My (37m) wife (37f) vents AT me instead of TO me and it makes it hard for me to feel relaxed around her.

Married 6 years. My wife reacts to a lot of things with anger. Stress, anxiety, worry, fear.

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Anyway, I have no problem with emotions. But what I don't like is when she finds a way to focus her anger on me when she's actually mad about something else. We've talked about this but she seems unable to stop it.

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Today she went to get her hair done (finally out of lockdown). I dropped her off and went home to wait for her (she said she'd get an uber home). She already knew I had an evening planned and was leaving our house by a certain time.

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I texted her 5 minutes before I left to tell her I was going. No response (I assumed she was still busy getting her hair done). 10 minutes after I left, she texted me angrily: "did you SERIOUSLY leave the house without making sure I was ok???" Now, I know right away this means something happened at the hair salon (sigh...she seems to attract drama...that's another post). I remind her that I was going out tonight and asked her why she wouldn't be ok when she was just getting her hair done.

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This caused her to tell me that I'm short-sighted and can't imagine what could go wrong and to just leave her alone. Basically it ends up that the dye was a bit too dark for her liking. In the end, I told her to wash her hair with tide soap (lol sounds awful, but I've seen it work). She told me that after she looked at it in natural light in the kitchen it actually looks ok, and it's only semi-permanent anyway. Whew.

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But...this type of thing happens a lot. I have no problem if she texted me saying "I'm so angry! My hair looks too dark!". But instead she lashes out at me. It happens a lot in a lot of different situations, and honestly sometimes when I hear the phone buzz with a text from her, I tense up because I never know if she's randomly going to be freaking out at me over something.

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Even if there's no way to get mad at me for the issue at hand, she'll find another way to get mad at me (ex: once she spilled wine on our sofa, so she went to the kitchen to get papertowels and they weren't where she thought they should be....I had put the groceries away and told her I put the paper towels in a different cupboard (I didn't know it was the wrong cupboard). So she started venting at me that she "can't live like this" because I'm so unorganized, etc etc. Meanwhile she's actually upset/anxious about the wine all over our sofa.

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Do we need counselling for communication? I guess I need to learn how to better diffuse the situations, but I'm honestly getting tired of it. She acts childish at times, like she can't just accept that sometimes crappy things happen and she doesn't need to blame me in some way. Any ideas on how she can learn to vent TO me (I'm a great listener, and I can come up with good ideas) instead of finding stupid ways of getting mad AT me when something in her life goes wrong?

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tldr: I'm getting worn down by my wife reacting to any upsetting situation by finding a way to get mad at me.

Submitted February 21, 2021 at 03:13PM by SharpEntrance3249 https://ift.tt/3kmpk2d