Hi, need some advice and maybe a little insight on how I can help my husband and me get out of our fighting pattern. My husband (38M) and me (36F) have been married for almost a year and together for 4. 90% of the time, everything feels healthy and great, but every now and then we stumble into a nasty cycle. It goes a little something like this: H is down about something and gets quiet. I try to inquire, but get a fairly brief answer and not much else. I feel shut out and start to overthink about what it could be and turn it into something deeper involving us or me. I ask if I did anything wrong and he gets frustrated with me and it usually snowballs from here into, “you are insecure and make everything about yourself” followed with a threat to sleep in another room. To which I get hurt and then frustrated that it’s snowballed into this huge thing rather than us just talking about what’s going on. And then it’s just back and forth between those two sentiments and we can’t get anywhere.
How I’m currently feeling: I just want us to feel like we’re going through the hard things together. I understand that life is tough and we all handle our trials differently. It is obviously completely understandable and normal when he feels down. But I want us to be able to talk about things and it not feel like I’m being shut out. I don’t want to make things about me when he’s sad, I just get nervous when we don’t communicate that I’m missing something and my mind tries to fill in the blanks, which unfortunately turns into “What did I do”. I wish I could just stuff that feeling and those thoughts down but I have a really hard time veering my mind away from that direction. I want to figure out a better way to get him to open up. We have such different communication styles and needs. He needs space to process, I want to talk through the hard stuff.
My questions are these: How do we both feel seen and heard when things get hard? I feel like the easy answer is, “just don’t make it about yourself” and believe me I want to and I’m trying, but it’s hard to get myself out of that place when I feel like I’m missing something. So my other question is, if anyone knows helpful ways to not go down that thought path, I would very much like to hear it? The cycle is draining and a bit heartbreaking at times. Just would love some guidance on how to get out of this cycle.
tl;dr: husband and I get into the same fight over and over and struggle to understand the other’s side.