I took it as an attack, but it was not an attack. She was not feeling loved the way she wanted to be loved. Through connection and quality time. I was loving with acts of service and providing money and stuff. I fought against giving her what she wanted. That probably had more of an effect than I gave it credit for. When I would argue with her and say that we do spend time together and its her fault that the only time we spend together is fighting because I blame her for bringing up her feelings and take them as attacks. That's a tangent, back to our main story. I got defensive because I felt like she was saying that what I was doing didn't matter, and I took so much pride in being able to provide for my family that she wasn't giving me any credit for something I had never been able to do and was so scared about how fragile it was, and that's not what she wanted. I took her statements the wrong way, and my ego was hurt when she would complain about not being able to make money when I would tell her that I hit my money goal for the week. It meant more to me than others might know. Being able to provide a good life with all the things, car, house, spending money, travel, and all that. It felt so good to be able to do that, and she said she wanted that so I gave my all to give her that. I misheard what she was really saying. I was trying to give it to her now. She was describing a lifetime.

Again, I must say, Maybe. To all of this, maybe. These are my thoughts. These are my feelings. I don't actually know the other side, and we're not currently able to check these against reality, and it'll stay a product of thought until that conversation.

My approach had been the direct approach, and I am looking into that method. I'm also looking into other methods. I worry the direct approach is not well suited for certain audiences. This is probably the most "duh" statement I will make, but its simplicity is its curse. I wanted to take the easy way of using the same approach with everyone and calling it consistency. Its probably just laziness, and then I get to blame the other person if they aren't strong enough to handle it. So that's a nice protective bonus. This method never reflects, and it doesn't improve. We're all about the improvement around here. Discard that which does not suit my needs for the specific situation, and this doesn't make me lack integrity, in fact it's arguably greater integrity to treat others with kindness consistently and showing empathy for the other and how they might wish to receive information, because the integrity is the caring for others, not the one-size-fits-all approach to every situation.