Photo: iStock/VasjaKoman
My husband and I have been together for almost 20 years. We have very different personalities and communication styles. I?m an extrovert who talks quickly?some might say ?blurts.? He?s a quiet guy who carefully considers each word before speaking. I am impulsive; he?s more thoughtful. Over the years this has led to misunderstandings, hurt feelings and many, many fights.
Once, when we were first dating, he showed me a pair of glasses he was thinking of buying. My immediate response was, ?I hate them with every fibre of my being.? After a week of fruitless searching, we were back in the same optometrist shop. I picked up a nice pair that I thought would look good on him. He reminded me (rude) that it was the same pair I had reacted to so passionately only a couple of weeks earlier. This was a cute, funny story from those early love-filled days, but as the days, weeks, years and decades of our relationship have piled up, we?ve had a few less-cute fights about money, career and family. These have been exacerbated by our different perspectives and tendency to react quickly to our own individual triggers.
And, as the pandemic wore on, we were really getting on each other?s nerves. After another squabble about something stupid that spiralled into a fight about every past wrong, current annoyance and one another?s ingrained character flaws, we needed a new approach. I?m not sure who came up with this method (which probably means it was him), but we?ve been ...