The husband is very insensitive with his words (both in giving and receiving) and I’m very sensitive with and to words. A lot of the stuff that he says that I bristle at, in the past he has told me he doesn’t mean and that I’m “supposed” to ignore them. But words have meaning to me and I take them seriously; in reverse, I try to use my words meaningfully with as much integrity behind them as I can muster. In receiving words, Mr. W is less affected, doesn’t find them particularly memorable (even when I want them to be), so he delivers his words with the same little intent behind them.

If I were to say to him something like, “You ALWAYS do this,” which he often says to me and would upset me in its exaggeration and cause me to fly into explicit examples to prove its untruthfulness, he would just shrug it off.

Sometimes he makes an observation or comment using words that I find inflammatory, so I’m inflamed. Sometimes I tell him something that I really mean and he blows it off, scoffs and pretty much calls me a liar.

He wishes I were less sensitive; I wish he were more sensitive.

I don’t know what to do about this discrepancy. Mr. W’s solution is that we just shouldn’t talk to each other.