It’s something in my tone. Something defensive. Something angry. It’s the mad-bitch tone. Apparently, it gives me away every time.

Ever since I’ve been making this concerted effort not to yell, really really trying not to yell, MrB has been calling me out on the tone of my voice.

I have been trying, so hard, to say what I need to say, ask for what I need, state my feelings, whatever, in the most calm and even tone. I have actively worked toward bleaching all the anger and aggression out of my voice. And not just that. I’ve been working hard on letting that anger go, on understanding where it comes from and learning what to do with it. I’ve been literally practicing in therapy how to say things, how to articulate my boundaries, to state my bottom line.

Strangely, the calmer I get, the more he reacts to me. I feel like I can say the most innocent thing, and he’ll blow up at me, and when I ask why he’s yelling at me he’s saying Well You Were Just Going Off On Me, and I’m like what the fuck?

It’s all in the tone of my voice. He can tell how I’m feeling, and he knows that I’m angry, secretly seething with resentment inside, even as I continue to calmly say what I really mean he argues that I’m lying. He says he doesn’t know what it is, but I just can’t hide the anger that I’m feeling, and it’s really pissing him off that I’m not addressing the thing that’s pissing me off.

It’s weird, to see him losing his temper so often like he is, because that was always my part in the dynamic between us. I was the hot-headed one, he was so maddeningly calm. It’s almost scary, because he’s the one who is so obviously angry, but he keeps insisting that it’s really me who is mad. He’s accusing me of jumping all over his case, or whatever, when he’s the one yelling at me.

Could it be that there is something in the way I’m speaking, some cue that I’m giving? I suppose it’s possible. Maybe I’m emotionally detatched, or just out of touch with my feelings, because of the suboxone. Maybe there’s something there that I don’t even realize and it comes out in the subtext of whatever I think I’m really trying to say.

That’s a scary thought too though, the possiblity that I’m that deeply out of touch with my own feelings, because some of the times that he’s accused me of having an angry tone have been times when I was pretty sure that I wasn’t feeling angry and I had practiced and really intentionally tried to bring up and state whatever I had to say in the most neutral/non-judgemental/non-emotionally-loaded way.

But even in those instances, he heard something totally different from what I was saying. I’d say something like: When you tell me you’ll take care of something and then you don’t, I feel disappointed and angry. And he’d say: Well you just said I was an irresponsible asshole.

I take some responsibility here too. This is a new skill for me, and I’m sure I’m not expressing myself perfectly. I’m sure I say some things out of habit in a way that could be construed as grumpy. But I don’t know how to deal with his continued insistence that I am angry, even after I try to assure him that I’m not.

This is so frustrating. I miss the time when the only hidden meanings in our words were fun and flirtatious ones. I miss being able to talk to him without everything being so loaded and painful. Fuck, I just miss him. He’s far away in his own misery these days, and I am certainly not the one who brings him any relief from that. Most of the time I just feel like I’m another annoying burden to him, one of the things that holds him down, keeps him back…

Maybe if I wasn’t all screwed up sexually, we would have a better communication. I don’t have the energy to write that post tonight though. Meh.