To begin, my wife [F 26] and I [F 27] love each other so much, are committed to each other, and are perfect for each other, and that’s not just from my perspective.

However, the problem starts when she’s not herself for one reason or another (PMSing - the worst of all, hungry, tired from work and worse when it was a tough night, overwhelmed or pressured from too much going on around her), her instinct is to withdraw and want space, but still want my presence just out of the way. Mine is to help, touch, comfort, and so on. We know we have different love languages, as I’m sure you can tell. Anyway, over time I’ve been able to read when this is happening, or she’ll tell me tersely or have a negative mood swing, and I back off until she’s lucid, per se. And she does recover rather quickly. She can have a quick fuse, but then a quick recovery. I have a long fuse, especially since I understand her for the most part and can push through or defuse her until she inevitably apologizes for being on her BS haha, and an equally long recovery if I do get pushed to where I’m upset.

But there are other times when, for whatever reason, I’m already fragile (tough day at work, PMS - I’m an emotional PMS type, or I’m just feeling needy like she does sometimes). She’ll withdraw more and gets frustrated and can be mean, which, seeing her upset and feeling upset myself, makes me want to reach out to soothe and comfort myself and her more, and so on and so on, as you can imagine. I’m hurt feeling forced to withdraw not wanting to inflame the situation further, whereas she’s told me at times she’s allowed more than she can stand for my benefit which prolongs it. In other words, giving and receiving attention and affection would soothe me, and getting peace and quiet calms her and clears her head, and obviously at that moment both can’t happen at the same time. When the dust settles, we both understand and can articulate how it happened, forgive, and move forward. This has happened a couple times. But obviously it would be better to avoid the whole script in the first place.

It also sucks because we don’t get a whole lot of quality time as is, given we work opposite schedules and don’t live together. That is a temporary situation, since I’m military and eventually we’ll move on from here. A side note: we’ve both recognized that her work schedule (F-Su 12 hour 3rd shift, sometimes Th too) isn’t really conducive to being married (she took the job before she knew me, and when we were dating, she was training on 1st shift so it wasn’t an issue but it was known this was coming) plus their management sucks and is unappreciative which is already wearing on her. And 3rd shift makes her tired often, which is one of her previously mentioned things that can put her in a foul mood.

Anyway, how can we, I guess, step outside ourselves and kill the feedback loop before it becomes another painful, stressful squabble? Or just recognize when anything negative is about to start, and disengage? Especially when we don’t have a chance to fully heal before parting ways.