conflict resolution

[hawk191]

Hi,
I need some advice on the best way to communicate with my boyfriend and father of my two kids. He cannot handle any type of criticism (even constructive criticism) without making everything into a full blown fight. He takes every little thing and blows it into a big thing. He's so ultrasensitive to criticism. For example if I ask him to wash the pans when he does the dishes, instead of saying something like "okay I will try and make an effort to wash the pans when I do the dishes but it would help me if you could soak them first". he has to tell me 10 things that he thinks I need to do and then I get pissed and we fight. I need to talk to him tonight about an incident that occurred yesterday and I want to try and do it in a way to make my feelings clear without making him feel defensive (He will either leave the house for awhile or shut down emotionally.) I'm tired of fighting.

We took our two kids to the pool yesterday and met some friends there. We had a great time and then he asked me to take the kids home, feed them and then he would come home and we could have a dinner for the two of us. He had to run his friend on a few errands but it wouldn't take long and he would be home in a couple hours.
That was fine so I ran a few errands took the kids home fed them and it had been two hours. I called him and he said that they hadn't even left to run errands yet but had been hangin out drinking beer at the apartment. I was upset and told him that. I asked him why he didn't call me and let me know that he was going to be late. He had promised me that he wasn't going to be long,made dinner plans with me and if he had really just wanted to hang out with his friend, why didn;t he just be up front about that instead. He was really rude and disrespectful to me on the phone. He hung up on me in mid-sentence and then when I called him back he just said LA LA LA LA the whole time I was talking. Told me he would be home when he decided to come home. I could tell he'd been drinking a lot. I was furious!! He said he'd be home in 1 hour but actually showed up 2 hours later. He's not usually that disrespectful. I felt like he never had any intention of coming home in 2 hours and that he just wanted me to be the babysitter for the kids and lied to me so that he could have fun with his friend. I was really mad about the whole way he handled it. Then when he came home, he never apologized. He was drunk and he laid down to put our oldest kid to bed and he passed out. I'm so mad at him on so many levels it's ridiculous. I told him this morning that I was still upset and wanted to talk to him about it later. I'm just so mad that I'm not sure I can be very constructive about this. I want to stick to the issues at hand yet make it clear that he can't reat me that way and discuss it without making it another fight. Help!!

[gksimon]

Hi, I'm Dr. George Simon, and although I don't know enough about your situation to make a reliable observation, I found two of your complaints interestingly stated and thought I'd offer some things for you to consider. First, you indicate that you believe the problem to be that YOU haven't found the right way to "communicate" just yet. Second, you seem to presume that your boyfriend "can't handle" (perhaps out of some presumed insecurity or some such thing) criticisms you offer, even when they're constructive. Have you considered the possibility that he has a disturbance of character? I'm not saying he necessarily does, but at least there appears the possibility from much of what you say about him. And, if in fact he does, he "hears" you just fine but because he is comfortable with the kind of character he is, he doesn't want to change and wants you to see things his way. Also, if he has a character disturbance, it's not so much that he "can't handle" out of some kind of "ultrasensitivity" your confrontations, but rather that he seeks the upper hand in his interactions with and uses the tactic of pretending to be affronted as just one of several ways of making you feel like the bad guy when it's his irresponsible behavior that's the problem! I've spent 25 years studying character disturbance. I'm always impressed with how longstanding notions about why people do the things that do that have grown out of old, worn-out psychology metaphors as well as pop trends put people at a disadvantage when it comes to spotting and dealing with defective characters. I hope this helps. Again, I'm not making a definitive statement here, just offering another possibility for you to consider.