We are the same way. Taylor thinks about every response while I'm yelling in the background. It's very frustrating. And when he comes back with a response, which is often rather brilliant and nice, I get even more pissed because he's being nice and we're supposed to be ARGUING.
Very difficult.
This is exaaaaaaaaaaactly how Sean and I fight too. You don't know how many times I've said "IT'S YOUR TURN TO SPEAK. THIS IS A CONVERSATION." He likes to think and think and think about his response during a fight and it's always really calm and measured and DRIVES ME CRAZY BECAUSE I WANT TO YELL YELL YELL. As you can tell from how many capital letters I used in this comment. Wow.
This post is full of grammatical errors, but I am tired. Forgive me. Or I'll yell at you.
Sometimes I swear our husbands are the same person.
We do the exact same thing. I am a 100% yeller. Mr. M is incredibly patient and calm. He doesn't wait 10 minutes to respond but he does very rationally come up with a response. But the fact that he is CALM is what pisses me off even more which causes me to yell more. Vicious cycle I tell you.
I really think it must be a gender thing, because my long-term boyfriend and I fight the exact same way, too. I yell and scream...while he sits. And, as opposed to using the time to calm down, as perhaps a normal person might, I use the time to make additional snarky, rude, terrible comments. My ONE redeeming fight quality is that fighting truly wrecks me emotionally, and I can't fall asleep, work, etc. if we're in a fight, so I try and fix things before bed. Andrew then tries to start fights realllyyy close to bed. Great post---I could leave a book-length comment.
I'm a yeller. Comes from having to talk (shout) over my 5 siblings growing up. Yelling makes B- retreat to a room and shut the door. Which, of course only makes me angrier.
So, I once had this ex-boyfriend. And he was really pretty awesome, but definitely one of those people who I should have sang karaoke with and gone to the park with and ran marathons with but NOT DATED. For lots of reasons, but the fact that we are the best of friends today is probably one of them. (Sometimes friends just should NOT DATE.)
Whoa, tangent.
In any case, this fucker (loving!) pulls that SAME SHIT. And honestly, I'm not sure if he's REALLY thinking or if "thinking" sounds like a good excuse for "sitting here quietly and imagining pie and a nice pint" and ADDITIONALLY serves to give the impression that all his "thinking" is so much more MATURE and EVOLVED than my meh meh meh.
All this to say: I once timed him during a phone conversation. Asked a question and waited. And waited. ONE HOUR AND THIRTEEN MINUTES LATER I cracked with an "are you thinking?"
And wouldn't you know it. HE STILL WAS.
Yesterday I gave up my job as an AAG prosecutor where I was in court 3-4 days a week. I don't yell. Neither if us do. Twice in 8 years of marriage I've raised my voice at Bob, both times about the issue of lack of sleep with babies. We generally argue/discuss in super slow motion. We both think a long time before we speak. With 2 children it makes it hard to find the time to argue, so sometimes we get up way early in the morning.
Yes, we are midwesterners.
So I am the calm rational one, with thought out points, until the hubs gets defensive which he ALWAYS DOES and then he says something completely asinine and THEN I start with the Italian side of my temper: hands start flying, a vein pops in my forehead and the yelling oh my the yelling.
Plus he always claims that "he is the analytical one" *snort* how bout you analyze your way out of being so damn defensive all the time? That would save us SO MUCH TROUBLE. UGH.
I have only not spoken to him, once, for a few hours and that was after a particularly bad phone blow up where I had to basically tell him I needed to not talk to him so I could calm down. I might have thrown a dish or something otherwise.
Tom is the yeller. I talk and talk and talk (apparently I use sarcasm, so he says) and he yells over me. Then at some point I shut down because I cannot handle the yelling and I either walk away or just stop responding altogether. This results in more yelling.
Not productive either.
Oh god, when you described your silent treatment it was like you were talking about me too! I get all mad about something, we yell at eachother for a few minutes, and then I storm off and refuse to discuss it for HOURS/DAYS at a time during which we don't speak.
It's stupid, but I just can't stop myself, arg!
Goddamn, I love this post.
I'm the Mr. A type. In fact, if I'm feeling REEEEALLY bitchy, I'll stay calmly silent through an entire rant and add a little condescending "are you DONE?" eyebrow raise at the end. Oooo, burn. Heh.
I can give the silent treatment like a motherfucker too. Impressive/condescending indeed.
(TWO WEEKS!) Love it. You are so awesome.
Yes! Someone who understands the BOIL of the silence. Something about the lack of response makes me just insane. I also want to remind my husband that we are engaged in a back and forth conversation. Sometimes I want to say something and then start counting aloud so that he knows that ACUTAL time is passing. I wish I could give silent treatment, instead I just get more wound up. Luckily the fights are few and far between!
We are actually really similar to you guys except I am not really a yeller and neither is he. But I will get totally worked up, while he rarely gets angry and is a total thinker and then I get more pissed and stop speaking to him. And his inability to get really truly mad at anything other than the remote control just irritates me even more because then I start to feel silly for being worked up EVEN THOUGH IT IS SOMETHING TOTALLY WORTH BEING WORKED UP ABOUT so I just get angrier the longer I stew.
This problem could be solved, I believe, by him just constantly agreeing with me and when I get worked up, he should get genuinely worked up right there with me.
I should probably quit my job and become a couple's therapist.
I'm not really a yeller, but my husband sounds just like yours! He never, ever gets upset. If we are discussing things it's because I brought it up. But he does genuinely care that I am upset...but he himself just doesn't get mad. Ever. Which is kind of irritating when you just want to get it out there and fight about something...but you end up being forced into a civilized calm conversation every. single. time. 
i'm more of the think about it before you say it and if i say "it", i'm not yelling about it, unless i'm being yelled AT. i hate pauses, but i hate yelling more. walking off on a topic is just taboo in my book!
Do you watch How I Met Your Mother? Because this week's episode was about how the different couples fight and this post totally reminds me of it.
My boyfriend is the calm, rational one in our relationship, but we rarely fight and haven't had one about any huge issues (yet, anyway). Luckily, his calmness is somehow starting to rub off on me, so now when I get frustrated or angry, I yell a little bit, then go storm off into my room and deal with it, and then come back calmed down to have a rational conversation. This is so NOT how I've ever handled being angry in other relationships... those have always been the battle of who could scream loudest. Yikes.
I drive my husband crazy when we fight; I'm a very logical engineer, he's an abstract thinking artist. I formulate concrete srguments before I even pick a fight with him, and then I get mad when he has no response. It is not very productive.
We are the exact same way, except instead of Steve thinking about it, he just walks away and plays a video game or something. But, as much as he says my YELLING doesn't solve anything, his doesn't either! Bahhhhh.
Jason is a yeller. Big time. And when I try to talk, he interrupts me, which makes me want to rip his tongue out with my bare hands. He is also very big on Assigning Blame, and everything is black or white - no shades of gray. He would make an excellent lawyer.
That said, I couldn't ignore him if I wanted to because when we're arguing, we have this whole flipping process to go through: he yells, I try to talk, he calls names, I finally get pissed and insult him, he blames me for everything, I politely tell him he's an ass and that I deserve better, we stew in silence, he finally apologizes.
I HATE the whole process; there's no stopping it until it's run its course. It easily eats through an hour or two of our night. Definitely something I want him to knock off (and he's totally aware of his behavior and wants to change).
I am not a yeller, rather a loud and fast talker. Mr. Everlasting is a quiet thinker and generally has NOTHING to say in response other than silence. It drives me freaking crazy. I am not his mother, his teacher, etc... It is not my job to scold him and him to hang his head and take it. I want him to engage with me. Many times I get so pissed I have to push him and finally end up screaming "if you don't f-ing say something this is going to a whole new level." Most of the time I get more upset about his lack of response ability than whatever it was we were originally fighting about. His thought is that I am just "better" at arguing (true, natch) so why try. ARGH!
i yell. i scream. i say mean things. todd just sits there. he doesn't respond. AT ALL. then i just get more and more mad and do it some more.
then i start screaming, "SAY SOMETHING! FIGHT BACK!"
sometimes i just want to fight. what's wrong with that? 
When men yell at me, I cringe like a beaten dog. So it's good that the mister and I don't yell. We did have what was probably our first serious tiff this weekend, though. Basically, we were having a party at his house, I offered the day before to shop for all the food, he says no, it's fine. I come over a couple of hours before the party and offer to set up the food before assembling my costume. He hasn't slept in 36 hours (imminent summary judgment filings are AWESOME).
"There isn't any food. I thought we would just go buy some today."
And instead of yelling I just collapse inward like a black hole of internal eyerolling: WTF WTF WTF. And get clipped and icy. And he can tell I'm pissed off and gets avoidant and mumbles in the opposite direction when he has to talk. But we bought the food and he took a nap and I set things up and people didn't arrive until an hour after the party's start time anyway and it was all fine.
I did have a relationship where in fights my boyfriend was the super emotional yelling crying kind and I was the patient measured rationalist, but that didn't go well (he was like you, my being calm just made him madder).
Wow, with The Boy and I it's the complete opposite. He likes to talk and yell when he's upset and I completely clam up.
I need time to process a response, to actually think about what we're both upset about and how to fix it. Also I tend to get really upset during an argument (tears and such) and I HATE trying to talk through tears. So, often times I'll leave the room to collect myself and my thoughts which to him, registers as me "walking away from the situation."
I just can't sit there holding in tears over something stupid while he tsks me about not continuing the "conversation".
It seems there's always a yeller-need-to-discuss-this-at-high-volume-NOW person and a thinker-sarcastic-would-like-to-just-avoid-this-
discussion person in each relationship. I am the latter. If it weren't for my marriage to Homer, I don't believe I would ever need to raise my voice above a conversational volume.
See our problem is not so much in the fighting as in what happens after the fight. I get mad and yell and the boyfriend completely shuts down and sulks. I tend to get over things really quickly once I express them, but he broods. Then I feel bad (even though I was totally right in the first place) and end up apologizing because I can't deal with the brooding anymore. Very frustrating.
Oh I could not DEAL with the silent treatment. I don't think I could give it and I KNOW I would crumple into a complete and total mess if I received it.
I do tend to be louder when we disagree. It goes back to when I was a debater in college. I think of EVERY SINGLE REASON why I am right and then I spew them all, and then if I think of a better way to phrase something I say that too. Whereas Torsten is more of a "let's discuss this once and then move on" person. And I NEED to keep talking about it until I am over it. But he's pretty tolerant of that. So it works out OK.
I am sorry you are fighting. I am sorry we all have to fight, ever! I hate fighting! I am a fight avoider. Which leads to other problems, usually ending in a fight. Hehe. But isn't it comforting to know that we all do it? In some strange way, comforting, I mean?
So yeah. The fella and I are a mishmash of what everyone above has said. I am not a yeller, at all. I don't yell. But I do have a HUGE NEED to TALK about...everything. I have to verbalize the shit out of a disagreement, even if it's just talking through all the what ifs. It drives my BF crazy, because he then feels like I'm bringing up a laundry list of problems and expecting him to solve all of them. Which I'm not, but I can see how he winds up thinking that, as I'm spouting my mouth off. Anyway, when we get to that point, he gets WAY angry & begins to yell. Usually he likes to throw out a "I can't take this anymore." Which then sends me from just talking to tears. Which makes the situation worse because then he assumes he has to fix that, too. Charming cycle!
I don't usually get angry about stuff until after the fact. Then I realize, wait a second! I have a right to be pissed off, that wasn't nice!!!
I'm definitely in the yelling camp. I'm also a I WANT THIS RESOLVED RIGHT NOW WHY ARE YOU BEING SILENT kind of gal. I want to fight, get it over with, and get on with life. Two weeks of silent treatment? Wow. I think the longest I've ever given the silent treatment was a day, and that was really really hard. I finally broke the silence with something like "ARE YOU ALIVE?! OK GOOD. I'M STILL MAD." As you can see, I'm very mature and rational when I fight.
Comment about our respective jobs is insightful, I have never considered that. Our different family environments/up-bringings has a lot to do with it. Slynnro is from house of fighters/yellers. I am from house of no yelling, repressed rage, etc. Me no yell, me silently simmer, boil in resentment. However, I do get angry. Really scary angry. Destroy inanimate objects angry. But, I don't let it out very often - perhaps b/c I don't want to break things.
Teaching point (for all those men who married a blogger): I am making no further comment on this subject in this venue.
WE ARE TWINS.
this is exactly how we fight. and Mr. A's comment above is exactly the same for us too. I came from a house of YELL, and G came from a house of repressed anger. heh. funny, that.
To be clear Mr A doesn't break inanimate objects in front of me. Slynnro don't play dat.
Ugh, that silently thinking think would annoy the SHIT out of me! I think Mr. A's comment is dead on. It's all about how you were raised. My family is a bunch of yellers. You KNOW when we're mad. But I had a huge fight with a friend in college who was the opposite. She held her anger inside for like THREE YEARS and then finally blew up and didn't talk to me for 2 years. I was blown away because I don't know what it is like to hold on to that for so long.
i think how my husband and i fight is one of our greatest strengths. (i don't know anyone else like him in this respect. i am lucky!)
i yell, get short, but i want him to say something back. sometimes he yells but this yelling period does not last long. we usually have a brief pause, then one of us calmly starts the process of talking it out.
i am frankly amazed at how well he fights with me in such a productive manner. i don't quite even know how we do it.
we have never gone without talking for more than 5 minutes in 6 years. again, i am amazed myself.
oh and my inlaws have the most unproductive conversations/yelling ever. my husband somehow learned how to fight with me during our relationship. seriously, don't know how it works.
I tend to get really, really mad really fast and explode. I yell, say really mean things and then.. I'm over it. The mister can be mad for days. He's the King of the silent treatment and I hate it. I always end up apologizing first just so he'll quit being a girl and talk to me!
I'm a yeller... and a cryer. I used to be TERRIBLE at the silent treatment - I wouldn't let anyone leave angry for long before I'd crumble and apologize. Now that we're married - and its infinitely harder to break up with me without legal proceedings - I have transformed into Awesome Silent Treatment Girl. Which is amazing, b/c Evs still THINKS I can't let anyone leave mad so when I do, he thinks it must be a REALLY BIG DEAL. When in fact, I'm just Awesome. I fear this tactic can only last another year or so until he catches on and I have to perfect other tricks.
i TOTALLY suck at fighting. i am super bad at confrontation, so half the time when cornered into a fight, i end up CRYING, which i hate more than ANYTHING IN THE WORLD, and then i'm angry at my boyfriend for whatever we're fighting about AND myself for being such a pansy-ass crier, and... yeah. unproductive.
I think one of the biggest issues we had is that after a few arguments that were big enough to last longer than a few minutes I wasn't allowed to be angry. Like, it was this horrible thing, me being angry, and such an ugly emotion, and "you were never such an angry person before," and on and on and on. I knew it was complete b.s. Anger is an emotion that everyone feels and it can be pretty damn awesome when necessary.
I think the truth behind the issues scared him, and so rather than throwing everything out on the proverbial table to hash it out, he would deny that anger was an acceptable response, to anything having to do with us. Meanwhile, he was super angry and I was angry that I wasn't "allowed" to be.
Annd, I think I just had a mini-therapy session in your comment section. Awesome. You're totally like the Dr. Phil of blogs.
Have you ever read John Gottman at all? His Seven Principles book is good. And he's not one of these who will tell you "yellling is wrong," but he does have some really good and true observations I think. Escalation and de-escalation and all that. Just a thought -- I loved it.
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