Lost, Hurt, and Utterly Confused

I totally understand why you are so upset. Feeling unheard is deeply distressing. I know exactly what needs to be done in order to solve this mess. The problem is that I can't begin to tell you everything in one short column. But, don't despair, my book, Till Death Do Us Part (Unless I Kill You First). is going to turn your relationship around. After reading this column, go straight to Amazon.com and order a copy today.

In a nutshell, here's what is going wrong. When you want to be heard, your boyfriend does what many men do; he rushes in with solutions, you don't feel heard, you become angry, he tunes out, and whammo, viscious cycle time.

I think that your problem is being magnified by the fact that his nonlistening is awakening a wound that you suffered in childhood. I sense that you have felt misunderstood and unheard since you were a child. If I am right, then your psyche is riddled with a great deal of buried hurt and anger that dates back to your childhood. When your boyfriend doesn't understand you, he unknowingly rips open your childhood wound, and all the old hurt and anger comes rushing out, adding fuel to the fire, turning a simple conflict into all out war.

Childhood feelings cause arguments to become out-of-control in much the same way that a storm becomes monstrously huge as it gathers moisture when it passes over a body of water. Here's how it works. We all come to adulthood with the wounds of childhood barely scarred over. When our partners say or do something that reminds us of something that our parent(s) said or did that damaged us, all the buried hurt and anger of the past comes leaping out; you feel like ripping your partner's throat out (half the time you don't even know why you are going so nuts, since the association to childhood wounds is occurring on the unconscious level). When you become more and more heated, you turn off your mate's hearing. His nonlistening makes you even more mad, and before long you are locked in a viscious cycle. At this point, the anger is poisoning you, and that's why you are making yourself vomit: to rid yourself of the emotional poison that is more than you can stomach.

What we need to do is: help you to identify the old wounds that are being ripped open by his nonlistening, and use your relationship to heal these wounds; teach you how to communicate what is troubling you so that your boyfriend wants to listen; and, last but not least, show your boyfriend how to listen to you and convey that he has heard and understood.

Speaking of Mr. Fix It, your boyfriend, like all men, has been socialized to solve problems, and is clueless about how to respond to emotional communications. When you hurl a bag of emotions at him, he finds himself lost, swimming in a sea of feelings. When he responds by saying, everything can be fixed, he is responding in the only way that a man knows how: to fix it and make the messy feelings go away. We need to teach him that the'fix' you want is to be heard and understood.

Don't worry. My book will show you how to talk to him so to that he wants to listen, and it will teach him how to stash the solutions and truly listen and understand you.

Keep me posted on your progress.