I overanalyze *everything*

Seriously, I totally do. I have been doing it forever....for as long as I can remember. It can really suck because I can't just turn off my brain. Sometimes I just want to turn the damn thing off! But I can't. It's impossible. It's inside of me and it won't go away. It's what causes my insomnia 9 times out of 10 I think.

I think about how I could have handled situations differently, how someone may or may not be taking what I do or don't say, every detail of certain things to see what I may have missed the first time around.

The only good it has ever really done me is that I pretty much always know what is bothering my husband, even when he won't say what it is. I have overanalyzed his thoughts, and my reaction to them, so much throughout the years that I often know what it is that is going on with him.

Recently we had a medium-sized argument because he was copping an attitude and not telling me what his problem was. I hate when he does that. It boils my blood. So I don't ignore it. I bug the crap out of him until he tells me what is going on or until he pushes my buttons back. It's what we do...it's what eventually works for us.

This all happened in the car on the way to someone's house. When we got there, we still hadn't resolved this issue so we spent the next few hours talking to everyone else there, but not to each other.

On the way home, he finally opened up and admitted what his issue was. It was what I thought it was all along. What I had tried to say to him from the beginning and he denied, denied, denied.

Finally he told me that, in situations like that in the future, since I know what is wrong anyway, I should just respond to that issue rather than trying to pull out of him what is going on with him.

What?? Did he just give me permission to make assumptions about him? Doesn't assuming make an ass out of you and me? That's what I was always told anyway.

So I clarified with him that that was in fact what he was saying. He said yes, that is what he was saying. So I warned him that I could be wrong with my assumptions....that sometimes I think things are wrong that are not, that he was giving me permission to potentially make false assumptions about him. He didn't seem bothered by that.

But of course I can be bothered by that at times. How can I not? If I haven't found time to overanalyzed it already, I'm sure that I will at some point...probably the next time that we get in a fight over him not sharing whatever is wrong with him.

Because let's be honest - as hard as it is for him to learn how to share what he is feeling, it is just as hard for me to not expect him to just come out and say what his problem is. But we will keep trying to compromise on it...because that's just what we do.