The dilemma I am in the midst of yet another meltdown in my marriage. We seem to play an endless dance of miscommunication which then veers into resentment. I wish to talk everything through, but my husband is a man who finds talking difficult and resorts to the silence of stone.

Things have reached yet another impasse and we are nearly at the point of separating. He has accused me of rage – partly true as, eventually, the only way I can talk to him is by pushing him into a corner. We have tried therapy and he doesn’t want to do it again.

Money has always been a problem – we are both freelancers and I earn well intermittently while he earns very little. He is also in debt to the tax man again. I’m exhausted and frightened, but with enough scraps of battered love to try and move us forward. I just don’t know what to do. Help.

Philippa’s answer Another meltdown? This is a pattern and the great thing about patterns is that they can be changed. You can find a different pattern, a more helpful and loving one. If you get divorced you’ll only repeat the same pattern in the next partnership, so sort it out in this one. You’ve got enough scraps of “battered love” to move you forward so let’s concentrate on those to get you through this and, this time, out the other side, rather than falling back into your old patterns of behaving.

What your dance may be about is that you need to talk before you can be loving and your husband needs loving before he can talk. This is a very common problem in couples – it’s about feeling safe. No one feels safe if they are shouted at and, therefore, he couldn’t open up to talk under those circumstances. Unfortunately, to feel safe you want to talk before opening up to any kind of loving surrender. If this is your pattern, no wonder you’re stuck. Luckily this is easy enough to fix.

Switch your focus away from what is wrong in your marriage to what is right – those scraps of love. Forget about talking, it’s not working. Instead, give your husband at least three appreciations or compliments every day. Remember love is not something passive that you fall into, it is something active that you do. Also think of three loving behaviours to do every day. Maybe help him with his tax bill, or empty the dishwasher or cook a nice meal. You must get into the habit of these loving behaviours before you even begin to address any complaints to re-establish trust. And it is amazing that when you decide to act in loving, forgiving ways, it can make you feel more loving, too. Feelings follow behaviour.

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Now, communication and how not to do it. Never define the other person. Never say, “you always…”, “you are…”, “the trouble with you is…” Nope, these sentence stems are absolutely forbidden. Also, no name calling, no insulting, and no blaming, no proving him wrong. So, after at least two weeks of breaking your trying-to-force-him-to-listen-and-talk-by-shouting pattern – which you will have replaced with loving appreciations and behaviour – you can have a go at talking about your relationship. Never bring up more than one issue a week – any more than that and he’d be overwhelmed. When you bring it up, define yourself and not the other person. It’s “when you do […] I feel […] What I’d like instead would be […].” Remember a complaint is about you and your feelings, it is not about proving you are right and he is wrong. Don’t demand a response straight away.

It does seem from your email that you are playing the “me-right-him-wrong” game. Desist immediately. You can be right or you can be married, but you cannot be both. You seem to be seeing talking as right and silence as wrong. Nope, just see these things as different. I get the feeling, too, that you are taking the moral high ground about money. This is not helping. It is going to take practice on your part to remember you are in a loving partnership rather than a who-is-the-best-person competition.

It is good that you are willing to admit you act out your rage and anger – although by saying “partly true” it sounds like you are justifying your shouting at him. Shouting is a form of violence; don’t try to justify it. It isn’t loving behaviour, so best to drop it. When you feel so much rage that you cannot keep it in, go and yell at an inanimate object.

You will have noticed I have only given instructions for you and none for him. That’s because it was you who wrote in and you can only change your own behaviour, you cannot change his. His may change when yours does but there are no guarantees.

Now stick this article up on the kitchen notice board. No need to say you are going to follow it because actions speak louder than words.

In short Remember he needs to feel love before he can talk, yet you want to talk before you can be loving. Secondly, love isn’t passive it is loving action, so practise acting lovingly. Thirdly, no grasping for the moral high ground with the me-right-you-wrong game.

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