agonyaunt | Dear Abby: My Wife Changed Her Mind!

You know, as someone who teaches persuasive writing for a living, the idea that it's somehow a character flaw to change your mind about something in the face of evidence and reasoning dismays me. Whatever you think of either Obama or marriage equality, I think his discussion on why he changed his mind sets a very good example: I used to think this way because of X, but in the face of Y, I realized I was wrong, and therefore now believe Z. How hard is that?

(And don't get me started on the "angry and emotional" bit. It could be accurate, but it reads as one step away from "hysterical" to me.)

"angry and emotional" so often reads to me like "and when I try to intimidate her into agreeing with me, she gets mad!"

Thaaaaaaaaaaat is my reading of that one, yes. (And also that he is angry with her for having "agreed" with him in advance of the meeting, when she likely knew he'd not listen to her... I'm sort of inclined to read "we talked it over" as "I pontificated at great length", but perhaps I am being unfair.)

There are a looooot of assumptions in that, though.

My late uncle's wife (I will not call her my aunt) gets angry and emotional if you try to talk to her about something she's done that upsets you. Most of the time it's not even WORTH trying to talk to her about something she did that upsets you, because trying to have the conversation will probably be more exhausting and miserable than just getting on with your life. "Angry and emotional" is a perfect description of how she behaves.

So, like. While I recognize that for some people it's become a trigger-phrase in and of itself, that's not universal and people also do use it when it's perfectly apt. Soooo.

Hear, hear. (I also teach persuasive writing for a living.)

Edited ("Hear, hear." Seriously, rymenhild, you know better than that.) 2016-05-01 14:30 (UTC)

"My wife and I agreed" could mean that they actually discussed it beforehand and came to the same conclusion. But what I suspect it means is that he gave a big long speech about why his stance was right, and his wife smiled and nodded through it because any substantial discussion would result in her being labeled "angry and emotional".

You are not alone in this perception.

Let me see if I've got this, here.

He is the one who feels "betrayed" because of a single incident in which his wife agreed with, apparently, everyone else in their (what sounds like) social/recreational group on an issue. He needs help "mov[ing] past his resentment".

But his wife is the one who gets "angry and emotional"?

I just call shenanigans all over this. Like, soooooo much shiny mirror going on there.

Sooo here's the thing:

Your local dance club has decided to ban same-gender dance pairs. They all agree on this issue. You and your spouse don't, and you think it's important, so even though you know that you're going to be the only ones, you talk before hand and agree that you're going to make your disagreement clear when it comes to a vote.

The vote comes. You clearly vote "no" for this policy of exclusion. And then your spouse beside you votes yes.

I dunno, man. I think I'd be pretty gutted. And there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in the letter that says that isn't exactly what happened.

(Probably because what he's ASKING FOR is help getting over it and moving on, not validation for being upset by it.)

Edited 2016-05-01 21:50 (UTC)

That is a very good scenario wherein I too would consider the LW justified, and not one I had thought of. Thank you for pointing this (and assorted permutations and combinations of other such issues) out.

I feel kind of honour bound to say that someone telling me they'll support me and then totally not in the aftermath is not only unpleasant but actively terror-triggering, and basically why I never ask anyone for support (as if I never ask, and never believe people when they say, I avoid having the rug pulled out from under me and spending the next week shivery).

It seems like everyone has jumped to the assumption that the LW is a brow-beating emotional abuser who bullied his wife into agreeing in the first place, and yeah, "angry and emotional" is a red flag, but that IS an assumption without really direct evidence. Because fuck knows I've met women you literally cannot have a discussion with about something they've done because they will lose their minds. (I have also met men who do this, and non-gender-binary persons who do this! It's a human thing. But like, think of the abusive mothers that we also all know exist because we end up talking about them in these comment section - out there are men married to them. So.)

And, like: his actual question is, "how do I get over this?" not "was she a horrible person for doing it?", which to me flags the other direction - it's about him, his feelings and his behaviours.

And if you take away the assumption that he's an asshole, then what the wife did was give him every reason to expect her solidarity in a public voice-vote and then left him hanging by himself, without having ever notified him of her change of heart.

And that's a shitty thing to do to someone. Changing your mind is fine: then you TELL THE PERSON you had agreed to be in solidarity with that you changed your mind so that they actually know the score when they decide what they're going to do. Just flat out abandoning someone with no warning - which is what she did - is pretty uncool.

Edited 2016-05-01 21:43 (UTC)

Here's my take: I can absolutely understand why being left as the sole voice of dissent would be upsetting. However, unless there was some sort of break before the vote in which they could discuss it (and there's nothing in the letter to indicate there was), what happened seems (at least to me) as if his wife changed her mind after hearing and participating in prolonged discussion. And I will own my own issues, here: I absolutely hate the way our culture has turned changing your mind as a character flaw. I get students coming to me saying that they can't find evidence supporting their thesis, and the notion that they're wrong has never occurred to them.

So yeah, we're bringing very different backgrounds to this matter. It would possibly make a great deal of difference to know what the issue was. But as it stands, I'm still bothered by his characterization of the event.

I also hate that? I don't disagree with you there.

I slightly disagree that even without an actual formal "break" the wife couldn't've let him know she changed her mind - even whispering a quick "actually I'm going to vote the other way" would give SOME warning.

The big deal for me is this was a voice vote - that means no anonymity at all. None. So the social consequences and the outright misery of the experience of being the only one to vote against a policy when you had every reason to expect that you and your life-partner, at least, were in accord are pretty big, and I really think it's a shitty thing to do.

Even a hissed warning would give your partner enough time to decide not to be that person - to KNOW they're going to be alone, and if they want to deal with that alone, and with the implication to the rest of the group that even their spouse thinks they're wrong.

So.

I am . . . also actually curious as to whether the responses in these threads would be the same if the LW had signed "Diane in Florida", and/or if it were "my husband and I", but were otherwise totally and completely the same.

Like I actually suspect they wouldn't be; I suspect that the spouse's actions would be seen as pretty uncool, and especially in the case of it being "my husband", not wanting to discuss it with the spouse because they become "angry and emotional" would be seen as red flags for the husband being abusive, even.

Which would indicate some things I find pretty uncomfortable, to be honest.

Honestly? I can't answer that, because I can't separate a culture in which a former celebrity is currently telling women that their purpose in life is to follow their husbands' leadership, or where accusations of being overly emotional about things are more commonly leveled at women. So, actually, I can answer it: yes, my perception would be different, but I think there are valid reasons for that.

And I get that.

But I also can't separate it from a culture wherein it's assumed men cannot be victims of domestic abuse, and a life wherein I have been the target of emotional abuse from "angry and emotional" women, and literally other than that phrase - which is not necessarily loaded to everyone - there is no other indication whatsoever that things did not happen as he says they did.

And yet EVERY comment on this entry has gone to assuming that he's an asshole and even that she never really agreed with him anyway.

And I'm really uncomfortable with that.

I can actually see your POV. I really hate the phrase "agree to disagree," but I think that's where I'm at right now, because I think we're rapidly approaching wheel-spinning otherwise.

The thing is, I don't object to pointing out that "angry and emotional" might be a warning sign of him making common cultural assumptions/characterisations of women's responses to things. Fuck no: I get that shit levied at me all the time.

That's part of why part of the reframe I offered was same-sex couples.

What makes me uncomfortable is how the absolute consensus was that it MUST mean that, and not only that, but also that he was probably lying about any other statement of fact (like "my wife and I agreed") that he made in the letter. That it basically really feels like because this is a letter by a man about a woman having done something upsetting who might also react badly to being talked to about it, it is inherently a lie.

So from that the consensus is, any man who claims his wife gets angry when he tries to have a serious discussion with her is a either wrong or a liar. Even when the only function of disclosing or claiming this is, not even to get validation about it, but to potentially head off things like "well you should just talk to her about it" in the advice he is seeking for handling and getting passed his own emotions about the situation. For himself.

I don't think that's how most of the people in these threads would like to see themselves as seeing the world? At least not from previous discussions. But that's really, really how it comes off.

Edited 2016-05-01 22:39 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I really did mean the "perhaps I am being unfair": I'm very aware that I'm primed to interpret this along Traditional Gendered Lines because of the ways I've seen the framing-in-the-letter* used, and very aware that I'm prone to exhibiting confirmation bias in this regard (not least because the male survivors I'm close to are, I think, all men who are engaged with The Discourse and have therefore learned a... very specific set of social norms around how to frame discussions about the things other people have done to them).

But I-for-one obviously didn't actually say any of that, so, yeah, I think you are quite correct with your criticism (and obviously correct that the actual advice given was inappropriate and unhelpful; presumably-not-surprisingly I'm in camp Have You Considered A Divorce) and I do think all the points you're making are valid. &, yeah, thank you for making them.

* By which I don't mean "angry and emotional" in isolation -- but I didn't actually communicate that at all, never mind "well" or "clearly". On top of which, my twitch comes from the not-actually-justified-by-the-text interpretation that they're my grandparents' age (and therefore mapping them onto my grandparents' interactions, and all the baggage that goes with that).

Well, where are the assumptions coming from, though?

I think many of us may be bringing the experiences of a lifetime of being women and/or observing women be labeled "angry and emotional" for daring to express contrary opinions, from dealing with people (including men) who think a "discussion" is having their pontification listened to, and, as Cereta pointed out, from dealing with the idea that changing one's mind is absolutely unthinkable. (I was raised as a fundamentalist Christian and told word for word that compromise is a bad thing, a weakness, a sin. This idea is pervasive and damaging in US culture.) We all have to bring out experiences of life to these letters, which necessarily leave a lot of information out.

NOW. I'm not saying this to disagree with your point that this case may not actually fit these patterns we've lived and observed. It's honestly useful to notice these assumptions and try to consider the case from other points of view. But I thought I'd point out that these patterns some of us have brought to this case come from lived experience rather than, well, being randomly angry and emotional.

As noted, I am literally a woman in this general culture and literally experience the same shit on a regular basis. Like having stated that very explicitly, I'm not sure how I could make that clearer? I get where the assumptions come from.

But that doesn't make the assumptions right, or okay, or not part of its own pattern that can cause serious problems. And it doesn't mean it doesn't make me uncomfortable when a community that has previously shown a lot of thoughtfulness and attention and so on (which this community so often does!) treating those assumptions as automatic truth/etc, to the point that I saw here.

Because from my own experience, including my experience of emotional abuse, "this makes a noise like a duck so it's DEFINITELY A DUCK and that's how we'll treat it!" is a really, really dangerous assumption, because a lot of things make noises like ducks that are not ducks. (To torment a metaphor.)

So yeah. No. I know where those assumptions come from. I still found their generally-unquestioned application here made me extremely uncomfortable/unsafe-feeling.

Speaking of changing one's mind... I actually came back to rewrite my comment because I thought more about this, and thought I was being a bit too much "this is how it is" rather than "this is how it might be." I was thinking about this and thought, "well, we've all seen guys like that" and then I thought, "yeah, but, maybe this guy is not ACTUALLY like that, maybe that's what Recessional is trying to get across, that possibility".

So instead of rewriting my previous comment I'll post this one with my amended opinion -- thank you for giving me information that led to changing my mind.

(Also, well -- how do I put this? -- I have felt unsafe and frustrated after discussions here too - ask me about the one about the little Indian-American child being bullied into wanting to shave her legs -- but/and I wonder if that's a feature of ethical discussion places in general. Maybe that would make a good meta post.)

And I've totally seen guys Like That. . . . I am related to many guys like that. A best friend is MARRIED to a guy who could easily be Like That.

I just also could have written this letter, more or less (given the exact circumstances) while I was in the interactions that were abusive. Right down to "I can't have a rational discussion because she gets mad so how do I get over this on my own?" And I know men - specifically men who share my OTHER axes-of-disadvantage of ASD [often undiagnosed] and anxiety [VERY often undiagnosed] - who have/could find themselves in the very same situation, but actually do get, well, constantly blown off/attacked because people assume they're that other guy. And it sucks. =\

(*grimace* I've never been happy with how that one ended but couldn't think of a way to communicate things better that didn't involve basically the equivalent of the twenty minute talk over coffee to establish a huge chunk of background stuff and detail and make sure words were communicating what they should be and could be adjusted if not, in a hopefully less fraught circumstance than Performing The Discussion On The Internet? If that makes sense? So leaving it seemed like the best option for not making it worse. But the point being, no, that was not a great overall thing to put it mildly and I fully . . . *waves hand* acknowledge? respect? get? regret-being-part-of-the-cause-of? that feeling. Also please forgive me if those words are a bit awkward.

And you're probably right, in re feature! I just also think there is value in going "yeah okay so this makes me uncomfortable because Thing!"

. . .and also I tend to get fixated on "okay I clearly haven't managed to communicate what I MEANT" which can make it difficult to walk away from things. *facehands*)

*headtilt*

"I feel betrayed that my wife changed her mind without talking to me. How do I get over this without taking to her?"

Yeah, like. I get

recessional's points, but it's not just "angry and emotional" that is a red flag to me in this letter, but also being resentful of his wife for daring to have a different opinion than him, and also apparently not wanting to talk to her about it.

I also get

recessional's points, but the LW didn't say that that talking about this issue makes his wife "angry and emotional." He said "It's difficult to have a rational discussion with her because she easily becomes angry and emotional." In general. She's not just angry and emotional, she's irrational, and he's clearly implied that it's her default state, and not just about this incident.

So he's gone to the length of writing an advice columnist for advice on getting control of his feelings, he's using loaded terminology like betrayed -- which most people would reserve for issues bigger than the peccadillos of their bridge club or whatever -- but he's completely evenhanded and approaching conversations constructively and in good faith and his wife is just flying off the handle without any escalation on his part at all.

Sure. Right. I believe that. I also believe that whatever it was that happened in that club is worth marital strife. Also that giant rabbits talk to me.

Dear Abby: My Wife Changed Her Mind!

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