Dear Therapist:
I’m someone who likes to talk things through when something’s bothering me—it helps me process and feel closer. But my husband just goes quiet, moves on quickly, or just says “it’s fine.” He’s not cold or mean, he just doesn’t really do the whole talking-about-feelings thing.
I’m trying not to push, but I also sometimes feel alone and that things are unresolved. Is this a normal difference in personality, or something we should be working on more actively?
Response:
You and your husband have different ways of handling issues. Everyone processes things differently for a variety of reasons, including age, gender, upbringing and family norms, triggers, and insecurities. Determining whether to resolve things on your own or to encourage your husband to engage more depends largely on the reasons for his reluctance to do so.
When you say that you like talking about things that bother you, are you referring specifically to issues between the two of you, issues that relate to both of you, or matters that are yours alone? Or perhaps all of the above? Does your husband tend to go quiet and move on quickly in all of these situations or only in certain ones?
If you talk about both individual and marital issues, do you sometimes conflate them? For example, might you discuss feeling generally unappreciated (by others) while also trying to address a misunderstanding between the two of you? This could confuse your husband if he tends to process things in a more linear, compartmentalized way. It might make him feel attacked even if that’s not at all your intention.
Similarly, if your husband avoids a subject in the moment, it might feel to you as though he doesn’t care about it. In reality, he may want to resolve the issue as much as you do—he just approaches it differently.
When both partners try to handle things in their own way, the message each receives can be quite different from what was intended. For example, if you feel unheard and your husband feels criticized, you might push him to talk while he withdraws to get space. Although you’re both essentially trying to do the same thing—resolve the issue—you may each be triggering the other to do exactly what makes you feel worse.
The first step may be to have a conversation about how you have conversations. Choose a time and setting when there’s no tension between you. The goal isn’t to fix any one problem, but to explore your different ways of communicating and whether you both want to work on bridging that gap. If one of you isn’t ready to change right now, you’ll need to weigh the importance of this issue against the possible negative effects of pushing the other to do something they find uncomfortable.
-Yehuda Lieberman, LCSW
psychotherapist in private practice
Woodmere, NY
adjunct professor at Touro University
Graduate School of Social Work
author of Self-Esteem: A Primer
www.ylcsw.com / 516-218-4200
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