It sounds like these moments of tit for tat make you feel anxious and insecure? Like you’re also mentally reviewing why you even or have to have them? Rest assured Arfie, the way you’ve talked about hubs he certainly loves and cherishes you. Could the worries also be about your transition back to the school year life without the kids and so you’re just processing and transitioning back to the dynamic with him? It’s all good and a part of life. Maybe this is just a healthy vent witnessed by a journal entry?

Big hug

Hugs to you arfie! Dr. Phil always asks "Do you want to be happy or do you want to be right?" I don't know if that applies but I almost 100% love his advice.

markus
our history of tit for tat is far, far more than a momentary or isolated incidents. what i am calling, "domestic tit for tat" is the prolonged drama which inspires well-meaning friends to shower you with divorce lawyer business cards. most of our many-times-married associates are still quite vocal about our 44th anniversary being a denial trophy. don't we know how miserable we are? in actual fact, we have lived apart for many of those 44 years. we count those as the most important years of our marriage. those are the years where we learned how to live and let live. in my psychosorting, there is no doubt that it is an accumulated stress response. the LFL (long fucking list) of stress factors keeps changing, but the stress responses are distressingly similar. spouses do make convenient targets for the cumulative toxins of stress. we have been working on finding more humane stress responses.

journal entries done. lately i have gone retro and returned to keeping my journal in a spiral notebook. no particular reason. it just feels like an old friend. i started journal keeping long before the internet.

greeneyes
i will applaud doctor phil's borrowed advice. i learned it from alanon, long before his first episode in 2002, but subscribe to it, all the same. not quite sure it fits this scenario, but it is sound advice for isolated incidents.

for what it's worth
i got curious and looked up doctor phil. talk shows, in general, are not my genre, but it turns out he is a home boy. he is currently filming in the closest metroplex to my farm.

arfie, I am currently learning to observe the feelings in my spouse. I am not sure what you mean by tit for tat but to me that means the kinda mean stuff. I say your pants are too tight and then you tell me the meatloaf sucks.

Dr Phil is right and I am learning to practice this. My current mantra on my bathroom mirror is -- "my peace is worth more than... being right, needing respect or validation, having control, winning, getting my way" and some days I add other things in my head. I am trying to not have to win.

That tit for tat stuff to me is about control and winning. I read about this in a good article about conflict resolution and thought "AH HA" this is me!

As a person who rarely discharges their stress on someone else, on my spouse but who has a spouse the vibrates with their stress and dumb a load of it on me in an irrational way -- well this is so painful when he does it to me. I've tried to change him. Now I am trying to change my thinking and not be so reactive back and concentrate on keeping my peace. I fail at this as often as I succeed.

Ignore this if it doesn't match what you need today.

thank you, hasty. in my decades of using the therapy peer support network, i have learned to be open to all responses. even the advice columnist wannabes that give advice fit for a teenage romantic can bring sound tidbits to the table at times. when it is just plain silly, i take what i like and leave the rest. live support groups are far more set in their "no advice-giving" practices than e-groups, but it is what it is. learning how to take what i like and leave the rest with arguing was a skill set i never learned as a child prostitute.

tit for tat is a generic term for action/reaction. handshakes, hugs and sports are classic examples of tit for tat. the domestic tit for tat i refer to with hub-a-lub is the classic soon-to-be-ex competition.

you said _____
because you said_____
you always _____
you never ______
you make me so _______
no, it is all your fault.
no, you are to blame
etcetera
etceteri

hubs and i are from radically different backgrounds, but we are both well-conditioned to domestic tit for tat. the tit for tat skirmishes can get especially brutal across cultural lines. i agree with the right vs happy sentiments, but our tit for tat skirmishes are seldom single topic debates.

for what it's worth
another framing of the right vs happy axiom which i like is, "success is getting what you want. happiness is wanting what you get." even (especially?) as a child prostitute, i was stubborn enough to get what i want on a fairly routine basis. my psychotherapy began with the realization that i seldom wanted what i got. these days i go for the happiness while working with life on life's own terms.

That's very interesting about Dr. Phil filming so near to you! I have loved him since I saw him on Oprah in 1999 when I was recovering from back surgery at my parents' house. He considers himself a good Ole boy!

wish i could trade you places, greeneyes. talk shows and documentaries bore the unholies out of me. i sometimes get curious when a commentator gains enough notoriety that even **i** have heard of them. but i still can't stand to watch or listen to the shows. in a talk show context, i can't tell a good ol' boy from a harvard elitist.

for what it's worth, his website had a form for being on his show. i'm not THAT curious, but you might enjoy filling out that form.

Gotcha arfie! Sitcoms bore me. I like reality tv but the storyline stayed the same for so long and then there were the reruns. My tv didn't get turned on for about 2.5 years and so I got rid of cable and my landline. And then my bill was going to be too high so I just have Internet Essentials by Comcast for $29.99 and that works for me.