Tldr: my wife and I get into verbal fights quite often (once a month or so) I get over it in an hour and it takes her days. Both of us think that the other’s timeline isn’t normal. What’s typical/normal?
I’m ADHD (my current therapist thinks it’s AuDHD) so I’m prone to emotional deregulation and pretty crazy mood swings. I’m pretty sure my parents are somehow ND as well so I don’t have the best basis. My wife is also ND, but it’s audio processing not emotionally related
My wife and I get into fights and arguments sometimes over petty stuff. I feel I hear her out but it’s difficult for her to listen to me straight through as I tend to take a while to get to my point. She interrupts me a lot with either snide comments or questions that if she just waited a sec I’d answer. This leads me to getting frustrated and raising my voice and yelling, which gets her pissed off and raises her voice and suddenly we’re in a shouting match.
Eventually one of us gives up or realizes they’re wrong and we end the fight and go to our separate (safe) areas.
After about an hour I feel I’m back to normal and can talk about other things. (We usually have something we need to do with our kids or work or the house that we need to communicate on).
My wife feels it takes her a day or two to come down from a fight so shes very short with me until that time, where I feel I can talk after an hour or so… She feels that it’s not normal to change in that short of time.
What do people think?
It really depends on the specifics of the fight and the person (neurotypical or not). Perhaps some couple counselling with a professional would be helpful to understand each other better?
There really isn’t a norm. I don’t get mad very easily- I brush off thighs that upset other people - but if I get mad it takes a long time to get over it. I had a gf once who got mad at the slitest thing (often really mad), but would get over it really quickly. There’s a lot of variation. And, of course, it can depend on the issue, too. A guy leaving the toilet set up is different from a guy kissing his gf’s sister.
I get the best of both worlds, it takes sustained pressure for a LONG time for me to get angry about something and when I finally do get angry it fizzles out and I’m over it in a matter of minutes to a max of about an hour.
But then again, most of my “negative” emotions are like that, grief, sadness, anger etc fizzle out quickly and I’m back to “baseline”. It’s like there’s a switch on brain that goes “Ok, that’s enough of that, back to normal”, not sure how normal that is in relation to others LMAO
That’s great, at least as long as you’re truly letting go of it and not pushing it down someplace.
It’s pretty easy for me to feel sadness, but anger is just a very unnatural state for me. Probably to an unhealthy degree in that there are probably times when I should be mad, but instead just get despondent.
It normally takes me up to 12 hours (sleep or not), rarely longer, to forgive myself for not forgiving myself (99%) or the other person.
eta - assuming the ‘minor’ is worthy of 12 hours’ attention.
As a NT parent, one of the hardest things has been the “emotional whiplash” of an ADHD kid. One minute it’s a horrific display of emotional violence that scars me for life, and then five minutes later it’s like it never happened. I’m probably slower to change my feelings than most - there are things that happened years ago I’m still able to access fresh feelings about - but even when I actively recover from a fight I’m still upset by the time the next one occurs. It’s taken a toll on my mental health for sure.
I wouldn’t say there’s a norm, everyone varies. What would probably help a bunch is some sort of validation for how that fight sucked for the other person, no matter who’s right or wrong.
“Hey, I’m sorry we fought. I hate it and I know you do too. I don’t ever mean to make you feel bad. I love you and want us to be ok. Is there anything else you need me to understand?”