Married for 9 years to a lawyer (I’m not a lawyer) who has many lawyers in her family (no lawyers in my family growing up). Initially in our relationship, I was in training for medicine and studying or working around the clock. I came from a background of not enjoying arguments, as they made me freeze up, and I generally tried to minimize arguments and often didn’t make my needs a priority in order to keep things chill and positive. I felt guilty for being unavailable so often. This was not a healthy dynamic for many reasons and I’ve worked on being more comfortable with establishing boundaries and holding firm when disagreements arise. Over the last few years, we’ve had a lot of tension in our marriage unfortunately and we’ve been in individual and couples therapy for over 3 years. During this time, I’ve had to make peace with the fact that we’ll likely never achieve a dynamic that doesn’t involve her periodically becoming very intense and aggressive during disagreements. She just seems to need a certain amount of friction! And while I’m getting used to tolerating this, I am aware that she is often using argument tactics that are quite manipulative. She also frequently projects uncomfortable/intense feelings onto me. Via therapy she’s gained some awareness of these tendencies (via very heavy lifting) but she seems to be generally unaware of doing these things in real time.
During this remote working era, I sometimes overhear her talking to clients/opposing counsel, and I hear her engaging in some of the same tactics that she does with me.
As I struggle to stay optimistic about the viability of our relationship, I am wondering if anyone has advice, insight, etc about how to (1) achieve some version of a harmony at home with a spouse who is a lawyer who seems to have a need for a certain amount of friction or arguing and (2) navigate her utilizing manipulative argument tactics in order to pursue her agenda at the expense of our connection/intimacy.
2 comments
What does she do if you call it out in the moment? Have you tried? My husband will say to me “I’m not opposing counsel” and that sometimes helps, although our issue is usually me being overly legalistic about word use or specific definitions when we’re disagreeing not just friction-seeking.
I can relate to this in many ways. Years of counseling, yet spotty implementation of lessons learned in the moment. Feel like you’re getting mind-fucked unless you’re walking on eggshells.
I used to fight back because I was into it, hell we met in law school (I left the profession a decade ago and have a low stress job I love in IT now). Long story short my coping mechanism is to see the behavior as a drama addiction. As a former attorney I’m definitely in recovery for drama addiction, so I know all the signs someone is deep into a bender and can’t be reached with rationality. I’m not interested in being an enabler. When this happens I just shut the conversation down by using the “grey rock” method. Google it for tips.
If it’s a conversation that must happen, when it starts getting intense I call him out and say he’s “lawyering me” and I don’t want to play along. As I am a recovering bitch, sometimes I slip up and feel bitchy enough to say stuff like “you literally manipulate powerful people for money. You get paid to get people to agree to your worldview. So I know this is some sort of reflex, and I’m not playing along. Let’s talk about this at some other time.” Then I propose a time and go do something fun alone or with friends/family. A lot of times the reschedule is for during counseling.
If these two tactics don’t turn down the heat significantly, you might want to rethink this marriage. Left unchecked this stuff can wear away at your self esteem.