Ok, hi. My first post here but have been wanting to find an online forum for psych-issues for a while.

I'll into myself and then ask for some support here. I'm married, 41, two great kids (10,7). Without going into too many details, my wife and I are working on our marriage by going to counseling weekly, I got to a personal counselor and then also a group session - both weekly. I think I'm evolving and growing and things on my part are good and getting better. The reason I'm doing this is to build communication and intimacy back into our marriage.

Now, the topic at hand was this. My wife was scheduled for a beneficial operation July 25th which was postponned due to her doctor getting seriously ill. The operation will affect her deeply - it's a full hysterectomy and ovary removal. She was distraught after the first cancellation and the possible 2nd date came and went (early August). She called her doctor's office last Monday (8 days ago) and they hadn't gotten back to her. I decided that she really needed to hear from them so I called the doc's office today to ask them to let us know what was going on and to contact her to give her an update. The doctor had just returned to the office today and the assistant said that she was planning on talking with him and letting my wife know what the status of things are.

Now, I was hoping that my wife would say "thanks for calling - I appreciate your concern". But I got the irritated wife saying "you didn't talk to me first - you do that all the time. I don't call customers of your company when you say they're not doing something right." She did admit the thought was nice but that I didn't talk to her first.

I called the doc's office for myself as well. I want this surgery to happen so she can get going with recovery, get over the daily pain she has with her uterus and get on with life. I also want to get rid of the mood swings and irritability and her attacking me for doing "things you always do".

I'll give her empathy and let this pass. But I really want to hear her say, someday, "thank you for thinking of me." Rather today, I tend to hear "you don't do things the way I want you to and I don't like it."

Thanks for listening - any advice?