Communication

Posted by Sarahbear on June 17, 2010

A few nights ago Chad and I got into an argument. It was the first time we’d fought in a while. We were both sore and tired from the weekend. He was recovering from strep throat and a sunburn from grilling my birthday choice of dinner Saturday. I was sore and tired from the recurrence of my period (finished the Provera and it’s back). We were both exhausted from dragging the kids around downtown Atlanta, the aquarium and then to my aunts house for a wind down before the three hour drive home.  We slept alright that night, but the next night was rough.

We dozed off watching a boring documentary about plastic over-usage. It must have been 11 o’clock. The kids weren’t asleep yet and he woke up to deal with something they were fussing about. By the time they settled down he was wide awake. He spent the next couple of hours watching hentai, trying out his Fleshlight, playing Oblivion and chatting with some friends of ours in Ventrilo.

Around 2:30 I woke up to pee because I heard him laughing and talking. I don’t sleep soundly when he’s not in bed with me. I haven’t since the affair because that’s what he use to do was sneak off after I’d gone to sleep to talk to The Whore. As I was leaving the bathroom I noticed the Fleshlight had been taken apart and scattered all over the sink to dry. He’d obviously used it and cleaned it, which is not usually an issue. I don’t have a problem with him masturbating.

This time I did because I was triggered. Out of nowhere I was right back in the middle of last September. My mind was racing, thinking the worst and wondering what he was doing out of bed and who he was talking to and why he needed to masturbate while I was sleeping. He must have sensed how upset I was because he got off the computer and came to bed. He assured me that he didn’t do anything wrong and walked through what he’d done while I was asleep. I was still livid though. Particularly when he thought the fight was over and went to sleep. I wrote a blog, deleted it and woke him up.

I tried explaining how I felt to him but he had gone into defensive mode. He was too busy coming up with his defense to hear what I was saying and I was getting more agitated by the second. Neither of us were communicating effectively. We must have spent an hour screaming the same thing at each other. By this time I was crying. He screamed “I’m fuckin sorry.”‘ and I rolled over to try to calm down.

Finally I said “You are too busy thinking of what to say next and it makes me feel like you aren’t listening to me.”  He motioned for me to go on. “What you did tonight was triggering for me and upsetting. It does not matter if you did nothing wrong. I know full well that you haven’t done anything wrong. I don’t want you to tell me over and over everything that you did. I believe you when you say you did those things. I want you to tell me that you’re sorry. I want you to acknowledge that I’m upset and that you understand why I’m upset. I want you to tell me that you will make more of an effort to not trigger me in the future because we’ve already talked about what triggers me and why it does.”

He nodded.

“When I tell you that I’m upset, that I’m triggered, and you continue trying to explain what you didn’t do it makes me feel like you’re thinking that I’m over-reacting and irrational.”

He apologized. He told me that he does understand why I get triggered and that I’m justified in feeling that way about those things and that he didn’t mean to make me feel that way. He doesn’t want to trigger my memory and send me back to the place we were nine months ago. He doesn’t want to make me think that he feels like I’m irrational or over-reacting.

When we both shut up long enough and listened to what the other person was trying to say, we were communicating. We were hearing each other. We were accomplishing something. So many times we get so caught up in trying to be right that we forget there’s a person we’re talking to with feelings and emotions. Sometimes we need to figure out what we’re trying to say and see if we’re actually saying that. We need to step back for a moment, collect our thoughts and speak clearly. We need to wait our turn and actually listen when the other person is speaking. That is how you communicate. That is how you maintain a healthy relationship.

“If we were meant to talk more than listen, we would have two mouths and one ear.”  - Mark Twain