Bearflag, I like the ideas of marriage counseling, if you think it’s warranted, or else like somebody said, dividing up “areas” where one of you has primary authority. It is something all couples have to work out and great that you are looking for solutions rather than just keep on with the same old arguments over and over like so many couples. Good luck with it. 
Totally agreed. It’s just like how we all think we have no annoying habits - only our spouse does. 
I just wanted to quote this because I don’t think it could be phrased better.
Your goal was not to win - your goal was to protect your dog, but the keeping score got in the way.
Bearflag, how do you feel about telling your wife she was right about something (and you were wrong)? Is that easy for you to do? Have you done it much with her? It is kind of an obvious thing once you realize it, but admitting you’re wrong is not a bad thing - it just means you just learned something. It doesn’t diminish you in any way, and I get the feeling from the dynamic you’ve described that it might go a long way to improving communications with your wife.
That’s in the works. Ever since the diagnosis, and the period of grief that followed, things have been getting rocky. It’s complicated and we need a third person to help straighten it out and give us better tools. There are other things I/we want to do that would be helpful beyond just counseling though. For example, I desperately need to get out more and have some fun.
There are times when I don’t hesitate. Other times, it’s not easy and I certainly don’t do it enough.
Bingo. You don’t need to be a woman or a lawyer to get tired of that.
Here’s a concept I’m having a little difficulty with… bear with me…
In my mind, there are times when people could and should exercise Better Judgment based upon Reason. This is, in part, one of the big ideas behind SDMB.
If we were in a dark gas-filled room and I was fumbling for matches so I could see better, I would hope my wife would say, “Shouldn’t you put those matches away? You don’t want to do that because you’ll blow us up.”
I would be fine with that.
Her goal is to avoid getting blown up. Her goal is to help me exercise Better Judgment. Her argument is based upon Reason. Even though she is calling my judgment into question, she makes a compelling case, I would be highly appreciative, I would have no issues with “keeping score,” and I would have no qualms knowing that, in this case, she was Just More Right Than I About Reality. i would thank her and happily admit she was right and I was wrong.
I wouldn’t expect her to say, “It is making me feel anxious thinking that you are considering lighting a match in this gas-filled room.”
In this second scenario, she’s again asking me not to light the match, but now her request is to make her feel better emotionally: to relieve her anxiety and not necessarily to avoid getting blown up. Somehow, this second scenario is better than the first?
I don’t think anyone in this thread disagrees that lighting a match in a dark gas-filled room or having an unleashed partially supervised whippet next to a fairly busy street is a Good Idea. I guess I’m having a problem figuring out why my request to leash the dog is better rooted in Emotion than in Reason. When making the request, why convert Reason into Emotion or ignore Reason in favor of Emotion to get the point across?
What if emotions run counter to reason? I would be torn if we were in a dark gas-filled room and she said, “Please light a match because it is making me feel anxious being in the dark.” My response likely would be, “I don’t want to do that because it will blow us up.” My response likely would not be, “I appreciate your anxiety but I feel anxious lighting a match in a gas filled room.”
Does it all boil down to ego? I dunno sometimes. Maybe I’m a lost cause.
… and/or a Vulcan.
You can cover both bases in one phrase. “My concern with that is…” works well, as does “Well, what I worry/wonder about with that is…” It gets the point across without sounding accusatory or making your valid concerns sound stupid, unfounded, and unreasonable. Which, incidentally, is something that drives me straight up the goddamn wall about a lot of the suggested “Oh, I’m such an overly dramatic worry-wart, please humor me” responses here. Painting yourself as a stupid, unreasonable person who has to be condescended to and humored in your stupidity and unreasonableness builds contempt on her part and resentment on yours, which is totally counterproductive.
Painting your concerns as silly and unfounded also does a disservice to the dog. He’s a sight hound, he has a history of taking off and not submitting to voice recall when his sight hound instincts get stimulated, and there is no earthly way your wife can physically catch him if he has even a 2 second head start on her. “Watching” a dog like that near a road tends to mean “watching him get hit” because it’s not like you’re going to be able to stop him if he decides to take off into traffic. I couldn’t begin to tell you the number of times I’ve heard that exact scenario from weeping owners as I help them pull their mangled pet out of the backseat onto a stretcher, and never hearing it again would suit me (and everyone else in veterinary medicine, including your vet) just fine. In this case at least you are, as Manda Jo puts it, More Right About Reality.
There’s a difference between “Could you put those matches away?” and “Do you think you should put those matches away?”
I think counseling would be especially good in you all’s case because you are in a time-crunch. I think a lot of the time counseling helps us get to where we would have gotten eventually, but it gets us there faster because a good counselor will help direct you away from the deadend methods and fast forward through pointless conversations.
You love each other, your both dedicated to the marriage, you’d figure this out eventually. But your daughter needs you to stop hurting each other NOW. Find someone.
This.
Your conflict stems from the fact you’re not arguing logically. This is A DOG. It’s not a person, it’s not capable of human judgment it’s a DOG. Mr Dog is going to act just like a dog.
People tend to anthropomorphize their pets. Your wife feels the dog will be better off without a leash. Why would the dog be better? The dog doesn’t care. It wants to be a dog period. And dogs and other pets to dangerous things, because it’s in their nature.
Dogs chase things. Why? Because that is what they’re for. Many dogs in the wild die from chasing things. The difference is the dogs in the wild are taught by Mama Dog how to do it properly and minimize risks. A domesticated dog has all the instinct but none of the practical training.
When you start looking at your pet as an animal you see things clearer. Put the dog on a leash is better for the dog, it minimizes risks to other people. Any dog is capable of biting. No matter how nice they are.
A dog on a leash can’t get to people, a dog off leash can. Then when said, dog bites someone you’d have that person, starting a thread here, complaining about how unfair it is their dog is going to be put to sleep for biting someone.
The best resolution is to ask yourself, what is best for the safety of the dog. Remember that it IS a dog and doesn’t really care about most things people care about. Give a dog food, a place to sleep and some company to hang around and the dog will be perfectly happy.
You might be, but she might not. You’re not trying to convince you, you’re trying to convince her, so altering your language to be what she hears best is probably a lot easier in the long run.
“I’d like you to put those matches away. There’s a gas leak, and I’m concerned the flame might ignite the fumes.”
You might think you’re respecting her as a human being and equal by phrasing it as a question (or, it might simply be your training as a lawyer - don’t you have to ask questions, rather than make statements when you’re talking to a witness?), but if there’s really only one answer you’ll accept, then it’s not a question, it’s a trap. At least, that’s what it feels like to her (and me.) And people get angry when they feel trapped, and that tends to shut down further productive conversation.
In return, she can learn to phrase things as a question when she’s talking to you, if that’s what you truly prefer.
Plus he’s giving her a choice, and by the way: in the OP’s example the dog ended neither leashed-outside nor unleased-outside, it ended unleashed-inside. I think you may not only need to work more on describing the actual situation and doing that whole “feely” thing, but also on remembering that the first two options which occur to you are not the only two possible options.
And, being an American lawyer, you’ve spent a lot of years being trained to work in opposition to others. You have to learn to solve problems with your wife, not against her.
One thing we do is rate how much we care, from 1 to 10. Higher number wins. No debate. So if he wants the hypothetical dog on a leash at an 8, and I want it off the leash at a 6, it goes on the leash straight away. Obviously we don’t use it for every disagreement, but it comes in useful a lot.
The other sort-of-linked thing we do is acknowledge that sometimes it doesn’t matter who’s right, it matters that we should both be happy and at ease. Basically, a lot of it comes down to focusing on solving the problem rather than on establishing who’s right and who’s wrong. If one person’s focus is on ‘The dog being off the leash is really making me nervous’ rather than on ‘You are wrong to have the dog off the leash,’ it’s a lot easier for the other person to see that, right or wrong, that needs to be dealt with.
Exactly. There was a “middle ground”, or at least an option other than A or B, regardless of what the OP started out as. There isn’t always, but this time there was.
A related tip: Don’t offer a choice if you’re not okay with it. It’s as true in relationships as it is in parenting.
“Do you want fish or chicken tonight?”
“Hmmm…chicken sounds good.”
“Oh…really? Are you sure? What’s wrong with fish?”
AAAAAARGGGGH! Kill me now. :smack:
Instead, try:
“I feel like fish tonight. Should I make it breaded or broiled?”
Sure, she can then say, “Oh, I’m really not in the mood for fish. Would chicken be out of the question?” but at least you’ve then established what the actual *preferences *are, and you can negotiate from there. “Okay, let’s do breaded fish tonight, but I’d like chicken tomorrow,” or “I’d be happy to do up a chicken breast and put it in the oven with the fish,” or whatever.
You have to do this because people are emotional.
I personally don’t like it when someone makes a request that sounds like an order. Like “I’m leaving to buy groceries, clean the living room by the time I get back.” Now, to whoever says this to me, it might sound like a reasonable request. She’s buying groceries, so it’s only logical that I should put in some work as well. We’ll get two things done at once, right?
However, to me it sounds like she’s ordering me around. If this was a few years ago, I would just get upset and not do any cleaning. But since I know better now, I just tell everyone I’m with to rephrase things.
Is it rational for me to get upset at the phrase above? The thing is that the phrase could mean that she thinks she can order me around like a servant. That small ambiguity is enough to upset me. In my experience, it’s enough to upset anyone in a relationship.
Consider an electric fence.
To Lakai:
“The washing needs hanging.” “It does, does it?” “:rolleyes: Fine, please Nava hang the washing.”
and
“Nava hang the washing.” “Did I hear the magic word?” “:sigh: Please Nava hang the washing.”
Have both been standard responses to my mother for the last 10 years - even more so in the last 5, since there are two Kidlets around who are required to use their magic words. The Kidlets are required to be polite, the grownups are too.
Thanks for the responses. I agree that self-deprecation wouldn’t work for me. I’d feel like I had to call myself an ass every time I felt I wanted to request anything.
I also like the idea of using “concern” instead of “anxiety” and other terms when appropriate.
I like the analogy to “ordering me around” and how the same request phrased in different ways can have different effects on the listener.
The electric fence is a bit risky for whippets. Whippets can bolt through the electric field too quickly. A whippet can be running 35 MPH by the time it gets to the fence. It will get a shock, but by the time it reacts to the shock, it could be on the other side of the fence. Also, we’re probably losing the house anyway.
I also want to reiterate the idea of getting out and having some fun. Other than maybe 20 minutes here and there to grab something to eat, by myself, the ONLY times I got out of the house and just had a relaxing time that in no way had anything to do with work or this disease was taking 3 hours to see Thor by myself last weekend. That’s 3 hours of outside down-time in almost a year now. That’s bad, it drains my spirit, and it probably affects how we interact in the home… especially since we are under the same roof basically 24 hours a day since my wife isn’t working anymore thanks to the impact of the disease.
I’m fairly sure you would be; you seem like a reasonable, rational person who gives and takes rational arguments. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say this is not the language your wife speaks. Since I’m pretty rational myself, I’m not sure what language she speaks, but what seems obvious to you does not seem obvious to her. I think you need to figure out what language she’s speaking and talk to her in that language (and ideally, she would learn your language, too).
I don’t think so.
I agree that you need some fun time for yourself (and so does your wife). Are you able to talk with her about this and maybe figure out a schedule for both of you to have some downtime?