How Arguments About Stupid Little Things Turn into Major Blow-ups

The Grouchy Guy:  How Arguments About Stupid Little Things

Turn into Major Blow-ups

BLOGGER:  LAWRENCE JOSEPHS, PHD

I am always surprised by the fact that couples who fight like cats and dogs all the time usually fight about stupid little things that get blown up out of proportion. Someone forgets to clean up after themselves, someone doesn’t want to take directions when driving, someone thinks the kids are being treated too permissively, someone isn’t in the mood to do something like have sex or go out to dinner, someone doesn’t want to spend money on something, etc. These are just all the little conflicts and tensions of married life that require two people with two different personalities, two different points of view, and two different sets of preferences to peacefully negotiate their inevitable differences and come up with a workable compromise. Why is that so difficult to do and why do these little conflicts become triggers of major blow-ups?

The problem seems to be that on average men and women seem to have different ways of managing conflict and angry feelings in a close relationship. When men are annoyed about something and assert their grievance, they want respect and are hypersensitive to not getting it. When women are annoyed about something and assert their grievance, they want reassurance that the relationship is solid, isn’t threatened by the difference in opinion, and are hypersensitive to not getting that reassurance. Men want to feel that their wives respect them no matter what and women want to feel that their husbands still love them no matter what, though women also want respect and men also want love. Perceived lack of respect and perceived lack of reassurance is what escalates a minor conflict about a petty issue into a major blow-up. The argument takes on a larger symbolic significance once the couple becomes insecure about whether or not they really love and respect each other. That’s the underlying hot button issue that can lead to a major conflagration.

When a difference of opinion arises and our viewpoint is questioned, it is only natural to defend ourselves by further justifying our own position while more strongly attacking our rival’s position in order to win the argument. Once a competitive mindset has been activated, that winning the argument is all that matters, the stage is set for an escalating conflict that may get totally out of control. Many men are hypersensitive to being questioned by their wives as though being questioned puts their masculine competence in doubt. To assert their dominance men start to make their argument all the more forcefully as their temper is rising. Of course, women don’t want to feel bullied into a submissive position so they too defend themselves all the more forcefully, leading to an escalating conflict. As men get more and more frustrated that they can’t get respect by winning the argument, they start expressing more disgust with and contempt for their wives and as they begin to get fed-up start to threaten to withdraw in anger. At this point, many women get alarmed that the relational connection is threatened and start demanding reassurance that they are still loved by a devoted partner who seems to be threatening hostile rejection. Of course, a man is not going to give reassurance that he still loves his partner when he is fuming inside and beginning to withdraw in anger. This is the stand-off: the man demanding respect or else to be left alone in peace and the woman demanding reassurance through some intimate gesture that brings them closer together and neither getting satisfaction. Then it’s a screaming match.

The challenge for anger management is captured by the title of the famous Rolling Stones song “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.” Men aren’t going to get respect and women aren’t going to get reassurance once their partner is upset and angry because people have difficulty thinking straight when they are only seeing red because they are so angry. You have a difficult choice to make, give up trying to win the argument so you can diffuse an escalating conflict or keep trying to win the argument, knowing it’s just going to end up in a big blow-up. The best response is simply to say: “This isn’t worth getting in a big fight about, let’s discuss the issue later when we are in a better mood.” Since the hot button issue must be discussed sooner or later, you have to remember that you can never talk someone out of their true feelings. Everyone is entitled to their feelings or point of view so there is no sense trying to prove that someone’s feelings or point of view are wrong and your feelings and point of view are right. So you may just as well cut to the chase. The way to arrive at a negotiated solution is to accept the fact of eventual compromise and concession. So you say something like this: “I understand that from your point of view it looks this way and from my point of view it seems exactly the opposite. Let’s not waste time trying to change each others’ minds because we will just get into a big fight and just dig in our heels all the more. So let’s just figure out what kind of compromise or concessions we can each live with.” Ultimately, you can always just walk away from a fight if your partner isn’t ready to negotiate a workable compromise. A little time-out from the relationship gives everybody time to cool off and arrive at a more conciliatory attitude.

Being in a long-term relationship is about making compromises for the sake of the relationship. You can’t always have everything your way even if you genuinely believe your way is the best way, the right way, or the correct way to go. Being in a relationship means we have to patiently suffer our partner’s mistakes and errors of judgment and still find it within ourselves to respect and love them anyway. Nobody is perfect so part of being married is learning to tolerate our partner’s imperfections, which means letting your partner do things his or her way even when you know for a fact that his or her way is the absolutely wrong way to do things. We all have to learn from our own mistakes so we can’t micro-manage our partners to make them do everything our way which is of course the “right” way. So we have a choice:  We can try to win every argument and get our partner to do everything our way and end up fighting all the time. Or we can give up trying to win arguments and try instead to negotiate a workable compromise, perhaps having to suffer your partner’s errors of judgment. Yet at least you won’t be arguing all the time and your partner, following your lead, will learn to let you do things your way even when they think you are dead wrong.

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How to Manage Your Grouchy Guy

How to Manage Your Grouchy Guy

BLOGGER:  LAWRENCE JOSEPHS

            You thought you fell in love with a wonderful guy and you thought you would settle into a comfortable easy going relationship once the honeymoon phase of the relationship was over. But instead you find yourself living with a first-class grouch and you don’t know what to do about it. What is a grouchy guy? These are the defining characteristics of a grouchy guy:

1)    His mood tends to be chronically irritable and cranky. He responds with annoyance to minor frustrations.

2)    He is faultfinding about stupid little things and prone to starting arguments about trivial matters. He makes mountains out of molehills.

3)     He blames you for everything as though every minor frustration he suffers is your fault. He implies or says outrightly that you are ruining his life.

4)     He treats you like you’re an idiot if you don’t immediately get something he is saying.

5)    He gets annoyed and pushes you away when you reach out affectionately to him looking for some love and attention as though you’re a pathetically needy person.

6)    He has a generally contemptuous attitude towards you though he’d deny it if you confronted him. He’d claim you’re too being too sensitive.

7)    He may make sarcastic or belittling comments towards you, even in front of other people. If you confront him on it, he will claim he’s just kidding around and will ask incredulously what’s wrong with you that you can’t you take a joke.

    If you sympathetically ask your partner what’s bothering him, he will deny that anything is wrong and will respond as though that’s an irritating question.

9)    He demonstrates diminished interest in sex with you but claims everything is just fine if asked.

            You know what it is like to live with a guy like this. You are angry all the time because he treats you in such a hostile rejecting manner. But because he denies everything, he makes you feel that it’s all in your head and you must be crazy. It’s not good for your self-worth because he is making you feel like he finds himself trapped living with a person he finds absolutely insufferable. He acts like he is just staying with you out of some misguided sense of begrudging obligation. And when you finally lose your patience with his chronic but denied grouchiness and you lose your temper, he looks at you with utter disgust as though you are the biggest bitch in the entire world! Then you feel guilty as though you have probably deserved to be treated poorly all along. You can’t imagine why in the world he stays with you and why he just doesn’t go out and immediately replace you with someone nicer. You might even begin to think that maybe you should feel grateful that he puts up with you at all.

Or maybe you are wondering why you put up with him at all and maybe you should just dump the jerk and find somebody nicer, somebody who is lower maintenance.

But if at least for the time being you are sticking with your grouchy guy and trying to figure out what to do with him, I can give you some advice about how to try to make the best of a bad situation. First, I have to give you some advice about what not to do because it’s very easy to make a bad situation a whole lot worse than it already is. Firstly, you have to learn how to restrain yourself from reacting defensively to the hostile and rejecting way your grouchy guy treats you. Understandably, you feel hurt and angry and want to express your hurt and anger openly. Unfortunately, grouchy guys don’t know how to deal with women’s feelings and just become more antagonized the more you try to force them to understand how you really feel. Grouchy guys, especially when they are angry are empathy impaired. They get freaked out by a crying woman who seems wounded by their abrasiveness. Crying just makes a grouchy guy feel guilty and when he feels guilty he either becomes even more argumentative or withdraws in anger. Grouchy men see crying women as weak and then have contempt for them. Appearing hurt and wounded doesn’t get you anywhere with a grouchy guy. They think it’s manipulative.

            Maybe you get angry when your grouchy guy isn’t being nice and to assert yourself you express your anger. But the next thing you know you are have a screaming match on your hands and things are getting pretty ugly, maybe even in front of the kids. Getting angry doesn’t get you anywhere because then you turn into his scolding mother. If you get angry he will no longer see you as the sexy romantic partner he once loved because you have morphed into his disciplinarian mother who is trying to force him to be obedient. Naturally, he will become only more rebellious. You might get him to begrudgingly submit out of guilt but he will hold it against you and get even with you one way or another, perhaps even by cheating on you with someone at work who seduces him by seeming more indulgent and accommodating than you are.

            Of course, you could just try to ignore his grouchiness and try not to let it bother you and try to learn to live with it. But because he is a grouchy guy and is trying to get a rise out of you, he’s just going to drive you crazy until you lose it. If you try to ignore his chronic irritability and constant put downs, you are just going to build up resentment like a pressure cooker until you finally explode. So what do you do if you can’t just ignore him, can’t express your hurt feelings openly, and can’t express your angry feelings openly? What options are left?

            Fortunately, there are two good options left which are more likely to be effective with a grouchy guy: 1) Good natured teasing and 2) Firm limit setting.

            Grouchy guys have often lost their sense of humor. Every little thing about you is annoying to them and they have to constantly harp on the fact of how everything you do drives them crazy. The basic idea of good natured teasing is that every time your grouchy guy says something critical, insulting, or bossy, you don’t have to take it seriously, just make a joke about it. For example, your grouchy guy starts scolding you for misplacing his favorite coffee mug that he can’t find. You can argue that you didn’t misplace his coffee mug or that even if you did what’s the big deal and you’ll probably have a huge fight on your hands about a stupid little thing. But you could kid around and say something like: “I hid it on purpose because I know you can’t live without your favorite coffee mug” or “Why don’t you take care of your coffee mug yourself if you don’t like the way I take care of things around here, you’re a big boy, now so learn to take care of yourself.” To women’s ears these comments might sound too harsh, even emasculating, but this is the kind of language that grouchy guys understand. This is the way grouchy guys deal with each other, through what I call “verbal roughhousing.” Grouchy guys like to play rough, that’s the way they deal with all their pent-up aggression. Grouchy guys have to be taught a lesson: “Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it.” You have to show them that you don’t take them too seriously when they are acting like a first class jerk. You need to make fun of them when they are acting insufferably to show them that they have lost your respect. In cultures where there is very little male aggression, it is achieved because the men relentlessly mock each other when they get out of line until the men acquire better self-control of their aggressive impulses. Men respect sassy women who can put them in their place by a witty put down. Unfortunately, in our culture it is usually the men who make jokes and the women who are the appreciative audience for men’s humor. But sometimes in a marriage there has to be a role reversal and the women need to get their grouchy guys to lighten up and not take themselves so seriously.

            Your grouchy guy will really appreciate you if you can learn how to diffuse a tense situation with humor. But you have to understand that the type of humor that most grouchy guys like is rude, crude, and lewd, not always the witty repartee we see in old fashioned romantic comedies. If you can learn to amuse your grouchy guy with that sort of humor, you will have him eating of your hand and he will feel like he is the luckiest guy in the world. It will also re-awaken his waning sexual interest in you. Grouchy guys want to have sex with women who can make them laugh.

            Humor only works when a grouchy guy is mildly annoyed. Humor doesn’t work when a grouchy guy is really angry. Then he is too far gone to be reached by humor. Once he is really angry he can’t even think straight so you can’t really have a rational dialogue with him. So what women have to learn is to not even try to have a rational discussion with a grouchy guy once he has lost it. It’s better to tell him that he is out of control and out of line, that you won’t talk to him if he is going to talk to you in such a disrespectful way, and that he better go off by himself to cool down and don’t talk to you until he can talk to you in a calm and respectful way. Thus you have to set limits on his grouchiness by refusing to talk to him unless he can talk to you like a civilized and mature adult. First you try to diffuse a tense situation with a little humor but if that doesn’t work set a limit on him and tell him to get out your face until he calms down.

Once a grouchy guy cools down he will be nicer and more conciliatory. Sometimes, it’s hard for women to do this because they want the immediate reassurance in the midst of an ugly fight that everything is OK. Women hate it when men withdraw in anger because they feel rejected, if not abandoned, by the men they love. But it is better to let your grouchy guy withdraw in anger until he is ready to make nice. Forcing him to reassure you that he still loves you when he is fuming with anger is just going to result in an even bigger blow-up.

            So these are the basic tools of effective grouchy guy management. Don’t ignore him, don’t act hurt and wounded, don’t scold him, and don’t pressure him for reassurance. That will only further antagonize him and make a bad situation a whole lot worse. Use humor and good natured teasing, preferably a bit crude and lewd, to diffuse a tense situation when your grouchy guy is mildly annoyed. When he is really angry give him a time out until he calms down and sounds conciliatory. Good luck learning to manage your grouchy guy because you deserve better.

  Let me know what you think.

To read more about Dr. Josephs, click here

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