My husband covered up the fact that he retired. How can I reboot open communication? | Family

My husband completely covered the fact that he retired two years ago and was pretending to go to work since then. He created stories about work events. I only discovered by seeing pension payments in our joint account. He is 68 years old and has re -submitted the specifications to his old company. He had no response, but he was still waiting for one.

When asked what he is doing, he says he is sitting in cafes and making crossword puzzles. He is always on his phone. It is late and denies talking about being on a pension and any activities such as volunteering, doing training courses, etc. How can I restart open communication?

Elianor says: Oh, this makes me sad for you. He reminds me of the people who were demobilized and did not tell their families, took their lunch in the paper bag and sat on the garden seat.

It is clear that he deceived you, and this should feel bad – you may be very angry. In addition to a sudden discovery that he retired, there is a difficult surprise as much, for completely inappropriate reasons for you, he did not want or feel that he was able to say.

This is a radical thing to learn about your communication environment! This was a great deception. It is not clear that it can be explained, for example, a lie to get out of trouble. It does not seem as if he is scrambling to explain things now after he was discovered; I said that he is still preventing efforts to talk about the pension. I think you are right to feel communication that needs to be restarted.

My question (and I imagine you) is: What does he want or needs that lying feels like the best way to get it? This may help start from there by listening literally. The listening phase of recognition of each other in relationships is completely different from the classroom, and it differs again from the stage of installation and improvement. I have mentioned a number of things from the last camps – he does not want to talk about classrooms, activities and training courses, and is delayed and denied. Separate and before that, there is a task of understanding: Why didn’t he want to share this?

I wonder if this might help in the “What Now” Questions Stone and “Who is Right”, and focus on knowing whether you can learn why he does not want to share this. I am thinking Listening techniques to the old school Like telling his point of view to him, knowing if you can accurately summarize this is the reason for the importance of such a matter. You may be surprised by the extent of this lighting.

You think you say exactly what the other person has just said, then they will say no, it’s not, it’s this instead. The mutual cutting makes you closer to a correct understanding.

I know that this is a lot of work that must be placed on you, and this means allocating temporary legitimate criticism. But pragmatism in communications is often separated from the ethics of government. You are now in a situation that is felt by something that the speech is not worth it. I do not say that this is true – it may not be. It may be largely unfair. But if it is possible to change, it should be a feeling that the conversation may result in different results from the one he expects. One way to do this is to continue to say: This is a really strange thing in our connection and I hope it is different.

If he even fights you, you can tell him how to make you feel – alone, as if he does not trust you with important things for him. In this way, continuing not to speak is not just a framing of his preference. He explains that, through evaluation, he actively continues to do something that hurts you.

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