healthy outlet, as well as to appropriately express anger at things that deserve it.

For one, people under 30 experienced anger of all forms or intensities more frequently than did older adults. This was mainly due to the fact that young people are more likely to be affected by three core stressors that can trigger angry feelings, Schieman said:

* Time pressures
* Economic hardship
* Interpersonal conflict at the workplace

Yup.

Schieman's findings will be detailed in a chapter of the forthcoming International Handbook of Anger, to be released in January 2010.

Now that should be an interesting read. When you buy your copy, try not to throw it at the bookstore clerk.

I'm glad this article doesn't try to say that all anger is bad, because it isn't. In some cases, people who are angry should be asking those who aren't, "Why aren't you angry?" Followers of Christ should note that Jesus demonstrated righteous and appropriate anger, as recorded in the Bible.